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My son, Jack had a call and had to return to his office, leaving me seated in front of the painting. Before he exited the gallery he gave me that knowing smile of his. He’d seen me in front of Nighthawks before, lost in thought for what to him must have seemed like hours. Jack knows the painting is special for me but he’s never asked why. He knew there were parts of my life I never talked about and I guessed he wondered it they were connected to the Edward Hopper work. Once he joked: “Dad, I think you come to Chicago to see the Hopper, not your grand kids.”
The Art Institute had just opened, and I was alone with the artist’s rendition of two gaunt men in fedoras, a woman in red, and the night chef in the paper hat leaning over the counter. It was a scene of isolation many of us born in the 1930s could relate to. Alone in the exquisite solitude the painting evokes, bathed in the yellow-green aura of the fluorescent light escaping from the diner, a place of quiet, I still heard heavy diner mugs and bowls being stacked and smell the sizzle of bacon on the greasy grill. Once again, I was in the picture, a small boy staring through the window from the street corner outside, the sidewalk still wet from a light rain. The sound of traffic noise building in the street. A smile broke out on the face of the woman in red, and she whispered something to the man sitting next to her. He turned his head away and laughed. Overhead the street signs read 49th Street and Lexington Avenue. John Steiner, my father, once lived just around the corner.
As I entered the painting and walked closer to the window, the night turned to morning. The woman in red and the men in fedoras were nowhere to be seen. The stools at the counter were occupied with new customers. I peered through the window, searching for John Steiner. An old fellow in coveralls and a trainman's striped cap must have thought I was a hungry waif looking for a hand out and waved me in. I sat on the empty stool next to him. The noise inside was a deafening contrast to the morning quiet outside. I wished the jukebox wasn’t blaring although I liked the song… nothing could be finer, than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina….
“Have some breakfast, boy,” he said. I pointed to the small boxes of Pep cereal lined up on a shelf. A waitress served it with milk and banana.
“Do you know John Steiner?” I asked the trainman. “He used to come in here.”
"Anybody know a John Steiner," the trainman shouted down the counter, and then to me, "Can ya describe Mister John Steiner, lad?"
I looked at the cereal bowl in front of me and said, "My aunt always said he had hands like two bunches of bananas."
The trainman laughed and said that just about described everyone he knew. He gulped his coffee, picked up the check, paid the bill with a tip, all in change, and said before leaving, "Well laddy, I've got to be catchin’ the ferry for Ho-buck-in and work. I hope ya find what ya lookin' for."
After he left, the short order cook came to the counter across from me and lit a cigarette. He raised his head thoughtfully toward the ceiling, wiped his sweaty brow with the bottom of his apron, and said, “Yeah, I remember Steiner. He came in here a lot. Used to live around the corner in an old brownstone on 48th Street. Worked for Steinway Piano. He joked about his name, Steiner. Said he owned the piano company."
“Yes!" I shouted with delight. “Forty-eighth Street around the corner. I visited him there a long time ago. He was a cabinetmaker. I knew he must have come here to eat. It's the nearest place. What can you tell me about him?"
"Oh, I don't know.” he replied. “Nice enough guy. Always came in alone neatly dressed with a necktie. He liked the Giants. That's right! Talked about the Giants during the season. Everybody else in here liked the Yankees. But he never got into an argument over it." The cook shook his head and smiled, pleased that his memory was returning. "If he came in these days, he'd hear a lot of arguing. If it ain't about Mickey Owens dropping that third strike and costing the Bums the Series; it'd be about Roosevelt dragging us into war. Haven't seen Steiner in a long time. Guess he's gone somewhere else by now."
The juke box stopped when he said that and the diner was quiet. Then someone dropped a coin into the slot and the Ink Spots sang…"We three, we're all alone/Living in a mem-o-ry/ We’ll wait for you/Even till eter-ni-ty/ my echo, my shadow, and me."
I left the diner and rounded the corner. A newsstand displayed the morning papers hanging with clothespins like underwear drying on a line. The Daily News and Mirror had "Roosevelt" and "Lend-Lease" in their headlines; the Times and Trib had "Moscow Under Siege" in much smaller type. The talk in the diner was about going to war with Germany. John Steiner's parents had come from Germany. I used to hear how he loved his beer.
I found a row of brownstones. I’d sat on the steps a long time ago waiting for him to come home. I was almost asleep that afternoon when he spotted me. There was surprise all over his pallid face. “Your brother must have told you where I live. We can talk in my room.” he said. I followed him up two flights of stairs. His room was large enough to hold a bed, two dressers, one with a mirror, and a small desk. It had a walk-in closet and I saw his clothes hanging neatly through the open door. His neckties were arranged on a tie rack on the back of the door. I'd never seen a tie rack before.
He’d lit a Camel, sizing me up then telling me to sit on the chair at the desk. It brought back memories of him as a heavy smoker who could dangle a cigarette from his lips while he walked, talked, or worked. I’m sure he asked me what had been going on in my life, but I can’t remember any of our conversation. I said very little. I didn’t know what to say. I remember mostly his watery eyes looking down at me, smoke curling around his head. Smoke always made my eyes water too.
I walked home that late afternoon along streets teeming with people leaving their jobs, across intersections jammed with honking traffic, past stores with their lights popping on like fireworks. I was at peace returning the misunderstood.visit he paid me four year ago.
It was early September, and I’d just started second grade when he appeared suddenly on my way home after school. He came out of the shadows of a corner storefront under the El and called my name. I froze, frightened by the sudden appearance of this man with the smoking Camel in his nicotine stained hand, the necktie knotted tightly under his starched white collar, the pallid skin pulled tight on his face, my father just as I’d remembered him, a man I’d been taught to hate for reasons I never knew. Had he come to take me away to some snowy place in the Alps like the mean aunt in Heidi, never to return to my home, friends, and school? When he stepped forward to talk, the light turned green, and I ran to the other side of the avenue, turned and he was gone. John Steiner had entered my life for a moment after four years of nonexistence.
The conflict with Germany did come as the customers in the diner predicted, but none expected Pearl Harbor. My brothers went off to war. My uncle died, and my Aunt went to work to help us survive. There were a few more walks uptown; short waits outside the cold brownstone, and furtive peeks through the diner window before the procession home, walks that filled me with the lightness of absolution for having tried to face John Steiner after running from him. But at the time, I was just a boy looking for answers to questions I was unable to articulate.
Soon we would leave the city to live with relatives in New Jersey. No more would I watch the city at night from the window of our four-story walk-up. No more dreams about parties and penthouses in the Empire State Building, looming like a titan to the left, most of its windows brightly lit. We, the skyscraper and I, had a special connection, born as we were around the same time. No longer would I feel the sadness I’d feel looking down at another diner, this one a corner away with flickering neon lights and a closed door that nobody ever passed through. In my new home, there would be no more thoughts of John Steiner. No more lonely walks to look for him. No more peering through the window of the diner. The last time I was there, the woman in red was back, the men in fedoras were sitting in silence, and the waiter was leaning over the counter. Night had returned to the static scene, along with my son, Jack.
“Sorry to have taken so long, Dad, you must have had your fill of looking at the Hopper.”
“It reminds me of a diner that I used to know on Lexington Avenue and the memories of eating there. You know how my memory needs help these days, Jack.”
“Sounds like you’ve got food on your mind. We’ll have an early lunch at Blacky’s before going home.”
“Jack, you never asked about your grandfather. Even when you were a kid.”
“I knew he was a sore issue for you, Dad. That he kind of dropped out of your life. I mean your brothers and sister’s lives too. Still I would have liked to know him, even if I was only two when he died.”
“I would have liked to know him too, son.”
Jack waited while I stood, and took a last look at the painting. My thoughts returned to that sunny morning, thirty five years ago, riding the Beltway to a funeral parlor in Long Island. John Steiner’s five kids made an entrance and joined people who never knew we existed. I went to the casket after everyone else. He was surrounded in unbecoming white satin, still as pallid as ever, a necktie tightened around his throat. Why hadn’t someone stuck a Camel in his mouth? It was my time to say the words I’d never been able to say as a child:
It must have been tough for you, John, losing your wife, stuck with five kids, me only four years old, you with no job during the depression.
It was the only thing I could have done and your aunt wanted you and the others.
She turned me against you, sad to say; maybe to keep you away, but it shouldn’t have stopped you from being present in my life. I never wanted anything from you but that, your presence in my life.
I was wrong about that. I should have pressed you. I wanted to see you, but was never forceful.
And I was wrong too, unlike my brother, who opened a door to you a few times. I didn’t have the guts to move ahead. But at least we both know now what we missed. I’m glad we had a chance to talk again. Wish we could grab a cup of coffee in that diner on Lex.
You remember that place? Lousy food!
I go there all the time…
“Dad.”
“Hmmm.”
“Dad, we better go if we’re going to get a table. You know how that place crowds up at noon.”
“I’m ready, Jack. I think I’ll have a cocktail, if you promise not to tell your mother.
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