MacDougal and Bleecker

We were talking about our aging parents when my friend asked if I take notes. I thought she meant notes toward stories, but she meant notes to myself that I’d read in the future, to remind myself of once-thought thoughts.

But I had to explain: When we’re there where the notes were meant to go, we’ll not appreciate the thoughtfulness of our younger selves. The handwriting will be invisible, the notes illegible. We’ll respond with anger to the notes reminding us of who we were once and are no longer.

It’s foolish to assume the superiority of one’s present self to one’s future self. Still, drinking margaritas on a warm summer night at the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker, one’s hubris—one’s tendency toward hubris—may be excused.

Village

That evening, Eleni and I walked to the next village just before the sky went dark. All the ground was in shadow, sheep bells ringing. No wind, nothing stirring, even the plants were settled in for the night.

I can’t say for sure what she thinks of me. We’ve known each other, sporadically it’s seemed but perhaps more solidly than we’d thought, for almost thirty years. It’s an island that joins us, a real island, kidney bean-shaped in a stormy or placid sea. Having lived there, we’ve seen it every which way, and often cursed it, like the captains spawned by the island, who do so regularly. What is it for us to swear at a body of water? Women, hardly captains, who nonetheless try to steer our own passage through difficult or calm waters.

For years, her Marxism and my capitalism (by default) seemed to bring her knowing wrath upon me. I’ve had opportunities she hasn’t but just yesterday she told me of an alternate life. Her parents, a grocer and a seafarer, always hoped she’d open a private English school. Being of a particular generation, she threw her weight with the People, and suffers there to this day with minimal pay, and even less thanks.

The next morning, Eleni talked about teaching and the political situation as we descended toward the sea. She stayed in the water a long time and at some point, she must have forgotten about everything we’d said on the way down. She didn’t swim laps, she didn’t even wet her head, but moved slowly eastward until she was beyond the cliff and invisible to me. Eventually she came back into view but even then, she kept moving, head above the water, reluctant to emerge.

While waiting for her, the sea sparkled diamonds and I remembered that an aunt of hers is a nun on an island blinding in its whiteness or maybe in the power of so much prayer being sent aloft.

After a leisurely lunch at home, she pulled three pomegranates from the tree and left. She had a strike to attend on the other side of the island. She’d drive for hours along the south coast, watching the mid-autumn sun descend and then disappear into the sea.

I waved as she drove away, standing there longer than necessary.

Beyond

I was at home when the phone rang but stayed, half-listening, through a door, to the voice. I could identify the voice and the demeanor of the speaker so, playing back the message as soon as the caller hung up, I wasn’t exactly shocked by the announcement of a death.

But the problem and the burden was that having heard the message, I would have to bear the news. I knew what had happened, I couldn’t erase the news from my mind. I thought about lying, but rejected the idea almost immediately. I could handle telling him.

What bothered me was that he had gone out, and I wanted to as well. I knew that if I did, we’d meet along the road and that in not revealing the news, I’d be lying, in a way. Or, if I flagged him down (he was driving, I was walking), and blurted it out, the force of the news could cause him to drive carelessly, as he often did anyway.

I left the house, walking. He honked as he passed me on the road; I did nothing to indicate that I wanted him to stop. I let myself off the tether of my burden, when I could, but it came back anyway, causing that familiar tightening of the stomach. I wanted to get home and be released.

I found him on the steps. He was arranging his swimming things on the banister so they would dry in the sun.

I said: I saw Hans on the road. His appendix was taken out just two days ago and already he’s driving!

I started with the good news because after bad news, I knew the good news would have no weight. Then, almost before he could take in the news I’d offered, I told him the second piece: Your mother left a message on the machine saying that L has died.

I’d worried that he’d ask why I hadn’t picked up the phone, but his emotion over the death saved me from having to answer that question.

He fell immediately into sadness; my relief was equally instantaneous.

Airport

She told me that she expects me to tell her a story about the Bedouins, or whatever they were, some form of immigrants who were milling around the baggage claim area when I arrived that day last January. Outside, the sky was white, the air looked cold.

We sat together inside the airport, hardly looking out, for more than three hours, talking over watered-down cappucino.

They were all little people, I said, smaller than most I’ve ever seen, and they wore long, draped clothing. They seemed happy, unless that’s something I invented. They were surrounded by piles of square packages, neatly wrapped in what looked like muslin. I figured those were their suitcases. The people looked jolly.

She wanted me to tell her a story to take her mind off other things—she has five children and two mothers-in-law! In the airport, I saw her before she saw me. I hadn’t seen her in a while.

The day before, I’d been travelling along sunny, cold New York streets in a shuttle bus full of Italian art historians. Their speciality, they told me, was medieval manuscripts.  Passing St. John the Divine, I pointed it out. The driver took 125th St to the Triborough Bridge. One of the Italians, the spokeswoman for the others, said to me: Sometimes after being in New York, when I return to my home in Padua, I feel as if I’m in the wrong place. I said: Tomorrow I’ll be home in a village of fifty wretched souls. 

How is it that—even now, at almost fifty years old—I can still fool myself into believing that I love the people sitting across from me on the subway but despise the neighbors in the village half a mile away? Off the top of my head, I’d say it’s just another form of misanthropism.

I’ve got a tad of it, too, she said.

I made her promise me that it isn’t misanthropism alone that makes us compatible. Her laughter assured me.

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Keywords : Manhattan, Youth, Politics, Family, Misanthropy

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