A Touch of Memory, with Onions

I was in Burger Heaven on Lex in the low 60's, waiting for my lunch. An elderly couple, perhaps in their mid-eighties, entered the restaurant. Each had a cane, and each had white hair—hers short and wavy, his fringe unexpectedly and strongly reminiscent of my late father’s.

They walked toward the back, toward me, and stopped in the narrow aisle leading to an empty booth, near mine. As they waited for a busboy to finish cleaning the table, a waitress carrying food-filled plates began to step around them.

The man placed his hand on his wife’s elbow. Gentle. Protective. Decades of gallantry were in that simple gesture, one I had seen my father do countless times. It startled me, and warmed my heart. Filled it with memories of him that tumbled one over the other. His intellect, his eloquence, his gentleness. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to share a meal with him, a hamburger medium rare and piled high with sautéed onions. I wanted nothing more than to discuss the mystery novel I am halfway through. He would have enjoyed it. Ridley Pearson. Good, not great, but plenty good for a summer read.           

I left the restaurant, my meal almost uneaten because I felt full. Filled with pieces of my past that kept me company as I strolled downtown. By the time I reached the Chrysler Building I was recalling a childhood summer spent on Watermelon Hill Road in Mahopac. My parents had rented a summer cottage with a small pond in which we swam. The house was nothing special but the owners’ record collection was. I think it set a record for the number of classical records in a personal collection. The second largest in the country back then, that’s how I remember it. Wall after wall filled with LPs. We listened to so many of them, endlessly it seemed, that long summer. We played them, one by one, on the turntable. Whether we were inside the cottage or out, floating in the pond or catching fireflies at dusk, we listened to Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert. My father’s favorites.

Early impressions can last a lifetime. This one, this summer memory of a place I hadn’t given thought to since I was a kid. It was so unexpected, so vivid. That simple cottage with its worn furniture, the family restaurant at the far end of our road. A small hibachi outside the screened door of our rented cottage. My father grilled hamburger patties that my mother had made. Now, I could almost smell them. I could almost taste them. By the time I was in Kip’s Bay I was hungry. I should have finished lunch. 

*** 

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The Loveliness of the Long Distance Runner

My air conditioner sucks, and it has from day one. Okay, maybe day two. Every few years we bought a new one because all of them sucked.

I know. It’s summer. It’s hot. It’s supposed to be hot, but there’s a heat wave in the city and inside my apartment I feel like I’m in a furnace.

It’s not all bad. My left elbow is comfortably cool. That is because my Design Within Reach red leather recliner is located practically on top of the a/c and my left elbow is up close to the vents.

I love this chair so much. I bought it for my husband but it fits me better.

I will try to have my positive feelings for the chair negate the bad feelings I have for my air conditioner.

Nice thoughts. Here goes:

Cool stream. Watermelon. Mango sorbet. Floors.

The gorgeous floors in my apartment.

Hardwood, pickled white by the previous owner.

These positive thoughts are working. I am now recalling other floors I once thought exceptional.

I had been the selling broker for a loft in the mid-teens. The owners ran a business, I forget what, but they were artists at heart. They had hand-painted parts of the floor to look like rugs, and would only sell to a buyer who promised to keep the floors as is.

The long, narrow hallway had a runner painted on the worn wooden floor. It covered most of the hallway with an Aztec design. It had shades of red, yellow, purple, and green, with a border of burnt sienna and black, and it seemed to go on forever. It was bold and beautiful.

The hallway led to the living room on one end of the loft. Its floor was partially covered with Oriental rugs of varying size and quality. Actual rugs, thrown with seeming abandon over the large room.

At the other end of the hallway were three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Each bedroom had its own individual carpet painted on the old hardwood floors, wall to wall and meticulously done.

But it was the runner that had grabbed my attention, and that I envision even now, years later. To me back then, it was everything floor art could be.

I showed this loft many times, and everyone remarked on the floors. Most people loved them as I did. Others, not so much.

“Why would anyone paint over these gorgeous old floors?”

“Don’t people have better things to do?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

The customers who loved the painted floors loved them so much that at first they overlooked the outdated kitchen and the cracked tiles and signs of water damage in the master bathroom.

At first. By the second or third visit there was a lot of:

“The kitchen is outdated. The bathrooms are horrible.”

“The bathrooms are outdated. The kitchen is horrible.”

“There are no views to speak of.”

“The building is shabby.”

“I’m not really crazy about the location.”

So by the time I finally brought someone interested enough to make a decent offer, someone who would qualify for a mortgage and easily pass the co-op board, I expected my sellers would be eager to give a reasonable counter-offer. 

I called the husband at work.

“Oh, Liz. Hi. Now’s not a good time to talk. I’ll get back to you.”

He didn’t, so the next morning I called him again.

“I’m sorry, Liz. I’m in a meeting. Let’s talk this evening.”

Uh oh.

I called them at home that evening.

“Hi,” I said when the wife picked up.

“Oh, Liz. Wait a minute. I’ll get my husband.”

I don’t know where she had to get him from, but it took longer than it should have.

“Okay, Liz, now we’re both here. On speakerphone.”

“Yes, we’re both here.”

I waited for one of them to say something else. One of them didn’t. Neither did the other.

“Are you guys still there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a counter for me?” I asked.

Again I waited for one of them to say something, and again one of them didn’t. Neither did the other.

“The buyer is extremely qualified,” I said. “He makes a zillion dollars. He’s ready to do a deal, and he said to tell you he would never get rid of your painted floors, because he loves them.”

“So do we, Liz.”

“Yes, so do we. We love our floors.”

“So do I,” I said. “They’re lovely. Do you have a counter-offer? You know this is the first solid offer we’ve received in the six months I’ve been marketing your home.”

“Well,” the wife said, and then she said nothing for a while, until: “we’ve decided to stay put.”

“Yes, Liz. We’re staying put. Home sweet home and all that.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“We’re not going to sell.”

“That’s right. We’re not going to sell.”

What the hell! Parrots. I was dealing with parrots.

“We’ll never have the energy to create floors like this again.”

“My wife is right, Liz. We’ll never have such energy again.”

“We put our hearts and souls into these floors.”

“Our hearts and our souls. The flower garden alone, on our daughter’s floor. You have no idea…”

“Yes, I do.” I said. I had an idea, all right.

They had told me at least a dozen times how much heart and soul had gone into the painting of their floors. They had also told me at least a dozen times how ready they were to move on to a new project in a larger home.

“So take the loft off the market,” he said.

“Yes, please take it off the market,” she said. “Bye now.”

They hung up.

I was floored.

*** 

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Ear Today, Goin' Tomorrow

I’m home. I should be on a plane right now, headed for Paris. But I’m not going.

I’m okay with it. I have to be. Doctor’s orders.

Well, not quite orders. “Strong suggestion.”

“Give it more time, Liz. Another round of steroids and your hearing should be back to normal. A few more weeks, and it will be safer to fly.”  I got the message loud and clear: “Just do it.”

It reminded me of a buyer I once worked with, back in the 90’s. I was in my office when a call came in.

“Hi,” the voice on the other end said. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“So is mine,” I said “With an ‘s’”.

“I know that. What do you prefer being called?”

“Liz,” I said. “What about you?”

She laughed. “How about Cutie?”

“Okay,” I said, thinking it might be fun to work with her.

“I was planning to travel this week,” she said. “To Paris. But I canceled.”

Cancel a trip to Paris? I couldn’t imagine.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “Why?”

“I need to find an apartment. Lawyer’s orders.”

“Really,” I said.

“Well, not quite orders,” she said. “Strong suggestion.”

We met for lunch to discuss her needs. She was in her mid-thirties, slender, with long dark curly hair and an engaging smile.

“I have a trust fund,” she said. “And I have been advised to buy an apartment before the market turns. Five hundred thousand. That’s what I can spend. I need below 14th and something with character.”

It was an interesting time for New York’s downtown real estate market. We were like the poor country cousins to Uptown. Throughout the recession Uptown had large sales, with hefty commissions. Downtown had few places to match, until the multitude of large loft conversions began to hit the market. As prices rose, units sold quickly, and were re-sold, and re-sold again, almost always at a great profit. But we were not there yet.

Therefore, Cutie’s lawyer had timed her search well.

“Five hundred thousand,” I said. “We’ll find you something.”

We looked at a dozen places, but none of them appealed to her.

I took her to a duplex just east of  2nd Avenue. “I love the look of this building,” she said. “Do you know anything about it?”

“Oh, it’s High Victorian Gothic,” I said, as casually as I might have said, “the sky is blue.”

“Ha!” she said. “You just happen to know that?”

I looked at her and smiled. “Sure do, Cutie. It was built to be a refuge for girls from abusive homes. I think it was also a school.”

“I like this place even more now,” she said.

We walked up half a dozen steps to the front door, and entered the apartment. She walked around. It was spacious, with high ceilings, and had a solid staircase to the lower level.

“It feels like a home,” she said. “How much is it?”

“Considerably less than your budget,” I said. “And there’s something else.”

“Like what?”

“Originally it was called the Elizabeth Home for Girls.”

“You are kidding me!” she said.

“No, Cutie, I am not.”

“Liz,” she said, “this is meant to be, obviously. Talk to my lawyer. He’s not too impossible. Make it work, so I can take my trip.”

And now, tonight, as I sit in my apartment instead of on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, I remember her clearly, and how easily she had been able to switch gears. 

Taking care of business. That’s what she did.

That’s what I’m doing. Taking care of business, a second dose of steroids.

Cutie bought an apartment. I’m buying time for my ears to heal, so I can take my trip. 

*** 

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To Buy and Not To Buy

Shopping. There are so many ways to do it. Impulse, bargain, need. An endless list.

And don’t forget timing.

I am an impulse shopper. Take, for instance, the silk embroidered prayer cap from somewhere in view of the Himalayas.

At least that’s where they told me it was from when I bought it, at an antique store in Putnam, in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut.

I had to have that cap. I truly did. The moment I saw it I hugged it to me. I went to pay without looking at the tiny price tag pinned inside.

I would have paid anything.

Well, not anything. Certainly a lot more than the “twelve dollars, ma’am,” I was told at the counter.

I felt I had found the shiny needle in a voluminous haystack of antiques.

I look at that cap all the time, and all the time, it makes me happy.

So does my apartment. It makes me happy, even when I’m not. I owe my apartment to a former colleague of mine. She asked me to have a look, to help her price it before she listed it for sale. The moment she opened the front door I knew. 

“Please don’t list this,” I said. “I want it.”

It’s not like I decided on the apartment the same way I decided on the cap. I had not been looking for a prayer cap. Really, why would I? But I had just started to look for an affordable apartment to purchase. Just. This was the second one. And it was the right one. I had no doubts at all.

I will always be grateful to my colleague for giving me that opportunity.

Sometimes it does come knocking, and this time it was loud and clear.

***

One afternoon I was leaving the office with another broker when a young man with a wispy beard skateboarded up to us. We were just outside the front door. He was wearing cut-off jeans, unlaced sneakers and looked as though he hadn’t slept in a month.

“You guys brokers?” he asked. Since I was heading to an appointment, my colleague answered.

“Yes,” she said.

“Coooool! Got anything to show me?”

My colleague looked at me, rolled her eyes. I waved goodbye and went to meet my customer.

The next morning I got a phone call.

“Remember that kid, yesterday?” my colleague said.

“The skateboarder.”

“I showed him a duplex on Bethune. He wants it. Says he has cash.”

The kid bought the apartment. Hired an architect. Gutted the place. Hired a decorator. Made it gorgeous.

***

One Sunday several years ago a woman showed up early at the open house I was hosting. She made herself right at home.

“This apartment has everything I want,” she said. “I can see myself living here.”

Soon enough, people began to fill the apartment. Brokers with their customers, buyers with questions to ask me, neighbors who were nosy and just wanted a glimpse of the space. I didn’t want to be rude to the woman, but I couldn’t spend all my time with her.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said.

“I’ll come back when you’re not so busy,” she said.

She returned at the end of the open house.

“I like you, Liz. I think we could work well together. I love this apartment, but maybe you could show me a few other places. What do you think about Brooklyn?”

“What parts of it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s just give it a shot, okay?”

Brooklyn is huge. HUGE. This was like asking a broker in Delaware to show you houses in Pennsylvania.

“What parts of Brooklyn interest you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Do you think I would like living there?”

How the hell would I know?

“I hear Forest Hills is nice, too,” she said.

So is the South of France.

To find the time to work with this woman I would have to curtail all other activities. Including the performance of bodily functions.

Over the next few years I would see her, at other open houses, with other brokers. She would wave, or smile at me. I would wonder how many brokers had spent how many hours making how many phone calls to make how many appointments to try to find her a home.

About four months ago I was about to get on the elevator of my building on the ground floor just as she was getting off. She was with a broker I knew quite well, who had a new listing for a one bedroom apartment several floors above mine.

“Hey, Liz,” the broker said. “I’d like to introduce you to my customer. She just decided to buy the apartment a few floors above yours.”

“Really,” I said. I turned to the woman. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Same here. You live in the building?” she asked. “How great! We’ll be neighbors.”

She seemed tired. “Three years,” she said. “It has taken me almost three years. You know how many apartments I’ve seen? Real estate is exhausting.”

That’s true, it can be, especially in this city.

“Congratulations,” I said. I  meant it, for it was her time. At last. 

 ***

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Memorial Day in Vermont

This post won’t be focused on real estate or New York City, but about where I am now, and also about my ears.

I’m in northern Vermont, a bit southeast of Burlington. Today, for the first time in days, it’s sunny. I’m so happy to see the sun after cold, rainy days. Yet inside my sister’s yellow gabled Victorian it’s been nice and warm, because I wore heavy socks, a red and black wool lumber jacket and a wool Peruvian hat.

I’m with my husband and my nephews. But not at the moment. At the moment I am the only one awake, typing. The sun is streaming through the long windows of the front parlor.

Now let’s get to my ears. I think/hope they’re finally getting better. We’ll have to wait and see.

A week ago today my throat felt thick. Thought nothing of it. Tuesday night my left ear began to feel as though it were submerged in water, or stuffed with cotton. I can’t describe it better as I had nothing to compare it to.

I called my doctor. “Can I fly tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes, take Afrin and Sudafed.”

The advice worked, for the flight. It was painless, but the next day both ears were weird and I called the doctor again. I had blocked Eustachian tubes. Soon I couldn’t hear anyone when they spoke to me. Also, they couldn’t hear me, because my voice alternated between hoarse, squeaky high, and barely there. All three variations in a single sentence. 

This is how some conversations went:

“What?”

“What?"

‘What?”

“I said pass the pumpernickel.”

“What?”

"What?”

“Oh. That’s nice.”

It’s a good thing my nephews accept me as I am. I can’t hear them, they can’t hear me, I haven’t been cooking for them. Because of my ears. They make me tea.

We watched an Audrey Hepburn movie that I couldn’t hear. We kept turning the sound up but then little pingy sounds came out of the speakers, like bb’s being flung at the window, and that was because the sound was too loud.

“What did she say?”

“What did you say?"

“Huh?”

“Huh?"

Today’s a little better. Today I could hear sounds out of my left ear and could even distinguish certain words. Such a relief.

I’m outside now, on the deck. It’s gloriously warm and sunny. I’m overlooking the vegetable garden, furrowed by Farmer Ted. There’s also a chicken house, and one big fat red chicken wanders the lawn, looking for its chicken friends, but either hawks or dogs ate them.

Now I’m in the kitchen. This is what’s in the kitchen: lots of windows, a large wooden table, six chairs, a desk, several computers, a small couch, a yellow Heavy Duty KitchenAid, a Hoosier, a work island, a book case, a large bench, a plant stand for their tomato plants now growing by the minute.

This is what’s not in the kitchen: a dishwasher.  

I asked my  nephew, “Why don’t you have a dishwasher?”

“They’re stupid. We don’t need them,” he said.

We went for a walk. The streets are lined with American flags mounted on telephone poles. It is Memorial Day, but this is not token patriotism. This town is small, but it’s heart is big. I know this. I flew Jet Blue up here ten days after 9/11. The two main streets were lined with American flags. More flags than Midtown. More flags than Uptown. I remember today, almost twelve years later, how ashamed I felt for the parts of my city that flew less flags than Richmond, Vermont.

Let me tell you about how strange it felt to fly so soon after 9/11. Almost empty airports. Hushed voices. Fear. Polite alertness.

JetBlue did what it could. We had two flight attendants, an Egyptian and an Israeli. To calm our nerves, they told lots of jokes. Here’s one:

“Now please pay attention, ladies and gentlemen. If anything bad happens, like an engine fails and we start to go down, then those of you traveling with more than one child please quickly choose your favorite.”

It was extremely funny, especially at that time. And there were more jokes but I don’t remember them. I do remember how I felt being picked up at the airport by my sister, and seeing the flags lined up along her street, and along the main street, which is just around the corner. It moved me almost to tears.

I will always love visiting here, because of my family, and because of what I felt in this small town during those raw days.

See you in the city.

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(Lower) East Side Story

Earlier this week I was at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary for an eye test. Since  I was in the neighborhood, I then walked down the block to Little Poland and had some pierogi with onions.

I used to live around here, decades ago, just two blocks further down Second Avenue. Before that, my First Husband (FH) and I were living in a miniscule apartment on West 12th Street.

At that time, I was pregnant and early on a Monday morning I had my baby at what is now New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Try rolling that off your tongue to a cabbie while you’re in the middle of a contraction.

Fortunately I didn’t have to. We had a car – a turquoise VW Bug – and the hospital had a much shorter name: New York Hospital.

The deal was, I’d have the baby and then my husband would find us a larger apartment.

I did what I had to do and my FH did what he had to do. My job was by far the easier. He read obituaries, bribed doormen, drove anywhere and everywhere he heard of an apartment becoming available. East Side, West Side, all around the town. Everything was either gone by the time he got there or was a piece of crap.

Some stories never change.

Wednesday morning he drove to the Sheridan Square news stand to get the latest Village Voice. With an increasing sense of urgency he drove while our friend Margaret read the real estate ads and found a place that sounded promising.

“They only want a family,” she said.

“I’m a family,” FH said.

“We have to go to an office on East 14th Street,” she said. “To see an agent or someone.” They drove to the office and met with the agent. They were the first ones there but soon a crowd of interested renters began to form.

“You’re a family?” the agent asked.

“Yes,” FH said. “My wife just had a baby.”

“Oh, yeah?” said the agent. “Where?”

“New York Hospital. 68th and York.”

“I know where it is,” the agent said. “What’s her name?”

The agent called the hospital and verified that I indeed had given birth to a baby boy, just two days ago.

“Okay, you’re set,” the agent said. “Just give me two hundred seventy bucks cash, one month rent, one month security, and we’ll go see your apartment.”

That’s how it was done. Cash up front and then you saw the apartment. At least that was how our deal was done. My FH handed over the cash, the agent grabbed a set of keys, told the growing line of hopefuls they were too late.

It was the Second Avenue Deli building, the entrance on 10th. How could that be anything but great? FH knew he’d made the right decision by paying up front for matzoh ball soup, pastrami on rye, salami omelets practically on demand.

“It’s a good apartment,” the agent said, as he, Margaret and FH waited for the super. “Only reason it’s vacant is the previous tenant committed suicide.”

“In the apartment?” FH asked.

“Yeah, I think in the kitchen,” the agent said.

“Huh,” FH said.

The super’s Polish wife showed up. She spoke and understood just a few words of English, but it was enough for her to realize she’d made a huge mistake. A family of gypsies had come to her to see a storefront next to the Deli, but because of her limited English she misunderstood, and showed them our apartment instead. After all, they were a family. And now they had occupied it.

There they were, the father, mother and two kids. All were hostile and at one point one of the daughters pointed a pair of scissors at Margaret, who was already perturbed.

And then there was the décor. The entire apartment was painted black. Every room, every closet.  

“I’d kill myself, too, if I had to live with this,” FH said.

The gypsies wouldn’t budge. And I apologize here if I sound politically incorrect, but back then it was gypsy, not Roma. And there were tons of squatters in the area. Runaways, users, dealers, gypsies, artists living in vacant buildings, especially a few blocks further east in Alphabet City. At least FH had the lease.

And this family wasn’t totally squatting. More like semi-squatting. They had come to see a smaller, street-level space. Who wouldn’t move into an airy two bedroom apartment five floors above street level, if it was offered to them by mistake?

The agent haggled with the father and ended up paying him fifty bucks to vacate.

Our very own home sweet home.

FH and his father spent three weeks painting every inch of that home with Benjamin Moore Empire Gold, a vibrant Mexican yellow. It took three coats to cover the black. A coat a week.

This is what we paid for: rent control, two bedrooms, windowed kitchen with brick wall, a bathroom with some water damage in the ceiling over the toilet , which caused a chunk of it to fall down on a visitor’s head at an inopportune time.

It was a great apartment, and I was so happy there. The East Village seemed like the center of the world back then. So alive and vibrant, even at a time when the Summer of Love had already begun to morph into something almost ominous.

It was an amazing time to be young on those streets. Tompkins Square Park. Gem Spa. The Electric Circus. Kiehl’s. Julian’s Billiards. Just walking around was enough. I didn’t mind the bullet holes in our bedroom window overlooking East 10th Street. I didn’t even mind the creepy man who regularly followed me into our lobby. “Ay, mami.”

I walked down those streets as if I was born to live there, pushing my baby in the navy blue pram my mother had bought.

A pram, on a street filled with tenements.

Such a long time ago.

Yet sitting in Little Poland the other day, it seemed like yesterday. Or maybe the day before yesterday. Little Poland wasn’t there then, but it could have been. The Second Avenue Deli, Kiev, Veselka and B&H Dairy were. Also Veniero’s and Di Robertis. Places of nourishment, all.

There was something about the East Village then. There is something about it now. There have been changes here and there, but those streets… Take away a few condos, a couple of banks, a Starbucks or two.

There’s a word for what the East Village is.

Comfortable. The East Village is comfortable.

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