The Three H's

The residents arrive, age, and leave. I stay. There's a woman in a white gown in the laundry room who never learned how to go — I'm afraid I'm becoming her.

Hatfield. Hardwicke. Haddon. Named for real Elizabethan houses, raised on East 41st Street over a slum, and full — always full — of people arriving and aging and leaving. William Faulkner typed here. Charlton Heston dressed for the theatre here. A cartoonist drew the Spirit here. They came, they were brilliant, they went.

There is a woman in the Haddon Hall laundry room in a long white gown with her head bowed, and the handymen who have seen her do not like to talk about it. I am afraid of her. Not because she is dead. Because she is like me — a beautiful resident the building would not let leave — and I cannot always tell, anymore, which of us is the warning.

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From the recordTrue: Hatfield, Hardwicke and Haddon Hall are named for real Elizabethan houses; a long-haired woman in a white gown is said to stand head-bowed in a Tudor City laundry room.