My Room With a View

When I woke up Sunday morning, I knew instantly why I was sleeping on the king-size mattress in my living room.  The fire from the day before had rendered the bedroom unusable and the smell of smoke in the air made the rest of the apartment unlivable.

Living in New York for as long as I have, I’m often asked for hotel recommendations.  I don’t have any – I live here; but now I had to find a place to stay for the foreseeable future.  The only thing I did know was that I wanted to stay in my neighborhood on the Upper West Side.

My renter’s insurance would pay for my accommodations but they needed me to make a decision.  The Beacon was out.  It was filled with too many memories of the time I stayed there in the waning days of my marriage while the apartment was painted and floors sanded waiting for our furniture to arrive from San Francisco.  I tried calling On The Ave, a cool boutique hotel, but each time they transferred me to reservations I was put on hold for so long that eventually I hung up. 

In the meantime, I was busy entertaining.  The building’s insurance investigator arrived as did another city fire marshal.  I watched as they sifted through the charred remains of my bedroom window and wall, smelling each piece of blackened wood and asking me where it had come from as if I could recognize its source.  Some of the debris had landed in the backyard of the building next to mine but most was in the garden below.  I couldn’t see any of it because what used to be my bedroom window was now boarded up with plywood.  More guests arrived these two were welcome; sent by the service my insurance company used, there were here to pick up round one of my clothes to be cleaned.  Everything I owned smelled of smoke, and I didn’t know where to begin.

“It’s winter,” suggested one.  “It’s cold out.  Let’s start with your coats.”

I handed him my two furs, a mink coat that belonged to my grandmother and a raccoon jacket that the ex-law had given me.  I held back my shearling coat and down-filled ski parka; they could go in the next round.  In the bedroom, I took the clothes that hung in neat rows: suits, dresses, blouses, sweaters and slacks.  Each one was carefully examined for pre-existing conditions, like my favorite “at home” sweater, a heather cashmere crewneck with a small hole in the shoulder seam.  I had to provide a value for each item before the men logged them on a list then put them in the large laundry-style bags they had brought with them.  They also took my too-little-used luggage.  I hadn’t traveled in years.

It was dark by the time I finally went out for the Sunday paper, intending to stop at On The Ave to see if they had a vacancy.  Instead, I remembered The Milburn on West 76th Street, where the ex-law’s grown stepchildren had once stayed.  The front desk staff was friendly and amenable to being paid directly by the insurance company and they had a room.

I went back to my apartment, filled some Fairway shopping bags with essentials, packed up my laptop, and then walked around the block to formally check in.  Relief flooded me as I opened the door to the corner room and discovered a small suite on the top floor.  My fear of being stuck in one room with a bed, bureau, and a television as my only companions was unfounded.  Walking in through the small hall, what struck me first was how clean the air was.  Until then I hadn’t realized how toxic what I had been breathing was.  I was also happy that the windows opened, and I wouldn’t be hermetically sealed in.  The bedroom was far more spacious than I was used to and I couldn’t tell if the bed was queen-size or full.  I just hoped it was firm. 

Faced with too many choices of where to put my meager belongings, I fished around in the bag until I found my toothbrush and toothpaste, brushed my teeth, and washed my face.  Even though it was only 8 P.M., and I hadn’t eaten all day, I hung out the Do Not Disturb sign, closed the bedroom door, took off my clothes, and went to sleep. 

Fourteen hours later, I woke up.  I didn’t have a robe so I put on a T-shirt bracing myself for the chilly walk to the kitchen where I had noticed a small coffeemaker the night before.  Entering the sun-filled living room, I was warm.  It wasn’t just the sun, the radiator emanated heat.  My apartment, while cool in the summer, is never warm enough in the winter.  The living room radiator is in one corner of the room and while the bedroom is small, two of the walls are exterior, and I have often joked that I could hang meat there. 

Sitting on the loveseat, drinking hotel-provided French Roast, my fifteenth-floor suite had the most-coveted of New York City views – Southern Exposure.  Now I realized what a big deal it was.  Years of living in a northern-facing brownstone looking at the trees in other people’s gardens had inured me to what I was missing.  I could see the three side columns of the Ansonia and south to the spire and red-neon sign on the Essex House, and the dome-roof on Worldwide Plaza.  To the east was the Citicorp Center with its distinctive angled roof.  I could also see the Time Warner Center, and closer to home the Central Savings Bank Building, now converted to ridiculously-priced condominiums, looked small.  Cars traveled north on Amsterdam Avenue and in both directions on Broadway.

Later that night, I pulled up the living room blinds and looked out at the clear dark sky.  I could see stars, so many that I was sure I was looking at a constellation.  The moon, too, was within my sights.

I have been here long enough to see the lunar eclipse, coinciding with the winter solstice, the last one of its kind for 500 years, watched the blizzard blanket the city, and on New Year’s Eve, I saw the fireworks launched in Central Park.

The windows are thick so there is little noise and the view, originally a distraction, is now a reminder that there is life out there on the streets, unlike the barren winter gardens my apartment windows look out on.

It may not be home, but seriously, I have heat.

My Side of the Bed

I always thought I would be carried out of my apartment feet first, as the expression goes, but in the end what caused me to flee was a fire. 

The fire was in the bedroom next to the window, discovered when I noticed what I thought was steam rising from the radiator.  Turning my head, I could see flames flickering inside the wall.

After calling 911, my apartment quickly filled with people, first the upstairs neighbors who had tried to alert me by knocking on my door.  I left messages for my landlady at all the phone numbers I had and then asked my neighbors what to do.  One of them advised grabbing some clothes so I hurriedly filled a shopping bag with underwear, socks, some long sleeved T-shirts, a pair of clean jeans and a sweatshirt. 

The firefighters seemed to appear in an instant.  The fire was small and they determined it was confined to my wall, so it was decided that no hoses were necessary.  They could put it out with the gear they carried on their backs.  I never saw flames again, and I stood there amazingly calm, warning them about the Christofle crystal stored in boxes in the loft and asking them to use the real ladder, not the one I normally use, as it was too unstable to withstand their weight.  The loft was for storage, although when it was originally built I slept up there with the man I was living with.  I heard banging as they chopped through the plaster wall until they reached the outside brick.  They talked to each other but ignored me entirely, as if I had no place there.  I kept trying to peek into the bedroom but the narrow space was filled by the men in full regalia on the main level and up in the loft.  Some left to survey the other occupants of the building but most of them were away for the holiday weekend; it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

I lost track of time and felt nothing as strangers trampled through my apartment.  I could see that they had moved my bed so that it stood on its side and there was a rip in the sheet.  I don’t remember hearing the window shatter, which was probably one of the first things they did, but I could feel the cold air streaming in.  I wandered around with a mug of coffee that I kept putting down and losing track of.  I was wearing the clothes that were on the floor from the day before, that hadn’t yet made it into the hamper.  I was awake, but still in bed, when I saw the fire.

My landlady showed up with her daughter, Linda, who introduced herself as the managing agent.  We are a five-story brownstone and don’t even have a proper super, just Silvio who puts out the trash and recyclables on collection days.  My landlady is the widow of my original landlord, and like her late husband, her initial response to anything is to yell.  She hollered at me for not seeing or smelling any smoke.  “Please keep her away from me,” I implored Linda.

Questions began.  “Do you ever smoke in the bedroom?”  “No.”  “Did you have any candles in the bedroom?”  Again, “No.”  “Is there any wiring in the wall?”  “No, the wiring is on the other side of the window and another outlet is near the door.”  I could tell no one was happy with my answers.  I stood there feeling like an interloper.  It didn’t register in my brain that it was my home that was being hacked apart, my apartment where half the boxes from the loft now filled the few empty spaces in the living room.

When they finished to their satisfaction, they sifted through debris and told us not to touch anything.  Inspectors and marshals would join the party but they couldn’t tell us when.

Linda stayed and phones rang.  Neighbors who hadn’t been home at the time or lived in the front apartments stopped by to see the damage.  Linda said she would send Silvio over later to board up the window and move my bed into the living room, suggesting that we move the sofa back toward the office and dining area and use the newly-created space for the bed.  It seemed wrong to me.

I was in my twenties when I moved to the Upper West Side, one of the pioneers in the late ’70s where block by block the neighborhood was being gentrified.  I knew I wanted a one-bedroom apartment and I wanted to live in a brownstone so after a short search I found a home on the rear parlor floor with high ceilings, a 20-by-20 foot living room with views of the gardens below.  At the time I had no idea how pivotal a decision I was making; I was moving to the city after a short marriage and figured this would do until I married again.  In hindsight, it was the best decision I ever made.  Thirty-four years had passed along with numerous boyfriends and another marriage and I was still here.

A fire marshal showed up and an adjuster from my insurance company.  I had found an old bill with an 800 number.  They took photos and asked the same questions.  The fire marshal carried a gun.  Silvio came back and boarded up the open space in the bedroom with plywood.  I had measured my king-size bed, and the available space, and decided to move the sofa and coffee table closer to the brick wall and place the bed behind it.  I thought if I didn’t have to see it I could ignore that it was there and pretend my life was still normal if I sat in the leather recliner beside the sofa. 

Once everyone was gone, I took a shower and changed the linens on the bed.  The insurance company offered to put me up at a hotel but I didn’t know where I wanted to stay.

I slept there that night mainly because I didn’t have anywhere to go.  With the bedroom door shut, I tried to forget what it looked like on the other side.  Valium helped.  I couldn’t decide whether to sleep with my head by the windows or the front door.  The bed had landed North/South not East/West, like it normally does.  In the end, I opted for facing the door, but being a side sleeper my choices were looking at the back of the sofa or at the two black filing cabinets.  The air was thick and I knew this would be my last night here for a while. 

The next morning the phone calls began, first Linda reminding me not to touch anything in the room until all the inspections were done.  I, too, wanted to know how a wall next to my bed where I had slept for three decades could have caught fire. 

I also knew that I needed to find somewhere to live.

Alphabet Days

Some days I feel like my occupation has changed from writer to waiter.  In this age of text messaging, e-mails and cell phones, why does it take so long for things to happen?  I spend an inordinate amount of time waiting: for agents, editors, to hear back from jobs I’ve applied to, and for the love of my life.  Of course, for the latter I would actually have to begin dating again but that’s another story for another day.

The silence is deafening on what I call the D days.  My mind wanders around the letter as I feel despair, depressed, despondent, and sometimes done.  As a single Baby Boomer, there is no one around to nudge me out of it, no one to remind me of who I am and what I’ve done.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,” is the opening line of Leslie Poles Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between.  I’d like to amend that to the past is a frightening place and the things that happened there stay with us forever.  On D days, that’s where I spend most of my time.  The all too easily recallable past, the pain of each mistake and hurt feeling as fresh as the day it happened. 

Mentally I flail around looking for some happy moments.  “God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December,” said Sir James Matthew Barrie, better known as the author of Peter Pan.  There are no flowers in my mind.  Stuck in the now, sometimes my imagination for the future shuts down.

There are D days that hurt so much it feels like dough is rising in the pit of my stomach threatening to expand until it shuts down my vital organs.  I feel like I have lost myself and am surprised when I see my reflection in the mirror. If I’m not careful, D leads to A where there is only apathy so thoroughly enveloping that all I can do is take a nap. 

My favorites are the B and C days.  On B days, I am never bereft, bored, or broken.  The B days are when I feel brilliant, brave, bold, and sometimes beautiful.  There are C days when confidence, clarity, creativity, courage, and calm return.  There are too few of them.  I wonder where my enthusiasm went but once I am at D, it is hard to move on to E.

E is excellent and exciting, but can turn on a dime to exhausting and from there it’s not a stretch to move on to the far trickier F.  On good days it is fabulous, fun, fulfilling, and fantastic and I have faith, but it can yield to frantic, failure, fake, fraud, and fatalistic.  In an instant fearless becomes fearful.  The fight turns into flight.

You won’t get an argument from me that I have too much time on my hands and not enough structure in my life.  Friends urge me to get out more, but on days when I’m playing with the alphabet, I tend to get stuck in this zero sum game.

Tom Petty was right: “The waiting is the hardest part.”  Maybe it is time to start dating again if only to discover some new words and letters and to have something delicious to wait for.