Only in New York

by Lily Brett

  New Yorkers have to be smart. And fast. It is a fast-moving city. You have to be smart just to cross the road here. New Yorkers have to have their wits about them. They have to be street-smart. Most of them are. They can’t easily be taken in. Unless it is by something out of the ordinary. Many New Yorkers aspire to be more than ordinary. To be extraordinary. Something out of the ordinary seems to appeal to a certain type of New Yorker.

  A new phenomenon has been sweeping through New York. It does involve a lot of sweeping and scrubbing and scrubbing and brushing and cleaning. This scrubbing and cleaning is not physically arduous. No mops or brooms or brushes or detergents or polishes are necessary. It is expensive. And requires a willingness to suspend the scepticism that seems to be an inherent part of being a New Yorker.

  A surprising number of people are managing to suspend their scepticism. They are hiring space clearers. Space clearers clear and scrub homes and offices, psychically. Not physically, psychically. I had never heard of space clearers. Apparently everyone is using them. Real-estate brokers, lawyers, bankers and Wall Street types are rushing to have their homes and offices psychically scrubbed.

  Space clearers are also known as psychic scrubbers. Does this sound as if I have suddenly switched to writing in Czech? It does, to me. Space clearers cleanse your home of undermining and enervating energy, bad vibrations and negative spirits.

  One of the more well-known space clearers is a former lawyer who describes herself as an indispensable exterminator. I have enough trouble with the notion of psychically scrubbing your home without worrying about indispensable exterminators.

  I can’t think about the word exterminator in a positive light. In America it is a frequently used word. Exterminators are people who rid homes and office buildings of insects and rodents and other pests. My mother used to talk about exterminations more often than she intended to. She was referring to the regular prisoner round-ups, at Nazi death camps, during which it was decided who would be exterminated that day or who would, temporarily, escape extermination.

  Having your apartment or office or townhouse psychically cleansed isn’t cheap. And it can be done remotely. Clearing a home remotely costs about 250 dollars. It costs 350 to 1000 dollars to have an in-person clearing of your house or apartment. I read about a businesswoman who had her house psychically cleared every year, for her birthday. ‘It gets rid of that stuck energy,’ the businesswoman said. Stuck energy, she explained, was when you were stuck at home and just couldn’t do anything, not even move a pillow. She mentioned that after one particular psychic clearing she had so much energy she had stayed up all night repainting her house.

  I stayed up all night repainting my house once. I was in my mid-twenties and suddenly decided that a new colour on the walls would be a brilliant idea. I painted all the walls a glossy, dark reddish brown. This was the 1970s and I wasn’t even on drugs. I had to live with that rather foreboding colour for years before I could get up enough energy to change it.

  The former lawyer’s space-scrubbing equipment is pretty minimal. She works with a pink, plastic spray bottle filled with tap water. Despite wanting to be a person who is open to new ideas, I have trouble embracing the concept of a psychic scrubbing or clearing. And I don’t even want to think about why the plastic spray bottle is pink.

  New York tap water is very, very good. I know this because I consider myself somewhat of an expert on tap water. I don’t drink alcohol. That is a long story involving my mother’s belief that all Australian men went to the pub every night, got drunk and took it out on their wives, when the men finally got home. I married two Australian men, sequentially not simultaneously. And clearly didn’t take my mother’s warning – and it was a warning – to heart. I did, however, always avoid alcohol. As a result, I drink a lot of tap water.

  With a few sprays of tap water accompanied by some blessings or prayers, a psychic clearer can apparently rid your house or apartment of all its negativity, energise and invigorate its vibrations, and even enlarge the space by psychically pushing out its walls.

  New York tap water is very, very good but it is not that good. Paying someone $1000 to spray a few drops of tap water from a pink, plastic bottle doesn’t sound to me as though it has a large chance of enhancing your health or your property, let alone your prosperity. For a start, your bank balance would definitely be depleted.

  I asked a friend who was considering hiring a space clearer what she was hoping to achieve. ‘I want my apartment to be healthier,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think apartments get sick,’ I said. ‘I’ve never heard of an apartment with a headache, let alone an apartment that has had the flu or chicken pox or shingles.’ I meant shingles, the inflammation of nerve endings caused by the herpes virus, not the rectangular, wooden tiles used on walls or roofs.

  I wondered whether apartments could, like people, have aches and pains. Maybe plumbing got congested and wiring became twisted. I decided that these sorts of ailments would be more problematic for the owner than the dwelling.

  ‘It’s the energy in the apartment that is unhealthy,’ my friend said. I gave up. You can’t argue with a desire for better health.

  It seems to me that people in New York are making fewer and fewer phone calls. Before smart phones, when ordinary mobile phones did nothing much except enable you to speak to someone else, everybody was on the phone.

  People called each other from wherever they were. On the street, on a bus, on a train. This was a little disconcerting at first. It was the early 1990s and previously the only individuals in the streets who engaged in conversation with invisible participants were usually talking to themselves. In the 1970s New York City cleared out many of its psychiatric hospitals. Too many people who needed help were left to roam the streets, often immersed in a feverish and ferocious conversation with themselves.

  Slowly the city changed. There were fewer homeless and more people on mobile phones. The streets were full of people talking. People calling each other to discuss issues, to make plans, to declare love. Every day you could overhear a lot of interesting snippets of conversation. You could also gauge the zeitgeist by witnessing how the many conversations about therapists and therapy gradually changed into discussions about food and restaurants.

  Now everyone talks with their fingers. Texts and emails and other internet-connected communications are fine. They are fun, often essential and sometimes lifesaving. I love the instant communication of a short text message. Especially across continents. And I love the gadgets. I am ashamed to admit it, but I have a smart phone, an iPad, a mini iPad and a laptop.

  All of these things allow us to keep in contact with each other. But they also enable us to hide. In an email, I can sound cheerful when I am feeling dismal. If the recipient of that email spoke to me she would be able to hear that I was feeling flat.

  I really miss the more revealing, less controlled exchanges of a phone call. In text messaging or email it can be much easier to avoid the unpredictable. Phone conversations don’t stay on a straight course. They can career straight into unexpected moments. Even for those of us who write relatively long emails, there is still little chance of wandering off on an inadvertently revealing tangent.

  If you looked at the transcript of a thirty-minute phone call, you would be shocked at how much gets said, how much is revealed, is understood and becomes evident. You can’t remove and delete an expression or a tone when you are talking on the phone. It is very hard to see behind a tidy line in an email or a text message.

  Nobody in New York seems to say ‘Call me’ or ‘I’ll call you’ any more. It has been substituted with ‘Email me’ or ‘I’ll text you’. When I was a teenager, I used to talk on the phone to my best friend for hours. It drove my father mad. As my best friend and I had been at school together all day my father failed to grasp what on earth we could still have left to say. The truth is that there is always something left to say.

  When I make phone calls in New York, they are usually to
dispute a medical bill or to make appointments. Usually medical, dental or hair appointments. I rarely ring friends in New York to chat. I often want to, but a sort of paralysis comes over me and I can’t pick up the phone.

  New Yorkers pride themselves on being busy. If you call someone in New York with no purpose other than to say hello, there is, inherent in that action, a suggestion that you have nothing to do. That you are definitely not busy. New Yorkers are, on the whole, busy. But not all of the time. Appearing to be busy, it seems to me, is part of being a New Yorker. I am not sure why appearing to be busy is so important.

  I have long periods when I am writing during which not only do I not make phone calls but I also don’t answer my phone unless it is my father or one of my children. Working at home makes it easier to become hermit-like. I have worked at home for decades. When I last worked in an office I was twenty-one.

  When I am writing, I can go for days without speaking to anyone at all. I text my husband to let him know what I am doing. They are short texts, like Having lunch or Will be late for dinner. His studio is within a hundred feet of my study,

  At night, I can be very quiet. It often takes me some time to wrench my brain away from what I have been writing. My husband understands this. He also understands my inexplicable need, when I am in the middle of a manuscript, to watch television after dinner.

  I like to watch television series that are far from highbrow. The television series I choose are mostly British. They are not shows I would recommend to most people I know. A few years ago, I watched what felt like hundreds of episodes of Midsomer Murders. I can’t even remember what I was writing. I just remember watching murder after murder and then going to bed.

  I am currently watching Call the Midwife. I love it. At least two or three babies are born in every episode. It is very satisfying. My husband often retreats to his studio, as every episode has a lot of screaming and pushing. I have failed to persuade him that it is a very good series and a cut above Midsomer Murders.

  As soon as I have finished writing a book I stop watching all of these series. When I finish a book, it takes me a while to feel comfortable, again, out in the world. I have been buried in a world of my own for so long that the real world feels unfamiliar. I have also been quiet for so long. And that makes it even harder to pick up a phone.

  When I am not writing, I talk to friends on the phone. They are mainly friends who live in other countries. I have four or five friends I speak to regularly. They live in Shanghai and Sydney and Melbourne. The phone calls, on average, last for an hour or two. The record was three hours. My arm used to ache after some of these calls. Now, I use headphones. It only took me twenty-three years to work out that solution.

  When I hang up after one of these calls, I feel so happy to have been in touch, to feel close, to feel part of my friends’ lives. But there is something about distance that can’t be covered by phone calls. You really need to be with people. In the flesh.

  I watched a documentary, Gloria: In Her Own Words, about the iconic feminist of the 1970s women’s liberation movement, Gloria Steinem. One of the things that struck me was how close the women were. They were forming groups all over the country. They were marching in unison. They had a common agenda and a communal loyalty.

  Watching thousands of women descend on Washington DC or march through the streets of New York made me long to have that sort of bond, that sort of shared common goal with other women. They were so united and so passionate in their beliefs.

  I don’t see that sort of unity, that sort of camaraderie, that sort of passion among women any more. Of course, things have changed. We on the whole no longer have men like the unidentified male in the documentary saying things like ‘Most women I think have a problem with concentration.’ Or the radio broadcaster Garry Moore, who said, ‘Gloria Steinem is an extremely attractive woman, but most of the women I see in the women’s liberation movement frankly couldn’t lure me out of a burning building.’

  Even the highly acclaimed, Emmy award-winning television news anchor Harry Reasoner, when announcing the publication of the first issue of Ms. magazine in 1971, said that the magazine was sad and wouldn’t last. ‘I can imagine some stark, sexist editorial meeting trying to decide what to do next. After you have done marriage contracts, role exchanging and the female identity crisis, what do you do?’

  No one would say anything like that today. At least not in public. That first issue of Ms., which was meant to last three months, sold out in a week.

  Even President Nixon weighed in. He was asked by Dan Rather of CBS News what he thought of the term Ms. ‘I guess I’m a little old-fashioned but I’d rather prefer the Miss or Mrs,’ the president said. In tapes released decades later, Nixon can be seen talking to Henry Kissinger about Dan Rather’s question. ‘He asked a silly, goddam question about “Ms”, you know what I mean? Miss or Ms. How many people have read Gloria Steinem and give one shit about that?’ Nixon says to Kissinger.

  Things have changed. But they haven’t changed enough. A Harvard University study showed that women who were financial specialists, podiatrists, physicians and surgeons, aircraft pilots, financial advisors, dentists and accountants made sixty-six to seventy-six percent of the amount of money earned by men in the same jobs.

  And the Women’s Media Center has just reported that sixty-three percent of the bylines in the country’s top ten newspapers belong to male reporters. Of all the recipients of the 2014 Pulitzer prizes for journalism, only one was a woman.

  Maybe if we speak to each other more, see more of each other, we could re-ignite that sense of intimacy and togetherness and form stronger bonds and common goals. I am going to pick up the phone and call some of the women I know in New York.

  New York has a lot of synagogues. There are more than forty synagogues in Manhattan alone. There are also many synagogues in Brooklyn and Queens, a few in the Bronx and one on Staten Island. Few cities in the world, outside Israel, have that many synagogues.

  Most non-Jewish New Yorkers know quite a bit about being Jewish. They know when it is Passover or Chanukah. They know that many Jews don’t eat pork and don’t celebrate Christmas. A lot of non-Jewish New Yorkers have been to a Passover Seder or attended a Chanukah party. And quite a few of them have been to a synagogue service.

  Despite being well and truly Jewish, I have rarely been inside a synagogue. And when I have it has usually been for a funeral. I have never been a member of a congregation.

  It was in a tiny little synagogue in Kazimierz, the former Jewish quarter in Krakow, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, that I felt my most intense and deep connection to Judaism. I felt this affiliation because of the lack of Jews. There were five or six other women in the small room at the back of the synagogue that was reserved for women. The room was filled with candle smoke. None of the women looked Jewish. A Catholic girl of about eighteen or nineteen explained to me that deep inside she felt she was Jewish despite her Polish parents’ horror at that thought.

  As a child and a teenager in Melbourne, I was forbidden to go to synagogue. On Yom Kippur, Jews are required to fast and atone for their sins. You are also required not to work or drive. On Yom Kippur, my father used to drive past the local synagogue waving his ham sandwich. He mocked the Jews who were fasting and praying and laughed at the notion that there was a God. ‘If you did see what I did see in the death camps,’ my father used to say to me, ‘then you would know for sure that there is no God.’

  My mother also had a persistent need to let me know that there was no God. When I was eleven, I joined forces with my mother. I told everyone who would listen that I didn’t believe in God. For decades I scoffed at the notion of God. And secretly, and not so secretly, envied people who were religious. I still do.

  In German cities like Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, I have watched people pouring out of church on Sundays. I have envied their connection to the church and to each other. In small mountain towns and villages in M
exico, I have stood mesmerised as villagers dressed in their best clothes arrived at the church and started to pray. I have envied them their belief.

  Three or four years ago I woke up one morning with what felt like an urgent need to belong to a synagogue. I have had fantasies of joining a synagogue before. For years I have felt a strong pull towards congregations. All congregations. Baptist, Catholic, Muslim, Episcopalian, Methodist, Orthodox Russian and Greek.

  In Houston, one weekend, my husband and I found we were the only white guests in the hotel. The other guests were all African-American Baptists, who were celebrating a series of marriage-vow renewals. The celebrations sounded fabulous. They involved a lot of talking, a lot of music and a lot of dancing. Several of the couples invited us to join the celebrations. I think marriage-vow renewals are a good idea. My husband and I wrote our own marriage vows and wept through them. Our renewals would involve a lot of weeping.

  I badly wanted to join the African-American Baptists but I felt too shy. I regret that decision. We spent our weekend in Houston feeling appalled by the number of people carrying large rifles in shopping malls and in the streets.

  I have formed my own groups and clubs. Book clubs, film clubs, women’s groups. As a child, I wanted to be a communist. As a young woman, I wanted to live communally. Now that I am older, I dream of sharing my old age close to my closest friends. But my closest friends live thousands of miles away and that sort of dream will probably go the way of all those dreams of creating extended families through book groups and women’s groups.

  The morning that I woke up with an urgent need to join a synagogue was almost frightening. The feeling was so intense. It felt as though my life depended on joining a synagogue. I suspect there can be something dislocating about being born with too much religion or too little.