Elaine

ON an exquisite Saturday afternoon in June, an assistant watch repairer named Dennis Cooney temporarily distracted the audience at an indoor flea circus just off Forty-third and Broadway by dropping dead. He was survived by his wife, Evelyn Cooney, and a daughter, Elaine, aged six, who had won two Beautiful Child contests; the first at the age of three, the second at the age of five, being defeated when she was four by a Miss Zelda “Bunny” Krakauer, of Staten Island. Cooney left his wife a little insurance: enough for her to import her widowed mother, a Mrs. Hoover, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the aging woman had supported herself by working as a cashier in a cafeteria. The money was enough for the three to live in relative comfort in the Bronx. The superintendent of the apartment house in which Mrs. Cooney and her mother and daughter proceeded to live was a Mr. Freedlander. A few years before Freedlander had been “super” of the house where they finally “got” Bloomy Bloomberg. Freedlander informed Mrs. Cooney that Bloomy didn’t look any deader than Mrs. Cooney, or anybody. Freedlander made it clear to Mrs. Cooney that Bloomy never called Freedlander anything but Mort, and Freedlander never called Bloomy anything but Bloomy.

“I remember readin’ all about it,” remarked Mrs. Cooney enthusiastically. “I mean I remember readin’ all about it.”

Freedlander nodded approvingly. “Yeah, it was quite a case.” He looked around his tenant’s living room. “Where’s Mrs. Boyle?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her around lately.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. —your mother.”

“Oh. Mrs. Hoover. My mother’s name is Hoover. I oughtta know. It was my name once!”

Mrs. Cooney laughed immoderately.

Freedlander laughed with her. “What’d I call her?” he asked. “Boyle didn’t I? We had a Mrs. Boyle in this apartment last. That’s why. Hoover. Hoover’s her name, eh? I get it.”

“She’s out,” said Mrs. Cooney.

“Oh,” said Freedlander.

“It’s really awful. I mean she stays out for hours and hours. I keep thinking of her getting run over by a truck or something at her age.”

“Yeah,” Freedlander commented, sympathetically. “Cigarette?”

AT the age of seven, little Elaine Cooney was sent to Public School 332 in the Bronx, where she was tested in accordance with the newest, most scientific methods, and consequently placed in Class 1-A-4, which included a group of forty-four pupils referred to among the faculty as the “slower” children. Every day Mrs. Cooney or her mother, Mrs. Hoover, brought the child to and from school. Usually it was Mrs. Hoover who made the delivery in the morning, and Mrs. Cooney would pick up her daughter in the afternoon. Mrs. Cooney went to the movies at least four times a week, frequently attending the late evening show, in which case she slept late mornings. Sometimes, owing to some unforeseen emergency, Mrs. Cooney was unable to call for her daughter. Under this not uncommon circumstance, the child was forced to wait as long as an hour by the second exit door from the corner, marked Girls, until her grandmother plodded irritably into view. On the way to and from school, the conversation between Elaine and her grandmother never achieved an exceptionally high degree of comradery between generations.

“Don’t lose your lunch box again.”

“What, Grandma?”

“Don’t lose your lunch box again.”

“Do I have peanut butter?”

“Do you have what?”

“Peanut butter.”

“I don’t know. Your mother fixed your lunch. Pull up your pants.”