Love Saves the Day

It was five weeks before I heard from my insurance company, and they informed me that my renter’s policy didn’t cover lawful acts of emergency demolition by the City. By then Laura and I were staying in cheap hotels on the Lower East Side, and my credit was nearly exhausted. I arranged a “fire sale” at Ear Wax, selling everything that could be sold for whatever price I could get for it to the obsessive collectors who had always been my best customers. At the end of it, I turned the keys and the lease over to Noel. I still had hundreds of records left that were scratched or damaged, or that the collectors hadn’t been interested in, and perhaps two dozen that I couldn’t bring myself to part with. They weren’t worth much anyway (although I don’t think Laura, when she saw how many remained unsold, believed that), but now you could probably sell them for something simply because they’re old. All of them, along with my personal effects from the store, went into the same storage unit I’d first rented back when Laura was born. Another phase of my life had been boxed up and put away in a dark room, left there to molder and gather dust.

We were living in an SRO up in Harlem—all I could afford at that point, and more accessible by subway to the Midtown employment agencies I had applied with—when we finally heard from Anise in early August. I brought Laura with me to every typing test and every job interview—because where could I have left her?—and that, along with my lack of a “real” address, wasn’t helping my job hunt. Most of what Anise had to say about her management company—which, as I suspected, hadn’t made much of an effort to pass my messages along—was unrepeatable. She fired them a few days later, and her ousting them in the middle of an international tour over “creative differences” became a minor news item. The new management company she quickly signed with arranged for Laura and me to stay in one of their corporate apartments. Anise offered to do a lot more than that for us, but I refused to take it from her. I knew I’d never be able to pay her back.

Once I had an address, I was able to find a job as a typist at a small real estate law firm. The hourly rate was good, and I learned that if I was willing to work off-hours—late at night, for example—I could make up to double my hourly rate. I was used to keeping odd hours because of the record store, so that suited me fine.

Having a job meant I could finally fill out the reams of paperwork for a two-bedroom apartment in a Mitchell-Lama building in the East Twenties. Only thirteen blocks from the technical boundary of my old neighborhood, but still a world away. We were more or less settled by the time Laura’s school year started, although it was Christmas before I could afford to buy us any real furniture beyond the two mattresses I’d used up the last of my credit for when we moved in.

Laura was barely speaking to me those days. When I lost Laura’s voice, I lost the music in my head, too. Or it was more like the music in my head was my daughter’s voice. Laura was my music. It was like living with my parents all over again, except this time the only person to blame was me. I knew the only way I could make things right would be to find Mr. Mandelbaum, to salvage whatever there was left to salvage of our old lives.

I went back to our old neighborhood every night after work, every morning before I was due at the office. I had the photo of Laura and Mr. Mandelbaum that I’d kept in my wallet, and I showed it to people. All the hookers and squatters and street people I’d come to know over the years. Except that there weren’t as many of them anymore. How had I not noticed? I even went to the beat cops, the ones I knew from my store. Cops who hadn’t been on the other side of the barricades that day. In the end it was Povercide Bob from his usual haunt in front of Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A who—after subjecting me to a twenty-minute diatribe about how the government and the CIA were conspiring to kill the poor, and how what had happened to our building was proof—directed me to a seedy SRO on the Bowery.

I thought (foolishly, I now realize) that if I went to Mr. Mandelbaum with a plan for getting him out of that place, everything could still be all right. I told myself nothing had happened to any of us that couldn’t be fixed by time and the quiet order of a clean new home. I called City agencies on my lunch breaks, trying to find a place for him to go. I got shuffled around a lot. Eventually I was referred to the Jewish Home for the Aged, who would be able to find Mr. Mandelbaum an apartment only a hundred dollars a month more than the old place had been. Of course, a hundred dollars a month is a fortune to somebody on a fixed income. But I was making more money now, more than I’d made with the record store. My bigger paychecks, our cleaner, bigger apartment, hung in the air between Laura and me like unspoken accusations. I had to do something. I had to make it right.