Chloe's Aunt Matilda lived in a low-stuccoed-celinged high rise in Midtown. She had 13 cats and a yappy poodle, who she dragged alongside her beat up red pushcart when she went on her Sunday morning trip to Gristedes. Her place always smelled of a mixture of cat litter, piss, and oil paint, the physical elements of which would also be found mixed together, when Chloe would come to visit.
It was always a depressing trip up the 6 train, alighting onto the sidewalk into a busy, noisy city canyon, and then walking the few blocks to the building with the sleeping doorman and the dingy elevator, up to the 18th floor. Aunt Matilda, though, seemed to enjoy her life of 40 years there, in the same apartment her mother, Chloe's grandmother, had bought for her when she first moved to New York at 23, with big ambitions and even bigger hopes for the future.
Over the years, she had once told Chloe, from one disappointment to another, Matilda began to falter. Job after job, date after date, her friends disappeared to marry off, sometimes with one another, and her cats continued to multiply, Matilda growing more weary year after year. By her 40's, she had finally resigned herself, becoming infinitely numb to all that the modern world's society demanded of her. She reveled in the New York City ballet performances, had affairs with Courbet at the Met, interludes with Stravinsky at the New York Philharmonic, and brought T.S. Eliot from Bauman Rare Books back to sleep with her. She was happy, nonetheless.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Nicolette's jump
Nicolette was one of Chloe's best friends. She had moved to New York in the years of the Williamsburg heyday, when everyone was moving there across the East River.
[Some people would refute that statement; say that they heyday actually occurred way before that, in the early 90's when part of your morning walk to the L train involved tripping over industrial debris on the sidewalk (those people don't live in Williamsburg anymore, or they still do and wallow in all of their nostalgia-ridden melancholy amid throngs of pretentious wannabe hipsters). And some people would refute the other way around; say that the heyday never ended and that it continues.]
Either way, they weren't glorious times anymore, at least not for Nicolette, who weathered the gentrification onslaught in her ramshackle loft on Kent Avenue, even as the star architects' glass dildos stretched into the sky all around her.
The truth of it all was that Nicolette had had enough. Not just of the Williamsburg scene, but of life in general. She had confessed to Chloe, one snowy day at that coffee shop on North 11th, that she was lost; that she lived in the one city she could think of that offered the most chances at a useful/meaningful/satisfying/fulfilled existence compared to all others. And why ever wasn't she happy? She had cut all of the fat from her life. Severed ties with friends, enemies, or otherwise who sucked the life out of her, who exasperated her, or who just plain annoyed her. She was a freelance graphic designer, working on her own terms, for projects in which she held a more or less vested interest. She had a huge, gorgeous, fluffy persian cat named Daphne, who found her on the street. Like should have been good, shouldn't it have?
Well, it wasn't.
One day, Chloe phoned Nicolette seeing if she'd "like to see Dean and Britta at Union Hall?"
"I'm afraid not. I have something to tell you, Chloe. I'm leaving. For good."
"What?"
"I'm going away. I've sold my things. All I have now is this backpack and my mother's jewels."
"Where?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm thinking Belgium first - Bruges. Then we will see..."
[a long, awkward pause.]
"...I know what you must be thinking. But.... well, it was either that, or put on my favorite dress and all of my mother's jewels [her favorite dress was that vintage rose silk one, with the fabric covered buttons and the pleats up the bodice], walk to the exact mid-point of the Brooklyn Bridge, and hurl myself over the edge into the East River.
That reminds me - will you take good care of Daphne for me? I know how much you love her."
[Some people would refute that statement; say that they heyday actually occurred way before that, in the early 90's when part of your morning walk to the L train involved tripping over industrial debris on the sidewalk (those people don't live in Williamsburg anymore, or they still do and wallow in all of their nostalgia-ridden melancholy amid throngs of pretentious wannabe hipsters). And some people would refute the other way around; say that the heyday never ended and that it continues.]
Either way, they weren't glorious times anymore, at least not for Nicolette, who weathered the gentrification onslaught in her ramshackle loft on Kent Avenue, even as the star architects' glass dildos stretched into the sky all around her.
The truth of it all was that Nicolette had had enough. Not just of the Williamsburg scene, but of life in general. She had confessed to Chloe, one snowy day at that coffee shop on North 11th, that she was lost; that she lived in the one city she could think of that offered the most chances at a useful/meaningful/satisfying/fulfilled existence compared to all others. And why ever wasn't she happy? She had cut all of the fat from her life. Severed ties with friends, enemies, or otherwise who sucked the life out of her, who exasperated her, or who just plain annoyed her. She was a freelance graphic designer, working on her own terms, for projects in which she held a more or less vested interest. She had a huge, gorgeous, fluffy persian cat named Daphne, who found her on the street. Like should have been good, shouldn't it have?
Well, it wasn't.
One day, Chloe phoned Nicolette seeing if she'd "like to see Dean and Britta at Union Hall?"
"I'm afraid not. I have something to tell you, Chloe. I'm leaving. For good."
"What?"
"I'm going away. I've sold my things. All I have now is this backpack and my mother's jewels."
"Where?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm thinking Belgium first - Bruges. Then we will see..."
[a long, awkward pause.]
"...I know what you must be thinking. But.... well, it was either that, or put on my favorite dress and all of my mother's jewels [her favorite dress was that vintage rose silk one, with the fabric covered buttons and the pleats up the bodice], walk to the exact mid-point of the Brooklyn Bridge, and hurl myself over the edge into the East River.
That reminds me - will you take good care of Daphne for me? I know how much you love her."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)