90th and Park

Arrival on Sunday evening. Our driver, from somewhere in Africa, a warm face, inward-seeming. “Triborough Bridge or Midtown?” We select the latter (for the Triborough there’s a toll). Across Queens Boulevard, Rego Park, massive girder viaducts as we approach the river from the other side. Finally, last span, and down into the familiar numbered streets of Manhattan, crosstown block of apartments, dailiness of people’s lives right to the rivers edge—you enter in…

1111 Park, at 90th, Ann L.’s apartment, on the tenth floor. She’s still in Maine for the last of the holiday, quiet evening. Two doorman stand as we enter, offer to help with the luggage. One hands me an envelope, folded in half the long way, key inside, attached to a photo of Ann’s grandson, wearing a yarmulkah.

Apartment at night, an entire life, and past. Paintings by lamplight, some Ann’s own, a Milton Avery kind of feel. A horizontal run along the walls, nicely irregular, one to the next, but all of them chosen with one sensibility. Folk art from Ann’s travels, tucked in here and there. A wooden frog from India? Flat pieces, off-beat shapes, connected by small metal pins. Strings for movement—a puppet, or children’s toy.

View from all the windows, buildings by night—a view of old New York, shape of water tower on black girders just in front of the window—Antonioni, but without the anomie. A joining in, vast open-armed city, anonymous and alive.

Apartment lights, warm and discreet, each all different distances. Window shades, lights behind, balconies etched against glowing black sky. Pencil-thin high-rise off towards the river, dots of light on various floors. Nearer—bank of windows on Lexington, something commercial, but old.