The Bag Lady Papers (11 page)

MF + 7 WEEKS

T
his morning my usual four o'clock wake-up finds me compulsively adding up all the cash I have on hand and reviewing the new AMF budget numbers Tommy helped me draw up. There's not much to work with. My newly developed mental discipline of “no future think” kicks in and I drag myself out of bed to make a cup of coffee.

What can money buy?
Coffee! I pour some no-fat cream into the molto-cheap but maximo-delicious espresso that I have substituted for my old-life Dean & DeLuca gourmet blend. Money bought this coffee—but less money than a few months ago—and this pretty porcelain mug.
What can't money buy?
is the next logical question.

I sit down at the computer and take two minutes to list what I think money can and cannot buy. There is something therapeutic about the exercise. I e-mail three friends whom I know wake up early and ask them to send me their inventories.

Alex shoots me back an answer by 6:45 a.m. as the sun's rays sneak onto the keyboard of my laptop.

Here's her response:

I'm enjoying my second coffee as my friend Patricia Marx's e-mail whistles through the ether. She's an acclaimed humor writer, and I love her words:

A few hours later, another missive arrives from Patty:

Here's the super-quickie from my good friend Richard.

I call Paul, who refuses to do e-mail, and pose the question. He's an artist and has never had a huge amount of money, but phones me back in a few minutes with his ideas.

“I was thinking a lot about your question and it's an interesting one for me because I'm not very interested in money,” he says. “But this is what I think money
can't
buy.”

He stops. I wait a second for what money can buy.

“I really love what you just said,” I say, and I mean it. I'm very curious as to how he will respond to the second part of my question.

“Money can't buy much,” he shoots back immediately when I ask him.

“That's about it,” he responds after he's listed those three. The answers are so provocative that I write Carol, a friend in London, for her thoughts. Here's what she e-mails back:

My friends' answers are sincere and many are clever. My own unedited lists surge out of my unconscious. Sorry, no cheekiness or wit here: I'm too agonized about money these days to make any fun of it. But, come to think of it, maybe the only way to deal with lucre in these economically insane days is to be impudent about it.

I
t was 1983 and our neighborhood had been officially christened SoHo. Busloads of tourists careened down the cobblestone streets snapping photos of artists and local denizens as if they were some species of exotic turtles. Harriet's store downstairs was doing a land-office business and my sales help on Saturdays was needed more than ever. Across from my small space on West Broadway was Mr. Kochendorfer's knife-sharpening business. His father sat on a chair outside the front door carefully surveying the scene from a black peeling-leather office chair that rolled around on rusty casters. On one side of him was an enormous, cavernous building with greasy yellowing tile walls, a garage for garbage trucks. Its huge doors crashed down with colossal
kabaaaang
s after the hump-backed garbage trucks rumbled grumpily out onto the street at three a.m. every day.

On the other side of Mr. Kochendorfer was a well-architected nineteenth-century building. It wasn't a cast-iron beauty like many in the neighborhood, but it had an appealing facade, huge windows, and very high ceilings. I could see into it from my place and it seemed the perfect abode for a painter and her son. I daydreamed about buying a loft in that building, and even received a generous offer for a loan from my old landlord and friend, Arthur, for a down payment, but I didn't want to be indebted to anyone.

I wrote yet a third book on love and relationships and it, too, did well financially. Despite my losses in the Japanese market, my savings from book advances and royalties were more substantial than I could have predicted possible a couple years ago. I stayed in our small space and life went on smoothly and uneventfully with unimportant ups and downs. My son was applying to colleges and I finished the third book, went on some unremarkable blind dates, wrote a few articles on art criticism, did freelance writing, and reaped good fees from start-up-magazine consulting. I spent a long, food-oriented summer in Tuscany with a girlfriend who had rented a villa there and enjoyed several vacation trips to France and Spain. At home, I grew somewhat discouraged about finding a gallery but I kept on making art. It was the only work I really loved—then and now.

I had a new circle of friends—artists, dancers, writers, poets, shopkeepers, knife-grinders. Often in the evenings I heard a pebble strike my window, thrown from the street below.

“You busy?” a friend would call out.

“C'mon up for a drink,” I'd say, throwing down the keys, wrapped in an old sock, to their outstretched hands so they could join me at my recently acquired, much-cherished refectory table. I always kept a bottle of good Chianti and chilled Pinot Grigio on hand, and usually had some superb, freshly made smoky mozzarella from Freddy's Dairy on Sullivan Street in the fridge. If my day had taken me by Mr. Dappolito's bakery a couple of blocks away, I would have a semolina loaf right out of his bakery oven. Bread, wine, and cheese have always been a perfect meal to me. They never tasted better than in my small West Broadway place.

By 1987, my son had left for college and the streets of SoHo were even more packed with tourists. When I walked out the door of my home, I felt as though I were in a jam-packed rush-hour subway train. The throng was at its noisiest on weekends when I was trying to paint and think. The neighborhood had become a shoppers' paradise, but to me it was hell. It was time to move.

With the proceeds from the books, I bought my first piece of real estate, a one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village near my old college-days haunt, Washington Square. Prices in SoHo had escalated so much that I couldn't afford a loft on a quieter street, but this would be a solid investment in a good location. Owning my own apartment gave me a new feeling of well-being and security. I reasoned that my son would soon be off on his own and I could work in a small alcove off the bedroom, as I had begun doing very
small-scale paintings and collages. Someday, if I saved more money, I would rent a good-size studio.

I loved being in a quiet, safe building with a doorman and a super who doubled as a much-needed handyman. I even had enough money to get my old friend, designer Larry Totah, to help decorate, and together we painted the walls a pale sienna, which reminded me of Italy. A silky apricot rug adorned my bedroom, and a new down-cushioned sofa slip-covered in natural linen was a focal point in the minimalist living room. We installed all new appliances in the small but efficient galley kitchen, but left the classic black-and-white tile floor.

Inexplicably, even owning my own apartment, the bag lady anxieties lurked. I had finally called my parents and visited them in Connecticut, but our relationship remained chilly and removed. My son was away at school, and I wished I could find the right man and often wondered if I were doing something to sabotage myself in the relationship department. I questioned whether I really had the goods as an artist. I didn't know where my life was going. I also wanted to get rid of the fiendish, unreal fears of being a bag lady, so I decided that I needed a shrink to help me look honestly at my self. I asked around and found a well-regarded therapist whom I began seeing once a week.

About a year later, I found myself lying on the kitchen floor in my apartment, my entire body rigid with pain and fear and dread and defeat. I tried with all my will to think my way out of this paralysis, but my brain could only tap out codes of unbearable anxiety. The telephone was lying next to my ear and I finally picked it up.

“Is there any chance I can see you this afternoon or tomorrow morning, or even tomorrow afternoon?” I entreated Dr. R, the therapist I'd been seeing. “I really need to meet with you as soon as possible.” My hands were trembling so violently that the phone fell from my grip. Surely the doctor would detect the panic in my voice. There was a pause and I heard the faintest sound of shuffling of pages.

“I'm very sorry,” Dr. R said. “Unfortunately, I have no time until your regular appointment on Friday. If you need me you can always phone. If I'm not here, the service will take your message.”

Just as Dr. R hung up, my call waiting clicked and a voice said, “AP—AP? Are you there? It's Lynn.”

“I'm here. Hi, how are you?” I heard myself saying. I worked on writing projects for Lynn. It was imperative that I pull myself together enough to discuss the piece she was calling about.

“You don't sound good,” Lynn said, not missing a beat. “Is there anything the matter?”

“I'm not really so good.” The words just spilled out. “I was just speaking to my shrink. Something's come up and I needed to see him and he blew me off for four days—”

“Who are you seeing?” she interrupted. I told her the doctor's name.

“For god's sake, he's not for you, he's doesn't know how to deal with creative people. Forget him. You've got to call Dr. J. He's worked with some great writers and artists and you will love him. Here's his number. Do you have a piece of paper?”

“I don't think I should call another doctor while I'm seeing Dr. R…” I said dubiously, still lying on the floor.

“That's nonsense!” Lynn assured me. “Here's his number. His office is on Lexington Avenue. Call him as soon as we hang up. You must promise me you will do this. Dr. R won't be able to help you. I happen to know about him. He's one of those Freudian types who makes you lie down and babble on and on and he never says a word. He is not right for you. Please do this, please see Dr. J.”

“Okay,” I said at last, so I could end the conversation. But she insisted that I find a piece of paper to take down the number before I hung up.

I don't know how long I was on the tile floor. An hour? Two? More? Who cared about time? I didn't care about anything. I was grateful that my brain had shifted into neutral; I just stayed there doing nothing but counting the tiles that I could see from my crammed-in position between the two rows of cabinets. I counted and recounted the tiles dozens—no hundreds—of times. Then I memorized Dr. J's number and address. I repeated those numbers like a mantra.

I don't know what made me lift the receiver and dial Dr. J's office. A strong pleasant voice answered, “This is Dr. J.”

At six thirty that evening I was sitting in a chair opposite Dr. J, a tall, silver-haired, distinguished-looking man, past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. At the time he was seventy-five. The first thing I noticed were his eyes, which were the intense blue color of the sky on an early summer morning. He wore an impeccable gray
suit, starched white shirt, small gold cufflinks, and polished black shoes. There was an ineffable, comforting quality to him: I knew at first glance that this was a man who had seen it all.

“You can sit here next to me, or use that if you want,” he said with a warm smile, when I pointed to the ubiquitous leather-covered couch that graced all the offices of the shrinks I'd read about or seen in movies.

Dr. J's warmth and immediately empathetic manner made it easy to talk. I heard myself telling him that I'd finally met a man named F whom I thought I was in love with. He had abruptly broken things off when we began talking about living together and he wouldn't return my phone calls. My reaction was so extreme that I couldn't function. Dr. J asked me to tell him briefly about my background and the difficult relationship with my parents and the bag lady fears I'd alluded to. About an hour and a half later, I heard the diagnosis—“a broken sense of self” and “a broken heart”—and the words “I'd like to see you again tomorrow. Can you come at seven fifteen in the morning?”

I could have wept with gratitude, but I was cried out from the hour and a half that I had spent recounting my life story and how I had found myself shaped like an overly fried doughnut on my black-and-white kitchen floor.

He walked me to his walnut-paneled office door, took my hand in his two warm ones, and said, “I'll be the last doctor on the case.” I believed him absolutely.

Over the three years that I saw Dr. J I was to find out that
even though I was a highly functioning person professionally, my heart, my soul, and my self were all broken long before I ever met the charming, brilliant, handsome, witty, undependable F. Not surprisingly, most of it had to do with my childhood.