50 by Avery Corman

Author:Avery Corman [Corman, Avery]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7040-0
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-12-24T17:06:00+00:00

10

ANDY WAS ABOUT TO leave for college. On his last night in New York he asked Doug if they could merely bring in a pizza, and he spent most of the evening on the phone saying goodbye to people. Karen, back from London, was in her room working with charcoal in a sketchbook. She no longer painted in Doug’s apartment, and once when he asked her about this she explained, “It’s something about the light here. It’s not optimum.” She had said this offhandedly, oblivious to the possibility that she might be hurting him, that the best he had was a side street, which was not Central Park West overlooking the expanse of the park. She was making an artist’s simple statement of fact: in the other apartment the light was better.

Doug helped Andy tie some of his belongings into a carton, remembering when he had left for college. He had walked out of his parents’ apartment into the subway. His parents had a party back then when he was accepted at NYU on a baseball scholarship out of Haaren High School. They served cold cuts and bottles of rye at an event largely for adults: Frank and Norma Gardner got a son into college! They may have been second-generation Americans, but by social class they still considered themselves immigrants. When the children, specifically when Doug moved into American corporate life, they would finally get their citizenship papers. They would visit him at his home in the suburbs, their son the executive. “NYU. The business school,” his mother said proudly, her face jolly for the moment. “He’s my guy,” his father added, patting Doug on the back. Frank and Norma were being congratulated on all sides by their friends, and Doug was weak with sadness for his parents, for their need to live through him.

For three years at NYU he meandered, unfocused, through vapid business courses. One day he complained to the editor of the school newspaper about what he considered inadequate coverage of the baseball team and was asked to rectify it himself. He started to write for the newspaper, taking journalism courses in his senior year. The college writing helped him to an Army job with the post newspaper at Fort Dix, and when he returned to the city he was determined to be a newspaperman. He knew there would be less anxiety about his job-seeking if he informed his parents about his plans after he had a job.

“A reporter? For sports?” his father responded when Doug said he had been hired by the Yonkers Herald Statesman.

They were ashen. They stared at him, disbelieving.

“You went to college for business,” his mother said.

“I don’t want business.”

“If you’re not a doctor, then all there is—is business,” she said.

“How much is the pay?” his father asked.

“Fifty-five dollars to start.”

More disbelief. Four years of college and the Army only to work for fifty-five dollars a week.

“That’s the pay scale. It improves.”

“How can it not?” his father said.

“I was a business-administration major. There isn’t a business I could administer, even if I wanted to.

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