In An Apartment at The Plaza

I thought it was an easy read and scanned through 'The Plaza' by Rebecca Makkai, published in The New Yorker on May 1, 2023. Well, it is an easy read, but it reminds me how some people live their lives. It isn't my place to judge, but to carry such baggage and have your daughter or son continue with it, I'm not sure how this contributes to making the world a better place. In spite of affluence and wealth, it's still a vicious cycle perpetuated. 

Young innocent small-town girl Margie Bixby, (Margaret), Trout Queen of Upper Delaware River in 1946 and 1947, met slick city wealthy businessman Alistair Caldwell (Ally) in 1948 who was visiting town with five old friends from Yale to fish for trout. They had a dalliance. Margie said it wasn't her first hotel guest dalliance, and it meant she ought to be careful about men like this because they would be selfish and never would commit. 

Still, Margaret left Stitchney and went to the city to look for Ally to take up his invitation to visit. She had no money and no plans. She knew Ally was wealthy, but didn't know that Baldwin Organization was his family's business or what it did. He put her up at The Plaza.

Did she imagine he’d marry her? Not really. Stranger things had happened. But she knew enough to assume that Baldwells married leggy girls from Wellesley, not hotel waitresses with drunk brothers. 

So at the end of the week, when no proposal or desperate vows of love had been offered (“I’m terribly smitten with you” was what he said), she told him that she’d worry her family if she stayed longer, and packed her bag, now stuffed with three extra dresses. He’d given her a simple gold bracelet, and she had the program from the show. He looked at her with beagle-puppy eyes and said he hoped she’d return.

Okay, this is the classic plot of girl meets boy, girl gets pregnant, boy doesn't want to commit but fulfilled his obligations anyway, hid her in an apartment, maintained her, promising a nurse and a nanny when the baby arrived but providing no cash. There's no security in their future together. She has no security. Ally was an absent father, and an absent and inattentive husband who was ashamed of her. She didn't even know if their marriage was real, if her child's paternity was on paper, or if he's just keeping her a secret. She was continuously thinking of what she could pawn for cash, and what would be enough for the next five years, or even ten years. 

The child turned three, then five, and in the mother's own words, was a terror. Margaret began sneaking men to her apartment. Her father died of cancer, then her brother died in an accident. She finally wisened up and sought legal advice from a lawyer from Virginia she was having an affair with, Stuart, who at least helped Margaret gained some form of security under the law. She was still imprisoned by Ally's money and power. She had no true freedom. What kind of relationship is this between two people who were once in love? 

The child tore at her nails, interrupted hotel weddings, climbed her mother like a leech. She was a torrent of words; she could play any grown man like a fiddle. 

Wasn’t that all she needed in life? High expectations and a lack of remorse. Astonishment when things didn’t go her way. The universe would fall at her feet. 

Margaret wrote Vincent a note and burned it: “You’d be amazed. Well, no. You’d be her victim.” 

She saw the child for a week or two at a time, covered her with kisses. She drank earlier in the day. She found reasons to be across the city or across the world. 

But wasn’t her work here mostly finished? 

She’d done her best. By accident or design, she’d built the girl into the precise monster most capable of surviving this world.

The child turned six, then later seven. The ending was a tad sad. Not chilling, but if we don't live that life, then we see it as a pain for children brought up without much love or present parents. In that era, children were brought up by nannies. This child wasn't different. Margaret had plenty of freedom and could vacation with any one (man) she wished. And this was how life turned out for Margaret, Trout Queen from Stitchney. 

In an interview with the same magazine, the author said that behind all fairy tales, lies a blunt comment about the state of our society.

As you say, Margaret triumphs—in that she sees through Alistair’s schemes and wins her financial freedom—but, at the same time, she doesn’t have a very happy life, and she is hardened by it. Is the only winner here the child? Or is the child actually the one who’s lost the most? 

I see the child as being the winner only in the moment, in large part because she’s so oblivious of what’s going on. The story ends with Margaret seeing her child as equipped for the world, or at least for a certain kind of life, but I can’t imagine that a child this neglected would have an easy time finding happiness later on.