M Train

  Back home I looked at the number I’d written on the scrap of paper but could not bring myself to dial it. I placed it on my night table before my little television set, a strange talisman. Finally I called my friend Klaus and asked him to make the call for me. I suppose a part of me was afraid it was not really for sale or that someone else had already gotten it.

  —Of course, he said. I will talk to the owner and find out the details. It would be wonderful if we were neighbors. I’m already renovating my house and it’s only ten blocks from the bungalow.

  Klaus dreamed of a garden and found his land. I believed I dreamed of this exact place without knowing it. The wind-up bird had awakened an old yet recurring desire—a dream as old as my café dream—to live by the sea with a ragged garden of my own.

  A few days later the seller’s daugher-in-law, a good-natured young woman with two small boys, met me in front of the old blockade fence. We could not enter through the gate, as the owner padlocked it as a safety precaution. Klaus had given me all the information I needed. Because of its condition and some tax liens it was not a bank-friendly property, so the buyer would be obliged to produce cash. Other prospective buyers, seeking a bargain, had grossly underbid. We discussed a fair amount. I told her I would need three months to raise the money, and after some discussion with the owner, all agreed.

  —I’m working all summer. When I come back in September I will have the sum I need. I suppose we will have to trust one another, I said.

  We shook hands. She removed the For Sale by Owner sign and waved good-bye. Although I was unable to see inside the house I had no doubt that I had made the right decision. Whatever I found to be good I would preserve, and transform what was not.

  Credit 9.4

  —I already love you, I told the house.

  —

  I sat at my corner table and dreamed of the bungalow. By my calculations I would have the sum I needed to acquire the property by Labor Day. I already had a busy workload and took every other available job I could get from the middle of June through August. I had quite a diverse itinerary of readings, performances, concerts, and lectures. I placed my manuscript into a folder, my pile of scribbled napkins into a large plastic baggie, wrapped my camera in linen, and then locked it all away. I packed my small metal suitcase and flew to London for a night of room service and ITV3 detectives and then I was off to Brighton, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, Lausanne, Barcelona, Brussels, Bilbao, and Bologna. Afterwards I flew to Gothenburg and embarked on a small concert tour of Scandinavia. I plunged happily into work, carefully measuring myself in the heat wave that doggedly pursued me. At night, unable to sleep, I completed an introduction for Astragal, a monograph on William Blake, and meditations on Yves Klein and Francesca Woodman. Every so often I returned to my Bolaño poem, still languishing between 96 and 104 lines. It became something of a hobby, a deeply wrenching one that produced no finished result. How much easier if I had simply assembled small airplane models, applying minute decals and touches of enamel paint.

  In early September I returned somewhat exhausted but well satisfied. I had accomplished my mission, losing only one pair of glasses. I had yet one last commitment in Monterrey, Mexico, and then could take a long-needed break. I was among a handful of speakers at a forum of women for women, serious activists whose travails I could barely comprehend. I felt humbled in their presence and wondered how I could possibly serve them. I read poems, sang them songs, and made them laugh.

  In the morning a few of us went through two police checkpoints to La Huasteca to a roped-off canyon at the foot of a steep mountain cliff. It was a breathtaking though dangerous place, but we felt nothing but awe. I said a prayer to the lime-dusted mountain, then was drawn to a small rectangular light some twenty feet away. It was a white stone. Actually more tablet than stone, the color of foolscap, as if waiting for another commandment to be etched on its polished surface. I walked over and without hesitation picked it up and put it in my coat pocket as if it were written to do so.

  I had thought to bring the strength of the mountain to my little house. I felt an instantaneous affection for it and kept my hand in my pocket in order to touch it, a missal of stone. It was not until later at the airport, as a customs inspector confiscated it, that I realized I had not asked the mountain whether or not I could have it. Hubris, I mourned, sheer hubris. The inspector firmly explained it could be deemed a weapon. It’s a holy stone, I told him, and begged him not to toss it away, which he did without flinching. It bothered me deeply. I had taken a beautiful object, formed by nature, out of its habitat to be thrown into a sack of security rubble.

  When I disembarked to change planes in Houston, I went to the bathroom. I was still carrying The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle along with a copy of Dwell magazine. There was a stainless-steel ledge on the right side of the toilet. I placed them there noting what a nice element it was, but as I boarded my connecting plane I realized my hands were empty. I felt quite sad. A heavily marked-up paperback stained with coffee and olive oil, my traveling companion and the mascot of my resurging energy.

  The stone and the book: what did it mean? I took the stone from the mountain and it was taken from me. A kind of moral balance, I well understood. But the loss of the book seemed different, more capricious. Quite by accident I had let go of the string attached to Murakami’s well, the abandoned lot, and the bird sculpture. Perhaps because I had found a place of my own and now the Miyawaki place could spin in reverse, happily back to the interconnected world of Murakami. The wind-up bird’s work was done.

  —

  September was ending and already cold. I was heading up Sixth Avenue and stopped to buy a new watch cap from a street vendor. As I pulled it on an old man approached me. His blue eyes burned and his hair was white as snow. I noticed that his wool gloves were unraveling and his left hand was bandaged.

  —Give me the money you have in your pocket, he said.

  Either I am being tested, I thought, or I have wandered into the opening of a modern fairy tale. I had a twenty and three singles, which I placed in his hand.

  —Good, he said after a moment, and then returned the twenty.

  I thanked him and continued on, more buoyant than before.

  There were a lot of people in a hurry on the street, as if last-minute shoppers on Christmas Eve. I hadn’t noticed at first and it seemed they were steadily multiplying. A young woman brushed past me with an armful of flowers. A dizzying perfume lingered, then dispelled, replaced by a vertiginous refrain. I felt conscious of everything: a beating heart, the scent of a song wafting in a conflict of breezes, and the human current heading home.

  Three dollars short, richer longer love.

  The signs were good. Closing date was October 4. My real estate lawyer attempted to sway me against buying the bungalow due to its ramshackle state and questionable resale value. He failed to comprehend that these were positive qualities in my book. A few days later I paid the sum that I had amassed and was given the key and the deed for an uninhabitable little house on a withered lot, steps away from the train to the right and the sea to the left.

  The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there. I heated up some beans and ate quickly, walked to the West Fourth Street Station, and got the A train to the Rockaways. I thought of my brother, our hours on rainy mornings assembling Lincoln Log forts and cabins. We were devoted to Fess Parker, our Davy Crockett. Be sure you’re right, then go ahead was his maxim that soon became ours. He was a good man amounting to much more than a hill of beans. We walked with him as I walk with Detective Linden.

  I got off at Broad Channel and boarded the shuttle. It was a mild October day. I loved this short walk from the train up the quiet street, each step closer to the sea. I no longer had to peer longingly at the bungalow through a broken slat. I ignored the No Trespassing sign and for the first time I stepped inside my house. It was empty save a child’s acoustic guitar with broken strings and a black
rubber horseshoe. Nothing but good. Small rooms rusted sink vaulted ceiling century-old smells mingling with musty animal smells. I couldn’t stay very long, for the mold and a prevailing dampness ignited my cough yet did not dampen my enthusiasm. I knew exactly what to do: one great room, one turning fan, skylights, a country sink, a desk, some books, a daybed, Mexican-tile floor, and a stove. I sat on my lopsided porch and gazed with girlish happiness at my yard dotted with resilient dandelions. A wind picked up and I could feel the sea within it. I locked my door and closed the gate as a stray cat squeezed through an open slat. Sorry, no milk today, only joy. I stood before the battered blockade fence. My Alamo, I said, and from that moment on my house had a name.

  Credit 10.1

  Aftermath, Rockaway Beach

  Her Name Was Sandy

  THERE WERE PUMPKINS on sale outside the Korean deli. Halloween. I got some coffee and stood looking at the sky. A distant storm was brewing; I could feel it in my bones. The light was already low and silvery and I had a sudden impulse to go to Rockaway to take some pictures of my house. As I gathered some things, providence brought my friend Jem to my door. Every now and then he pops by unannounced and I am always glad of that. Jem, a filmmaker, was carrying his Bolex 16-mm camera and a portable tripod.

  —I was shooting nearby, he said. Want some coffee?

  —I just had some, but come to Rockaway Beach with me. You can see my house and the most beautiful boardwalk in America.

  Jem was game so I grabbed my Polaroid camera. We hopped the A train, catching up with things on the way, mining the troubles of the world. We made the connection at Broad Channel, ascended the long metal stairs of the elevated train, and walked to my house. I needed no portal to enter; I had the key on an old rabbit’s foot from my father’s desk drawer.

  —You are mine, I whispered, opening the door.

  It was too dusty for me to stay inside very long, but I happily sketched out my plans for future renovation as Jem shot some film. I took a few pictures of my own and then we walked over to the beach.

  The cold light over the sea was swiftly fading. I went by the water’s edge and stood with some gulls who seemed undaunted by my presence. Jem had set up his tripod and was hunched over, filming. I took his picture and several of the empty boardwalk, then sat on a bench as Jem packed up. Halfway back I realized that I’d left my camera on the bench, but I still had the pictures as I’d slid them into my pocket. It wasn’t my only camera but it was my favorite, for it had blue bellows, and had served me well. It was unsettling to imagine it alone on the bench without film, unable to record its own passage into the hands of a stranger.

  Jem and I said our good-byes as the train pulled into his stop. There’s a storm coming, he said, as the doors closed. The sky was already dark when I arrived at the West Fourth Street Station. I stopped at Mamoun’s and got a falafel to go. The atmosphere was heavy and I noticed my breathing was shallow. When I got home I put some dry food out for the cats, switched on CSI: Miami, turned down the volume, and fell asleep with my coat on.

  I awoke late, feeling apprehensive, an uneasiness that I willed myself to shake. I told myself it was just the coming storm. But in my heart I knew it was also something else, the time of year, one of emotional duality. A happy time for children, marking Fred’s passing.

  I was fidgety at ’Ino. I had some bean soup for lunch, hardly touching my coffee. I wondered if it was a bad omen leaving my camera on the boardwalk. I thought to go back, irrationally hoping to find it still sitting on the bench. It was an outmoded object not worth much to most people. I decided to return to Rockaway, and walked home quickly trying to avoid mounting images of Fred’s last days. I threw a few things in a sack, and then stopped back at the deli for a corn muffin to take on the train.

  The human mood was frenetic. People were crowding the normally laid-back deli, piling up supplies, preparing for an impending storm that had in the last hours dissipated, then strengthened to a category 1 hurricane, and was now heading our way. I was several beats behind and felt suddenly hemmed in. A coastal emergency plan was being issued, and we stood listening to the small shortwave radio perched atop the cash register. Planes were grounded, subways were closing, and a mass evacuation of the beach-lying areas was already set in motion. There was no getting to Rockaway Beach today; there was no getting anywhere.

  Back home I checked supplies—plenty of cat food, spaghetti, a few cans of sardines, peanut butter, and bottled water. Computer charged, candles, matches, a few flashlights, and an inbred cockiness that would eventually be challenged. By nightfall the city had turned off our gas and electric. No light, no heat. Temperatures were dropping and I sat on the bed wrapped in a down comforter with all three cats. They know, I thought, like the birds of Iraq before shock and awe on the first day of spring. It was said that the sparrows and songbirds stopped singing, their silence heralding the dropping of bombs.

  Since I was a child I have been extremely storm sensitive, I can usually feel when one is coming and its magnitude by the amount of pain in my limbs. The most powerful storm I could remember was Hurricane Hazel, which blew into the East Coast in 1954. My father had night work and my mother, sister, and brother were huddled together beneath the kitchen table. I had a migraine and lay on the couch. My mother was terrified by storms, but they excited me, for when a storm broke, my discomfort was replaced with a kind of euphoria. But this one felt different; the air was remarkably charged and I felt nauseous and somewhat breathless.

  —

  The enormous full moon dropped its milky light through the skylight like a rope ladder that spread across my Chinese rug and the edge of my quilt. Everything was still. I read with the aid of a battery-powered lantern that projected a white rainbow across the objects arranged on the bookcase not six feet from my bed. The rain was hammering the skylight. I felt the trepidation of October’s end, magnified by the waxing moon and a commemoration of storms assembling in the sea.

  A multitude of converging forces seemed to bring these memories entirely present. Halloween. All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ Day. Fred’s passing day.

  Racing through Detroit on Mischief Morning with Fred in the back of an ambulance to the same hospital where our children were born. Returning home alone after midnight in a raging thunderstorm. Fred was not born in a hospital. He was born during an electrical storm at his grandparents’ home in West Virginia. Lightning streaked the purple sky and the midwife did not make it, so his grandfather saw to the birth, delivering him in the kitchen. Fred believed that if he ever entered a hospital he would never leave. His Indian blood felt such inexplicable things.

  Flash floods, high winds, the canal overflowing. Jackson and I piling sandbags before the door leading to the flooding basement, metal trash cans and twisted bicycles littering the rain-sodden streets. Fred, fighting for his life, could be felt in the howling wind. A great branch from our oak tree fell across the driveway, a message from him, my quiet man.

  On Halloween, resilient children with raincoats over their costumes ran through the black rain-soaked streets with sacks of candy. Our little daughter slept in her costume, believing her father would see it when he came home.

  I turned off the lantern and sat listening to high vocal winds and the pounding rain. The storm’s energy drew out every memory of these days, a dark autumn journey. I could feel Fred closer than ever. His rage and sorrow for being torn away. The skylight was leaking badly. It was a time of the tearing. I rose in the dark and moved my books and got a bucket. The moon was now obscured but I could feel it, massive and full, drawing out the tides and melding powerful natural forces that were to transform our coastline into a twisted version of itself.

  Her name was Sandy. I had felt her coming yet never could have predicted her awesome power and the terrible destruction left in her wake. The following days after the storm I still walked over to ’Ino, full knowing it would be closed, as was our quadrant of the city. No gas or electricity, so no coffee, but a comforting hab
it I did not wish to break.

  On All Saints’ Day, I remembered that it was Alfred Wegener’s birthday. I tried to devote a measure of my thoughts to him, but I was really with Rockaway. Bit by bit I received news. The boardwalk was gone. Zak’s café was gone. The train line crippled and its sad bowels ripped apart, thousands of salt-coated wires, the gone intestines of motion. Roads were closed indefinitely. No power, gas, or electricity. November winds were strong. Hundreds of homes were burned to the ground and thousands flooded.

  But my little house, built one hundred years ago, scoffed at by realtors, condemned by inspectors, and denied insurance, had apparently stood through it. Though severely damaged my Alamo had survived the first great storm of the twenty-first century.

  —

  In mid-November I flew to Madrid, escaping the suffocating aspects of Sandy’s aftermath, to visit friends with problems of their own. I brought along The Thief’s Journal, Genet’s hymn to Spain, and traveled by bus from Madrid to Valencia. In Cartagena we made a pit stop at a restaurant called Juanita, across a wide highway from another restaurant, also called Juanita, each a mirror of the other, except the one across the highway had a small loading dock and diesel trucks in the back lot. I was sitting at the bar, having lukewarm coffee and a bowl of marinated beans warmed in possibly the first microwave ever made, when I realized some guy had sidled up to me. He opened a well-worn oxblood wallet to reveal a solitary lottery ticket with the number 46172. I didn’t get the feeling it was a winning number, but in the end I paid six euros for it, which was a lot for a lottery ticket. Then he sat down next to me, ordered a beer and a plate of cold meatballs, and paid for them with my euros. We ate together in silence. Then he got up, looked me straight in the face, and grinned, saying buena suerte. I smiled back and wished him luck as well.