Only in New York

by Lily Brett

  ‘You won’t be flying business class,’ I said. ‘It won’t cost thousands.’

  This temporarily derailed him. ‘Where in the plane would I be flying?’ he said.

  ‘Probably with the luggage,’ I said. He started laughing, and then resumed a monologue about being completely dead when you were dead.

  ‘Mum won’t know if I am next to her or not,’ he said. ‘I do not believe in God and I am not going to change now,’ he added.

  For most of my life I have envied people who are religious. As a child I wished I was a Methodist because they served apple pies and cream and jam-filled sponge cakes at their church fetes. I had not been inside many Catholic churches when I first stepped into St Agnes.

  It was not love at first sight. I wasn’t instantly smitten. I was nervous. I felt out of place and uneasy. The feeling reminded me of being a teenager on guard against any inadvertent infraction of the rules that might slip out of me in my overly strict, highly academic high school.

  I was at St Agnes to do a reading from what was then my latest novel. I had never read in a church before. I waited in the sacristy for the audience to be seated. I felt cold. It was strange sitting in a room usually occupied by priests. There was a male aroma in the room. I felt like an intruder. Or an alien.

  A few minutes later, I walked into the main body of the church and sat down to read. I looked around me. There was something timeless and uncluttered and unfettered about this beautiful church. Something deeply moving. I felt calm. And embraced. I looked at the audience. Row after row of people were smiling at me.

  I went back to St Agnes the next day. And I didn’t want to leave. I was in love, I loved the church. I felt part of the church. I was not alone in this. St Agnes, which sits right in the middle of the district, has a devoted community. Over the last ten years they have hosted contemporary music events, art exhibitions and book readings. Last year three hundred people came to hear the writer Ulla Hahn read poems.

  I have been back to St Agnes many times since that first reading. I have read there again. In their permanent collection, the church has one of my husband’s paintings, a triptych called Passage and Crossings. It hangs in the nave. Each panel has soaring red and black lines that stretch upwards pointing to somewhere above the earth, somewhere celestial, somewhere above the minutiae of everyday life.

  My relationship with St Agnes has changed my life. It has allowed me the freedom to feel at home visiting St Anthony’s, a Catholic church not far from where I live in New York. It has also changed my view of religion and showed me how we can be deeply connected while holding different religious beliefs or no religious beliefs. I feel as though St Agnes is my church. I refer to it as my church. Or our church. This sometimes makes my father laugh. But there is a sense of pleasure in his laughter. I suspect it is the pleasure of possibility.

  I am still in love with St Agnes. And still in love with my husband.

  I woke up one morning with an urgent need to make a strudel. Many New Yorkers have urgent matters and possibly urgent urges, but few, I am guessing, would wake up feeling a desperate need to make a strudel.

  Apart from assembling the ingredients and making the pastry and the filling, a minor problem was the fact that I had very limited use of my right arm after recent shoulder surgery. And I am right-handed. I still couldn’t eat with my right hand. For weeks, I had been eating with my left hand. Food constantly missed my mouth and landed in my lap. Only my father thought it was funny.

  I was dying to be able to hold a pen and write again. And feed myself again. And dress myself. Since the surgery, every ounce of energy I had had been expended on rehabilitation. I had three physiotherapy sessions a week and did a series of exercises three times a day. And I learned a lot about myself.

  I learned that your shoulders keep your arms attached to your body. That seemingly obvious fact hadn’t occurred to me. Your shoulders are also the most mobile part of your body. I didn’t know that either. I had no idea what shoulders did, apart from looking attractive.

  I also learned that I can’t follow exercise instructions. I am really slow to catch on to how to do exercises. I can’t follow the clearest instructions. I think it must be connected to my inability to read maps and my terrible sense of direction. I try very hard, but exercises with more than three instructions – for example, shoulders back, knees bent, wrists straight and feet together – go straight out of my head the minute after I say goodbye to my physiotherapist, Ben Gold. I can’t even remember to lower my shoulders, keep my stomach muscles taut and hold my elbows by my side. Not all in one exercise.

  Fortunately Ben is a thoughtful and non-judgemental man. He starts making me instructional videos. He films me doing the exercises as he details concise instructions for each exercise in his clear voice. He emails me the videos.

  I am transfixed by the videos. Transfixed by how awful I look. There I am in my nondescript, grey Target top and a weird pair of stretchy, rather voluminous, black-and-white patterned H&M trousers. It’s not that I am usually dressed in Chanel or Stella McCartney, it’s just that I am not used to seeing myself photographed like that. It’s not an image I want to look at.

  Eventually I get over how awful I look, and I study the videos. One exercise at a time. I try some of the exercises. They still don’t feel right. I call out to my husband. He watches the videos once, and knows what to do. He shows me. I try again, and slowly get the hang of it.

  Several weeks later I wake up with a pressing need to make a strudel. Not an apple strudel or a topfen strudel. I’m not very good at making desserts or cakes.

  With one good arm and one arm still in rehab, I decided I would make curried beef with almonds and raisins strudels. Yes, strudels. Plural. A few hours later I took out of the oven eight curried-beef strudels, with no splits in the pastry.

  My right arm was a bit sore. But I wasn’t worried. By then, I had really mastered my physiotherapy exercises.

  For twenty-five years, whenever I have had a meal or even a cup of tea or coffee at home, I have sat in the same chair at my dining-room table. It is a long table. It can seat twelve people. Fourteen if we squash up.

  When I invite people over for coffee or lunch or dinner, I go out of my way to make sure no one else sits in my seat. I always try to appear casual about this. I will have done something subtle, or not so subtle, like place my reading glasses and my mobile phone on the table in front my chair. Sometimes I have lost my casual air and run ahead of my guests to claim my seat. This has usually been an inelegant move that could possibly make me look less than level-headed.

  But sitting in my chair, at the right-hand end of my dining table, facing the kitchen, I feel relaxed. Not one of the eleven other chairs around the table gives me this sense of wellbeing.

  Last year a journalist who had arrived to interview me beat me to the table. I had made the mistake of offering him a glass of seltzer. By the time I got to the table he had placed his tape recorder and his notebook and pen in front of my chair. I must have looked disconcerted because he asked me if I was all right. Of course I had to say yes. You can’t start an interview with a journalist by looking as though you need to sit on the very chair he has taken for himself.

  I sat opposite him. For the whole interview I felt discombobulated and disturbed. Facing that direction just didn’t feel right. I don’t know why. I was less than three feet from where I usually sit and I was in my own home.

  When I go into a restaurant, I am even worse. What will feel like the right table, not to mention the right chair, is something I cannot predict until I see it. And then the chair or table is often already occupied. Unless you are Michelle Obama, you cannot ask a table of four to move tables mid-meal because they are sitting exactly where you want to sit.

  This leaves me having to choose the right chair at whatever table I am offered. For decades, my husband and my children have stood and waited for me to make my choice before seating themselves. When they were small, they thought t
his was normal.

  Once I have found the right chair, I am happy. What makes the right chair the right chair is inexplicable. There are no rules governing my choice of where I want to be seated at any of the tables. However, it takes me just seconds to spot the right table and the right chair at any table.

  My husband calls it my Jewish Feng Shui. Feng shui, the ancient Chinese philosophical system of harmonising human existence by arranging objects and designing architecture to improve our health, prosperity and luck, has become very popular. Especially in New York.

  I was looking for a television documentary on Luciano Pavarotti, when I stumbled across five feng shui experts sharing their tips for a happy home. The first was never to have more than one pair of shoes near the entryway of your home. I was fine with that. I never leave shoes or anything else near my front door. I don’t like mess. My shoes are in my closet, in a shoe holder.

  Do not have any electrical elements near your bedside apart from a light, the same feng shui expert said. And if that light operates from an electrical outlet you have to move it. I wasn’t sure if you had to move the light or the outlet, but either way you wouldn’t be able to read. Unless you had a kerosene lamp or candles, both of which seemed to contain more potential harm than a lamp attached to an electrical socket.

  She also said that you should avoid using a computer in your bedroom, as that would compromise your sleep quality. My computer is in my study. However, I wondered if that included iPads, iPhones or Kindles. I love my iPad. I sleep next to my iPad. At night I recharge it about twelve inches from my head.

  I doubt that it is my iPad that has compromised my sleep quality. I am a bad sleeper. Everything that could keep me awake at night does. Too much happiness can keep me awake. Too much happiness can feel dangerous. As though I am pushing my luck, tempting fate. Too much happiness can give me instant insomnia. Not that anxiety, sadness or melancholy are calming. They keep me awake too.

  I envy people who sleep well. I envy people who can fall asleep anywhere. I am married to a man who can down four espressos and go straight to sleep. He also finds all beds comfortable. The most misshapen, lumpy, too narrow, too short mattress is fine with him.

  I have a carefully orchestrated series of rituals to ensure sleep. I don’t have anything caffeinated after nine a.m. I stop drinking fluids at least two hours before I go to bed. I exercise every day. I never nap. I don’t talk on the phone late at night. And I try not to think of anything exciting. And, still, I stay awake.

  I have tried noise machines. The sounds they reproduce are supposed to lull you to sleep. I tried sleeping to a sound called Frogs Croaking. I am not sure why I thought that might be soothing. I also tried a sound called Summer Night. It made me want to rush out of bed and cover myself in insect repellent.

  After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided not to worry about sleeping in such close proximity to my iPad.

  The next feng shui expert had more cheering news. He said you should make sure you used your stove frequently. He said this would energise your kitchen and lead to greater success in your career, fame and reputation.

  My stove is frequently used. I like to cook. I didn’t know that this use of my stove could enhance my career or reputation. The feng shui expert had gone on to say that it was essential to use each of the burners on your stove as often as possible, rotating their use if you only cooked one or two dishes at the same time. This was bad news. I have an industrial stove. It has ten burners. I am not going to try to rotate my saucepan on to all ten burners, especially if I am boiling two eggs or making a cup of tea.

  I was about to switch off the television when yet another feng shui expert proclaimed that the area of love and relationships in any space was in the south-west corner. This area, she said, should be pink, red and white and could be enhanced by adding two candles, a pair of lovebirds and photographs of a couple along with round, framed mirrors that would bounce energy around the space.

  My first stumbling block with this advice was my sense of direction. I would have to get help in determining which corner was the south-west corner. Also, with the enhancement of pink walls and candles and lovebirds as well as round, framed mirrors, I would think I was in someone else’s apartment or had inadvertently inserted myself into a very bad romance novel.

  I was jolted out of the romance novel by the same feng shui expert saying that fame and recognition were located in the south corner of the space. If you think that by locating the south-west corner I would then be able to identify the south corner, you are wrong. I would have to get help, again.

  Before I could spend any more time dwelling on my lack of a sense of direction, the feng shui expert issued a dire warning. Do not, she said, use too much red as it could lead to restlessness and agitation. I looked around my home. There was no red. That was a relief.

  I switched off the television before she began her tips for money and wealth. I decided I had left my run for wealth and prosperity too late.

  I love pens and pencils. I have loved them all my life. Whenever and wherever I travel, I buy pens and pencils. I am not a pen or a pencil snob. I buy them in supermarkets and at street stalls, as well as in every sort of stationery store. I don’t need to go to a Mont Blanc store or own a limited-edition Tiffany’s pen.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t need to own any more pens. I have a drawer full of pens. Ballpoint pens, rollerball pens, fountain pens. I also have a drawer full of pencils. All sorts of pencils. Short pencils, long pencils, carpenter’s pencils, charcoal pencils. I even have pencils inscribed as Dixon Beginners. They are black, and thicker than regular pencils.

  Having all these pens and pencils doesn’t prevent me from wanting more pens and pencils. I covet other people’s pencils in the same way that others might covet a friend’s house or car or husband.

  My lust for pens and pencils started when I was a child in Melbourne. For two years after we moved to 575 Nicholson Street, I looked at the fountain pens in a newsagency a block and a half away from our small cottage. One day, in a moment of great need and recklessness, I stole one. I wasn’t caught. I guarded that fountain pen as though it were Elizabeth Taylor’s Krupp diamond.

  I have written all of my books by hand. I know exactly which pens and pencils I used for each of my books. I do the actual writing with pens. For the last few years I have used a Pilot G-2 07 retractable gel ink rollerball pen. Always with black ink. I never write in any other colour. In pencil, I circle and draw arrows around whatever parts of my text I want to move or change. For Lola Bensky I used emerald-green Criterium pencils, made in France. I bought them in a hole-in-the-wall stationery store in a small, mountain town 170 miles north of Mexico City. They were so enticing and so cheap. I bought twenty-five of them.

  As soon as I pick up a pen or pencil, a sense of calm comes over me. I feel that the pen or pencil is directly connected to my heart, my lungs, my arteries. Nothing separates us. Of course I type on a computer and an iPad and a smart phone. And I take great care with my sentences on each of those devices. Too much care. Who needs to search for commas or apostrophes when you’re typing with one or two fingers? And I do love keyboards and the sounds they make. But they are not connected to me in the same way as a pen or pencil.

  Recently, in Seattle, I went into a huge Rite Aid store. We don’t have supersized Rite Aid stores in my part of Manhattan. I always think I love big stores. That is until I am actually inside one. After five minutes of feeling lost and disoriented in a seemingly endless aisle, I left with a bag of ten dark-yellow, eraser-topped pencils. Which I paid for, of course.

  I often walk from SoHo, where I live, to a part of Midtown I am crazy about. It takes me about thirty minutes, during which I become more and more excited about my destination. My destination is Spandex House on 38th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. Spandex House shouldn’t be confused with Spandex World or Spandex Hub, both of which are also on 38th Street. Spandex House is in the heart of what used to be N
ew York’s thriving Garment District.

  Fifty years ago, the Garment District in New York was the centre of America’s garment industry. Seventy percent of all women’s clothes and forty percent of all men’s clothing were manufactured in New York, in the Garment District.

  The district is roughly between Fifth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, from 34th Street to 42nd Street. It is now called the Fashion District. It still houses showrooms and production facilities and offices for many major fashion labels. And it still has some of the most interesting stores in the city. Stores that sell everything you could ever think of to construct, enhance, adorn or decorate every conceivable article of clothing. This is an area for serious designers and dressmakers and tailors.

  I can’t sew. I can’t sew at all. I can’t even sew on a button. I try. I carefully mark the place where the button needs to be sewn. I make sure I position the needle and thread and the button precisely on the marked spot. With great care, I slowly stitch the button in place. And then I feel depressed. The button is inevitably at least a half-inch from where it is supposed to be. Half an inch doesn’t sound much, but it is enough to cause a ruffle or bulge or gap in the article of clothing to which the button is now attached.

  For someone who can’t sew, I am inexplicably attracted to all sewing accoutrements. The streets around the Garment District of New York are some of my favourite streets in the city. I love the fabric stores and the trimmings stores. I find them strangely relaxing. Pacific Trimming on West 38th Street has the most wondrous range of zippers. Most people probably don’t think of zippers as beautiful. I do. And if you went to Pacific Trimming, you would too. The zippers come in every colour and size. Rainbows of zippers hang from the walls.

  The store also has a huge range of trimmings, buttons, buckles, ribbons, feathers and miles of gold chains, among other things. There are dazzling displays of sequin trimmings. Anyone who finds these sequined trimmings as alluring as I do must have a loud and flashy streak. At heart, I must want to look like Liberace or a Las Vegas showgirl. I don’t usually buy anything. If I can’t sew on a button, I’d have no chance of putting in a zipper.