Reading & Writing

I am a second-generation story-hoarder. From as early as I can recall, my mother, a voracious reader, read stories to me.  We sat squashed together on the sofa or a park bench, transfixed by the tale, me following the print across invisible lines on the pages with my finger and squinting to see the relationship between the words and the pictures, as she read aloud in her mellifluous voice.  Once I asked her if she made up these stories and wrote them on the paper for me.  She laughed and said no, a special kind of artist did; they were called writers and the stories they created enriched everyone’s lives. Writers caught magic with their imaginations the way my cousins and I caught lightning bugs in old jam jars.

When I was three, she took me to one of her favorite places, the main branch of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street, to get my first library card so I could join her in the pleasure of checking out books.  I remember climbing the great stone staircase slowly, my short legs requiring two hopping steps to every one of her long, elegant strides.  My awkward ascent wasn’t helped by the fact that I peered over my shoulder continually, trying to look at the two enormous stone lions, placed like sentinels where the sidewalk met the stairs, and wondering what they guarded.

When we finally made it to the cool marble lobby, I gasped as I saw what the unblinking lions were protecting.  The entire building was full of books; I could see them from where I stood under the big chandelier.  I knew then why my mother loved this place; this was where those special artists brought their ideas for the rest of us to hold in our hands.  Wandering through the aisles of the children’s section, running my sweaty finger along the plastic-wrapped spines of the Dr. Suesses and Beverly Clearys, it occurred to me why the lions out front were so busy they never closed their eyes; the stories inside of these books were valuable; my mother had said so.

I caught my mother’s abiding passion for stories like a DiMaggio caught pop flies - effortlessly. She encouraged me totally.  In elementary school, when I wanted to own every book in the monthly Arrow Book Club newsletter, my mother wrote the checks. Then when I decided to try to scratch out my own magic by writing stories and poems, she purchased endless numbers of spiral-bound notebooks for me.  She convinced my grandfather to build floor to ceiling shelves in my room to hold my expanding library. And when, at age eight, I succeeded in publishing my first poem in Highlights for Children, she crept into every pediatric office in the Fordham Road Medical Arts Building and swiped every waiting room copy.  So, when the opportunity arose for me to study great literature abroad for one year as I completed my education, my mom was the first to encourage me to go, certain that it would help me achieve my goal of becoming a professional writer. It did, although it sure took a lot longer than either of us planned.

I have begun to be what I wanted to be.  My stories have been included in national and international publications, although it isn't yet time to quite the day job.

And it is all because I was lucky enough to have you as my mother, so thanks, Mom.  I love you.

The Movie Star's Shoe

There are a lot of rats in Los Angeles County; they find it very hospitable.  I don’t mean the metaphorical ones who drive Porsches and dwell in cliffside houses in Pacific Palisades, but big, brown Norway rats that slink around the fringes of bushes in the ocean-front parks and skulk across the damp Santa Monica sand, snuffling their whiskers in the breeze to catch a whiff of greasy French fries and chicken nuggets as they fall through the wide wooden planks of the Pier.

As a transplanted New Yorker I had never thought about rats sharing our Southern California paradise until our neighbor Debbie told me how relieved she was that Jean Pierre, another neighbor, was having his twenty-foot tall Washingtonia filifera palms pruned.  Not understanding, I asked why.  “Ask the tree guy when he gets here” she replied knowingly. 

Later that day I had a long discussion with the man pruning the trees; he told me that rats like to live in untidy palms, the ones with the dead fronds hanging down; they enjoyed the protection from the elements and the close food source that unwary humans provide.  To forestall this, the trees must be pruned twice yearly.  Chilled, I spent the entire rest of the day grateful for Jean Pierre’s garden diligence.

            That night sitting at an outside table at The Blue Plate Oysterette, watching the sun slip behind the forty-foot King Palms lining Ocean Avenue, I idly (and mistakenly) relayed the conversation to my husband, Jamie.  I say ‘mistakenly’ because for the next three years - until we returned to the East Coast - every time we passed a palm tree he’d grab my arm and yell “Rat!”  At first it creeped me out, but since I never once saw a rat, eventually I concluded that there couldn’t possibly be rats in all of them.  Nevertheless, those invisible rodents remained secreted inside a small, dark sliver of my mind.

Still rat-less, weeks later, in mid-July we were lying on our bed watching the 11 o’clock news when I heard a thwack. I turned to Jamie.  “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“A smacking noise outside, like a bird hit the window.”

“So maybe a bird hit the window.”

“Jame, it’s . . . what, 11:20; what bird flies at that time of night?”

“Maybe it’s a bat.”

“Oooooh, do we have bats here?”

“Maybe it’s a rat jumping out of Jean Pierre’s palm tree.  Remember what the tree guy said.”

“Ewwwwwwwww.” 

“He’s coming to get you!”  Jamie grabbed my arm.  This time I did shriek.  What if the much anticipated, palm-tree-rodent had finally arrived?  He laughed.  “If you really want to know, look out the window.”

Ours is a very small house, a turn-of-the-century bungalow, set on a tiny, subdivided plot of land enclosed by a wrought-iron gate, barely ten feet away from the house across the paved path called a walk-street.  If that long-expected rat had appeared, he was sprawled on the porch roof, really close, maybe three feet away from the mattress.  I slid Spencer, our marmalade tabby, off my lap and faced the windows; approaching warily, I poked one finger tentatively through the blinds. Spencer padded after me eagerly, no doubt intrigued at the prospect of escaping through the window and seeing a rat.  I turned to plop him, squirming, on Jamie’s stomach and returned to the window.

Peering through the slats, I saw that something sat in the center of the pitched porch roof; it was sleek-looking with a long slender growth from one end, too sleek-looking to be a rat, even in overly groomed LA.   And while it was kind of rodenty in color, it appeared to have a red stomach.   Could it be a bloody rat? 

Grabbing the long blue plastic back scratcher I had gotten from a float-rider at the Fourth of July parade, I yanked at the blind cord, then slid up the window sash and leaned out.  I poked at the object with the scratcher.  With a clunking noise, it rolled over and displayed more of its red stomach.  Feeling somewhat safer - rats don’t generally clunk and roll - I leaned out further and tried to drag it toward me with the curled end of the scratcher.  It turned and clunked again, this time toward the edge.  Leaning out so far I feared tumbling out to join it on the small rooftop, I swatted again.  This time it caught.  I reeled it in.  It was a brown alligator Christian Louboutain stiletto.

Once I had the window closed, I sat on the rug examining my catch as it dangled expensively from the scratcher’s curved end.  It caught the light dully on its sable matte finish.  I lifted it gently and placed it beside me on the sea grass patterned carpet.  It gleamed; it was a left pump, its sole smooth and crimson, not yet scratched from use.  

I knew this shoe.  I had wanted a pair like this but saleswomen in every shoe department from Barney’s to Saks had sighed unctuously and inquired why I had not visited them sooner.  After all, it was the most important shoe of the collection and my size, six, was the most common in all of LA.    Covetously, I slid my bare foot inside my foundling’s cool newness.  Actually it was such a big shoe I could have inserted both of my feet. I hobbled around to Jamie’s side of the bed.  “Look at this.”

Intrigued by the news broadcast, he ignored me.  I removed the shoe from my foot and waved it in front of his face.  “Jame, look at this.  It wasn’t a rat; it was a shoe on the roof, a brand-new Louboutain.”

He glanced up distractedly and nodded. 

Perching on the edge of the mattress I twirled the shoe by its five-inch spike heel.  “How would this get here?” I mused.  “It’s expensive.  It’s alone and they come in pairs.  It’s big, too, look . . . size . . . oooh, eleven.  Wow.  And, anyway, they can’t fly, so how . . .” My voice trailed off.

Jamie looked up from the Marie Callendar commercial and jerked his head to the right.  “Her,” he said.

“Her who?”

He looked at me intently and spoke slowly, punctuating his words with a pointing index finger. “Her - across the walk-street.”  Then, just before he returned his face to the TV screen, he added, “And they can fly, by the way.”

Her Across the Walk-Street was an Oscar-winning actress known to the tabloids as America’s Sweetheart, a Chiclet-toothed girl-next-door, who earned tens of millions of dollars for every movie she made, regardless of how badly they bombed – and lately, several of them had.  While she and her manager-husband owned the bungalow opposite ours, they rarely stayed there, since they also had an estate in Malibu and another in the Palisades.   Being America’s Sweetheart paid handsomely.

After waiting for the next commercial to begin, I asked, “What are you talking about? What does Tessa have to do with a size eleven flying Louboutain?”

“It’s her shoe.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have met some of its relatives.”

“You can’t have; it’s here alone.”

Jamie shook his head, as if amazed by my naïveté.  “More distant relatives, then - a red Jimmy Choo, a black Givenchy, and . . . I am pretty sure the first one was a crème Manolo.  And they all knew how to fly, although some didn’t land too well; I thought the last one was gonna break the living room window.”

My lips formed a little “o”.  He tapped my chin and grinned.  “Close your mouth or you may catch the next one.”

It transpired that our neighbor - America’s Sweetheart – possessed the interpersonal communication skills of a thirteenth century Mongol.  Whenever she didn’t get her way - say, Jared, her husband, came home too late or stayed on the phone too long – she threw a screaming tantrum.  “Threw” appeared to be the operative word, too, because a shoe most often accompanied the shrieking verbal complaint; her right arm wound back and hurled – although with less precision than enthusiasm, admittedly, since no one had yet seen Jared with a black eye.  And as our house sat immediately opposite theirs on the narrow walk-street, the shoes landed most often on our porch. 

I was amazed at Jamie’s story.  “When does this happen?  Where have I been?”

“I don’t know where you are - work, Debbie’s, school.  It happens at all different times.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

He shrugged. “I didn’t really think about it.”

“Where are they?”

Jamie swigged his Diet Coke and jerked a thumb in the direction of Jennifer’s house while he swallowed.  “I gave ‘em back; what do you think, I kept ‘em?”

“How?” I envisioned his knocking on the door and bowing, ‘Your shoe, madam’ like some Post Modern Hollywood Sir Walter Raleigh.

“Usually I leave them on their front steps on my way to work in the morning.”

“Really?”

He stared.  “What else should do with them?”

I considered.  Fill them with lemonade and freeze them, making shoe-shaped granitas.  Plant them with dill and tarragon for a fashionista herb garden. Amusing, yes, but highly impractical, and nothing that my husband would have ever come up with.

“I don’t know.  I just . . . wondered.”

“Yeah, well, wonder it down to the front door and I’ll drop it off on my way out tomorrow.”

“Okay.  I guess.”  I carried the shoe to the narrow staircase and descended into the inky darkness as the late night music of a Law & Order rerun blared behind me. 
I wasn’t sure I wanted to return the shoe, although I certainly couldn’t articuate a reason for keeping it, except maybe contagion, as two Yale psychologists had called it - when people believe that they can capture the reflected glory of a celebrity by touching an object that the star touched, like at those Hollywood auctions Julien’s in Beverly Hills was always promoting.  This shoe was my little brush with celebrity, except in this case said celebrity’s Us Magazine life had been found wanting.  Stars!  They’re just like us!  They feed their kids and phone their therapists and argue with their spouses, but their neighbors have to help them finding their matching shoes after they have thrown them across courtyards.

A tiny part of me wanted to feel morally superior and be sorry for Tess; while I couldn’t quite manage that, I did think that, despite the great clothes and red-carpet events, it must be weird to be her. She may well do all those real-people things but she does them with an aging Sober Life Coach rolling along behind her, clutching a map and guiding her hand. 

No, she is nothing like me.  I teach high school English and worry about rats in palm trees, not rats clutching cameras, waiting patiently for the unflattering shot that will define me to all of America.

I sat in the dark until I no longer felt anything at all, then I opened the door gently, tiptoed across the paving stones, and lay the shoe on the doormat.  

The One Left Behind

When I was an undergraduate I enrolled in an Introduction to Italian class.  It met from 8 – 10:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Since I could hardly be considered a morning person, my mother fairly shrieked with laughter at the thought of my actually arriving there any time before 10, but there were no openings in any other sections and I was feeling Continental.  It had to be Italian, too – I mean, how could you not like a place that’s shaped like a high heeled boot?

The first day, I stumbled in, disheveled and grumpy, wondering just how badly I really wanted to do this, and saw that this whole becoming bilingual process was going to be better than I had imagined.  A lot better.

The instructor was already in the front of the room, leaning on the table that functioned as a desk, arms and legs crossed casually, elegantly.  He wore perfectly tailored khakis and an impeccable white linen button-down shirt.  This alone made me stare.  NYU in the early 1990’s was full of black-jeans-and-leather-jacket clad poseurs. Everyone looked like Lou Reed, including the girls.

Not this guy.  He looked like Jean-Paul Belmondo - tall, slender, dark hair, dimple in the chin, strong forehead, lush lips, and one slightly raised eyebrow, giving him an insouciant, Gallic air.  He smiled, exposing white teeth and a tiny dimple in his left cheek.   

“Buon giorno.  Il mio nome è Romano. Sono il vostro istruttore. Benvenuto ad introduzione ad italiano.”

I had no idea what he said but I was hooked. After that, I was never absent and smiled at him throughout the entire session.  He must have thought I swallowed Chiclets whole.

Every day he looked more or less the same, sharply pressed khakis, crisp white linen or cotton shirt.  Once a week or so, probably on department meeting days, he wore a silk tie.  They were always of casually elegant design, a foulard or small paisley.  I was dazzled.  After that first day, I went to class completely groomed, too.  I washed and blew dry my hair every morning.  I scoured places like Alice Underground for chic 60’s styles.  On a weekend visit home I even swiped my mother’s last bottle of Narcisse Noir.

Eventually, my own sartorial efforts paid dividends.  He smiled his crooked grin (I just knew a Gauloise should hang from the corner) and leaned over my shoulder smelling of something spicy whenever I asked for extra help.  He was always very encouraging to me, marveling at both the construct and subjects of my sentences.  (“Gradirei il rivestimento di Armani nella finestra, prego. Formato sei!”)

One day he asked me to join him for coffee after the class.  He had about an hour before he had to return to his office to grade papers.  I swooned.

I had hoped to converse in chic foreign tongues but since I didn’t actually speak anything but English, we talked like everybody else.  It didn’t matter.  I was enchanted.  We continued having coffee together nearly every day after class.  Sometimes we chatted about our backgrounds.   He was the only son of an Italian father and French mother and spoke 3 languages.  I never really said much, just listened to the timbre of his sonorous voice and slid into gossamer daydreams about walks around the Tower of Pisa in the moonlight.

One day I got to class a little late.  The lesson had already begun and since no seats remained up front, I chose one in the back row.  He looked up and smiled at me.  I smiled back.  I could see that it was a tie day, but the tie wasn’t one of his usual tasteful ones.  It was one of those garish, techno-colored Nicole Miller ties, the ones with fluorescent colored designs on a black ground.  The design was pink and white.  While I couldn’t make it out, I could tell it was awful. 

I had no idea what was the subject of that day’s lesson.   Vorrei voglio something or other, I think.   I couldn’t pull my eyes from the fabric strip hanging from his neck. It looked like. . . I squinted . . .Barbie?   I stared and twisted my neck as discreetly as possible.  Barbie?  Barbie.  

At the break midway through the class, I picked up my notebook (il taccuino) and tiptoed my way through the backpacks (i zaini) ostensibly to ask a question but really to get a closer look at that tie.  Praying I was wrong I approached.  It was Barbie, all right.  Her name was spelled out in big pink letters, randomly scattered with figures of the original ponytail Barbie and blonde bubble-haired Barbie and shoes, those little open toed mules that Barbie wore.

“Interesting tie.”  I gestured.  “Gift?”

“No, I bought it.  I wear it the first Thursday of every month.”

“Why?”

“That’s the day of our meeting.”

“Meeting?”

“Yes.  I am the President of the Long Island Chapter of the Barbie Club.”

At the exact second that those words left his mouth, my infatuation ended with a sharp internal yowl, like a cat’s tail caught in a door. 

Jean-Paul Belmondo would not wear a Barbie tie.  He would not join a Barbie club.  He would sneer at the thought as his Gauloise hung blithely from the corner of his mouth.

This story appeared in a slightly different form in What Was I Thinking: 58 Bad Boyfriend Stories; St. Martin’s Press; 2010

The Amount of Education You Have Determines Your Loot in Life

Lou Casella, my mentor teacher, used to say that teachers are born not made.  I wasn’t sure I agreed with that sentiment years ago when I first heard it and I’m less certain of it with each passing school year.  Certainly I didn’t see myself as a teacher for the first thirty-odd years of my life. 

When I was a kid, I thought teachers were overworked, underpaid, and got no respect from anyone.  (Funny how perceptive I was at such a young age.)  I’d seen all the teacher films on Million Dollar Movie – Up the Down Staircase; To Sir, With Love; The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie; The Blackboard Jungle – and certainly none of them glorified the classroom experience.   It wasn’t until later, as an adult, watching them again with a friend who was writing about the representation of teachers in the media for a graduate school project, that I began to think about what those films were actually saying about teachers and learners.  While some of the teachers’ experiences certainly weren’t enviable, maybe there really was something satisfying about showing kids something they’d never seen before, like Sylvia Barrett, the teacher portrayed by Sandy Dennis in Up the Down Staircase. 

Against nearly insurmountable odds, Miss Barrett obtains for her students new paperback copies of books she values, believing that, if her students will only read them, they will value those books, too.  Holding a fresh paperback in her hand, Miss Barrett stands at the front of her classroom and reads aloud the famous first line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.  She’s trying to show that literature isn’t old and dead. In fact, good writing knows no time boundaries since the observations about humanity contained in a book written in 1859 can help someone understand the paradoxes of Post Modern life.  Her restive students begin to pay attention as her modulated voice tells them a story.  And all things being equal in a Robert Mulligan film, of course she succeeds; her students find the book contemporary and interesting and discuss it enthusiastically.

That scene has remained with me since the first time I watched the film and I think of it often as I attempt to teach my students the same thing about literature.  I read aloud my favorite authors’ words (which I am lucky enough to teach) and hope that the message, so powerful to me, speaks to them, too.   So, is my mentor teacher right? Does the fact that literature speaks so profoundly to me and I want to allow it to speak to others indicate I am a born teacher?  If so, you’d never know it from my first teaching experience.  

My great-uncle Max remarried when I was twelve. The news astonished me because he had been single as long as I had known him: ex-Aunt Emily had divorced him years before I was even born and I’d had no idea he was in the market for a new wife.  It turns out that he wasn’t, at least not for just any new wife.  He wanted one in particular, a woman named Gisela, his adolescent sweetheart in Germany during the run-up to the Second World War.  They had lost each other when he fled Germany around 1938 to avoid a concentration camp: Gisela, a Catholic and in no immediate danger, remained behind.   After she and Max separated, each created a new life and married other people.  Gisela moved to a rural area in southwestern Germany while Max built his photography career in Chicago.  Eventually, both of their marriages came undone for one reason or another.  Apparently Max never forgot her and probably wondered more and more if what might have been could be still, so, early in 1971, he returned to Germany to look for her.  He found her, married her, and brought her to America and, within a few weeks, to our house.

The visit was intended to be a mixture of business with pleasure since, in addition to visiting us, Max was due to photograph the transformers illustrating Westinghouse’s newest catalog, published by my dad’s sales support division.  That meant that he and my father would be out of the house all day.  My mother and older sister would be at work, too.  Since it was summer and I was off from school, it didn’t take long to determine that I was designated to stay home all day with an old German lady while everyone else bundled themselves off to places more interesting.  At that age, the thought of spending an entire day with any adult bored me senseless, but a foreign one who, due to the fact that she spoke no English, couldn’t even talk with me was a living death.  Besides the communication situation, there was the unwelcome threat to my autonomy.  This houseguest would keep me from doing what I loved to do all day by myself: with her in the house I couldn’t lie on my bed and read until my mother got home from work.  I wasn’t pleased. 

After breakfast, when Gisela went to dress, I seized the opportunity to sit alone at the kitchen table and sneak a quick read of an Agatha Christie.  I became so engrossed in the adventures of Hercule Poirot and the Clapham cook I didn’t hear her returning footsteps. At the last moment, just as Gisela re-entered the kitchen, I tried to ditch Agatha.  Because I had started too late, Gisela caught sight of the book sliding under the chair cushion.  Something about what she saw made her face open.  She pointed to Agatha, then to me, and to the book again, then to herself.  I guessed that she might be indicating that she liked to read and asking if I liked to read, too, so I nodded and said, “Yes, I love to read; it’s my favorite thing to do.”  Although she didn’t understand my words, the enthusiasm in my voice must have spoken to her because she smiled, crinkling her blue eyes, and turned to leave the room.

She returned less than a minute later clutching a book, a children’s reading primer with Hans und Fritz printed on its cover.  She stood a few feet away and held it toward me with a hopeful expression on her face.  I had to stretch to reach the book, but I accepted it and riffled the pages.  It was simple story with pen and ink drawings of two children, telling of their adventures in clear, concise language designed to teach English to German children. I opened it to the first page.  She continued to stand by a chair and nodded toward me with an expression more intensely hopeful than the last.  I cocked my head to the left like a puzzled squirrel.  What was she saying?  She tugged at the chair and began to motion next to me.  “What? Oh, okay.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, “ I answered her absently, nodding while I spoke.  She pulled the chair closer to me and tried to see what I saw on the page. 

I read the book aloud, slowly, and Gisela listened attentively.  Sometimes she tried to follow along in the book but at that distance it was hard for her to see the pages so I gestured for her to move closer to me.  Now that she could see more clearly, she followed along even more intently.  Sometimes she reached out to run her index finger across the page under the words as she tried to determine which part of the text I was reading.  Her brow furrowed slightly as she whispered the words I spoke after I read them aloud.  She appeared so engaged in mastering them that I felt bad that it was such a short book and I started over.  Then I started again.  Sometimes she gazed at me as I read the words aloud and once or twice she turned my face toward hers by very gently placing her soft, cool fingers on my jaw or my lips so she could feel the shape of my face as I created the sounds.  Startled and, at first, puzzled by the gesture, finally I figured out what she was doing - she was trying to understand how to form the strange-sounding English words that seemed to possess the same meaning as the more guttural language she already knew.

Ultimately I was able to discern which chubby boy was Hans and which was Fritz and, flattered by her obvious appreciation of my reading skill, I began to alter my voice for each character.  Then I pointed at them when the drawing indicated actions, like jumping rope, shooting marbles, slipping down a slide, or eating a meal so she could learn the verb in English representing the action she surely recognized. Eventually, I must have read the whole book through ten or twelve times.

The hours passed and my family returned home.  Immediately upon entering the house, Max walked over to embrace Gisela and he asked her in German what she’d done all day.  She smiled, and then she picked up Hans und Fritz and read the entire book aloud with mostly correct pronunciation.  I remember the amazement on Max’s face as he heard her speaking English, a little haltingly, but still speaking it, and she beamed when he hugged her.   When he asked her how she had learned to do that in one day, she reached across the table and clasped the back of my wrist.   I smiled at them, surprised at the pleasure I got in having helped her.

This point is where a lesser woman would confide that this moment of interpersonal warmth and educational triumph subconsciously inspired her career choice by allowing her to discover that she was a born teacher.  Alas, life is not like the movies and I am not Sandy Dennis.  (Besides, I didn’t become a teacher until I was well into my thirties, having burned out of another career. Plus, remember those childhood observations about teachers?)

Here is also where a lesser woman would claim that this day’s triumph was just the beginning, that Gisela became a fluent English speaker, all thanks to my brilliant teaching skills.  And I would like to write that – I really would - but it isn’t true.  When I visited Max and Gisela four years later she still couldn’t speak a word of English, although she could read Hans und Fritz aloud from cover to cover, so I guess I taught her something. 

More importantly, Gisela taught me something, although I wasn’t aware of it until decades later: she taught me that teaching matters.  Showing someone how to do something and then watching that person attempt it on her own is the essence of teaching: this knowledge is the reason so many teachers go to work every day.  Likewise, learning how to think critically is among the key objectives of education and, as one of my students wrote, education is very important because the amount of education you have determines your loot in life.  In that case, we should all invest our loot wisely.

We've Seen it All Here in NYC

Native New Yorkers view the world through the grimy lens of experience, some might say cynicism.  Expecting and preparing for the worst possible result from all people and situations seems the most sensible way for a New Yorker to travel through this life.  And travel we do - on busses, in taxis, on ferries, and through subway tunnels, all within close proximity to our fellow citizens.  Because of these myriad public transportation options, most of us don’t have a personal relationship with the internal combustion engine; after all, if God had intended for New Yorkers to drive, He wouldn’t have provided Alfred Ely Beach the idea for an underground pneumatic railroad back in 1869.

And the subway works just fine, thank you.  Okay, it’s sweltering in the summer, stifling in the winter, and crowded all the time, but, it’s so much easier than taxis or busses.  Relatively few things can go wrong.  It runs on tracks from point A to point B; it can be fast or slow or stuck in a tunnel, but it will never deviate from its path leaving you stranded in a strange neighborhood.  And for those occasions requiring personal transportation there’s an Avis Car Rental garage on East 43^rd Street.

My grandfather owned a car in the city which he used for both his business and to drive upstate for weekends; my father had one, too.  Although I had learned to drive at seventeen, I rarely saw the need to actually do so.  I had always commuted to school and work in the more traditional fashion -  strolling to the subway stop, passing the firehouse, chatting with the firemen and petting the dog, picking up a newspaper and coffee, and observing the theatre of the city’s streets along the way. 

Like most New Yorkers, I’ve seen pretty much everything  life has to offer on those walks – from the homeless man lying on a plaid sofa watching tv under the Queensboro Bridge to the bride in full white wedding regalia boarding the B train.  Yes, in our travels New Yorkers have seen it all.  We’ve seen it with our own eyes, we’ve seen it often, and right now it’s blocking the entrance to the building where we need to go, dammit.  And no one in New York has seen more than its police officers.

In the early years of our relationship, Jamie’s office was in Brooklyn Heights and we lived on the Upper West Side, just a few blocks from Engine Company 76.  Jamie’s was an inconvenient and time-consuming commute so Louis, his boss, thought a company car was in order: that’s how a blue Mercedes C class entered our family immediately enrolling  us in that subset of city dwellers whose lives are governed by the New York City Department of Transportation Alternate Side Parking calendar, downloadable in various languages including Chinese, Russian, and Haitian Creole.  (Believe me; woe of apocalyptic proportions betides the ignorant fool who leaves his car on the wrong side of the street when a Department of Sanitation street sweeper is due.)  Months passed with Jamie driving to work and my hopping on the train, each of us pleased with the arrangement.  Then came the summer Saturday that we were invited to dinner with friends in Chappaqua, out of the city, one of those occasions that the car was supposed to make easier.

 Around noon, Jamie wandered into the living room where I was watching a film I’d recorded.  I pushed the pause button  when he began to talk. “I have to go to meet Stu at Hudson Street at 3 o’clock so why don’t we get ready early, I’ll go to the meeting then call you when we’re through and you can meet me and we’ll head to the Damiano’s.”

I considered the suggestion, then shrugged, unimpressed with the idea. “What’ll I do while you’re with Stu?”

“Go shopping in SoHo.”

I wrinkled my nose. “No, I don’t want to do that. It’s a schlep from Hudson to any stores I like and I was going to wear the blue suit with high heels tonight and I hate walking around outside in nice shoes.”

“Take the car.”

“Yeah, and park at Hudson Street and I’ll still have to walk all the way over to West Broadway.  No, thanks.”

“No, you take the car, park on Broadway and I’ll walk over and meet you when Stu and I’re done.”

Pause.  “Me drive?”

“Yeah, you know how.”

Exhale.  “Yeah, I know I know how but I don’t parallel park real well.”

“So learn.”

He was using that tone, that ‘What’s wrong? Can’t rise to the challenge?’ tone that I hate but remain unable to resist.

Two beats, then three.  I blinked.  He blinked.  I sighed.  “Okay, fine.  I guess I’d better get in the shower now then.” 

By 2:45 pm we were downtown.  Jamie exited the car in front of his friend’s mid-block office building and I slid behind the wheel.  Before slamming the door he leaned in and said, “I’ll call you when I’m through and you can tell me where you are and I’ll come find you.  Then we’ll drive to the Damiano’s.”

“Humph, I’ll probably be in traffic court.”

“Nope, you never get a court date the same day as the offense.” Grinning, he slammed the door and strolled away.

Using my walker’s gps I tried to figure out how to pilot this monstrous vehicle back toward Broadway.  I knew that avenues run north to south and streets are east to west but I am an Upper West Side baby; except for attending NYU, I had little experience with southern  Manhattan and even for that I exited the subway at West Fourth Street and walked.  I knew that Hudson Street met West Broadway somewhere around Chambers Street and that it runs both north and south so I could find the stores I wanted easily enough, providing I could get to that point.  The problem was that all of this was in the direction opposite of where I was headed and I didn’t have the vaguest idea how to get back to where I wanted to be. 

Guided only by rudimentary native New Yorker’s geography – east are the beaches of Long Island and west is New Jersey and everywhere else until you reach Los Angeles – I nosed into the thick Saturday afternoon traffic, slowly, nervously, inching what I hoped was eastward.  So many people, so many cars, so many trucks, so many One Way signs sprang before me that in no time I was completely discombobulated.  I don’t know what I did wrong but  I found myself crushed in the middle of the New Jersey-bound Canal Street traffic jam crawling toward the open, leering mouth of the Holland Tunnel.  Damn Jamie and his bright ideas.

The mere  thought  of the tunnel panicked me.  Obviously it began in lower Manhattan but I had no idea where it ended.  My mind conjured images of Lucy Ricardo’s first driving lesson when, panicked, she attempted a three-point turn in the tunnel and reportedly stopped traffic all the way to East Orange, New Jersey.  Determined not to befall the same fate, I looked nervously for someplace, anyplace, to turn out of the stream.  It wasn’t going to be easy; all of the streets seemed to be one way, feeding into the four lane bottleneck approach to the double-tube tunnel.  My palms grew sweatier with each street I passed.  About a block before the actual entrance I noticed another one-way sign pointing toward Canal Street but the street itself was blocked by blue NYPD sawhorses.  Rejoicing, I switched on my right turn signal and began the laborious process of exiting to the right.  I swerved around the sawhorse and saw three New York City police officers standing by identical sawhorses at the opposite end of the street; they were waving away all traffic attempting to turn into the street.  Hearing my approaching engine, one broke from the cluster and sauntered toward my car.  He gestured for me to stop, so I did; I lowered the window and waited expectantly, hopefully.

 “Lady, did you see the one-way sign?”

“Yes, but I’m lost.  I was getting forced into the tunnel traffic and I didn’t mean to go there. I don’t want to go into the tunnel.  I don’t even know where it goes.  I was trying to get over to the left to go to West Broadway but nobody would let me over.  So I turned here to go around the block and try another way.” I smiled.

His eyes narrowed slightly.  “Lady, this is a one-way street. You’re going the wrong way.”

“Yes, I know.” Hadn’t I just explained that?

He flexed his jaw.  “You’re going the wrong way on a one-way street. You have to turn around and go back”

“No, I can’t go that way. I’ll get pushed into the tunnel.” My hope was fading.

“Look, lady, either you turn around or I am going to write you a ticket for driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Now turn around.”

“No, I’ll get pushed into the tunnel.  If you have to write the ticket, then write it but  I can’t go back that way. Nobody will let me over and I’ll end up somewhere in New Jersey, I don’t even know where.” At this point all hope was gone and panic was creeping into my voice, not for the ticket, but for the possibility of getting lost in New Jersey. 

He pushed his cap further back on his head as he stared at me staring at him.  He sighed.  “Lady, what do you want me to do, stop the traffic for you?”

“Yes, please.”

His eyes widened.  I had chosen to take his sarcasm seriously and now he was stuck, as stuck as I was.  He sighed again.  “All right.  Turn around and follow me.”

I executed my three-point turn successfully and followed him up the slight grade.  He stepped into the first lane of traffic and held his right arm rigid with his palm toward the line of cars while gesturing for me with his left arm.  He repeated the process through the lanes until all approaching cars had stopped; I followed behind him an inch at a time like a tentative but obedient dog.   After I had cut diagonally across the stopped  traffic I braked near the officer.  He lifted his left arm and pointed theatrically in the direction I needed to go, then swept his right arm across his chest, brushing past his face, then dropped his head, in concert with the arm, into a dramatic courtier’s bow.  I yelled ‘thank you’ through the closed window and accelerated slightly.  As I passed him I could see the grin on his face.

Yes, we’ve seen it all here in New York.  And there are reasons why many of us choose not to drive.

The Lost American

The week after I finished graduate school, my husband, Jamie, and I went to Europe together for the first time. Excluding our honeymoon years before, this would be our first really long trip and, as my overly romantic imagination took hold, I envisioned us wandering arm in arm through moonlit Roman ruins; munching les marron glaces at Laduree’s tiny bistro tables; and elegantly sipping steaming Lapsang Souchong at Brown’s Hotel.  So powerful was this vision that I completely ignored what I already knew about the reality of travelling with Jamie; specifically, I read the tour books and look at the sights while he clutches a telephone to his ear, talking to his office as he unconsciously tidies things.  Years earlier we had accompanied my parents on a cruise to Bermuda.  Since there were no international cell phones then, Jamie spent an entire day on the dock in Hamilton talking on a pay phone on the pier.  As I skipped away for a day of shopping and eating with my mom and dad, the last thing I noticed was his saying “No, Kenny, I think if you open the bids again, you’ll find that . . . “ as he dabbed idly at a barely-visible Diet Coke spot on his khaki shorts.

I have never understood his affection for telephones or cleaning.  Being rather a Luddite, I didn’t get my first cell phone until long after they’d become common.  Perhaps my husband’s addiction to it put me off.  

While I suspect that the telephone thing is work-based, the cleaning is something he does reflexively.  Most of the time it seems harmless, quirky: sometimes it’s even been charming, like the sunny July morning my visiting childhood friend, Patti, excused herself to go to the bathroom during breakfast.  By the time she returned, Jamie had cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, and scrubbed the griddle, all with his trusty Motorola Razr pasted firmly to his left ear. “Seriously, Danny, you can’t honestly think that . . . “ 

The days passed, our suitcases were packed, and the morning of our departure arrived.  My heart pounding, we boarded the plane to London. During the flight Jamie didn’t use the Airphone at all but he did tidy all of the newspapers on the steward’s cart.  As we began navigating our carry-ons down the Jetway, however, his cell phone rang and it took repeated scowls from the Immigration officers to convince him to disconnect.  It rang again as we settled into our black taxi and Jamie chatted throughout the drive from Heathrow to Mayfair.  As he executed the U turn on Carlos Place in front of our hotel, the driver  - no slouch on the mobile phone himself, by the way - commented wryly that he hoped I’d be okay visiting the Tower and Harrod’s on my own since my husband would no doubt be up in our room talking on the landline, having exhausted his phone’s battery.

We wandered through European capitals, Jamie and I, chatting and reading, folding and plumping.  The evening before we were scheduled to leave Paris, Jamie prowled the room, hunting for errant objects with his cell scrunched under his chin.  I reclined against pillows on the bed and watched the 1936 Warner Brothers classic Charge of the Light Brigade with Errol Flynn dubbed to sound like Yves Montand. 

We needed to arrive at the station no later than 7:15 a.m. to retrieve our reserved tickets and make our way to the carriage of our 7:45 a.m. train.  Because I am not at my most alert in the morning, I had taken the linen jacket I intended to wear and purposefully laid it across the back of a chair before I retired.  The chair stood next to the door.  Regardless of my level of catatonia, I would see it..

Just after our 6:00 a. m. wake up call Jamie shoved me toward the shower and called Room Service for café au lait and pastries.  Despite the caffeine fortification, I dawdled and Jamie prodded me to hurry.   Exiting into the misty Champs Elysees morning, I grumbled about the chill air.  Jamie assured me I’d find hot coffee waiting at the station.  Comforted, I promptly fell asleep in the back of the tiny taxi.   By the time we’d reached the station, however, I had awakened shivering.  I searched my carry-on bag for my jacket.

“Did you pack it in your bag?” I asked Jamie as the taxi drove through the crescent to the wide-open glass doors of the Eurostar terminal.

He twisted his neck to hold his phone while he spoke to me. “Hold on, Kenny. Pack what?”

“My jacket. My beige linen Moschino jacket.”

When he didn’t answer, I poked him. He shrugged and gestured to the metal object adhered to his ear.  He continued talking until the taxi stopped at the doors, then disconnected and glanced at the meter. 

“Where’s my jacket?” I asked.

He counted Euros.  “Do you have any money?”

I emptied the front pocket of my jeans into his waiting palm. “Here. Where’s my jacket?”

“I dunno.  Did you take it out of the closet?”

“It wasn’t in the closet.  I threw it across the back of the blue chair by the door because I knew I wouldn’t see it otherwise. “ I could almost feel the little cartoon light bulb suddenly switch on above my head. “You hung it in the closet, didn’t you?” I cried accusingly.  “Last night when you were on the phone with Kenny you tidied it away!  We have to catch a train in twenty minutes and my jacket is in a closet in the hotel!”

He swung open the taxi door dragging the carry-ons behind him.  “Call the hotel and tell them to send it to Jose and Diana’s house.  Use my office’s Fed Ex number. I have to call Kenny back.”

After paying the driver and claiming the tickets, there was barely enough time for my errand.  Fed Ex number and hotel receipt clutched in my sweaty palm, I scurried down the train steps and looked around nervously for an old-fashioned telephone public sign.  Finally locating it on the outer wall of a tiny coffee bar, I trotted into the smoky room.  Reaching for the handset, I ran my eyes all over the phone’s body looking for the coin slot.  With a shock I realized that it didn’t accept cash, only phone cards.  I turned and dashed out of the warm, dark bar and into the bright, chilly station searching for the tabac stand. There it was, against the far corner.  I trotted toward it.  Facing the clerk squarely, I tried to act out my request as I fumbled with my poor French. “Je suis . . . une telephone card.”

Her brown eyes widened.

“No?  Um, voulez vous une telephone card?” She frowned.  Apparently that wasn’t right, either.  

I mimicked dialing and chatting gaily.  She cocked her head like a puzzled squirrel.  Nearly frantic, I lapsed into Italian, the only foreign language I know.  “Per favore, vorrei comprare una carta del telefono.”  She smiled and answered something like, “Vous voudriez . . . une carte de telephone” lilting at the end so I assumed it was a question.   I nodded.  She asked something else and the blankness of my expression must have assured her that there was no way I knew the answer to that one.  She repeated it, louder.  Realizing that raising one’s voice at a foreigner seemed to be a universal reaction to coping with one, I chewed my bottom lip and nodded slowly, hoping that was the correct response.  She sighed, shook her head, and turned to a locked cabinet where she slid in the key and chose a green telephone card with a French cartoon character printed on it.  I held out all the money I had left.  She picked out the price of the card, placed in it my hand , and then smiled.

I turned and raced through the station back to the smoky bar.  Yanking hard on the glass door handle, I heard a loud, metallic binnnnnnng-bonnnnnnng.  It reminded me of the televised Avon Cosmetics commercials from my childhood.  Nervously, I laughed aloud at the thought  - Avon Ladies in Paris – and grabbed at the telephone handset.  I had no idea how much time had elapsed, but connecting to the concierge, waiting for the head of Housekeeping to travel to our room and retrieve my jacket, and then verifying the Basel address and the Fed Ex number, seemed to take hours. I guessed I was safe, though; I hadn’t heard the Basel train called.

I exited the café and turned toward the track where my train was .  .  .  no longer waiting.  Disbelieving, I ran along the empty platform, dodging suitcases, strollers, and other people.  I really needn’t have hurried since I could see the train’s distant lights as it turned a curve about a half-mile away.   Realizing that the Avon Lady sound had probably been my train’s departure signal, I slid onto a cold wooden bench and considered my situation.  A tear leaked out from under my lashes.  Another one followed.  I wiped them away with the backs of both hands (my tissues were in my tote bag on the train) and, feeling distinctly like Lucy Ricardo, I decided I’d better find the stationmaster.  

The office was at the top of a flight of metal stairs.  The stationmaster was a very kind man; after listening politely to my admittedly ludicrous tale – preoccupied husband; forgotten jacket; no phone card; no ticket or passport, either  (both were with the Kleenex in my tote bag on the train), his only response was a small sigh  “I am sorry to hear that, madame, however, you are in luck because there is another train in three hours’ time.  We simply have to get you on it.  Please sit down and allow me to assist you.”  He paused and gestured to the blue plastic chair in front of his desk and pursed his lips slightly.   “I know what we will do.  I will radio the conductor on your train and ask him to verify that your husband and your ticket are indeed on it.  The conductor will then assure your husband of your safety.” He slid a small pad of paper and a pen toward me. “Now if you will please write out for me your name, your husband’s name and the location of your seats.”

When I was done, he lifted one of the many radios that cluttered his desk and spoke rapidly to someone in French.  He listened to the response then turned back to me.  “The conductor says that he just passed through the carriage containing your husband and that he was talking on his mobile phone but that he had two tickets in his hand.  In a few minutes, when he finishes his round, the conductor will return and ask your husband to see your passport. Then he will confirm your identity and assure your husband of your safety.  Afterward, we will issue you a new ticket. Please make yourself comfortable.  We have only a few minutes to wait.”

My husband was talking on the telephone. Surprise.

I stared idly through the window while we waited.  When the radio crackled in garbled French, the stationmaster lifted it to his ear, listened, looked at the pad, and then smiled.  “Now we will provide you with a new ticket and somewhere to wait until the next train.”  He reached for a cell phone and dialed.  After a few seconds he began chattering quickly.  I understood almost nothing of what he said, just “Americain” and “mal place”.  In another few seconds, the stationmaster disconnected the call and rose. “My assistant is coming. He will provide you with a new ticket and remain with you until your train boards. In the meantime, I must go to the train-shed.  Please remain here in comfort. If you will excuse me.”  He was gone.

I sat and chewed my right thumbnail pondering my own idiocy.  In about ten minutes, the glass door opened and a young man entered.  “Are you the lost American?” he asked politely.

Now I had a title.

The assistant stationmaster asked me to wait while he completed a few of his duties.  Since I had so much time, I took a taxi to the hotel to retrieve my jacket then met the assistant stationmaster again when he came to reclaim me. Since it was time for his midmorning break, he led me to a cool Parisian bar where he bought me a pain au chocolat and café au lait, then leaned against the scarred zinc counter and introduced me to his friends as the lost American.  At the correct time, he escorted me to my train and asked the conductor to be sure that I got to my seat safely. He probably also suggested that it would be best if I didn't leave my seat until the train stopped in Switzerland, although I can't be sure of this because I didn't understand their conversation held entirely in French. regardless, I made the trip to Basel in safety and comfort, albeit without my second honeymoon groom.

In retrospect, it all worked out fine.  True, I missed the romance of a train trip with Jamie but I had a Parisian adventure that I’d never have had any other way.  Plus I learned a few things; I learned that I can survive with no passport, no money, and no facility for the local language.  And I learned that all my years of living inside books wasn't wasted; Tennessee Williams really was correct about the kindness of strangers.