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So we are in Chicago. Why Chicago? Does it not lie somewhat off the direct route between New York and Phoenix? I think it does. If I were navigating, I’d have plotted a course that sagged from one corner of the continent to the other, through Pittsburgh and Cinci
Timothy didn’t visit his mother while we were in Chicago. We stayed not very far south of her, in a lakefront motel opposite Grant Park (Timothy paid for the room, with a credit card, no less) but he didn’t even phone her. The warm, strong bonds of goyishe family life, yes, indeed. (Call up, have a fight, so why not?) Instead he took us on a nighttime tour of the city, behaving in part as though he were its sole proprietor and in part, as if he were the guide on a Gray Line bus tour. Here we have the twin towers of Marina City, here we have the John Hancock Building, this is the Art Institute, this is the fabulous shopping district of Michigan Avenue. Actually, I was impressed, I who had never been west of Parsippany, New Jersey, but who had a clear and vivid impression of the probable nature of the great American heartland. I had expected Chicago to be grimy and cramped, the summit of midwestern dreariness, with nineteenth-century red-brick buildings seven stories high and a population made up entirely of Polish, Hungarian, and Irish workmen in overalls. Whereas this was a city of broad avenues and glowing towers. The architecture was stu
We had taken a suite, two bedrooms, Ned and I in one, Timothy and Oliver in the other. I dumped my clothes and collapsed quickly into bed. Not enough sleep, too much food: ghastly, ghastly. Exhausted though I was, I remained awake, more or less, dozing, stupefied. The rich di