From Time to Time

14

I CROSSED FIFTY-NINTH STREET, only three slow-moving automobiles chugging harmlessly toward me, and the distant electric eye of a cable car. No Fifth Avenue entrance to the Plaza that I could see; the familiar pillars, yes, but plate glass between them, behind them a glittering restaurant, everyone in evening dress.

So into the Plaza at Fifty-ninth Street; then I followed the music down a carpeted corridor to The Tea Room, and my sketch here is my memory of what I saw. It was wild, a quartet somewhere back there pounding out the ragtime beat: piano, trumpet, violin, and a harp plucked and swiped at by a shoulder-swaying lady in a long lavender dress. The men in suits, ties, vests, and nearly every woman wore a hat—big hats with big brims, or headbands, one of them sporting a two-foot-high ostrich feather rising straight up from the woman’s forehead, jiggling steadily—I could follow it moving around the floor.

Standing there watching, listening, grinning, I knew the words of this music, but . . . what were these people doing? Because they were moving to the beat all right, really moving, shoulders, arms, hips, feet, and wagging heads. But in my sketch I’ve tried to show how some women—like the one in the foreground—held their left arms oddly, hand on hip but with the elbow swung around to point straight forward. Others, like the woman at the left, let their forearms dangle limp. Occasionally a man bent his partner far back, nearly horizontal.

Abruptly the music ended: See that ragtime couple over there, I stood mentally singing along, see them throw their feet—and they did, everyone abruptly kicking one foot back—up in the air! Suddenly everyone joined in singing the final words aloud: “It’s a bear, it’s a bear,” and now they yelled it, “IT’S A BEAR!” The music stopped, and every dancer out there hunched shoulders and, feet shuffling, waddled off the floor, grinning, in imitation, I realized, of a walking bear. It was something.

A waiter in dark green trimmed with gilt braid stopped before me. “One, sir?” I said yes, and he glanced around worriedly, frowning, but it was a token gesture. “I’m afraid we have no empty tables, sir. Would you care to share one?” He turned, nodding toward a table at which a young woman sat alone. She smiled and nodded tolerantly. I said fine, and he took me there. She wore a headband with a plume of some kind, and sat fixing an earring as I arrived. “Tea for two?” said the waiter to me, and I glanced at her, saying, “You sure this is all right?” and she nodded, saying, “I’m not usually so bold, but I do dislike sitting alone at a thé dansant. Tea dance."

“Oh, I know what thé dansant means,” I said, pulling out my chair. “I speak impeccable French. L’heure bleu!”

She said, “Tiens. Croissant!”

I was running out of French, wondered if I could risk this, and did. “Merde!” But she laughed, and we sat smiling, and were okay, and I was glad to be exactly here because I was remembering something. I remembered the occasional somber loneliness, like no other kind, of entering a time in which you know not one single human being on earth. So that to sit here and be able to talk and laugh a little was nice.

The waiter was back with a tray that looked silver and maybe was. He set out cups, saucers, two teapots, cream jugs, all of thin white china, and a silver sugar bowl, tiny spoons, cloth napkins. And I sat, during this ceremony, looking at the girl across the table, and—it was the headband—a phrase, a name, rose up in my mind: the Jotta Girl. Because when I was a five-year-old, I lived for some months with an aunt who, in the 1920s, had been what she called a flapper. And one day in a drawer she came upon something she’d worn then, a kind of elaborate headband with tall feathers and a lot of glass jewels, not much different from the one across the table from me now. My aunt put on her old headband and did a dance, expertly it seemed to me, which she called the Charleston, singing a song of her youth called “Ja Da.” I loved that dance and song, and occasionally when I asked, she’d do it again while I tried to imitate it, to her amusement. And I loved the song for its nonsense words. We’d both dance and sing, a staccato “Jotta . . .” a beat, then again, “Jotta!” Another beat, then the part that delighted my primitive five-year-old soul, “Jotta, jotta, jink-jink-jing!” So now the girl across from me, pouring our tea, became in my mind the Jotta Girl.

She said, “My name is Helen Metzner,” and I said, “I’m Simon Morley.” But she didn’t look like a Helen to me. She looked faintly familiar, like someone I’d known, so she remained the Jotta Girl for me. We fussed with our tea, she added sugar, intent on the stirring. Then, retreating to our earlier joke for something to say, she said, “Your accent is a bit different from many French. Better, of course!”

“Of course. Because they’re the ones who fail the accent test.” She smiled, waiting; she was good-looking. “Even if you’re born French that accent can be too much. So at eighteen you have to take the accent test. And even with coaching and special gargling practice, eleven percent fail, and are exiled forever.”

“Given the dreaded red passport,” she said.

“Allowed home for a brief visit only once every ten years.”

“ ’Allo, Maman! I am ’ome!”

“Sacre bleu! For ’ow long!”

We relaxed then, we’d made it over the hump. The musicians were back, and now they began something I didn’t know, but with the same nice ragtime beat. “Well,” said the Jotta Girl, “it’s a tea dance. We have our tea, so now—shall we dance?”

I wear a wedding ring, and had my left hand lying on the table where she could see it; I didn’t want any misunderstanding. “I’m sorry,” I said, and was able to add truthfully, “I don’t know how.”

“Oh, of course you do; it’s easy; look at them.” We watched them, dancing as they had before. Then the little musical group swung into an old friend, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and I grinned and began singing the few words I knew, “Come on along! . . . Come on along!” and the Jotta Girl jumped up. “Yeah! Come on along!” she sang, holding out both hands, “to Alexander’s Ragtime Band!” and I had to stand, and walk out onto that wild dance floor with her.

I was right; I couldn’t dance to this. But so was she: Yes I could. Sort of. She more or less led me, guiding, keeping me out of harm’s way. And I imitated what I saw all around me, swaying my shoulders, kicking out when everyone else did, whirling, doing the best I could—and it was fun, exciting, even hilarious; we were laughing. But when the little musical group under the arches paused, leaning forward to turn their pages, I had the good sense to turn toward the edge of the floor.

Back at the table, we sipped a little tea, which was getting cold. I liked being here in this busy room, all a-murmur with talk and laughing and the happy chink of china. I sat back, looking around at the marvelous big hats; looked for the girl who’d come running in from the red taxi, and couldn’t find her; looked for the two-foot ostrich feather, and spotted it immediately, swaying over the dance floor. Then the musicians swung into “Oh, You Beautiful Doll!” and I didn’t want to be anywhere but here. But I made myself lean forward toward the Jotta Girl to say, “This is fun, a lot of fun. But I’ve only just arrived. From a long way off,” I said truthfully. And”—this suddenly turned true with saying it—“I’m worn out.”

“Of course. So was I the first day I arrived; New York is so exciting. Are you staying at the Plaza?”

“Yes.” I’d picked up the check—two dollars—and I put down three.

“So am I. Thank you for the tea,” she said, and released me gracefully by adding, “I’ll just stay and finish mine. Bonne nuit, monsieur.”

I’d thought I was going straight up to my room, but—I was too excited—in the lobby I walked on past the elevators, and out of the hotel into this night of early 1912. On the curb, there in the new darkness, I stood facing Central Park just across the street. Was l’heure bleu over? Yes. The trees and shrubbery of the Park stood night-black and formless now. At regular intervals under the streetlamps, circles of weak orange light silvered the streetcar rails and nicked into the curb. I glanced up at the sky; the air still clear here in these early years of the century, the stars hung as low and sharp as they did back in my time with Julia. Across the street a man and a woman, his hat in his hand—it was still daytime warm—stepped down off the curb and crossed at a long leisurely angle toward an enticing row of lighted globes along the front of the Savoy Hotel.

From the street came the steady clattering grumble of the cable down in its slot between the cable car rails, tugging a car toward me from my left. I stood watching the car’s round electric eye flitter its light along the uneven brick pavement ahead. Something puzzled me: on each side a rectangle of light accompanied the car, sliding along the bricks beside it. Then I saw that the car was open, without sides, and now I could see its passengers on benches extending across the width of the car, no aisle. A couple dozen teenagers, high schoolers, sat there under the ceiling lights, talking, laughing a lot, the girls all with long hair, some in long braids down the back, the boys all in suits, ties, and stiff collars. This was an open-sided summertime streetcar chartered for tonight, I supposed, in this springlike weather. Now I could see the overhead lighted bulbs—of clear glass with spike tips just as the glassblowers had left them. A blue-uniformed conductor stood casually on an outside running board the length of the car. A pair of girls, one with a big pink bow on her hair, sat, one busily talking, gesturing, the other listening, nodding, smiling. This wonderful open streetcar trundled past me now, the moving rectangle of light beside it sliding along, reaching just over the curb, to momentarily brush a wavering polish onto the rounded tips of my shoes. The listening girl, still nodding at whatever the other was saying, glanced casually out toward me, and—elated with this glorious sight—I lifted my arm on impulse and waved.

She saw me, and even in this fractional moment I had time to wonder: Would a young woman of the 1880s wave back? No, she surely would not. Or a young woman of the latter part of the twentieth century—would she wave from the window of a bus on this very same street? No, she wouldn’t risk being misunderstood. But the girl of this New York here on a fine evening in this early year of this fresh new century saw my little wave, smiled immediately, and without thought or pause waved back. Just a little flutter of the fingers as she rolled on by, but it told me I was visible, told me I was truly here standing on this sidewalk in this moment of her passing. And to me it said—this immediate, unconsidered, open response—that I had come into a time worth protecting.

The little island of light, slowing for Fifth Avenue just ahead, rolled on by, and I’d had enough for this night. All around me in the darkness the new city and whatever it might hold for me lay waiting. But for the moment I was content, and an almost welcome tiredness liberated itself to move through my mind and body. And I turned back to the hotel, to register and go up to my room and a room service dinner. And finally to bed and—I’d brought no wardrobe—to sleep in my funny new underwear.