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      The Cochrans have a party

      Cassy Cochran was upset.

      Michael, her husband, had gone to pick up ice four hours ago and hadn’t been seen since; Henry, her son, was supposed to be back from Shea Stadium but wasn’t; and Rosanne, the cleaning woman, was currently threatening the new bartender in the kitchen with deportation proceedings if he didn’t see her way of doing things.

      Not a terrific beginning for a party that Cassy absolutely did not want to have.

      “Hey, Mrs. C?” It was Rosanne, standing in the doorway to the living room.

      Cassy turned.

      “If Mr. C comes back, he’s gonna be pretty upset about how this guy’s settin’ up the bar. Could you—” She frowned suddenly and leaned her head back into the kitchen. “What?” she said. “Well, it’s about time.” Rosanne swung back around the doorway, waving her hand. “Never mind, Mrs. C, Mr. Moscow here suddenly understands English.”

      Cassy smiled, shaking her head slightly, and then surveyed the living room. It was a very large, very airy room that, in truth, almost anything would look marvelous in. And Cassy’s taste for antiques (or “early attic,” as Michael described her preference) was especially fitting, seeing as every floorboard in the apartment creaked. But then, the apartment was really much more like a house, a big old country farmhouse, only with high ceilings. And windows. The three largest rooms—the living room, the master bedroom and Henry’s room—all had huge windows facing out on the Hudson River.

      The windows had been washed this week. Before, shrouded in a misty gray, the view from the twelfth floor had been eerily reminiscent of London on what Henry called a Sherlock Holmes kind of day. But no, this was New York; and the winter’s soot had all been washed away and the late afternoon April sun, setting across the river in New Jersey, was, at this moment, flooding the living room with gentle light.

      For a woman from the Midwest, the view from the Cochrans’ apartment never failed to slightly astonish Cassy. This was New York City? That steely, horrid, ugly place that her mother had warned her about? No, no…Mother had been wrong. Hmmm. Mother had been right about many things, but no, not about New York. Not here. Not the place the Cochrans had made their home.

      Sometimes the view made Cassy long to cry. The feeling—whatever it was—would start deep in her chest, slowly rise to her throat and then catch there, hurting her, Cassy unable to bring it up or to press it back down from where it had come. She was feeling that now, holding on to the sash of the middle window, looking out, her forehead resting against the glass.

      The Cochrans lived at 162 Riverside Drive, on the north corner of 88th Street. Looking down from the window, Cassy’s eyes crossed over the Drive to the promenade that marked the edge of Riverside Park. The promenade was arbored by maple, oak and elm trees, underneath which, across from the Cochrans’, were a line of cannons from the Revolutionary War, still aimed out toward unseen enemy ships. To the right, up a block, was the gigantic stone terrace around the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, a circular, pillared tower patterned after the monument of Lysicrates in Athens. But this part of Riverside Drive was built on a major bluff, and it was beneath it that lay the heart of the park’s glory.

      Acre upon acre of the park was coming alive under the touch of spring, the trees bursting with new leaves, the dog-woods and magnolias flowering their most precious best. From here, too, Cassy could look down and see the community garden; in a month it would be one long sea of flowers, flowing down through a valley of green.

      Traveling down the slope of the park, Cassy’s eyes, out of habit, skipped over the West Side Highway and down to the walkway by the river’s edge. It was green there, too. And then, down there, the Hudson River. Lord, she was beautiful.

      It was the river that always played with Cassy’s heart. There were days when Cassy looked out and thought to herself, How does she know? She would be as dark and gray and cold as Cassy felt inside. But then there were those days when the river was as blue and as dazzling as Cassy’s own eyes were. Oh, how awful it was on those days when Cassy’s heart was cold and dark, and the river was so beautiful. Like now. How does she do it? Cassy wondered. The river had all of these crazy New Yorkers on one side of her, and all of these crazy New Jerseyites on the other, forever throwing rocks and trash at her, dumping things in her, and, sometimes, even throwing themselves into her in an effort to get this thing called life over with. And yet…her tides continued to ebb and flow, and the winds continued to blow across her, and her rhythms of regeneration went on, pulling, pulling downward, her glorious expanse gracing the urban landscape, pulling, pulling downward, spending herself, finally, totally, into the relentless mouth of New York Harbor.

      Cassy sighed.

      “You okay?”

      Cassy pressed the bridge of her nose for a moment and then turned around. “I’m fine,” she said. And then she smiled at Rosanne. And then she laughed.

      “What?” Rosanne said.

      “Well,” Cassy began, pausing, touching at her earring.

      Rosanne’s eyes narrowed slightly.

      Cassy glanced at her watch and then back to Rosanne. Back to the “Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame” bandanna that was slipping down over Rosanne’s eyes. Back to Rosanne’s blue denim shirt, whose shirttail was hanging down to her knees. Back to her jeans, whose hem lay in folds around the top of her Adidases. Back to thin little Rosanne, all five feet of her, standing there, just waiting for Cassy to say it.

      Cassy moved forward toward her. “It’s time for you to change,” she said, smiling.

      Rosanne looked to the ceiling. “Here we go,” she said. “Ya know, Mrs. C,” she continued, as Cassy took her by the elbow and steered her toward the kitchen, “you never said nothin’ about me havin’ to play dress-up.”

      They were in the kitchen now, and Cassy stopped, looking back at Rosanne. She smiled, yanked the bandanna down over Rosanne’s eyes and turned to the bartender. “Have everything you need, Ivor?”

      “Yes, Madame Coch-ah-ren,” he replied, bowing slightly.

      “Good,” she said, pulling Rosanne along through the kitchen to the back hall. Rosanne scooped up her bag from the counter along the way.

      “And I never said I was a caterer,” Rosanne reminded her.

      “Right,” Cassy said.

      “So I don’t know why you get so picky about what I wear—it’s not as if you like any of these guys.”

      They were in the master bedroom now, and Cassy headed toward her closet. “I think you’re going to like it,” she said, opening the doors.

      “Mrs. C,” Rosanne said, throwing her bag on the bed, “ya know, if you’d just tell me, I’d bring one of the ones you already got me.”

      “Well, I was in Macy’s and there it was, just