already heading for the door. ‘The Silbers are expecting us and they have to go out soon.’ Everyone knew this was a lie, and all were grateful for it.
The Garden Apartments on Nathan Hale Drive had been planned in the late forties, the first tranche up for rent a couple of years later. Though intended as affordable housing for the returning servicemen and their young families, there was nothing barracks-like about them. Each brick block was only two stories – a top and bottom apartment, one or two bedrooms, and each unit had a portico attached to the façade, making it look as if it were an individual house. Between the blocks the lawns had been turfed and maintained, trees were planted, beds of bushes ran along the walls. There were garden benches throughout, somewhere to sit with the paper while the kids played, perhaps talk to the other young parents.
A living community! proclaimed the brochures, but most of the residents regarded their tenure as temporary, until they could save up a deposit on one of the modest split level or ranch houses festooning the Long Island landscape. Only twenty years before, the Island was largely agricultural land. Now, within commuting distance to the city, it was sprawling suburbs, growing as relentlessly as a wart, and as unsightly. Nobody noticed, or, if they did, cared, that this new world was uniform and unlovely, because this fertile generation were desperate to become homeowners, for many of them the first home since their grandparents had emigrated from the old country. To own a house confirmed that one was an American, and to own a house first you lived in a garden apartment.
Harriet Silber had been informed, several times, that Michelle would supply coffee and cake before they came round at eleven-thirty, nevertheless a pot of coffee was on the table, plus a plate of pastries. She’d dressed up, after her fashion: wore a bright green smock with a wide front pocket, baggy dark blue slacks, a casual knotted scarf in bright orange: I am an artist, the outfit proclaimed, and a glance round the walls provided the evidence, with numerous paintings in the living room, ensconced in frames that were worth more at a junk shop than the pictures themselves.
Addie had heard of Harriet’s avocation, her pretensions, and had already branded her – before ever seeing her work – a local artist, a puffed-up amateur who has ‘exhibitions’ in some high school foyer and offers her daubs at prices that would buy you a good weekend in Manhattan. Addie looked, and, surprised, looked again. The seascapes and family portraits were competent, and – no doubt about it – Harriet cared about paint, in the laying down of colour, the nature and quality of brushstrokes, the depth and sheen of the oil. The pictures demanded a second glance, but did not repay it. A portrait of a young woman was painted in brutal impasto, in bright and unnatural colours, the turquoise hair contrasting with a face in lime green with blue touches. It hurt one’s eye. Harriet had looked carefully at German Expressionists and failed to learn from them. But the results were at least arresting. Not entirely bad. Not good.
Michelle glared at the plate of pastries, and Harriet shrugged her shoulders. You don’t entertain without offering a little something. It isn’t right.
Nor do you visit without partaking. Cups – the third of the morning for each of the visitors, they’d pay for that – were filled, rugelach chosen, one each. Ben popped his into his trouser pocket when he thought no one was looking. Addie was, and passed hers to him, a little too obviously.
He popped it into his mouth.
‘Delicious,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry the place is such a mess,’ said Charlie. ‘We’re moving in a few weeks and have started packing already . . .’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Ben, for Charlie was also a lawyer, who commuted to his office in the city.
‘Great Neck, there’s a new development there, just outside the centre, good incentives for first-time buyers and low mortgage rates. It’ll save me an hour a day commuting . . .’
Harriet nodded strenuously. ‘You bet! It’s going to make such a difference!’
‘What sort of difference?’ asked Addie neutrally, unwilling to reveal her unease.
‘Well, you know we came here three years ago, when our second was born, thought it would be a better life for us all? But it’s been hard on both of us . . .’
‘Hard? How so?’
‘Well, the commute for Charlie. He leaves just as the children are waking up and gets home after they’re asleep. That’s hard on all of us. But I guess I’ve never quite found . . . I don’t know what the word is? My place? No, not that, not quite. But I just don’t feel I fit in Huntington . . . I’m more of a city girl really, I love being near the galleries and theatres and shops, the restaurants. The people. Great Neck isn’t ideal, not by any means, but it’s bigger and closer. More cosmopolitan. Did you know Gatsby is set near there?’
Addie did. And Harriet’s description of herself was familiar: they were both city girls, and the suburbs were an inappropriate setting for them. Like planting orchids in a sandpit.
She looked round the apartment, the bits she could see from the table: the cramped kitchen, squat living room, the short hallway that led to the bedrooms . . . gazed out the window at the mothers and children in desultory commerce in the morning sunshine.
Awful. Just awful. They had similar accommodation in Alexandria, but DC was just a short ride away. They could use it, expose the children to it, make them aware that there was more to life than . . . this. This new home, that they could be moving into in a matter of months. She looked across the table at Ben, who smiled back automatically, in a sort of daze. Him? He wouldn’t mind, he had his work, and his writing, playing chess or the recorder, listening to opera on their new hi-fi, tennis and swimming at the Y. He’d actually like it. For a brief, unendurably intense moment she detested him.
‘But,’ said Charlie, anxious not to give the impression that he had been unhappy in his garden apartment, ‘we’ll miss it here, it’s very comfortable, nice neighbours, you can walk into town . . .’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Addie. ‘Is it the same as Frankie’s?’
‘The same?’
‘You know, same layout, same kitchen, same everything.’
The implication was not lost.
‘Oh no, each apartment is different is some way or another. We first tenants got to choose our own appliances and could modify the floor plan if we got in early enough . . .’
Addie rose from her seat, carefully avoiding the two cartons full of dishware at her feet, pushed under the dining-room table.
‘Can we have a quick look round?’
It didn’t take long, the Silbers anxious at the state of things: pictures removed from the walls left rectangles on the exposed paintwork, piles of blankets and bedding crammed into black garbage bags, the desolate air that makes any soon-to-be-abandoned home dreary and unwelcoming.
Addie walked through quickly, aware of her hosts’ embarrassment, anxious to spend just enough time not to be rude and get out of there. Anyway, it was exactly the same as Frankie’s, same floor plan, two crumby bedrooms, the larger perhaps ten by twelve feet, the other tighter and squarer, adequate for the kids. Small bathroom with bath and shower above, basic kitchen, basic appliances. More or less what she was used to in Alexandria, though preferable: lighter, slightly larger, more attractive yards. Better parking.
She tried to imagine what
