Secrets of the City A Novel

1 The Demon Foiled The new mayor of the city was Jewish, which didn't mean he wouldn't celebrate Kwanzaa. Also Christmas Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sea, which spread solid and squat across two blocks of prime downtown real estate. He would appear at the food kitchen serving the homeless a meal of turkey and cranberries, and sing along with a gospel choir. The camera would find him at a shelter for abused women dressed as Santa Claus some weeks before the actual birth date of the significant baby. He had been elected by a mere hair and was quite sure that many felt he was not up to the task, too inexperienced, too much an outsider, not a man of the people at all. He was aware that the schools were rundown and class sizes too large and the bridges in need of overhaul. For months now he had been worrying about bottom lines, the appearance of favoritism here or there, the failure of those he had appointed to stem the tide of disarray. He knew that the taxi drivers might strike along with the elevator operators and sanitation workers and at least half the libraries might have to close because the funds were not there. He knew that the prisons were so crowded that riots were imminent but the citizens still felt unsafe in their neighborhoods, that the police sometimes behaved like warlords, and that the minorities in his city did not trust the particular minority that had nurtured the mayor himself. All this gave him a headache, the kind that two aspirin hardly touched. The mayor's wife had prepared for Hanukkah as she always did. The children and the children's children would come for supper. There would be presents for the younger children, and then they would light the candles; this year they would do so for the cameras. His aides had thought it would be helpful to show the mayor to his fellow citizens as a man who respected his tradition, a man of God, a family man. The mayor's wife had purchased a larger, more elaborate silver menorah than they had ever had before. This one had an eight-inch Lion of Judah at the base and grape leaves and pomegranates engraved on the cups that would hold the blue and white candles. The mayor's grown daughter, Ina, had placed red velvet ribbons in her own baby daughter's hair and had insisted her three-year-old son, Noah, wear his jacket. The mayor's son, Jacob, who privately felt that his father was a bit old for the job and should have let a younger man take his place at the top of the ticket, shaved so thoroughly that he cut himself and arrived with his five-year-old twins, Kim and Kelly, at the mayor's house with a bit of bloody tissue pressed to his cheek. He reminded his twins not to say "Merry Christmas" to their grandparents. In silent pluralism lay unity was his policy. This year the mayor's wife did not make the potato pancakes herself. The cook made them and burned them and made a new batch. The children did not eat them because they did not like them and never had, although each year the mayor's wife offered them. The cook had to make them pasta with butter instead. They also did not like gefilte fish, rugelach, brisket, matzo balls, or apples with honey. So be it. They could always have pasta. The mayor wanted to tell the children how his own mother had grated potatoes and added onions and fried them on her old stove, and the smell clung to his clothes for days. But he had told them all that before. There was nothing new to say. For the cameras he had prepared a speech. He had rehearsed it as he dressed in the morning and added to it during the day in the seconds between appointments. He had thought of the ending in the five minutes before his luncheon guest, the CEO of a major firm who was thinking of moving the company's offices out of town and was angling for some tax concessions (also tickets to the opening game of the baseball season), had arrived. He had polished it while waiting for his internist, who had dismissed his stomachRoiphe, Anne is the author of 'Secrets of the City A Novel', published 2003 under ISBN 9781400049455 and ISBN 1400049458.