Battery Park City (a short story)

Angie suspected she should flee the scene of the crime. Although she looked out across the wind-whipped Hudson River, her mind’s eye imagined security cameras. Everywhere, probably. Her amateur attempts at anonymity were surely no match for post-9/11 security in lower Manhattan. 

When, she wondered, did I become someone who says 9/11? For years, she had stubbornly insisted on saying “the terrorist attacks on September 11th,” striving in vain to seem less narcissistically American. She hoped the change reflected an improvement in her character. A fading of intense self-centeredness. A small step toward kindness. Angie Eckhardt: Less Pedantic Than Before. And now she’d become a scofflaw, as well! She would have laughed at herself, but a wash of grief reminded her why she’d gone rogue. I’d do it again, she knew. I’m likely to do it again. Shit. That’s love for you.

This was not Angie’s first experience scattering ashes. A rogue gust off a cliff in Portugal had swooped away a handful of a dear friend. At a celebration of life for another friend, she’d helped seal his ashes into a lovely little Wedgwood urn. And she’d shared a residence with a small shrink-wrapped carton of her Aunt Birdie’s beloved cat Lola’s ashes for years. But this was quite a bit different. 

This time, her mother and she had, somewhat lightheaded and wide-eyed at their weird, woeful task, mixed the cat’s ashes into Birdie’s own. With a spoon. Oh, God. But the Long Island cemetery allowed no cat’s ashes, and Birdie would hardly rest easy without them, so they’d taken matters into their own hands. They’d solemnly portioned out a small amount of the mixture for Angie to take to her conference in the city, then carefully re-sealed the teak box. The law-abiding cemetery director would never know that the ghost of an opinionated feline had secretly slipped in to join the slumberers.

Again, Angie told herself to go. But, despite the unseasonable squall that she was badly underdressed for, and despite the prickling sense of being surveilled, she wanted to stay. She missed New York. Ached for the dreams she had left behind here. Not all the time, of course. She was deeply grateful for her life in California. For her husband. For real adult friends. For the miles and the years between her and her panicked youth. But sometimes she had to fight hard against wondering How could I have exiled myself from this place? Why did I give up? Why did I flee? So, her moments here were precious. Especially right here, where years ago, Birdie’s apartment had become first a refuge from a series of coming-of-age heartbreaks, and eventually, a home. 

Maybe everyone’s late twenties glowed particularly brightly in memory. For Angie, Battery Park City seemed to be the backdrop for a whole slideshow of vivid moments. She looked toward North Cove, remembering the frigid January night she had gone out to photograph and marvel at Captain Sully's floating US Airways plane. Remembering handing over via Water Taxi her darling black kittens to an ex-boyfriend who had claimed them in the breakup. Remembering a still young Lola in a cat-carrier slung over Angie’s shoulder as she and Birdie had staggered blindly south under the mattress of poisonous dust and smoke from the fall of the first Twin Tower. Remembering youth. Remembering loss.

Despite the neighborhood’s siren call, it had taken her years to force herself to visit the World Trade Center Memorial, and she’d found herself unprepared. Dragging her heels into the surprisingly tree-shaded grounds from the corner of Greenwich and Liberty, she’d tried to let thoughts of how touristy it all was protect her. But the sheer size of it! The mind-boggling amount of prime real-estate devoted solely to our fragile little hearts - to how much we mean to one another - had stripped her of her armor. This wasn’t “Ground Zero” to be checked off someone’s bucket list. This was a mass grave. And the yawning sinkholes easily enlisted a few of Angie’s tears to join their depths. You had to cry about this sometime, you know. Even if it took you twenty years.

But how could she be here without Birdie? Or rather, how could she be here with Birdie’s ashes in a Ziplock in her backpack? She and Birdie had gone through that awful day, those awful months, together. Close to the point of claustrophobia sometimes, but imprinted like fledglings onto each other nonetheless. Birdie would undoubtedly have said something now that irritated Angie with her special brand of being both right and wrong at the same time. Angie ached for that loss as well. 

Feeling slightly haunted, she’d been only too glad to continue on. She’d crossed West Street, so different now since the re-build, then passed under the footbridge across Liberty. She was there to fulfill her aunt’s wish to have the long-departed Lola's ashes scattered in the garden of their Battery Park City building complex. Of course, Birdie would have preferred not to be getting scattered right alongside the cat. Life is full of indignities, it seems... You’re coming home, Birdie. I’m so sorry. I hope you’d be happy to be here. 

Scattering wasn’t exactly the right term for what she’d done, but it had a much more noble ring than whatever you'd call her actual maneuver. She’d walked numbly toward the building complex, past the nail salon that was now a coffee shop, past the car rental place that was still extorting business travelers, past where the pay-phones used to be. Payphones. It had been a long, long time. She passed the mature tree in the garden, from which had once hung a singed and filthy pair of fireman’s overalls. She tried to shake the memories off. She hadn’t wanted to dwell on the past, but it snaked its way into her every breath.

Once ensconced in the complex's garden, trying to look like she had any legitimate reason whatsoever to be there, she’d counted 21 stories up and found her old window. The one through which she'd had a view of Lady Liberty. The one through which she’d taken that photo of the first burning tower. The one out of which she’d momentarily wanted to jump in a toddler-like rage after a fight with Birdie. Memories. You can run from them, she thought, but they will find you.

Forcing herself back to the task at hand, she’d cased the joint. For a moment, she’d thought it was going to be impossible. Surely, there had been more trees and bushes when she’d lived here with Birdie. Now, the garden felt too exposed. In clear view of the doormen, hundreds of windows, and presumably, facial recognition software, she’d almost lost her nerve. Already thinking I’m taking too long. I look ridiculously suspicious, she’d decided to throw the doorman off the scent. She’d entered her old lobby for the first time in nearly two decades.

The doorman was new. That is to say, he wasn’t Angel or Jaimie. He couldn’t have recognized her. “Excuse me,” she’d chirped, trying to sound some combination of confident and late, “Can I get down to the water from here?” A ridiculous question she’d already known the answer to, and which would work directly against her need to stay in the garden until the deed was done. But she’d hoped she still possessed enough charm at her age to buy some time with a smile.

Having been directed to the completely obvious path toward the Hudson, she’d started to head that way, then tried to telegraph through subtly exaggerated body language a brilliant re-thinking of her plans, a decision to await her imaginary friend right there in the garden after all. I’m making a mess of this, she’d chastised herself. Eyes nervously roving about the grounds, she meandered toward the gazebo, looking for the right spot. Under the bench? At the base of that shrub? No. There. There was a little footbridge over… well, nothing really, just an ornamental footbridge over store-bought symmetrical stones, but she could deposit the ashes just at the far side of it, and they would be invisible from Friendly Doorman’s angle. Not from any other angle, but she’d had to work with what she had. 

Hands shaking from more than the cold, she’d fished out of her backpack both the baggie, and, after imagining the ashes flying straight out to the Atlantic, a bottle of water. Worrying she was moments away from hearing “Stop in the name of the Law!” she’d knelt as if to tie her shoe, then sifted a small gray heap of a huge hunk of her heart onto the dry non-stream-bed, and then immediately doused it with water, so that the ashes sank straight into the earth and could never ever be completely dug out or blown away. A pause. A breath. Ok. There you go. Lola, at long last a permanent part of the view from that window. Birdie, heartbreakingly, too.

With no sirens blaring as of yet, there had been nothing left to do but stand and walk back out. She should have gone through to the water, to keep up her ruse, but her feet walked the regular way out, as they’d done so many thousands of times before. At the first trash can, she’d ignored recycling rules and hurriedly stuffed in both the empty plastic bag and the empty aluminum bottle, and then sped - NYC-fast, but hopefully not on-the-lam fast - away.

Her feet had kept walking her, at last, to the river, and she stood there for a long time. Mission completed, she wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Her chest felt a bit tight, and her knees were a little wobbly, but she’d done it, and she thought she should take a moment to let it settle. Hands shoved as deep in her coat pockets as she could get them, and hair whipping into her eyes, she replayed what she’d just done to the choppy soundtrack of waves smacking the seawall. 

She wondered briefly what she would actually do if she was set upon by the cops. Imagined seeing a pair them, heavy-booted and incredulous, charge up to her, yelling “Ma’am! What do you think you’re doing?” Would they ask for ID? Ask to see written permission from the property owners to scatter remains? What would she say? As much as she liked to hope she’d be defiant and confident, she’d known herself too long not to suspect that she’d burst into tears. Stop catastrophizing! Nobody cares! She tried to talk herself out of wondering what it would be like to be handcuffed and stuffed into a squad car. But just in case, she reluctantly - and feeling like she was somehow doing this all wrong - hightailed it out of there.

Goodbye, Birdie, she whispered as she went. I hope you knew how much I loved you.

Tonight, she had a ticket to the new Stoppard play and then drinks at Joe Allen with Jane, a fellow Stoppard junkie she’d met at yesterday’s conference. And tomorrow, her husband would fly in from California to join her, and they’d explore all the things the city had become since their last visit. There was a new restaurant they wanted to try where the old Lucky Strike had been. They wanted to see the addition to The High Line. She walked North. She took a deep breath. She was thinking of the future.

 

A Surprise Extra Room

Every New Yorker has dreams of discovering a secret extra room in their apartment. Well, I did. It might have been my one happy recurring dream, now that I think about it. (Nightmares got much more air time.)

You’d go to open a closet door and discover another door you’d simply never noticed, but that had been there all along. And when you opened it…. wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, an entire empty room, a box of light and space and possibilities. All for you.

There’s actually an entire empty 5-bedroom apartment “all the way uptown” that I’ve Tessered to many times in dreams. The building’s kinda grim, but the space! It’s hard to choose which rooms I want for myself, there are so many. And I thrift shabby-chic wooden furniture and cushions in vivid colors, and buy an overflow of plants to make it a bohemian sanctuary. 

If you take the dream train past the north-western-most limits of Manhattan, there’s another building that’s mine. Kind of a semi-detached town house. I’ve never been inside, but I keep remembering that it’s there if I need it, and that the train back into the city takes me right past that theatre where I have tickets to see that play…

Now that I live in a wildly sprawling one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with nary an air-shaft in sight, I have the dream much less frequently. But last week I was reminded of it during a sudden-onset cleaning frenzy on the upstairs balcony. Yes, we have two balconies. I feel a reluctance to say that, because it seems so grand, and because I could evidently do with going back into therapy, but. Ahem. The upstairs one was… not grand.

We’d inherited a tall, paint splattered easel when we moved in, which we kept up there because it looked artsy as hell. Then, during a lull, Steven suddenly became this amazing painter and craftsman, building a custom easel, making the wooden frames, stretching his own oversized canvases, crafting decorative walnut frames for display. The upstairs balcony seemed like Picasso’s Paris apartment, but sun-drenched, and with a handsome Scot in his dedicated painting clothes. Abstracts sprung from walls, extra canvases filled the loft.

When eventually the lull ended, the table saw went into a weather-tight storage box, which was nearly visible under the pile of wood scraps and other vestiges of a brief and glorious painting residency. That was years ago. And sticky, salty dust piles up fast when it’s blown in from the beach all day, every day - and it never rains.

My less preferred succulents got migrated upstairs to join the wood pile. Some planter boxes that had held herbs that died almost immediately in the constant abrading sea-breeze sat quietly falling apart, excelling at slowly releasing their soil and gravel onto the balcony floor. The balcony door rusted almost all the way shut for a few years, but even when it was repaired, why bother? The downstairs balcony has a table and chairs, and a gas grill, and my favorite succulents. So that is where we went. When we went. You’d be surprised how chilly it is in Venice.

Then inexplicably, on Memorial Day, I looked at it all and thought - Now. I'm going to do it now. And after much less time and effort (although just as much dirt) as I’d anticipated, everything but the teak planks we’d also inherited, the artsy easels, and the actually attractive plants were gone. I swept up dustpan upon dustpan of sand and other things I didn’t examine too closely. I thought - I bet a potted olive tree could survive out here, and wouldn’t it look lovely through the window from downstairs. I got a beach chair out of storage and sat out there listening to the audiobook of A Wrinkle in Time. 

The transformation isn't completely done. It needs another good sweep, and I need to get my hands on the weatherproof paint for the floor. (Picasso left a bit of a Pollock behind.) Plus, there’s a mostly dead cockroach that I discovered between two of the pieces of teak, and I don’t know how long it will take me to gather the courage to deal with it. But still. I have a brand new room. A surprise extra space. It had been there all along, waiting until I needed it.

p.s. It took 13 days to face the cockroach. Mercifully, by then, it had died. A species first, I believe.

Blackbird

Sometimes they have matchsticks for fingers, my poor hands.
Blood-red at the tips from nervous biting.
Lately they have become crepe-skinned, though I’m not that old.
Should they look this old?

Over the course of existing in a world
Where I have found the women's half of the sky
A heavy thing to hoist
I have used my hands to reject and to embrace their duties.

Right now I am entranced with
Berry-bright, glossy lozenges on my fingertips.
Other times I look at painted nails with disdain, pity.
Who would want to be so far from the Earth?
Who would be so vain?
Why are you so unlike the people you came from?
Your scientist father. Your warrior mother. 
But today, they delight me. Their shine.

I had been suspicious of my hands for a long time.
Unlike those I love, no matter which way I wear them.
Well, unlike my mother's.

It took a long time to realize
The Big Bad Thing hadn’t come for me.
The big bad thing that ate through my mother's still-young joints
That would have grounded her if we hadn’t lived when we did.

It swooped down briefly to consider me.
Lowered my arms, and lowered me from my toes
But then the big bad thing flew on.
Leaving only a little scar.

It did not happen to me.
Even though I am my mother’s daughter.
And it happened to her.

By now, if it comes, it’s due.

I can start taking the pins
Out of to-dos.
I can plan things
That involve my knees
My shoulders
My feet.

The skies have long been free of terrors.
And my hands have always been strong.