Maeve in America Read online

  Annie Moore never made a fortune, or wrote a book, or invented a computer, and why should she? Why should immigrants be deemed extraordinary in order to deserve a place at the table? She did enough. She was just one woman who lived a short life, a hard one. She had eleven children, but only six made it through to adulthood. Can you even imagine burying five of your children? I can’t. I tuck that part away in the “she must have been different from me, with fewer feelings” folder, the delusional one that’s full of news stories from faraway places that are too terrible to bear. Annie died before she turned fifty, but she lives on in every girl from a country shot through with rebellion and hunger, and in every immigrant who gives America their humanity, as every immigrant does.

  Five Interactions, One Man

  Party Tricks

  I met Dr. Glasses at a party. It was a low-key house party that I’d gone to with a date, so I was polite about the whole “but who’s that guy?” thing. The party had a theme, and that theme was apples. I had never come across this before, and was initially hostile. Apples? Why apples? They are so wholesome and outdoorsy. They remind me of childhood treats that are not treats at all. Natural sugar? Get out of my face. Besides, this wasn’t a kids’ party, and if it was, the kids would surely throw a collective fit when they found out that instead of pirates or fairies as a theme, some Goody Two-shoes parent had chosen apples. And why even a theme? I confronted my friend Dan, the party thrower. “Don’t you get it?” he asked, ladling mulled cider into my mug and spiking it with apple brandy. “This is how we get fucked up and stay in touch with the changing seasons.”

  Indeed, I did think about autumn and how nice it was in the park, while my date got fucked up enough for the both of us. I left him in the kitchen, mumbling about climbing trees and how he wished he could do that instead of work. Forever helpful, I suggested he quit his unfulfilling job at the architecture firm and become a forester. “Was he the one in Training Day?” he slurred. It wasn’t until I was in the grocery store weeks later and saw a man who looked like an ancient Denzel Washington that I realized my drunken date meant Forest Whitaker. There and then, among the laundry detergents, I rolled my eyes all the way up.

  Back at the party, I wandered around. Some people were arguing about Israel by the cheese, so I stepped away from that whole situation. I was beginning to think it was a terrible party when I went into the living room and sat next to a bunch of people, including this one cutie who made me laugh a lot by waggling his glasses in fake comedy surprise at something I’d said. Finding me funny and also being funny himself? What’s your ring size, pal? I didn’t ask him that, but I did ask him if he knew what Pilates was. I cannot remember why. He said he did know, and recommended it to patients of his if they had recently had a baby or if they had back problems, but he’d never tried it himself. That’s how I discovered that (a) he’d never had a baby, (b) he did not have back problems, and (c) he worked as a doctor. Not only that, he worked as a doctor in an underserved part of the city, which is very impressive and carries a lot of moral, if not actual, capital. I left the party shortly after that, alone, but decided to keep an eye on Dr. Glasses. I emailed Dan in the car home to apologize half-heartedly for leaving my idiot date there and request, with the other half of my heart, all of Dr. Glasses’s social media information. Turns out I didn’t even have to resort to hounding him online, because the very next week I bumped into him in my local coffee shop.

  We Both Love Coffee!

  At that time, I lived in Prospect Park South along Church Avenue, and went regularly to a small coffee shop that catered exclusively to gentrifiers like myself. At least, I appeared to be a gentrifier, even though I couldn’t possibly have bought a place, let alone rented my own place at that time. In fact, I was paying $700 a month to live in the spare bedroom of a couple’s apartment underneath the family who owned it, kind of like a . . . loser? Losers can gentrify too, though, and I much preferred people to think of me as a wealthy white artist who was storming the neighborhood. One morning, on my way to the gym, I stopped in the coffee shop, and there was Dr. Glasses. He was eating a pain au chocolat and was absorbed in the science section of The New York Times. Like any clever, absentminded person who is so busy helping others they don’t even have time for napkins, he had flakes of pastry in his stubble and melted chocolate on his fingers. He was happy to see me; I could tell because he smiled so hard his cute little chin doubled. We had a giddy exchange where we established that I lived nearby, and once a week he worked nearby, and what are the chances, and oh, doesn’t this place have good coffee, and isn’t this neighborhood so fun but it’s a shame it’s changing so quickly, and, what? I’m obsessed with Tuesday’s science section of The New York Times too, and how come it’s shrinking, and jeez, well, it was lovely to run into you, and hey, should we swap numbers?

  The Least Good We Could Do

  Dr. Glasses had a pair of tickets for a Peter Singer talk about his book The Most Good You Can Do. The book is all about how to maximize your do-gooding capabilities, like how to earn a ton of money and give it to people who need it, etc. It’s a great book. Hearing Singer talk about all these people who look like cold hard capitalists but who are quietly helping people in gigantic ways made me feel hopeful and empowered, which is an ideal set of feelings to have in any prelude to a romantic encounter, don’t you think? Afterward we walked around in the balmy evening, looking at menus, deciding where to eat. What a heavenly, underappreciated time that is in any day. The pleasure of choosing, the anticipation of a couple of hours with good food and better flirting.

  We settled on a Sicilian pizza place and had a really fun dinner. At one point the waitress tapped her teeth to alert me that I had something in mine. I tipped accordingly, what a great girl. As we wandered to my subway stop, I said, “That was so cool of the waitress to tell me I had something in my teeth. I hate it when people don’t.” He swore he hadn’t noticed, and then he said it was kind of a boring thing to talk about, the etiquette of people telling each other they had something in their teeth. I disagreed. He insisted it was, at the very least, kind of a clichéd thing to say, something that someone always says. “Oh,” I said, understanding what he meant. “Yeah, it’s like when someone mentions swans and someone else always says swans can break your arm.”

  He said that he had never heard anyone saying that and he laughed a lot, then we kissed. It was not a good kiss. I know that because the whole time we were kissing I was thinking, We’re kissing now we’re kissing now we’re kissing now, and at no point did it feel natural or unselfconscious. Chemistry had fled, leaving physics and biology to cope on their own with these two strangers who had recently eaten pizza pressing their mouths and teeth together and kind of mashing them around.

  A Very Painful Rash

  After the shabby kiss, we exchanged a couple of texts, but never bothered to meet up again. Weeks later, unrelated, I got an itchy rash under one arm and immediately stopped using deodorant. If you ever need a killer line to open a job interview with, you’re absolutely welcome to use that one. The rash spread back across my shoulder blade and became almost unbearably painful. It burned and stung, in a deep way that I felt through my whole chest. I told my friend John, and he diagnosed it, without looking, as shingles. He said he got shingles too, from the stress of being in a nasty relationship. I had no such excuse, so I thought it was because I’d been having too many milkshakes. I went to the doctor, and she said it wasn’t unhealthy eating, it was just a virus. She put on a plastic apron, gloves, and a mask as she spoke. By the end of my consultation she looked like a beekeeper, and I had learned that she was about as much use to me as a beekeeper. There’s not a lot you can do with shingles, except politely wait for them to leave. And also make sure none of the “liquid from the blisters comes into contact with anyone who has not been vaccinated against chicken pox.”

  Stuck at home, drifting in and out of pain, having exhausted the listening potential of my friend
s and family with my not very exciting stories gleaned from podcasts, I grew bored. I got the devil in me, and the devil’s sidekick, my phone, was only too pleased to help stir things up. Call it boredom, call it looking for free medical advice, call it shingle and looking to mingle—all I know is I texted Dr. Glasses with my disease news, and he offered to come take a look. I demurred. I did think it was sweet of him to offer, although I think doctors feel like they should offer. In any case, my bedridden self couldn’t see any other prospects on the horizon, and decided to ignore the bad kiss and try to give Dr. Glasses another go, once the shingles had moved on.

  Eggs for Dinner

  I was invited to a dinner party thrown by a new friend of mine, Diane, a performance artist and actor and sort of all-around mystery woman. The idea was that everybody had to invite somebody who worked in a different profession than themselves, thereby creating a big mix of people from all sorts of backgrounds who would not normally meet. Naturally, that didn’t work out because most of the people invited only knew people like themselves, but I cleverly used the opportunity to invite Dr. Glasses. We sat around a bountiful table, separated from the people we’d arrived with. Diane, from the head of the table, messily carving a chicken, told us to say a few words about who we are, who we really are, and why we do what we do, as in really do what we do.

  I wondered if Dr. Glasses could raise the conversation level above the intense need for self-expression shared by the rest of us, but when his turn came he took up just as much time as everyone else, in an equally charmless and long-winded way. The dinner puttered along, a dancer beside me compulsively swiping her dating app under the table, unable to focus on anything else. Before dessert, Diane explained that she was in the process of harvesting her eggs, and asked that one of us accompany her upstairs to administer her hormone injection. She looked to me, I looked to Dr. Glasses, neither of us said a word. I didn’t want to go, but I felt like he should at least offer. Don’t doctors feel like they should at least offer? Apparently not.

  The seconds ticked by until a harpist seated at the head of the table said, “I’ll go.” Later in the evening, when complimented for the umpteenth time on his selfless choice of profession, Dr. Glasses revealed something that surprised and disappointed me. He expressed an interest in doing comedy and showed us all a video of one of his comedy sketches. It was very bad. After the dinner, as a group of us stood around discussing transportation options home, Dr. Glasses spotted a bus that worked for him and chased after it, barely saying goodbye. Public transportation in this city is almost shabby enough to excuse this faux pas; it could have been an hour before another bus showed up again. Besides, any hope I was holding out for another kiss, a better one, had flickered almost completely out. But only almost! His darting off was a relief and an insult at the same time.

  The Sweetest Coda

  At two in the morning, he texted to apologize for running away without a thank-you/goodbye/possibly more. I told him it was fine. Rude, but fine. He said he’d dropped his house keys in his madcap dash, and had to break a window to get into his house. The petals of my pettiness bloomed large and, despite my ambivalence toward him as a potential boyfriend, I couldn’t help but feel pleased that this man, this perfectly nice man who had run off instead of staying and falling in love with me, had paid for it in some minor way. I tallied it up in my mean little mind: he wasn’t the person I’d imagined, he didn’t think I was worth missing a bus for, and I’d been forced to watch a terrible comedy video when I least expected it. At least, I told myself before I fell into a deep, beautiful sleep, at least he’d lost his house keys.

  Stormy with the Calm Eyes

  AT LINCOLN CENTER ONE NIGHT, some friends and I were loitering around the illuminated fountain, drinking tea out of paper cups and gossiping about which celebrities deserved their careers and which ones didn’t, when a cockapoo puppy came bounding toward us, russet curls bouncing, sweet little face shining in the moonlight, eager to make friends. As his dapper owner looked on indulgently, I screamed with happiness, got down on the ground to play with the puppy, and did an entire photo shoot where I pretended he had proposed to me by the fountain’s edge. My friend Starlee, the best dog owner I know, stood off to the side, scowling. When the puppy left, after I’d shared the content we’d created together on Instagram, I asked Starlee why she didn’t say hello. “That animal was paid for, you know, he was not a rescue.” She spat out her words. “That’s an Instagram dog.” “You don’t know that,” I replied, defensive, wishing I hadn’t tagged the creature’s account, which had more followers than my own. I’d forgotten how angry Starlee got when people chose to buy instead of rescue a dog, so I steered the conversation back to pre-puppy times. “Anyway, what about B. J. Novak? All privilege, or some small scrap of talent?”

  There are thousands and thousands of purebred animals living their giddy little lives in New York, but the ones that really intrigue me are the rescues. They rule this town. I could live a long, if not exactly happy, life as someone’s rescue animal. Rescue animals are prized possessions in New York, and unexpected status symbols. It seems like the older and sicker your animal is, the richer and greater you are. This correlation is quite mystifying to me because if I became crazy-rich and powerful, I would go all-out for proper high-status animals. I would have a panther or an emu, or even one of each, in matching diamanté collars. Ideally I’d have a bevy of magnificent animals that lolloped after me en masse when I took a walk, and waited outside coffee shops while I bought them little treats therein. The barista would know my order, one black coffee for me, and eleven dainty madeleines for the snow leopard and her giant turtle sister. Fancy, wild animals would be a mistake, though, in that I suspect if I did get the biggest and fanciest pets I could afford, people would actually look down on me, and tut-tut at the money I spent while there were free, ugly, and wrecked animals somewhere down the road, waiting for a home. Expensive, designer animals are frowned upon. Instead, people go out of their way to adopt janky, problematic, and elderly animals. They pour love and money into these creatures, sustaining a life that wouldn’t last candlelight in other places and times.

  This rescue phenomenon is remarkable to me, because I come from a rural background where an animal is supposed to pull its weight. They’re not supposed to be ornaments, and certainly not supposed to be burdensome in any way. On a farm, livestock is food, dogs are shepherds, and cats are, however desultory their attempts, mouse controllers. A prized animal is a functional one. But that’s back there, and back then. Things are different here in the comfortable urbanity of certain parts of the city where the luckiest ones live out a life of financial rewards and wonderful schools and great coffee. Type A people with great careers and stunning butts eventually swivel their Warby Parkered eyes around to those less fortunate.

  No, not always to those people less fortunate; I’m talking about those dogs, and sometimes cats, who have fallen on hard times and need a hero. This scenario is the one time in this city when weakness is a plus. Lolloping Labradors rule the suburbs, but they’re far too easy and fun for New Yorkers. In this city, if you’re a person or an animal hoping to stand out, I’d advise you to be extraordinarily beautiful. Or else really, really weird. High-maintenance is a good thing; underbites, crossed eyes, and missing limbs are medals of honor for these proud dog owners. Personality flaws and behavioral problems are indulgently cared for with therapists and medical professionals employed to their fullest, and everybody wants a feel-good bio for their particular pet. In this “if you can make it here” type of town, it’s a powerful message not only to make it here for yourself and your family, but to have the time and money to spare to create a whole new life for a helpless creature rejected by everyone else.

  And it’s become quite the competition. Sometimes I wonder if it is too much for the animals themselves. I meet them, and hear their stories. “Oh, that’s Melody, she’s actually a cat. She has Feline HIV and two types of cancer
, plus she’s thirty-two years old and has dementia, so you can imagine the amount of meds! Anyway—we had to have three of Melody’s legs removed and her remaining one encased in titanium and centered. We call it her ‘Prong’ sometimes, but I worry that’s a bit mean. Her leg cost sixty thousand dollars. Isn’t she beautiful?” When her photographer and owner leaves the room to feed the sourdough, I lock eyes with this elderly robo-cat, who then looks beseechingly at the balcony door as if she’s begging me to . . . let her go. “But Melody,” I whisper, “we’re seventeen stories up!” She nods back, slowly, but I don’t open the door.

  There’s an animal shelter across the park from my house. It’s a little chaotic, because it’s a no-kill shelter. The place is magnificent in that they don’t euthanize the animals; even when they’re very ill, they try to save them. Then they keep them around until somebody, anybody, shows an interest in taking them home. I visit them often, and there’s something I love about the place. There’s a feeling of sadness that’s redeemed by a slight edge of hysteria and a surviving trace of optimism, like a midtown bar at four a.m. Cats in stacked cages glare out crossly; they don’t even try to seem friendly, and I respect them for that. Nobody wants a phony feline. Most of the cats, even the seniors with missing teeth and scraggly coats, get fostered and eventually adopted. The shelter’s main focus is on dogs; they have so many dogs! Pit bulls, with their almost goofy, almost scary heads; small silly poodle mixes jumping up and down with anxiety; mongrels with bright clever eyes and great attitudes; and then there is . . . Stormy.