Time Warner Toby

As I get older, my mother becomes funnier.

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Today’s post is two moments from 2007. Partly, “Everything is Personal” is a memoir, where the pieces are not arranged in chronological order and where memory serves about as much as you would add a scotch bonnet pepper to a stew.

Richard and I met in 2006 at an artist colony. He was 56, and I was 60. We had to, what do you call it—adjust! The year before I met him, my mother had a stroke as a consequence of emergency bi-pass surgery, and for the next three years, my sister and I arranged for her to stay in her apartment with the care of 24/7 home aides, who were brilliant and loving to her. She was able, at the end, to die in her apartment, exactly as she wished. She lived on 58th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in the heart of the heart of where, to her, everything that mattered was always happening.

Time Warner Toby

It’s 2007, and I am pushing my mother’s wheelchair up the hill on 57^th Street. She’s nearing ninety-two. I say, “Are you happy to be out?” She says, “How can I be happy?” She says, “Don’t give up your apartment,” as we wait for a light to change at Columbus Circle. “Don’t be stupid.”

Cars whiz close to the curb. The glass of the Time Warner Center—New York City’s first enclosed shopping mall with posh restaurants and shops—rises over the empty fountain surrounding a statue of the Italian mariner. It’s as if he’s come all this way to be in the center of the world, the New York everyone wants to come to and feels shipwrecked if they have to leave. Two mounted police patrol the gate of Central Park. Vendors along the edge sell souvenirs and framed photographs, including the famous shot of John Lennon with his round specs and shoulder-length hair, sitting on a ledge on the Upper West Side.

Richard and I have talked about coming back here to live. My place could be a base, although it’s too small to stay in for long and he would need the right job. It’s a law of the universe: you don’t give up a rent stabilized apartment in New York, and I seem not to care.

That day at Columbus Circle, it doesn’t cross my mind that when my mother speaks about my apartment, she is thinking about having to leave her apartment and go where? A nursing home? Even in her wheelchair, she buses to Fairway, searching for a nectarine that won’t break her heart. I say that her aides won’t leave her, but it doesn’t reassure her. It doesn’t cross my mind she might be worried about me—living in Arizona. I can’t hear her. I can’t hear my friends who say, “Don’t lose your bearings. Don’t lose yourself.” I think they are saying, “You can’t have love. You can’t have happiness.”

I say to my mother, “I’m not giving up my apartment.” The sky is gray and pillowy, and a light rain falls. Toby doesn’t seem to notice. A police horse walks close to us. You can smell its wet hair. The horse snorts, and my mother jumps. She says, “I’m afraid of horses. I’m afraid of everything. Laurie, don’t let the horse get so close. It will step on me. It will bite me.”

I say, “More likely you’ll bite the horse.” She says, “Me bite a horse? I don’t even like horses.” I say, “You don’t like anything. You don’t need anything, do you, Toby?” She says, “That’s right. I wish I could live by myself. And don’t call me Toby.”

The light changes, and we cross. A pack of teenagers with every shade of skin lopes beside us. Behind them an elderly couple cross by themselves. Toby looks at them with longing. Two Wall Street types in long coats and leather boots bound up from the subway, jog to make the light, then disappear into the Time Warner Center. A bus wheezes to a halt and coughs out a dozen people. Some head for the shops, others for 8^th Avenue. On the other side of the street, I press down on her wheelchair, and she swings back like a patient in a dentist’s chair.

She says, “Why are you going to Arizona?” I say, “To be with Richard.” I hoist her up to the curb. She says, “Do you pay for the plane tickets?” I say, “Yes.” She says, “Why?” I say, “I want to.” She twists her head around to see me. “Why are you giving up your apartment?” I say, “I’m not.” She says, “You said you were giving up your apartment.” I say, “I didn’t.” She says, “You don’t know how things will turn out. Where will you go? Don’t be a fool. No one gives up an apartment in New York. Why doesn’t he come to you?” I say, “He has a job.”

She turns her face to the side as we make our way through the glass doors, and I wheel her across the marble rotunda. Her profile is still beautiful. Her cheekbones jut out glamorously. “Who is he?” she asks in a dreamy, Mad Hatter voice, addressing the air more than me. “Who am I?” I say, and “Who are you?” She says, “That is a very good question. I will have to think about it.”

Richard in San Francisco during year two or so of our time together

Another Moment

I sleep close to Richard if I want covers because he bunches them up on his side. Last night, he said he was too tired to pack. He said, “Why do we have to go to New York? Why don’t you go without me?” At the thought of being there without him, the little rubber stopper that holds in my happiness falls out. I picture us walking in the city, my arm around his waist. When I actually do this, he says, “I can’t walk this way.” He slings his arm around my back and glues me to him. “Can you walk this way?”

When I see him at the table, his diabetic supplies are in a jumble. I say, “This always happens before a trip.” He says, “It does?” This time, he’s having a problem with some tubing, and now he won’t have time to iron his shirts and pack carefully, the way he likes to. I look in the mirror and say, “I’m going on the plane with bed hair.” My eyes look puffy, and my skin is pale.

He needs breakfast. I water the plants. He showers. I take out the garbage and mail the envelope to Netflix. I throw a few belongings on the floor near the suitcase we are taking. He stares at it. I say, “I’m going to fold everything.” He says, “Yes, but, oh well, never mind, I have a system, and, well, never mind, it’s fine, you always pack this way.”

I’m wearing my black pants and a black jersey, and it’s time to toast bread for sandwiches. Richard’s hair looks fluffy and he’s unconcerned about food. He thinks we won’t get seats on the earlier flight I want us to make and we’ll wind up marooned at the airport for eight hours. He says, “Why are we going stand-by? Why do you have to squeeze every possible minute into New York, eh, what’s your problem, Phoenix isn’t good enough for you, this place where I have marooned myself for God knows how many years isn’t interesting enough for you?” I say, “No.”

Our friend Bill is standing outside his house when we pull up. He’s ready to drive us to the airport. He’s wearing one of those silk shirts he bought after Richard started wearing them. He’s been having a rough time at work. He wearies Richard, but he’s also Richard’s best friend, and as I look at Bill’s yearning, handsome  face, my heart warms right up, and I think this must happen to Richard when he looks at Bill after they have been apart. This must be the way Richard takes me back, too. I look into Richard’s eyes. They are the eyes of a cat, and you can’t read them. I look at the swerve of his slim body, and I think, “I like you, whoever you are.”

Our dear friend Bill Hart

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