Endangered Species

Sandra Hochman

Description

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Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Endangered Species

First published by Putnam in 1977, Hochman's third novel is the story of Kathy Kahn's tireless search for love and purpose through business ventures, poetry, activism, and doomed love affairs. Hochman's experimental and frenetic novel mirrors the soul's search for comedy in tragedy and meaning in the meaningless.

Sujets

• Endangered Species
• Literary
• Sandra Hochman
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 02 mai 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683365242
• Langue: English

Extrait

endangered species
other books in the sandra hochman collection from turner publishing:
Streams
Endangered Species
Happiness Is Too Much Trouble
Jogging
Playing Tahoe
for children:
The Magic Convention
sandra hochman
endangered species
a novel
Turner Publishing Company
Nashville, Tennessee
New York, New York
www.turnerpublishing.com
Endangered Species
Copyright 2017, 1977 by Sandra Hochman. All rights reserved.
This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design: Maddie Cothren
Book design: Glen M. Edelstein
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hochman, Sandra, author.
Title: Endangered species : a novel / Sandra Hochman.
Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Turner, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017002566 | ISBN 9781683365228 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3558.O34 E5 2017 | DDC 813/.54--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002566
9781683365228
Printed in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For-William Targ
acknowledgments
My thanks to these people:
My daughter, Ariel
Steve Hochman
Don Townsend
Arthur and Alexandra Schlesinger
Jean Campbell
Richard and Helga Rosenthal
Susan and Alan Patricoff
Mary and John Cheever
Marc and Susan Strausberg
Jerry Goldsmith
who, each in their own way, perhaps without even
knowing, inspired me as I wrote this book .
I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me, and night swamped me with its crushing invasion. To survive myself I forged you like a weapon, like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
Pablo Neruda-From Twenty Love Poems
endangered species
celebration at forty
Helen
Alone. My birthday. A celebration of forty years. I was about to get into bed and enjoy the silence of my own room. Then Helen called.
Are you alone? she asked.
Of course I m alone.
A drunken pleading came through the phone.
Tonight it s the eighteenth aniversary of my father s death. His yortzeit . There s someone here I want you to meet. Jud.
No thanks. I don t want to meet anyone through you, Helen.
The lost girl, the sad green-eyed girl began to plead. Can you come and see me? I don t enjoy reliving the past with old acquaintances.
Just then a man grabbed the phone.
Hello. I m Jud. When your book came out I gave it to Richard Heman to read . . .
She doesn t care about that, I heard Helen saying.
Please can I talk to Helen?
Why don t you come over-I ll buy you a drink? the man said into the phone. His voice was loud.
I don t drink, I said.
Here Helen. Take the goddamn phone. She has problems. She doesn t drink. She sounds too uptight.
Please? asked Helen.
Where are you?
I m at the Bistro. You used to come here with Sonny. It s on Eighty-first Street and East End.
I don t have any cash with me, I said.
Just take the cab and stop the driver in front of the restaurant. I have some cash. Just take the cab.
I agreed to go.
Because twenty-four years had gone by since I first met Helen at Bingham House as a freshman in college. Because I had just been thinking of her on my birthday-fishing her out of the past like a squirming green-finned mermaid who spoke French, once smoked Gauloises, now smoked pot, once drank wine listening to Bach and Segovia, now drank vodka scotch beer-anything-in armpit bars-in flocked wallpaper bars-Helen-is it really you-the red-haired one who welcomed me to Bingham House and wore her hair in a Dutchgirl bob and wore pink leotards and soft black ballet slippers-looking like one of the Picasso clowns in the blue period- Le Saltimbanque -Helen-who had abortions, who had lost her virginity in Brooklyn and was the first girl I knew to have affairs -Helen whose big fatty saint of a father drove up to college from Pennsylvania-Big Gerald-in a huge shiny black Lincoln car-who smiled behind the wheel-looking very proud-of his daughter-Big Gerald who sponsored composers and the Philadelphia Symphony orchestra-married to a porcelain woman-who Helen used to say always asked her-even at twenty-if she loved her Do you love me Helen? her mother, Harriett, would ask like a grownup child herself Helen don t ever forget I bore you not the bore we would get to know so many years later-the boring Harriett whose hair was no longer combed, Harriett the widow, never having enough money (Big Gerald s money was lost by Helen s old boyfriend and lover and investor-Edgar-who kissed her in the college parking lot on both of their birthdays and said this is Helen the girl I m going to marry but never did)-Harriett of the flesh and bearing of children-now in New York City living with Helen-briefly in on a trip from Hawaii and Helen, now a holy beggar, crying through the cruel telephone begging me to come on her father s yortzeit to some bar.
I said Yes. Hung up the phone. No. I was too tired. I put on my old green warm-up tennis suit. Oh yes Helen had said It doesn t matter what you are wearing -as if I cared-and I went.
Helen was sitting on a red leather bar stool. The restaurant was not the Bistro-it had another name, the Boeuf Bourguignon-Helen had it wrong-but I got out of the cab and ran into the bar. Jud-the lug-who Helen had described in her slurred conversation as warm and Jewish came out to pay the cab. He was holding his dollars carelessly as if they were play dollars. Always the sign of the really drunk. Dollars fell out of his fingers on the street.
He slipped as he came to the cab. I belong to the single parents association and I give single parties for parents without partners, he said slurringly to me as he paid the cabdriver.
The driver saw he was drunk. You owe me another dollar, the cabdriver said to Jud. He winked at me. He won t miss it.
Leave him alone, I said to the driver. But I supposed he wanted to be given the money rather than seeing it fall into the gutter. Why was seeing Helen again always a nightmare ?
Jud s my name. I hear you have a child. Enid? Engel? Or is it two children?
I m afraid of drunks. Especially at night. And so I ran into the bar leaving Jud to follow me slowly.
Helen slid off her bar stool. She still looked doll-like from a distance. She had red bangs-to cover forehead wrinkles. As she came closer the drink showed. Her face had now become a distortion of what it was. One eye squinted the other eye large. Now she was a different kind of Picasso woman. A one-eyed woman from the abstract period. She wore black with a rhinestone belt that came from a dress somewhere and white high-heeled bedroom slippers. No stockings.
She put her arms around me and hugged me. Come, she said, let us sit down at the table not at the bar. She was princess now in her own court of alcoholics and bloated jesters.
Kathy. Is it you? You came, Helen said.
Yes. Your father s yortzeit happens to be my fortieth birthday. I lit a cigarette. I came, I said. I was thinking about you an hour ago. An hour before you called after all these years. And so I thought I have to see Helen. I was beginning to loathe old times.
Jud came over to bother us. Helen looked at him and began begging. Please won t you go away? This was my best friend in college. She s a beautiful person. We want to talk privately.
Oh god, twenty years later, for Helen, everyone is still a beautiful person.
Helen began delivering a liturgy for the dead. Edgar had died a terrible death from a tumor. She had introduced him to a Puerto Rican and the Puerto Rican had taken all his seven million dollars. He had left the Puerto Rican before he died. I was in my tenement. You can t imagine how beautiful it is. I rent it from the hospital. Only a hundred and twelve dollars a month. My mother was staying with me. When Edgar called and told me he was leaving his wife-his Puerto Rican-that I introduced him to-he called me when the tumor was coming out to here (she pointed to her red Dutch-cap bob) I ran to the back of the tenement while Edgar was still on the phone and I said to my mother-Harriett-what should I do? Edgar wants to come back to me.
You asked Harriett? Couldn t you decide for yourself what to do?
Helen ignored this. Harriett said, Be kind to him Helen. Even if he did lose all of Gerald s money. He s dying. So I told Edgar to come over and he did and he said hello baby-and I still loved him so much-I always loved Edgar-and even though this tumor was growing out of his head we went to dinner and then we visited Masha-I love Masha-you must spend time with Masha-his sister-I love her so much-you would love her-
I know Masha. She is lovely.
Well Edgar was always in love with Masha. He would take her to a skating rink when they were children. And they would skate together. And he would say- Masha? Which girl would you pick out for me? You see he always loved Masha. That was his problem. He was in love with his sister. But to hide this he always asked her to find him girls. The same thing with me. He loved me. I think I reminded him of Masha. And when he lived with me he always said Helen find me a girl. Find me someone.
Helen s one good eye opened to a large green circle. The other eye started weeping. He died so miserably.
How did he make seven million dollars? I asked. I thought he was a communist.
He was a communist. He married a Puerto Rican. That was his idea of communism . He was an investor. He started out as a communist but then when he was a counselor in a summer camp one of the little boys fathers worked at Payne Weber and he got a job there as an investor and he was most successful-spook-or whatever you call what they do at Payne Weber-until they fired hi