(13 of 26)
"What struck me at once was how neat their apartment was. The two of them are a lot poorer than Mallory, but their place is a palace compared with his. I gather that the main problem is that woman superintendent, who seems to be driving them crazy. She constantly yells at the two little girls. Ingrid says that Tony is after her to have it out with the woman, but Ingrid wants to solve the problem by moving. She claims that the super has become the main sore point in their marriage."
"It may be a sore point, but it isn't the heart of their troubles. In a way, Tony and Ingrid are a classic situation. They came to the center with one specific complaint, and then it opened to something wider and deeper."
"Are drugs their biggest worry, then? Ingrid is down to nothing, but Tony still uses a lot of methadone. Is Ingrid afraid that she'll get hooked again?"
"That's a problem too, of course. So is Tony's health. He coughs up blood, which he blames on the metal fragments he inhaled at the sheet-metal factory. Ingrid says he's gone down four pants sizes in a year. Also, they live together illegally even though they're married, because Ingrid's welfare check would be cut off if the government knew Tony was helping out with the support. All serious problems. But the central issue is Tony and Ingrid. I've told them that directly. Both are 30; she may be 29. She is strong, articulate, ambitious. He is sweet and irresponsible. She feels that he is trying to hide from life. He feels she is dominating him."
"But that woman-super business. Doesn't Tony come off as the more aggressive of the two?"
"That's merely her way of bolstering him in front of a stranger. The irony there is that if Tony really wanted to stand up to the super, he would not do it through Ingrid. And she defines the problem as her responsibility, not his, merely reinforcing the circle. Even on the idea of their moving, Tony feels that he is being told what to do, not only by Ingrid but by the super, who is forcing him to make a decision. Tony avoids decisions. Ingrid has charge of the finances, the family schedules. For Tony, there is his guitar and his car. Given the chance, he would tinker with that car forever."
"He showed it off to me. A blue Cutlass. He only came to life when he talked about that car, explaining in meticulous detail how he fixed the carburetor, changed the radiator. Ingrid was with us, saying encouraging things."
"Yes, but she wants him to sell that car to help them move. Yet the car is very important to his self-esteem. And so it goes. That's Sunset Park. Real problems, poverty problems and simply problems of modern living. Tony and Ingrid are former heroin addicts living in a slum, almost wholly removed from the world. They saw their first Broadway show last year, The Tap Dance Kid; dinner at Howard Johnson's, a real excursion. Yet their troubles are middle- class troubles. She says: Take charge. He says: I don't take charge because you do. She says: If I let you do it, it doesn't get done. He feels resentful and excluded from the family."
"Where do you begin to help?"