Vignette
New York, San Francisco, teeth.
On the evening of Wednesday, June 19th, my mother called to tell me that she had been at the vet all day with my cat. After six hours of tests and waiting, she found out that my cat's intestines were poking up through her diaphragm and into a hole in her heart. It has always been this way.
She told me she receives phone calls from unknown numbers that leave voicemails by people she knows, like her mother. My grandmother hasn't spoken for years; she's bedridden in a nursing home, but she used to leave messages for my mom all the time. These recordings are appearing in my mom's inbox a decade later; my grandmother's voice clear and urgent.
I run into a close friend from kindergarten on Howard and 3rd in the Financial District. I'm late for work, but her face shines from across the intersection. She was beautiful when we were fifteen, and she's beautiful still. Her eyes carry the same softness. It's been ten years, but hugging her on the street corner over and over again feels like hugging my mother. It's a moment that makes me feel like I'm a thousand years old.
I fly to New York on a whim and stay with my cousin in the East Village. My phone gives me a weather advisory—it's 95 but feels like 101. I bring L to a Portuguese cafe near Tompkins that only serves dairy milk. There are paintings of fish on the walls and picnic tables in the back, communal seating. We sit and stare in silence, at our phones, at each other, listening to the twin hums of the neon bar lights and the air conditioning.
I spend $38 on two gin and tonics in a smoky club.
My friend G and I take pictures of each other in the middle of the wide streets of the Lower East Side with her digital camera until the quality of the air changes. We slide into a wine bar and watch as it begins to rain, and all of the girls and boys in the seats outdoors have to run inside.
I take antibiotics on and off for a minor, recurring infection in my gums. My wisdom teeth are coming in, but the oral surgeon said it is a complicated procedure to have them removed. The teeth are too close to the nerve that runs along my jawline. He said if I were 15, it would be easier. I have to stick a long, blunt needle into the small cavity between my gums and back molars and flush the area with 50% water and 50% hydrogen peroxide.
I tried to read The Master and Margarita because I bought it for $7 at a bookstore on Fillmore. It made me sick on the bus home from work.
I was in New York last year, too. I hadn't been eating; I remember all my clothes were looser. New York meant something different to me then. Whenever I go, it reflects back to me all of the things about myself that I try to ignore and all of the things about myself that I love. In the taxi to LaGuardia last week, I concluded that I can't find God in New York, and I try not to think about the traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge.
