Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(35)

I threw away books and left a box full in the lobby for neighbors to take. I threw out Steve’s remaining clothes—clothes I couldn’t part with at the end, clothes that reminded me so much of him—his boxers, his gym shorts, his flannel shirt. But now? What would I do with them? I didn’t want to imagine other people wearing them.

Reluctantly, I took down from the shelf a big brown grocery bag marked “Steve’s urn and personal effects.” I sat on the couch that used to be ours and went through the bag. Tears fell. I didn’t clearly remember this, but after scattering his ashes I had turned the urn into a kind of time capsule, filled with personal items (Steve’s hairbrush, watch, eyeglasses …).

Seeing Steve’s photo over and over: driver’s license, passport, family photos, snapshots—seeing how handsome he had been, and how he had changed, aged, how HIV and meds had changed his face—and thinking, “This used to be mine, he used to be mine” (is he still?).

It all seemed so delicate, fragile, like I might break these things with my thick, clumsy hands, even the photos—especially the photos. I felt half afraid, but also infused with tenderness. I opened a little plastic case that Steve used to keep in his gym bag. There, as if not a day had passed: his gym lock, some gum, his gym card. I remembered how he had worked out the night before he died. I didn’t know what to do. Throw it all away? Keep it? I couldn’t decide, so I didn’t decide.

I packed the urn back up, placed it back in the paper bag, and returned it to the closet. I closed the door. I went to the kitchen and filled a tall glass with water. I drank it in one gulp. I placed it in the dishwasher and left. I called a taxi to take me to the airport.





Trees in Winter





A YEAR IN TREES


Shortly after I returned from San Francisco, someone happened to ask me how I had managed to get over losing Steve, whom I’d loved so much and been with for so long. I gave a rather vague answer. What I had really wanted to say but found myself unable to explain (for it would have sounded too strange) was that I learned a good deal about moving through grief from some trees I once knew. They were not my trees. I didn’t plant them. They stood right outside the windows in my first New York apartment. The only tending done was to give them my full attention over the course of four seasons.

When I moved in it was April, still cold, and the branches were bare. Facing northeast from the sixth floor, my view of Manhattan was unobstructed, seen through a latticework veil. There were five trees, each distinct. They were not beautiful. My next-door neighbor, a landscape designer, told me that the species, Ailanthus altissima, is an urban weed. But I never expected beauty. That they were tall and strong and present was enough. I found that Ailanthus derives from an Indonesian word meaning “tree of heaven.”

I didn’t cover the windows with shades or curtains. I would wake with the sun and lie in bed and watch the tree limbs for a minute. Some mornings, the branches looked as if they were floating on wind drafts, as light as leaves. With a stormy sky, they turned black and spindly, like shot nerve endings.

Two years had passed since Steve’s death, and though I had largely adjusted to his absence, I still experienced intense pangs of grief—painful unpleasure, in Freud’s exquisite phrase. At times, I’d be tempted to take out old photos, just to look, just one picture, just for a minute, like a junkie on the verge of relapsing. But I resisted. I had seen the trees stand up to strong winds and hold their own against the elements.

By the end of May, buds had sprouted and turned to leaves. I lost my view completely but gained a lush green canopy. Along with the leaves came another development: rustling, in countless variations, soft, sharp, gentle, syncopated—like a quintet doing vocal exercises in anticipation of a command performance. Privy to melodies out of earshot to those on the street below, I tried transcribing the rustling but to no avail, the letters of the alphabet proving insufficient somehow.

The summer was a rainy one, perfect for watching Tree TV, as I came to call it. Once, during a ferocious thunderstorm I’d just managed to escape, I found the boughs being tossed about like rag dolls. The branches thrashed violently—whipping back and forth, slamming against the windows with a thud, then sliding down slowly before being lifted aloft again. I was riveted. The trees, clearly overmatched by the combination of winds, rain and lightning, were not fighting this storm but yielding to it.

This is just how they were built, how the species had evolved: to survive.

I am hardly the first to note that trees are at their loveliest when the leaves die. Correction: can be. My trees’ leaves turned a sickly yellow and emitted an odor reminiscent of cat urine. In a way, having a new frame of reference was for the best. Steve had died on an October morning, and even if I were somehow to forget the actual date, I will always associate it with walking home from the hospital under a bright blue sky, the air crisp, trees lining the streets in their full glory: autumn, unmistakably. When it came time to scatter his ashes, my five sisters joined me at a forest preserve where the trees were ablaze in gold and russet. I buried his ashes at the base of a redwood.

With winter, the trees finally began shedding leaves. Background became foreground; my view returned. One morning as the sun rose, I caught the Chrysler Building casting its shadow on the MetLife building, a slim dusky finger drawn across the striated facade, as if tickling it awake. I felt I must be the only person on the entire island of Manhattan seeing this.