It was a strange profession, being a Mover in New York City in the Eighties, one of a brotherhood of anonymous gypsies who made a living moving the possessions of the rich and successful from one palace to another. Since every service in the City carried with it the expectation of a tip, the wise ones among us made of the experience a show, trying to impress the customers with the dexterity and care with which we handled and transported their treasured possessions, playing upon the experience having such colourful characters invade their private lives for a day or perhaps two, and then disappearing like the ragged nomads we resembled.
That is all we were, to the customers. It would perhaps have shocked them to know how we observed and judged them, seeing them in the intimacy of their homes undergoing what is possibly one of the most stressful of life's experiences. We saw marriages driven to the brink of divorce, and at times we moved each partner separately in the aftermath. We saw happy families working together in a way that tugged at the heart of those of us not fortunate enough to be born into such an environment, and we also saw and heard things that made one ashamed to be of the same species as those we laboured for. This is one such story, as true as I'm here to tell it.
It was a small job, just me and Israel, a wiry Hispanic man of few words and an astonishing physical strength. The apartment was on the Upper West Side, in one of those historic Brownstones that have remained in the hands of their often elderly owners when they could be sold or let at ten or twenty times the original price.
The customer- let's call her Mrs. Trudaine – was I suppose in her late seventies, one of those tall aristocratic looking women you often see on the Upper West, with a face like bone china and a manner to match. Polished, but, you know, sort of fragile? Israel didn't need to be told that this was one to be handled with kid gloves. Not only the customer; the old high ceilinged rooms were furnished with a beautiful array of antique furniture, the kind that have a special gloss that comes from having been lovingly cared for over the years by their owners and handed down, rather than having been bought second hand at an auction house.
I think Mrs. Trudaine looked slightly askance at little dark faced Israel when we walked in, for she said with a certain emphasis, ' Now you will take care, won't you? Some of these pieces are quite old and fragile.' Like myself, she might have added, only that wouldn't have been her style. She warmed slightly as Israel, walking as softly as a cat on the rich carpet, ran an appreciative fingertip over a mahogany end table.
'Don' you worry Lady, ' he said, 'We take special care of soch nice things.' I had a suspicion that not all of Israel's moving experience had been with the consent of the owners but I never worried on that score; he was not a man to mix his worlds.
Mrs. Trudaine's apartment was on the ground floor, which in a brownstone meant that you entered up a short flight of steps, which meant that everything had to be carried to the truck rather than being stacked on one of the little padded four wheel platforms we called 'dollies'. Personally I preferred this kind of Move when dealing with antiques, as you had more control going through doorways and such with both hands on the piece. We braced one dolly against the front door to hold it open while we brought in a few stacks of moving blankets and set to work.
The blankets themselves were quilted cotton stitched over some kind of filler, in various colours and kept very clean. When she saw how carefully we wrapped each piece, using wide brown plastic tape to hold the blankets in place – hey, sure we had our minds on the tip at the end of the job, but the pieces were a pleasure to handle and I think we both felt it – Mrs. Trudaine unbent a little and chatted to us about the move.
'This big old place is just getting too much for me to handle,' she confided. 'My daughter and her husband have found me a nice modern apartment on the East Side. I haven't even seen it yet.' she gave a slightly girlish laugh and I could see she must have been quite a beauty in her day. 'After forty years here it's going to be something of an adventure, you know?'
That was my cue to be soothing and reassuring; something you got used to in this line of work. Think what you like, it's an emotional trauma for anyone to have their possessions picked up and handled by strangers, their personal space invaded. A little empathy and understanding goes a long way, and then of course there was that tip.
We got everything wrapped, and were starting to load the truck, when the daughter and her husband rolled up in in a taxi. They transferred Mrs Trudaine's personal luggage to the trunk and settled her in, then waved to her as the cab set off. I remember how she looked, sitting elegantly upright in the back, her head held high, looking serenely forward.
The Apartment was nearly empty by then, just a kitchen table and a phone which wasn't included in the Move. I couldn't help hearing as we took out the last pieces that both the loving daughter and her spouse were on the phone talking money talk to some real estate guy, both of them with big smiles on their faces. You think, well, hell, New York, everybody's trying to make a buck, but it kind of left a bad taste in the mouth.
We arrived at the address, a white modern cube of a building in the upper Seventies, and backed around to the freight entrance to be met by the Son in law. 'Just put the things in the basement for now,' he said. Israel and I looked at each other. No one had said anything about putting the stuff in storage, that would have been a whole other number, with the one time paper pads and corrugated cardboard we used for such jobs, none of which we had with us. We carried the things in, unwrapped them and stacked them as carefully as we could in the alcove he showed us, but I'm telling you even all these years later I can still see those beautiful old things resting nearer to each other than they were ever meant to be, like a bunch of aristocrats jammed in an elevator.
There was worse to come. We took the paperwork up to the new apartment, which turned out to be what they call in New York an 'Efficiency', meaning the bare minimum living space for one person. There was Mrs.Trudaine looking bewildered, saying 'But there's no space here for my Things!' and there was her daughter trying to calm her down, when in comes this burly woman in a white nurses' uniform, looking like she was on her way to answer a casting call for Nurse Ratchett in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'
'What these people are trying to tell you, dear, ' she said in the sort of sweetly impatient voice that would have got her the part in a minute, ' is that you are no longer able to look after yourself,' with some stuff about how happy she would be there and how well she would be looked after. It didn't matter. With her first words I saw comprehension dawn, and I saw those straight old shoulders sag for the first time.
We got out of there as soon as we could, I'm not even sure we waited around for the tip. We rode back in a kind of glum silence, except for Israel who as I mentioned was man of few words at the best of times. 'Man, that was some fooked up shit,' was all he said, which kind of summed up the whole experience.