I Totally Meant to Do That (29 page)

Doll.

Rising.

Orbit.

On.

Lug.

“They seem nice,” Kokie said. “You’ll miss them.”

“Are you kidding? She’ll wake up tomorrow and be happy not to see
nobody
,” Georgie said.

“It’s true,” I agreed.

“You can walk around naked if you like,” Georgie added. “That’s what I’d do.”

“Well, I definitely wouldn’t be able to if I had to come back here tomorrow and meet”—I pulled my fingers into air quotes—“the Sanchez Brothers.”

“Oh shit, Kokie, did you hear that?”

“Yeah, she’s making fun of us,” Kokie said playfully.

“Janie, you’d be lucky to spend another day with the Sanchez Brothers.”

“And anyway, this one ain’t over,” Kokie added. “We could still get a flat.”

“Why do you say that!? Don’t say that!” Georgie cried. “You’ll jinx us.”

“I’m not gonna jinx us,” Kokie spat. “Would you quit with the nagging!”

“Well, if we do,” Georgie persevered, “let’s hope it happens in your new neighborhood, and not here.”

“Oh yeah, you saw that place on Fourth Avenue?” Kokie asked.

“There’s one on Third, too,” Georgie answered.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Tire shop,” Kokie told me.

“Actually, I think I saw three on Third,” Georgie continued, and then looked at me. “You didn’t see them? They’re all around your new place.”

“Yeah, and also those churches like Henry’s,” Kokie said with concern. “I don’t trust those storefronts. I think they want your money.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Georgie argued. “You don’t know that. You’ve never been.”

They continued to bicker over whether or not Henry’s pastor was fleecing him, but my mind was stuck on the auto shops. Were there really that many? How had I not noticed?

Afterward, of course, I did. The following week I wandered the perimeter of my apartment’s immediate area—from Seventeenth Street to Ninth Street, up Fourth Avenue and back down Third—with a pen and paper. Here’s what I found.

“Three on Third”? Actually, there are fourteen in my immediate neighborhood alone. In an area eight-short-blocks by two-long-blocks, there are twenty businesses dedicated to transience, to keeping people on the move. Um, I think I found my nest.

The only other industry with anywhere close to as much representation in Gowanus is sign making—banners, neon work, and other signs, which I am clearly no good at seeing. How daft am I? Apparently something must be the size of a NASA rocket for me to notice it. And, PS, I googled that orbital launcher–looking thing, the New York City Hamilton DOT Plant: It makes pavement for the city’s roads. Pavement!

Once again, I had failed to recognize an egregiously overt metaphor. And once again I say to you: I can’t make this up! I still don’t believe in fate or predetermination, but these coincidences are racking up. I’m starting to wonder if coincidence is like déjà vu: Instead of paranormal shenanigans, it’s just the experience of your subconscious knowing something before you do. Taking me to Gowanus was my subconscious’s way of saying, “Oh, you’re only happy when you’re moving? See how you enjoy living in a racecar pit.” As if it caught me with cigarettes and now my punishment is to smoke the whole pack.

Generally, people with wanderlust at least get to see the world. The most exotic species I’ve spotted is Brooklyn’s indigenous yellow gorilla balloon.

As Kokie’s minivan pulled onto the part of the BQE that runs
along the water, I thought to myself,
Truly this is the seedy side of addiction
.

“What’s he
doing
in there?” Kokie asked the wall.

“Beats me,” I said, humming the
Jeopardy!
theme in my head. Another few minutes passed, and then Georgie appeared.

“What the hell!” Kokie demanded.

“There wasn’t any soap!” Georgie yelped. “But under the sink I found some SoftScrub.”

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Kokie commanded.

In the car, he consulted the GPS again, asked me for the comedy club’s address.

“You want to use the GPS in Manhattan?” I asked, realizing that the Sanchez Brothers probably don’t spend much time on the island, and relishing the opportunity to cash in on one of the few
benefits of being a weed. “We don’t need GPS,” I said. “I can get us to Midtown.”
Easy
. I devoured those neighborhoods years ago.

Georgie began to speak dreamily about the night’s remaining few hours. “I’m gonna lie back and do
nothin’
. Maybe watch some TV. Maybe not.”

Kokie, meanwhile, was anxious to meet his girlfriend, who had called several times now. “She said you must be pretty cute for me to be so helpful,” he told me.

“Tell her (a) I’m paying you and (b) I have a boyfriend.”

“I don’t know why she gets jealous,” Kokie said. “She’s gorgeous.”

“Yeah, so why’s she always saying she’s fat?” Georgie asked rhetorically. “I don’t understand why women always think they’re fat.”

“I don’t think I’m fat,” I said.

“Naw, naw, you’re just saying that,” he replied.

“No I’m not; I really don’t think I’m fat.”

Georgie spun around in shock: “Are you serious?”

“Are you saying I
should
think I’m fat?”

“No no no,” he backpedaled.

“I don’t believe you,” Kokie said suspiciously.

“Believe what you want,” I taunted.

We bickered and picked some more, and then we arrived, at 9:05 p.m. There was no time to dwell on good-bye, no opportunity to make this moment any more important than whatever would follow it. So I slapped them both on their backs and said, “Today was fun. Thanks, guys.”

As I crawled out of the van, Georgie said, “I gotta be honest, I didn’t think we would make it.”

So I put my hands on my hips, stuck my neck out far, and said with as much exaggeration as possible, “See?!”

no political lie has left an American surprised. Similarly, when I opened a puffy envelope from Aunt Jane and found inside another manners guide—delivered six years after the first and annotated this time in pencil—instead of saying, “Oh. My. God.” I merely thought,
Yep, that makes sense
.

Sarah Tomczak’s
How to Live Like a Lady
is adorned throughout with illustrations of women from periods past: a flapper holding a candlestick telephone, a corseted grande dame admiring her feathered hat, a young miss gazing dreamily upward at a pencil-thin mustache. The book betrayed its obsolescence before I’d read a word.

But read on I did, because I found the gesture adorable (beside the underlined phrase “quality cashmere,” she’d scribbled “at least 4 or 6 [better] ply”), because I ultimately had learned something from the first guide, and because it arrived with the subtitle “Lessons in Life” at a time when I needed answers. On a recent Saturday, the day after my sister’s birthday, while I was sitting in a coffee shop reading, I missed a call from my mother and got this voice mail.

“Well, we’re all here having lunch for Tucker’s birthday: Dad, me, Jane, Lucius, Lou, Marc, Franklin, Borden, Victoria, Tucker, Wes, and baby Wes. Just calling to say we miss you.”

Hearing all of their names, listed like that in a row, illustrated exactly how much my family has grown. Sure, I went to the weddings and christenings—clearly, I’m aware. But I didn’t truly understand. Because, when I am away from them, I don’t sit and imagine them all having brunch together. Being in purgatory doesn’t just mean they can’t see me; I can’t see them, either.

So I knew without really knowing that since I’ve been in New York, my immediate family has doubled in size. The bigger it gets, the smaller that I, in relation to the whole, become. That’s a good thing. Like the ply count of cashmere yarn. The higher the ply, the thicker and heavier the strand. But as my family evolves into superrobust textiles, I’m the stray thread that’s been picked loose from the knit, the one you either weave back in gently or yank out with one quick tug.

After almost eleven years in this city, I still live out of a suitcase, unsettled here, but unwilling to move home. I’ve been so consumed by this quandary, I’ve written a book on the subject. Even so, however, I always knew how it would end: New York. I choose New York. Or so I thought, because when it came time to turn in the first draft, I did so without a final chapter.

I didn’t know how to finish this. And when I got that voice mail, I figured out why: Because, by the time I’d reached the end, my options had changed. I thought I was choosing between two geographical locations, between two ways of life. But that’s not true. North Carolina isn’t a lifestyle; it’s my family. Or maybe it’s not that the options changed, but just that I grew up enough to see them differently. Again, it’s as if I knew it before I knew it.

So now I’m all confused again. Here or there—which is home? Or, rather, the true task is to discern which of the two is more of a home than the other. I’m Southern by default. But I’m also a New Yorker. Right? I love this city … don’t I? Sorry. Why am I asking you? I’m all mixed up, so much so that I sought counseling from a chintzy etiquette paperback.

Because it had arrived with a North Carolina return address, and came from the self-help section, I gave it weight, combed it for clues like it was a Dead Sea Scroll. Huge mistake.
How to Live Like a Lady
might not offer bad advice, except when suggesting “weird and wonderful diet tips” as a small-talk topic, but it is grossly underqualified for the task I’d assigned it. On the list of what should be “Inside a Lady’s Handbag,” I found “lipstick,” “small hairbrush,” and “spare pair of panty hose”—seriously, who wears panty hose?—but there was no mention of which state’s driver’s license.