The Collected Stories of Amanda Cross Read Free

retire?”
    “Five years ago,” Tom said. “I was a professor at City College, and I just couldn’t take it anymore, teaching remedial English and being mugged in the parking lot. A lot of us took early retirement when the system, in order to get rid of us, made it especially attractive. And it wasn’t really the remedial English and the parking lot, it was just that I’d been at the same game too long. As you can see, I’ve even forgotten my Shakespeare–not that I’ve taught him since open admissions.”
    “Have you enjoyed the retirement, until this came along?”
    “Moderately. The days pass. I like working around the house. I have a few investments, and they need looking after. I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but having all day isn’t particularly conducive to creation, or so I’ve found. Funny thing, though, I discovered I really liked cooking. Tania always said she was the oldest kitchen boy in town. We had people in a lot, for dinner, drinks out here. It was a good life. Regular. It doesn’t make any sense.”
    “What do you mean by ‘regular’?”
    “Every day was just like every other. Well, not exactly, of course. The days Tania taught were different from the days when she didn’t teach. We joked: if Tania’s teaching Chekhov, it must be Tuesday. And then, every afternoon,when she’d come back from the university–she taught in the morning, and advised from one to three–or just when the hour came round, on the days she didn’t teach, she’d take her walk. Down Riverside Drive, across Seventy-second Street to Broadway, down Broadway to Fifty-ninth, and across to Fifth Avenue. Then she’d turn and come back, without the carrots.”
    “Carrots?”
    “For the horses, the ones that pull the carriages through the park. For tourists, I suppose. Tania loved to offer them a carrot each, brightening their lives. It’s funny how it began, really; she told me.” Tom seemed lost in thought.
    “How?” Kate urged him.
    “She was crossing Fifty-ninth one day, going somewhere–I mean, not on her exercise walk–and a little girl got out of the carriage she was riding in with her family, to have her picture taken with the horse, and she tried to feed the horse a carrot, holding it upright, by its end. Of course the horse took hold of her hand too, and the girl, screaming, dropped the carrot. To the rescue, Tania. She showed the girl how to hold her hand flat with the carrot on it, and calmed her down, although, Tania said, she couldn’t convince the child to try again. That’s what put the idea of carrots for the horses in Tania’s mind. Also, it gave her a destination for her walk, and made it possible for her to say: ‘I walk almost three miles every day–warding off osteoporosis and other dangers of aging.’ ”
    Tom fell into a sort of trance, staring out over the Hudson River. “I’ve been thinking,” he finally said, “how we work so hard to avoid the dangers of old age, now that we all live so long, and then, suddenly, we’re gone.”
    “There’s no real evidence she’s ‘gone,’ ” Kate said.
    “I can’t believe she wouldn’t have let me know, if she was able to. Something terrible must have happened.”
    “You’ve been married a long time then,” Kate said, not making it a question.
    “We were married in the war. We both finished graduate school, and then the children were born. Tania taught all through those years; we needed the money. It was a busy life, but a good one. The children keep calling,” he added, reminded of them. “I’ve gotten to dread the phone calls: ‘No news, Pop?’ And I always have to say, ‘No news.’ She can’t just have disappeared into thin air,” he concluded, in an unconscious echo of Fred Monson.
    “What have the police done?” Kate asked, more to have something to ask him than because she needed to be told. The police had put Tania on their missing persons computer, and had made inquiries–perfunctory, Kate felt