Chapter 9 - The Eviction on West End
Wednesday arrived in Manhattan with a cold, piercing wind that whistled through the high-rise canyons, stripping the last yellow leaves from the ginkgo trees along West End Avenue.
At precisely eleven-forty-five AM, a white Ford commercial van bearing the logo of Elite Lock & Security pulled up to the curb outside 118 West End Avenue.
I sat in the back of an Uber Black fifty feet down the block, watching through the tinted window.
Beside the moving van stood two uniformed New York City Marshals, holding clipboards and red legal folders, speaking to the building superintendent—a tall Dominican man named Hector whom I had tipped five hundred dollars every Christmas for three years.
Hector held a master key ring.
They walked through the heavy wrought-iron double doors of the pre-war building.
Ten minutes later, the street door opened again.
Lily was being escorted onto the sidewalk.
She was wearing a dirty pair of gray sweatpants, an oversized winter coat that belonged to our father, and slippers. She was screaming—her voice high, ragged, bouncing off the limestone facades of the brownstones across the street.
"You can't do this! I have an exhibition in November! My canvases are upstairs! My oil paints are worth five thousand dollars!"
One of the marshals—a heavy-set woman with a badge pinned to her tactical vest—stood calmly on the bottom step, holding a legal document at arm's length.
"The seventy-two-hour notice was served on Sunday at noon, ma'am," the marshal said, her voice completely flat, bureaucratic, and bored. "The property has been surrendered to the landlord for non-payment of rent. You have sixty minutes to supervise the removal of personal effects by the designated moving crew. Anything remaining in the unit after one o'clock will be inventoried and transported to the city storage depot in Queens."
Behind them, two men in gray jumpsuits began carrying cardboard boxes out of the service entrance, stacking them on the concrete sidewalk beside a row of black garbage bags.
A yellow taxi pulled up to the curb with a screech of worn brake pads.
My mother tumbled out of the passenger side, her purse swinging wildly from her elbow, nearly tripping over the curb in her rush to reach Lily.
"Stop this!" Eleanor screamed at the marshals. "Stop this right now! Where is the manager? Call Mr. Henderson! My daughter is an artist! She is a student at Pratt!"
"The manager is in his office, lady," Hector said, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his face like stone. "And the lease is terminated. The guarantor canceled the card on Friday. We got thirty people on the waiting list for this unit who got real jobs and real checks. Move the bags off the sidewalk or the sanitation crew will take them."
Lily collapsed onto a stack of three cardboard boxes containing her art supplies, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with that violent, theatrical hysteria that had always brought our father to his checkbook.
Only Arthur Miller wasn't writing a check.
My father was standing by the trunk of his ten-year-old sedan, fifty feet away, leaning against the fender with his hands stuffed into his pockets, looking down at the pavement.
He didn't look like an executive.
He didn't look like the master of a suburban dynasty.
He looked like a tired, broken old man who had just received a certified letter from the bank informing him that his primary line of credit was in default and his daughter’s tuition was ninety days past due.
He didn't cross the street to help Eleanor carry the boxes.
He didn't offer to put Lily’s clothes into his trunk.
He simply stood there, cold, gray, and completely empty, watching the two women he had spent twenty years indulging discover what the world looks like when the woman who paid for the foundation walks away from the house.
I looked at the driver of my car through the rear-view mirror.
May you like
"JFK," I said softly. "Terminal Seven."
The driver nodded, shifted into drive, and the black car pulled smoothly away from the curb, accelerating down West End Avenue toward the West Side Highway, leaving the cardboard boxes, the screaming mother, and the ruined sister behind us in the exhaust.
