Impropriety On The Upper East Side

IMPROPRIETY  ON  THE  UPPER  EAST  SIDE

by Benjamin Norway

"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."  - Walter Lippmann

Airian sat peacefully on her piano bench. Her face, small and incandescent, conveyed a contradictory mix of fiendishness and innocence. In fact, it was more, really, a look of belligerent pleasure. Her revenge was complete – a backlash against societal convention and the ridiculous expectations which she felt had been unfairly placed upon her during her stunted adolescence. She had planned this entire socially crippling and potentially city crumbling event.

It all culminated during the unusually leafy fall of 1922 in Manhattan. I can't pinpoint when I first realized she had a plan, a design of sorts, but I knew Airian – and people simply do not change that quickly – especially little girls who virtually make careers out of adolescent torture and mayhem. It proved to be a ridiculous scandal, what she did. Had I not known her as I do, I would have thought her mad, but it wasn't really surprising – considering her history. And buddy, she had a history.
         
She had never really been the sedate, thoughtful, loving type anyway, and seemed the most likely of all the Kendall's to flout societal convention. She had always exuded somewhat of a rebellious attitude. I just underestimated the lengths and depths she was capable of going to in order to reach her target objective – an objective that she had clearly been formulating for a considerable time, an objective that seemed to rock the foundations of her upbringing and unmask the pain of a raucous, yet stringent childhood.
         
Little Miss Airian Elise Kendall – I still call her that. She turned out altogether different than any of us expected, and I say that with no pejorative sub-context. She just knew herself better than any of us did. And she was true to herself. However, after what she did on that groggy and tumultuous September evening, one would have logically assumed her austere upbringing had produced virtually no lasting effects. To tell you the truth, what she did was almost amusing, even charming really – to me. However, her behavior was reprehensible to the aristocratic Kendall family and an absolute outrage, though it was quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to us, or at least, again, to me anyway.
         
I was and still claim to be the sedate, thoughtful, and devastatingly witty elder brother of this vibrant and insolent girl. Airic T. (it's Terrance if you really want to be nosy) Kendall is my given name. My parents raised us in the heart of the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the streets corners were dotted with the ethnic delight of French delicatessens, Polish hot dog stands, and Italian bistros which battled nightly to fill our souls and belly's with sustenance. The real nourishment however, according to mother, came from the symphony halls, opera houses, and ubiquitous public libraries which were equally abundant in our corner of civilization and fed our minds with culture and education.       

In 1922 I had just turned 21 and was beginning my fourth year of studies at New York University, majoring mostly in schmoozing and sucking-up. My classmates called it "Business and Finance", but I was just doing it to make my father happy. He managed a small brokerage firm downtown and made a modest fortune selling his advice and expertise. Thus, our family was expected to participate in the "elite" socioeconomic circles that existed in the high-rent districts of Manhattan. The "high-brow" crowd was quite prominent during the roaring hey-day of speak-easy's, the "Bronx Bombers", and the "flapper".
         
Social responsibility has always been intimately associated with wealth. In this privileged, yet suppressive realm, proper conduct is not just a virtue – it's a must – especially with the girls (boys could get away with almost anything if they had the right connections). It was the young women who were expected to marry into an equally economically advantaged tradition. The young men could usually look forward to the family inheritance and work in the family business, so it was the females who were educated early in their lives on proper social behavior. They were trained on what to wear, how to walk, what to say, and how to say it. Etiquette schools began enrollment at age 12, so by age 16 the young ladies were customarily considered ready to flaunt themselves and their newly acquired social grace at semi-annual, and usually quite tedious, "Debutant Balls."
         
May I just begin again by saying here that our eleven-year-old Airian never quite felt comfortable with our socioeconomic culture and the ridiculous pressure surrounding it. I adored her though; I couldn't help it. In all my self-contradicting glory and impudence, I could not help but to be in complete awe of her audacity and charm.
         
Of all the siblings, we were the closest and seemed to most enjoy each other's company, despite the age difference. My older brother Thomas was 31, unmarried, and working out on the west coast as a producer for moving pictures. We weren't too close. Jocelynn, 22, had recently married after completing her English degree at Princeton. She lived in Boston with her husband, James Royce. He worked as an accountant (which fit our droll Jocelynn to a tee) for his father's new luxury car business. Jocelynn and I were very similar, and close in age (16 bitter months between us), but we couldn't stand each other for a number of reasons, most prominently of which dated back to an incident at Camp Witonka in the summer of '16 that I'd rather not go into. Needless to say, we did little more than exchange Christmas cards annually and notify each other by telegram of any important life altering events.
         
I had been closely involved in the raising of young Airian. Our nanny, Ms. Robbins, who had been with us ever since she had emigrated from London in 1910, looked after her while I was at school and mother was off at some sort of tea party with the Mulligans or the Shumways or whomever. Mother was a grand lady whom I have always loved dearly, but her bourgeoisie social status had taken her away from her motherly duties more often than not in those gay times. I was usually the one to clean and dress the scraped knees and bumped heads young Airian would acquire while playing stickball in the streets or wrestling with schoolmates. One occasion had her chasing poor Lionel Barnes down 84th street and across Park Avenue for attempting to pull her stringy locks during lunch recess. She came home with two impressively swollen knuckles on her left hand (a feisty young southpaw); Lionel showed up in Ms. Hines' class the next day with (according to Airian) two purplish-black eyes and a marble-sized knot on his forehead. No young boy ever did care to scrap with sweet little Airian Elise Kendall again.
         
My mother, as grand as she was, grew desperate to reform her little daughter into some semblance of social grace. Pressure was coming from within her social circle to host the annual Pitman's Ball, which included arranging for the evening's entertainment. Reformation efforts going as they were, it was looking like Airian would spend the evening as she always did – up in her room and far removed from the proceedings.
         
When we would take our turn as hosts for the weekend social gatherings that so often took place among the hob-nobbers and high-brows, Airian was forbidden to even so much as show her face during the proceedings. Instead she was confined most securely to her room with a nice bedtime book, usually from the adventurous folk and fairy tale series of Hans Christian Anderson or the Brothers Grimm. Ms. Robbins was always on hand to prevent any preventable mishap. With the Pitman's Ball only two months away, mother was nearing a deadline she had no idea how to meet and growing a bit anxious.
         
Airian was involved in many activities to keep her busy and out of the way. The obligatory piano lessons were dreaded by all, and rarely put up with by Airian on arid and sticky feeling summer afternoons when the neighborhood boys all flocked to the street for a game of stickball. She tortured her instructors enough to process through at least two or three of them a month. Mother persisted though, until an episode which included a not-so-pleasant series of blood-curdling screams, which Airian was impressively able to maintain while incessantly pounding on an odd combination of E flats and C minors during her lesson. The present instructor, a grim-looking woman with eye-glasses so thick one wondered how she recognized a single stanza, became so upset as to storm out of the house without even confirming another appointment or accepting compensation for previous ones. She was heard to egregiously announce to no one in particular as she left, "Not only will that child never play the piano with any grace or quality, she will be incarcerated by her fifteenth year!"

Airian shouted back to the woman as she marched down the sidewalk, "You don't even know how to play stickball!"
         
You know, it's not that Airian was such a bad little girl. It's really not. Aside from her infamous behavior during piano lessons and her reputation for being somewhat of a bully at recess, she was fairly well adjusted. She wasn't particularly gracious or obliging, but she was amiable enough and insatiably inquisitive. I was her closest sibling and biggest fan. She wasn't, however, turning out to be the kind of little girl that mothers of a certain social class expected and tried to shape and mold in their youth. "High Society" encouraged an entirely different set of behavioral values.
         
Airian was smart. Not that she received good marks in school at all, she was just smart, and clever, and not at all prissy. You couldn't fool her. It seemed she always knew if you were being phony. One false or phony move and it was over between you and her. Her margin for error concerning matters of trust was almost nil. She once said to me, "Airic, you are the only one who likes me for who I am. The boys are only like me because I'm good at stickball and can whip them all. Mommy just thinks I should drink from small tea cups and wear pretty frilly dresses and play piano all day. Thanks for always listening to me. I'm glad you're my big brother and my friend." This revelatory statement took me back a little, but I felt privileged to be in the exclusive company (I believe we numbered three: myself, Ms. Robbins, and an old neighbor boy named Billy who had moved away three years ago) of those who had earned Airian's trust.                    
         
Mother persisted in her efforts to groom young Airian into becoming more proper and ladylike, but met with much resistance and little success. Airian preferred to associate with and intimidate the neighborhood boys and she continued to harass a revolving barrage of competent, but underwhelmingly meek, piano teachers. The longest one lasted an entire month, but only because she was half-deaf and could tune out the rest. Airian's table manners were also becoming steadily worse, bordering on atrocious (at a relatively young age she had mastered the art of belching, accompanied with an unusual throaty quality that you had to respect, though all too often she practiced it at the dinner table), and she still refused to even wear a dress, though her closet was full of them, especially the frilly ones. Her attitude was one of rebellion. Not complete, out of control rebellion, mainly just an unwillingness to conform to the expectations she had been given and grown to despise. That was the case anyway, until one night.

It was about a quarter to seven and I had just returned from the Hawkins Library on East 61st Avenue.  I was walking through the upstairs hallway that led to my room. I stopped in to chat with Airian at her bedroom door as I often did. She loved to hear of my daily adventures and the rigors related to college life. This visit, however, caught me completely off guard. I noticed something completely different about her. Mysteriously enough, she was sitting there quietly, and wearing the prettiest little pink satin dress I think I’ve ever seen anyone wear – ever. And her hair was done up all in tight little curls. If this discovery alone was not enough to shock me, she had also taken out the wooden dollhouse and dolls she had received two Christmas’ ago and never touched.
         
Obviously sensing my amazement, she asked quite innocently, “Airic, will you please assist me in putting my play things away. It’s getting quite late and I must bathe before my bed-time at half-past eight o’clock.”
         
My mouth was still eerily open as I complied with her request. I vividly remember my internal monologue consisting of a series of baffling rhetorical questions that went as such: “Did I just hear her utter the word ‘quite’ for the first time ever? Will there be no whining and complaining tonight? Is this her long lost evil, but very polite, twin? I consciously closed my mouth slowly and decided to keep all of my questions unvoiced since they contradicted all my previous experience and intuition.
         
Ms. Robbins was now walking slowly down the hallway toward me with an odd and very rare smile on her face.
         
“Birdy,” I asked, (She preferred 'Birdy' to the more formal, 'Ms. Robbins') “I think someone has kidnapped our little Airian and replaced her with a fiendishly pleasant and obedient child. Quite frankly, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it. Should we just leave well enough alone?”
         
Ms. Robbins smiled, and then just as quickly tightened her eyes to a concerned and protective squint as she began, “Master Airic", she said in her wonderful cockney accent, "Perhaps I should be happy, but I am quite troubled with the strange and sudden behavior of young Airian. Either something has changed her, or she is up to something very devious. She is not a feeble-witted child. Something is going on indeed. I do feel we should keep our eyes close upon her.”
         
I nodded in agreement and mentally noted that although Ms. Robbins did indeed completely adore Airian as I did, she rarely, if ever, smiled. I mean, you really had pry them out like a stubborn weed in a lovely English garden. It didn't seem to be programmed into her innate British temperament. Consequently, I smiled back hesitantly, but not smugly, and went to see if my sweet little sister was ready to be tucked in.
         
The next three weeks were an absolute godsend for mother. Airian’s behavior was only slightly less than angelic. Our family did not know quite what to think of it. She seemed to always be off playing with dolls or dutifully practicing the piano – something she was actually becoming very competent at, even prodigious. She began denying the requests of many small, confused, pre-pubescent boys who knocked on our door at all hours of the day and asked the question, “Can Airian come play ball with us?” She instructed Ms. Robbins to politely decline the invitations as she had more important things to do.
         
Ms. Robbins and I continued to monitor her behavior warily, but Airian remained constant and gave us no clear cause for suspicion. However, no clear cause seemed like a reason in itself, so we scrutinized her actions intensely for any hints of bamboozling. None came.
         
My parents, so pleased with the latest effects of their alleged superior parenting skills, even decided to put Airian on the Pitman’s Ball entertainment program. It would include a nice piece by Chopin, perhaps his Etude op. 10, that would be very appropriate and moving - a wonderful way to publicly introduce their youngest child to all of their affluent and pretentious friends in the high-brow social circus.
         
The night of the Ball finally arrived. It was a very warm night. Locals would have described it "New York City hot", as if you couldn't comprehend the humidity unless you had actually grown up there. The moonlight sky was dusted with streaks of almost transparent clouds just enough to create a nebulous-like mood. Through the window in the kitchen several alley cats could be heard screeching vapidly into the abnormally still Manhattan night. 
         
My parents seemed absolutely ecstatic to be able to show off Airian, just as their friends, at countless previous gatherings, had exhibited their children, and displayed them like so many porcelain dolls on polished oak shelves. All of the expected and usual guests had come, and appeared to be looking forward to the “special surprise” my parents had enthusiastically promised. In between being introduced to a who's who of New York's over-privileged, Airian just wandered around, sampling from the many buffet tables set up in the ballroom.
         
After dinner and a barely endurable duet by Roger and Erma Shumway (one could have even described it as doubly insufferable), and a brief appearance by an acquaintance of some considerable status named George Herman Ruth, the time came for Airian to play her piece.
         
A multitude of nearly sixty of New York’s wealthiest and dullest sat anxiously as Airian sat down and scooted up the bench just a tad, conforming it to her small frame. Her fingers pressed gently on the keys and she proceeded to play the piece beautifully. She seemed to be an absolute natural after only about a month serious, concentrated study. Her fingers flowed gracefully along the baby grand my parents had purchased especially for her on her eighth birthday. At that moment I glanced over at them. They happened to have the most portentous looks of pomposity in their faces I had ever seen – ever before and ever since. I felt somewhat melancholy and apprehensive as I looked at their faces and then over at Airian. It occurred to me that my beloved little sister had perhaps decided to finally acquiesce to the role she had been so vigorously groomed for all of her young life.
         
Hollowly gracious comments were being warmly floated about the room by the pleased onlookers. I even overheard a fleshy-faced chubby looking woman leaning over to her husband and whispering aloud saying, “Clarence, I wish our child was so well behaved and talented. Clarence? Are you listening to me?” Presently, Clarence was leaning groggily-eyed on a bookshelf, quite ready to drift right into his own little Neverland.
         
As Airian finished, the crowd all politely clapped except for my parents, who unconsciously (and please note they never did anything unconsciously) broke all applause etiquette rules and cheered wildly, even attempting to lead those gathered into a riotous chant of “ENCORE, ENCORE!!” Airian just stood there quietly and smiled a half-smile and a grin as she looked around the entire room filled with people only her parents knew.
         
When the accolades ended, there was a short pause of pleasant silence. Then, with all the eyes and ears of the room gazing steadfastly upon her, Airian slid off to the left of her piano bench, bowed graciously in all directions to the curious crowd, and then BELCHED the LOUDEST, CRUDEST, most THUNDEROUSLY OBNOXIOUS BELCH that I, for one, had ever heard. It lasted for what seemed about seven minutes, but on reflection I surmise that it took no more than approximately ten seconds.
         
It first pierced the ears of those present, and was then simultaneously experienced by all even close to the building. Tremors rumbled throughout the entire suite. Chandeliers shook, precious china fell, tables and chairs were displaced, large literary works came off their shelves – possibly for the first time. Gasps replaced warm remarks among the stunned audience – gasps and moans. Shock waves were apparently reported throughout the entire upper East Side.
         
And the belch was just the beginning. Airian then threw up all the food she had eaten that evening: the chocolate cake, the crème buelè, a few salmon-stuffed mushrooms, handfuls of dinner mints, and seven well-filled glasses of cherry soda. She threw up on the Shumways first (fitting, I thought), then the Morgans of New Haven, the Codgewells, Old Mrs. Hamer from the 5th floor of our building, the Blakely's, the Conley's, Senator and Mrs. Wilshire from Massachusetts, and even the poodle sitting on Mrs. Mulligan's lap. 
         
After the commotion calmed to the dull buzzing of a small number of haggard guests, I again glanced over to where my parents were standing and saw their facial expressions had altered somewhat – from pompous and proud to looks of supercilious embarrassment and horror. Mother was crying inconsolably, hands covering her face in anguish. Father just stood there in stoic silence staring at the broken frame of a painting removed from its position on the west wall of the room. The guests couldn’t decide whether to laugh, collectively languish, or just begin cleaning up the repulsive debris and picking up the numerous books, china pieces, and chandelier fragments scattered about on the floor. It's almost as if they had actually – ironically – enjoyed the evening for once. At least it was a break from the norm.
         
I called in the help that were hired especially for the evening to handle the major portion of the clean up effort. My mother was in no condition to be level-headed at the moment.
         
Airian was an innocence-looking fiend – a child filled with belligerent pleasure. She smiled at me and I rolled my eyes in mock disgust. Her revenge was now complete - her adolescence restored. Her plan, her terms, her life.
         
As I stood there taking in the scandalous scene, I could hardly contain my laughter. But I did, for mother’s sake. It was the proper thing to do.

AFTERMATH
         
Later that evening, after the guests had long been gone, the mess had been cleared, and Airian had been banished to her room until an unspecified time in the 21st Century, mother came to me in my study room for some type of explanation.
         
"Did we bring her to this?" she asked. "Did you know anything like this would happen?" Mother looked as pale as some of the broken pieces of china now gathered in at least seven separate refuse cans.

I shifted in my seat a little, grinned a little, and then could not contain myself any longer. I burst out in laughter; the kind of laughter that brings tears to one's eyes. A laughter that usually doesn't subside unless time simply allows it to run its course or someone slaps you silly. Fortunately, though I am convinced she wanted to, mother refrained from slapping me.

Now, it's rare that one gets to speak to their parents in an advisory setting, so I tried to take full advantage of the situation. "Mother," I said, finally able to breath and speak normally. "When was the last time you spent ten minutes with Airian, and I mean before her recent cherubic-like behavior?" I was shaking my head in mock disgust. I sensed I had Mother's full attention now as she stared intently, so I began again. "I know you love her Mother, but do you even realize how many times she's skinned her precious little knees or just wanted someone to take her to the zoo? Did you know she sometimes wanders over to the library to look for me because she gets lonely and no one is usually home except Ms. Robbins? You are missing her childhood mother!

I'll be honest. What she did tonight surprised me as well as everyone else, but I almost expected it – something anyway. She wasn't being herself. Ms. Robbins and I watched her closely. No child changes that quickly. I know because I know her.
I don't mean to be so critical, but you've never had to deal with a child like this. Thomas just ignored you, but Jocelynn and I tried to please you at every turn. Model children are not all they are cracked up to be. Airian is different. She is headstrong. She knows herself. She is aware of the world around her. She doesn't feel the need to comply with social norms. She is true to herself and she needs more motherly attention. Try talking to her instead of at her or in her general direction. Mother, you might be pleasantly surprised."

She started to cry – again. I'm not sure if she had understood a word I had said, but I felt like a million bucks. It was as though everything I had been feeling poured out of my mouth in a sudden act of righteous indignation. Whether it was heard and understood or not was almost irrelevant to me. I wanted to make the same speech to my father, but he had left already - a business trip to Des Moines at two in the morning. I thought it was a little odd at the time, and I still do.

What with the way gossip gets around the social circus in this town, I half expected the New York Times to be running a front page headline the next morning reading: "Kendall Child Shocks Manhattan!" But Ruth's Yankees had won the pennant that night and for some strange reason their story seemed to take precedence oven an affluent adolescent's dramatic cry for help I did, however, find it buried on page 19 under an ad for Coca-Cola. The headline read: Impropriety On The Upper East Side.

It is now almost thirty years later. I never did fulfill my birthright to take over my father's company. Ironically enough, I'm a writer. I teach at a small college in Southern Missouri. This one singularly momentous episode in the Kendall family changed the direction of my life. I realized I could and should do as much flouting as was humanly possible. Airian taught me this lesson. She taught us all to break out of the monotonous, methodical lives we were living.

Airian is now a mother and a teacher - a piano teacher. I'm sure her children and students have displayed just as many rebellious stages as she ever knew. But she understands them, and she is there for them; they are just like her.
~ F i n i s ~