Summer ~ June 22, 2002
We're on our way to the city again. The sun is a big red orb hovering over the highway, wavering in the haze. It's going to be one of those muggy summer days. Summertime. I've never been to New York this time of year.
We are with Dan's parents and sister, who have never really visited the city. Somehow, Dan and I have been appointed "experts" and tour guides for the day. Eight months ago, I wouldn't have known how to ride the subway. I barely understood "downtown," "midtown," or "uptown." We still don't know much, just something.
On top of the Empire State Building, a little girl is crying that she can't see the Statue of Liberty. A kind of smog hovers over everything. I look south, and downtown and the gap in the skyline are so close. For months now I'd been looking at my pictures from the day we visited in October, pictures taken with a cheap camera with no zoom lens. But now we're up here again and I see the distance for what it really is. A plane flies overhead. This time, no one looks up.
We take the subway to South Street Seaport. Or, I should say, we try to, but I tell us to get on the wrong train. We end up walking near the tip of Manhattan, almost along the water, smelling the salt as the breeze cools our faces. At Pier 16 we see two ships and hundreds of children. Today is Kid's Day, and Zoom is up on stage, singing. Kids are getting their faces painted and accidentally letting go of balloons.
We've come to take a Circle Line boat cruise along the southern tip of Manhattan. Dan's mom has always wanted to see the Statue of Liberty up close. The Statue itself is still closed, so we thought we'd take this route instead.
Our narrator for the trip is a professed native New Yorker. He wanders up and down the aisle with a microphone, looking out at the city. We ride north first a little bit and sail under the bowels of the Brooklyn Bridge, then turn back around and trace the Manhattan shore. As we approach the World Financial Center buildings, he tells us we are looking at what people know now as "Ground Zero."
"I had three brothers working in those buildings that day," he says. "Thank God all of them got out." We are looking at the giant glass atrium that connects two of the buildings. I think it is called the Winter Garden. Now it's covered in scaffolding, undergoing repairs.
"That day, September 11, 2001, Circle Line hadn't sent any boats out yet," he is telling us. "When we found out what happened, we offered our boats to help get people off the island. We ended up transporting 60,000 people in four hours."
The boat is turning now, making a swing close to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, where hordes of people are roaming about on the grounds. I see helicopters hovering above us. There have been even more threats lately; reports of Al Qaeda reorganizing and plotting against us again. I wonder if it will always be like this.
Back on the shore, we leave it up to Dan's family: do they want to see Ground Zero? They say yes, so we begin walking down the narrow streets of this neighborhood that is becoming familiar to me. There is Fulton and Vessey Streets and St. Paul's Chapel, with all of the signs and cards attached to the iron fence. Every time I see it I take a breath and feel this sadness rise from way down deep somewhere. Every time, some people are laughing and posing for pictures, while someone else is wiping away tears.
And every time we come here they let us a little closer. They open a few more streets or sidewalks. Now, for the first time, we can walk up and look down and actually see. All of the other days I was standing on tiptoes and craning my neck, to...to what?
Today they let us press our noses against a chain link fence and look. I see a vast plot of land, a gigantic square carved out of the ground, filled with piles of sand and trucks. People died here, I keep thinking. Terrible things happened here, and now it looks just like a construction site, and all of us, most of whom never visited when the towers were here, are standing here gawking, not truly understanding.
********
We ride back uptown. In Times Square, a black woman is shouting into a microphone, "Jesus is the only one who can save you!" About 50 feet from her, also in the middle of Times Square, stands a man wearing only underwear, a cowboy hat, and a red, white and blue guitar. "The Naked Cowboy" is written on his backside.
Our pace is frenzied, almost as if we're in a race to see every possible tourist spot. We head up to Central Park, then down to Rockefeller Center. As we wait underground for the subway once again, a black man in a dirty light blue shirt calls out to all of us on the platform in a deep, rich voice.
"It's 90 degrees outside. Why are we wearing clothes?"
By now the shadows have grown longer and the streets are a little quieter. Everyone seems hot and a bit ruffled. We find ourselves in this little Italian restaurant on West 46th Street called "Nino's." Nino is actually our waiter. He brings us two different sauces and a little pasta to try. The vodka sauce is incredible.
"You like that, huh?" he asks. "On a busy day here, on a weekday, you should see how much sauce we go through. We use a pot this big." He motions with his hands. Nino reminds me of my grandmother. Anyone who makes good spaghetti sauce reminds me of my grandmother. Although, of course, Nino's sauce just isn't quite as good. The food is still delicious, though. We eat our fill and then heave ourselves back outside. I can barely walk, thanks to blisters all over my feet. But I feel good tired; content tired.
On the ride home, before I fall aslepp, I look up at the moon where the sun was hours ago. I think about all I have seen: today, eight months ago, and everything in-between. The pictures crowd in my mind. It reminds me of earlier in Central Park, walking past people on the benches, and just watching them. They were reading, eating, writing, painting, meditating, chattering in many tongues, sleeping.
A woman in her forties sat feeding an elderly woman in a wheelchair. The older one wore a sundress that exposed fleshy white, veiny legs. She sat facing the sun, her eyes slightly closed, just breathing in life, letting the sun touch her.
Two little black boys wrestled each other on the sidewalk. A white man and an Indian woman kissed passionately. There were sunbathers and rollerbladers, women with their heads covered and men in rags rattling tin cups in their hands. Police officers clopped by on horses and tourists in horse-drawn carriages and in the distance, there was a blur of yellow taxis, and the limousines idling in front of the Plaza Hotel.
"This," I had turned and whispered to Dan. "There's nowhere in the world where you can see all of this."
I think I finally understand. In New York, there will always be the best and the worst of everything.
Now I know I can come back again and again and there will be this empty hole in the sky, a certain melancholy reverence of downtown, a little ache. Someone will shove me on the sidewalk or ask for my change. There will be music on street corners and echoing in subway chambers; sandwiches on fresh bread pushed across deli counters; bridges and frenzied flashing lights; ice skaters, street preachers, TV cameras, bookstores and long looks up; and anything you could ever want to buy, anything you could ever want to do and just people, people, people. A thousand stories wherever you look.
I have my own place to live. I don't belong here. But that doesn't mean I'm not here. That doesn't mean I'm not carrying this place in this new part of me, down deep. It's like that song by Ryan Adams:
I'll always be thinking of you,
I still love you New York,
New York, New York.
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