Emma looked stricken. Faith could read her mind.
One more thing on an increasingly nasty “To Do” list—testify against Michael, find new apartment—
too, too upsetting to walk into the kitchen—get divorce.
“I’m sure the lawyers will handle everything, and going away for a while is a terrific idea,” Faith advised.
“It’s settled, then—and you’ll come, too, Faith.” Poppy drained her drink and stood up.
“I have to work, sorry,” Faith said—and she was.
Just for now. Just for a moment.
“He really was the most divine man. I miss him.” There was no question about whom she was speaking.
“I miss him, too,” Emma said.
Poppy nodded briskly. Things were getting a bit too mushy. “Now, call me and tell me where you’ll be after you leave here. I’m off to Marietta’s. You know how to reach me.” When they’d met at the St. Regis, Emma had called her mother right away. Poppy was keeping a close eye on her daughter.
Emma kissed her mother good-bye.
They talked some more, but after a while fell into their own individual reveries. It would be the New Year soon. A new decade, and in not too many years, a new century. You can’t stop time, no matter how much you do or don’t want to, Faith reflected. Richard had been right about one thing: Nathan Fox’s murder was tied to his past. A line from Shakespeare’s
The Big Apple. Jazz musicians coined the city’s familiar moniker in the twenties. There were plenty of apples to pick from the tree, but only one Big Apple, only one New York. If you had a gig there, you had it made.
The ultimate destination.
Growing up in northern New Jersey, I felt much the same. As teenagers, my friends and I used to say we lived “just outside the city,” omitting the fact that we had to cross a state line to get there. At twelve, we were deemed old enough to take the DeCamp bus together to Port Authority—in the daytime. Armed with the small penciled maps my mother would draw, we’d head for Manhattan. One Saturday, it would be museums. My cousin John convinced me to stand in line with him for several hours outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art to catch a sixty-second glimpse of the
No time of year was more magical than December, and from the time I was a small child, there was always a special trip during the season to look at the Rockefeller Center tree and the department store windows.
Other times of the year, my parents took us to the ballet, opera—the old Met with the “cloth of gold” curtain—concerts, and special exhibits at the museums—the Calder mobiles, like nothing anyone had seen before, spiraling in the enormous spiral of the Guggenheim.
Then there were the restaurants—or rather, one restaurant: Horn and Hardart’s Automat. My 1964 Frommer’s guide advises: “Inquire of any passer-by, and you’ll be directed to one that’s usually no more than a block-or-two away.” Sadly, they have all disappeared, and trying to explain the concept to my fifteen-year-old son —you put nickels in the slot next to the food you wanted, lifted the little glass door, snatched it out, and watched the empty space revolve, instantly producing another dish—is well nigh impossible. Fortunately, there are old movies. Just as difficult is describing the food—the superb crusty macaroni and cheese with tiny bits of tomato, the warm deep-dish apple pie with vanilla sauce, the baked beans in their own little pot. Most New Yorkers of a certain age wax nostalgic about Automat food—the meat loaf! And a whole meal for one dollar.
My husband is the genuine article. A native New Yorker, born and bred in the Bronx. “The Beautiful Bronx” when he was growing up, and we have a book of the same name to prove it. When he meets someone else from the borough, talk immediately turns to the Grand Concourse, the “nabe,” and egg creams. Where he lived is now part of the Cross Bronx Expressway, but he can still point out his elementary school as we whiz past. New Yorkers are very sentimental.
And to continue in the manner of Faith’s sweeping generalizations, New Yorkers are also very rude, very generous, very funny, very stylish, very quirky, and very fast. Genetically, they have more molecules than most other Americans. The moment I step off the train or plane from Boston, my pace quickens in imitation, my gaze narrows, and my senses sharpen. Forget all those New York designer fragrances. The essence is adrenaline, pure and simple.
This book is a paean to New York City past, present, and future—written about the end of one very distinctive decade as the city is poised for another—and a new century at that. At the close of 1989, the last thing Faith imagines is that in a few years she’ll be in exile—living in the bucolic orchards west of Boston.
She’ll keep her edge, though, will continue to read the
EXCERPTS FROM
HAVE FAITH
IN YOUR KITCHEN
BY Faith Sibley
A WORK IN PROGRESS
PORK LOIN STUFFED
WITH WINTER FRUITS
