I remember that in the hospital, when he had cracked up, he said to me, ‘She married me to carry her daughter’s harp! That’s why the woman married me! To haul that fucking harp!’ “On those Friday night trips, Ira found he could talk to Sylphid in ways he couldn’t when Eve was around. He hated the physical imposition that it was-those things weigh about eighty pounds-but he did it. At ten-thirty, when the restaurant is finished serving dinner and Sylphid’s ready to come back to the Village, he goes around to pick her up and the whole operation is repeated. At the restaurant he takes the harp out of the car and, big radio star that he is, he carries it inside.
The harp is in its felt cover, and Ira puts one hand on the column and one hand in the sound hole at the back and he lifts it up, lays the harp on a mattress they keep in the station wagon, and drives Sylphid and the harp uptown to the restaurant. He had the station wagon, and he’d pull up in front of the house and go inside and have to carry it down the stairs. Ira would drive her from the Village up to the restaurant with her harp and then go and pick her and the harp up when she finished.
She was called pretty regularly, once or twice a week, and she’d also got a job playing at a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties on Friday night. “Sylphid was beginning to play professionally, and she was subbing as second harpist in the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall.
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