WASHINGTON SQUARE

One Christmas many years ago, I gave a copy of Henry James’s novelette Washington Square to a couple who lived at an address on a Washington Square in a small town. After the holidays the wife told me they loved the book, that it was so much better than today’s output of fiction. How true that was! And I’m sure it is even more so today.

This week I asked a new waiter in our dining room if he were going to college, as so many of our waitstaff do. He stumbled around to answer he was, and when I asked what he was studying there, he seemed to be apologizing to say “Liberal Arts for right now.” I had only about half a minute to say, “That’s the best and the hardest,” before he got away. But in that brief conversation, I learned he has a lot to learn besides school work. He does not even know how gigantic a field Liberal Arts is. And I doubt, also what it covers. So far, he does not seem to be succeeding at waiting tables.

Yesterday at lunch, I was the first one to show at our table and I ordered the Mahi-Mahi selection. Lena was the second person to arrive and she ordered her usual half-serving and it was Mahi-Mahi. Edith was the last one to arrive (just the three of us at our table for lunch) and she ordered last and her choice was fried chicken. Soon this big guy who is going to study Liberal Arts brought in one dinner and set it down in front of Edith. (She was closest to him.) I could see it wasn’t fried chicken. But she ate it and told Lena it was fried chicken. Oh, well, she’s 98 and nearly blind. Lena and I kept Edith’s secret of what she was really eating. After about another fifteen minutes Lena and I got our Mahi-Mahis, brought to us under the supervision of one of the waitresses. That is, she was supervising the big guy bringing our meals. I had waited for my food for thirty minutes and I had an appointment at 1:00.

I made the appointment on time and another one at 2:00 and then Amy took me shopping. I got home at 5:30, just in time to make it to the dining room for supper before 6:00. I could hardly wait till after the meal was finished to get back to my apartment, put my feet up and rest. And of all things, I thought of the novelette Washington Square. If you have been stuffing your mind with the likes of the works of Janet Evanovich and others such, I recommend your reading Washington Square.