Winter Journal

  19. 18 Tompkins Place; Brooklyn. The top two floors of a four-story brownstone on a one-block street of nearly identical row houses in Cobble Hill, the neighborhood between Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights. Age 34 to 39. Less than half a mile from 153 Carroll Street, but an altogether different world, with a population more mixed and various than the ethnic compound you had lived in for the past twenty-one months. Not a duplex shut off from the lower half of the house but two independent floors, the low-ceilinged one on top with a nook-sized kitchen, an ample dining area and unpartitioned living room beyond it, as well as a small study for your wife; on the higher-ceilinged floor below: a compact master bedroom, a larger bedroom/playroom for your son, and a study for you, identical in size to your wife’s above. A bit ramshackle in overall design, but larger than any apartment you had ever rented and located on a block of great architectural beauty: every house constructed in the 1860s, gas lamps burning at night in front of every door, and when the snow covered the ground in winter, you felt that you had traveled back to the nineteenth century, that if you shut your eyes and listened closely enough, you would hear the sound of horses in the street. You were married in that apartment on a sultry day in mid-June, one of those hot, overcast days in early summer with storms building slowly at the far edge of the horizon, the sky darkening imperceptibly as the hours advanced, and an instant after you were declared man and wife, at the very instant you took your wife in your arms and kissed her, the storm finally broke, a tremendous clap of thunder ripped through the air directly above you, rattling the windows of the house, shaking the floor under your feet, and as the people in the room gasped, it was as if the heavens were announcing your marriage to the world. An uncanny bit of dramatic timing, which meant nothing and yet seemed to mean everything, and for the first time in your life, you felt that you were taking part in a cosmic event.

  20. 458 Third Street, Apartment 3R; Brooklyn. A long, narrow apartment that took up one half of the third floor of a four-story building in Park Slope. Living room overlooking the street in front, dining room and galley kitchen in the middle, flanked by a book-lined hallway that led to three small bedrooms in the back. Age 40 to 45. When you moved to your previous apartment on Tompkins Place, your landlord, who also happened to be your downstairs neighbor, warned you that you could not live there forever, that eventually he and his family would be taking over the entire house. You must have understood this at the time, but after living there for five years and one month, your longest stint in any dwelling since your boyhood days on Irving Avenue, you had little by little pushed the thought of involuntary departure out of your mind, and because the years on Tompkins Place had been the happiest, most fulfilling period of your life so far, you simply refused to face the facts. Then, in November 1986—just one week after your wife discovered she was pregnant—the landlord politely informed you that time was up and he would not be renewing your lease. His announcement came as a jolt, and because you never wanted to be in such a position again, could not bear the idea of being thrown out of yet another place at some point in the future, you and your wife began searching for a place to buy, a co-op apartment that would belong to you and thereafter protect you from the whims of other people. The Wall Street crash of 1987 was still eleven months off, and the New York real estate frenzy was surging out of control, prices were going up every week, every day, every minute of every day, and because you had only so much money to spend on a down payment, you had to settle for something that did not quite measure up to your needs. The apartment on Third Street was attractive, hands down the most attractive of the many places you had visited on your search, but it was too small for four people, especially when two of the people were writers, who not only had to live in that space but work there as well. All three bedrooms were accounted for: one for you and your wife, one for your son (who continued to live with you half the time), and one for your infant daughter, and even the largest of the three, the so-called master bedroom, was too tightly proportioned to accommodate a desk. Your wife volunteered to set up her work space in a corner of the living room, and you went out and found yourself a tiny studio in an apartment building on Eighth Avenue, a block and a half from 458 Third Street (see entry 20A). Too cramped, then, a less than ideal arrangement, but your circumstances were far from tragic. You and your wife both preferred the animation of Park Slope to the quiet streets of Cobble Hill, and when you started spending the summers in southern Vermont (three months for five consecutive years—see entry 20B), there was little or nothing to complain about, especially when you considered some of the wretched places you had inhabited in the past. Living in a co-op put you in more intimate contact with your neighbors than at any time before or since, something you initially faced with a certain amount of dread, but there were no Madame Rubinsteins in your building, no festering conflicts developed on any front, and the co-op meetings you were obliged to attend were relatively short, easygoing affairs. Six families were involved, four of them with small children, and with an architect, a contractor, and a lawyer among the members of the board, your neighbors were conscientious about maintaining the physical and financial health of the building. Your wife, who served as recording secretary for the five years you lived there, wrote up the minutes after each board meeting—entertaining, tongue-in-cheek reports that were warmly appreciated by everyone involved. Some excerpts:

  10/19/87. BUGS: This highly unpleasant subject was addressed by the assembled company with utmost delicacy. The euphemism “problem” was used by at least one member. Marguerite went so far as to speak of “hundreds of babies.” Dick recommended a product called COMBAT. Siri echoed the recommendation. It was also suggested that the exterminator be told to change his poison. Then, with a sigh of relief, the members turned to another subject.

  3/7/88. THE FENCE: Theo was given a price of $500 for the fence by his students. Certain members felt this was exorbitant; others didn’t. There was a faint agreement—that is, an agreement so vague, so slim, it might not be called an agreement at all—that if these students of Theo promised to do a good job, they could have their $500. But this is not certain …

  10/18/88. OLD BUSINESS: There was a moment of hesitation. Would the members be able to reach into the past and recall just what our old business was? The president came to the rescue with a copy of the old minutes.

  2/22/90. CEILING IN 3R: Paul announces to the group that the ceiling in #3R is about to collapse. Expressions of alarm can be seen on the faces of his fellow co-opers. His wife, otherwise known as the secretary, attempts to assuage the others by noting her husband’s tendency to exaggerate. The man’s bread and butter, after all, is in the making of fictions, and occasionally this submersion in the world of the imagination colors that other world, known for lack of a better expression as the Real World. Let it stand for the record that the ceiling in 3R is not about to collapse and that its occupants have taken appropriate action to make certain that this will not happen. The plasterers and painters shall take care of our slight sag …

  3/28/90. CEILING IN 3R: It WAS falling in! The painters who restored that apartment to an acceptable condition confirmed Paul’s gloomy prediction. It was just a matter of time before it fell on our heads.

  6/17/92. FLOODING: The basement is flooding. Lloyd’s acute remark that either we fix the flooding or stock the basement with trout hit home. The estimates for repair are running between $100 and $850, depending on what must be done. We agreed that lower was better than higher and that we should begin low with Roto-Rooter. The gentleman from Roto-Rooter, a friend, acquaintance, or at least a person KNOWN to Lloyd, is Raymond Clean, a name that inspires confidence, considering the nature of his work, and, who knows, may have inspired Mr. Clean’s calling in life.

  10/15/92. WINDOWS AND CRIME: Joe, the window man, was formally accused of absconding with the secretary’s one hundred dollars and not answering his telephone. He may have left the country. Theo and Marguerite have also accused him of essentially NOT FIXING
their balances, since they ceased to work again after one week. There was some speculation among the members as to how far one could get with $100. We may have to look for him in Hoboken.

  12/3/92. Beyond the walls of 458 Third Street, the weather was cold and damp that night, and winter was upon us. We ended the meeting on a wistful note. Marguerite told stories about Cyprus, a definite longing in her voice. In that exotic place the weather is warm and the light brilliant and clothes dry on balconies in ten minutes.… And that is how it stands with us. There’s always another place where the sun shines, where clothes dry fast, where there are no window men, no maintenances, no workmen’s compensation, or flooded basements …

  1/14/93. WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION: This issue of whether or not to cover officers of the co-op injured while performing their duties came to a head. We won’t. Let come what may: fingers broken at the typewriter, necks strangled in a telephone cord while conducting co-op business, broken legs, arms, and heads from too much wine at a meeting. We’ll have to live with it, the way people used to. We’ll call it fate. We’ll save about fifty bucks, and fifty bucks is fifty bucks is fifty bucks.

  20A. 300 Eighth Avenue, Apartment 1-I; Brooklyn. A one-room studio on the ground floor of a six-story apartment building, located in the back, with a view of an air shaft and a brick wall. Larger than the maid’s room on the rue du Louvre, less than half the size of the Varick Street hovel, but equipped with a toilet and bath as well as various kitchen appliances built into one of the walls: sink, stove, and minibar fridge, which you rarely bothered to use, since this was a space for work and not for living (or eating). A desk, a chair, a metal bookcase, and a couple of storage cabinets; a bare bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling; an air conditioner in one of the windows, which you would turn on when you arrived in the morning to filter out noises from the building (COOL in summer; FAN in winter). Spartan surroundings, yes, but surroundings have never been of any importance as far as your work is concerned, since the only space you occupy when you write your books is the page in front of your nose, and the room in which you are sitting, the various rooms in which you have sat these forty-plus years, are all but invisible to you as you push your pen across the page of your notebook or transcribe what you have written onto a clean page with your typewriter, the same machine you have been using since your return from France in 1974, an Olympia portable you bought secondhand from a friend for forty dollars—a still functioning relic that was built in a West German factory more than half a century ago and will no doubt go on functioning long after you are dead. The number of your studio apartment pleased you for its symbolic aptness. 1-I, meaning the single self, the lone person sequestered in that bunker of a room for seven or eight hours a day, a silent man cut off from the rest of the world, day after day sitting at his desk for no other purpose than to explore the interior of his own head.

  20B. Windham Road; West Townshend, Vermont. A two-story white clapboard house (circa 1800) on the crest of a steep dirt road three miles outside the village of West Townshend. June through August, 1989 through 1993. For the modest sum of one thousand dollars a month, you escaped the tropical heat of New York and the confines of your too-small apartment for this refuge in the hills of southern Vermont. A grassy, quarter-of-an-acre yard in front of the house; dense woods just beyond the yard that stretched on through several miles of wilderness; more woods on the other side of the dirt road; a small pond nearby; an outbuilding at the edge of the yard. Except for a sink and a cheap ancient stove in the kitchen, there were no amenities of any kind: no washing machine, no dishwasher, no television, no bathtub. Telephone communication via party line; radio reception touch and go at best. Freshly painted on the outside, the house was falling apart within: warped floors, buckling ceilings, squadrons of mice in the closets and bureaus, hideous, water-stained wallpaper in the bedrooms, and uncomfortable furniture throughout—lumpy, sagging beds; wobbly chairs; and a cushionless, understuffed couch in the living room. No one lived there anymore. The now-dead former owner, an aged spinster with no immediate heirs, had bequeathed the house to the children of various friends of hers, eight men and women who lived in different parts of the country, from California to Florida, but none in Vermont, none anywhere in New England. They were too scattered and uninvolved to do anything about the house, could not agree on whether to sell it, improve it, or tear it down, and left the oversight of the property to a local real estate agent. The last tenant, a young woman who had turned the place into a marijuana farm and had made a thriving business of it by employing a tough biker gang as her sales force, was now looking at a stiff prison term. After her arrest, the house had remained unoccupied for a couple of years, and when you and your wife rented it in the spring of 1989, on the strength of a single exterior shot of the house (so pretty), you had no idea what you were getting yourselves into. Yes, you had told the agent you were looking for something remote, that rustic was a word that did not frighten you or induce any qualms, but even though he’d warned you that the house was not in tip-top condition, neither one of you had imagined you would be walking into a tumbledown shanty. You remember the first night you spent there, wondering out loud if it would be possible to endure an entire summer in such a place, but your wife absorbed the shock more calmly than you did, telling you to be patient, to give it a week or so before you decided to jump ship, that it could turn out to be a lot better than you thought. The next morning, she launched into a furious campaign of scrubbing, bleaching, and disinfecting, opening windows to air out the stuffy rooms, discarding torn curtains and disintegrated blankets, cleaning the blackened stove and oven, removing trash and reorganizing the kitchen cupboards, sweeping, dusting, and polishing, her Scandinavian blood boiling with the righteousness and devotion of her frontier ancestors, while you went across the yard with your notebooks and typewriter to the outbuilding, a cabinlike structure of more recent vintage, which had been trashed by the marijuana girl and her biker friends and turned into a dump site of broken furniture, ripped screen windows, and graffiti-covered walls, a place beyond hope or salvation, and little by little you did what you could to clean up the mess, to get rid of the broken things, to wash the cracked linoleum floors, and within a couple of days you had installed yourself at a green wooden table in the front room and were back to work on your novel, and once you began to settle in, to occupy the house your wife had rescued from filth and disarray, you discovered that you liked being there, that what at first had seemed to be a ubiquitous, unalterable squalor was in fact no more than a state of weary dilapidation, and you could live with crooked floors and ceilings that were falling in, you could learn to ignore the house’s defects because it wasn’t your house, and little by little you came to appreciate the many advantages the place had to offer: the silence, the coolness of the Vermont air (sweaters in the morning, even on the warmest days), the afternoon strolls through the woods, the sight of your little daughter romping naked through the yard, the tranquil isolation that allowed you and your wife to pursue your work without interference. And so you kept going back, summer after summer, celebrating your daughter’s second birthday there, her third birthday, her fourth birthday, her fifth birthday, her sixth birthday, and eventually you began to toy with the idea of buying the house, which wouldn’t have cost much, far less than any other house for miles around, but when you considered the expense of restoring your summertime ruin, of rescuing it from imminent collapse and death, you realized that you couldn’t afford such an undertaking and that if and when you had the money at your disposal, you should leave your too-small co-op apartment on Third Street and find a larger place to live in New York.