Will > Books: nyc‎ (29)

The comics business was messy—a slapdash sprint to meet immovable deadlines, a blur of pages flowing from production to editorial and back before b

The comics business was messy—a slapdash sprint to meet immovable deadlines, a blur of pages flowing from production to editorial and back before being jettisoned out the door to the printer. Carmen loved it.

Miami was a city, too, Carmen knew—but New York was something else. A disease that bubbled and expanded and multiplied and morphed, like some kind of magical, mystical being that seemed from another world.

I’ve always been fascinated with Megan Abbott’s work and her ability to bring the tenets of noir to areas where you wouldn’t expect noir to exist—gymnastics, cheerleading, science, and so on. She crafts these narratives that are tense, fraught, and loaded with style outside of the typical noir settings. I remember reading Dare Me and just thinking, huh, wouldn’t it be cool to write a comic book noir? - from The Big Thrill interview

she had to become someone else to survive

Well the comic book industry was really struggling at that time after the glory years of the 50s and 60s. Comics were struggling. It wasn’t like today, where we have shows about Peacemaker or obscure characters – it was considered a dying industry. So I wanted to use her passion for the medium and contrast it with comics at its lowest point, and then show her fighting to control this one thing she loves. - from the Three Rooms Press interview

the drab, claustrophobic walls of the Port Authority giving her the most honest first impression of New York she could expect. As she wandered the cavernous transport hub, a concrete behemoth at the tail end of the Lincoln Tunnel, she got a heavy dose of what she’d only imagined. A city in disrepair, boiled down into this one sprawling bus terminal. Leaky ceilings, shadowy conversations, blaring horns, and unidentifiable smells all coalesced into an unbridled fear that gripped Carmen as she stepped out into the New York sunlight.

If it got published, I’d be ghostwriting it. . . . I mean, I’d get a shot, and if it did well we’d reveal my involvement, but. . . .”
“You’d be anonymous at first? Like his secret partner?”
Carmen waited a beat, letting her mind skim over what she already knew to be true. She nodded at Molly, hoping her friend couldn’t see her resigned expression in the dark.
“Is that what you want?” Molly asked. “To live your dream—in secret?”
Carmen felt her stomach twist into a painful, aching knot.

As my father lay dying, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact

As my father lay dying, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he’ll facilitate it, and then he’ll ignore the fact that you died.

Whereas Mary [Donald’s mother] was needy, Fred [his father] seemed to have no emotional needs at all. In fact, he was a highly-functioning sociopath. Although uncommon, sociopathy is not rare, afflicting as much as 3 percent of the population. Seventy-five percent of those diagnosed are men. Symptoms of sociopathy include a lack of empathy, a facility for lying, an indifference to right and wrong, abusive behavior, and a lack of interest in the rights of others. Having a sociopath as a parent, especially if there is no one else around to mitigate the effects, all but guarantees severe disruption in how children understand themselves, regulate their emotions, and engage with the world.

It was love of books that set her apart when she was growing up… in what she describes as a “shitty Trump apartment” in the gritty housing projects of Jamaica, Queens, quite different to the rarefied air of the nearby Jamaica Estates where the rest of the family lived. That gave her a grounding in reality. She took the subway to school. And she devoured literature. In her memoir, she recounts that her grandfather’s house did not display a single book until her uncle published his ghostwritten The Art of the Deal in the late 1980s. “I started reading when I was three and a half,” Trump says. “My horizons were already broader than anyone else in the family simply by virtue of that.” - from the Financial Times interview

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York and currently the de facto leader of the country’s COVID-19 response, has committed not only the sin of insufficiently kissing Donald’s ass, but the ultimate sin of showing Donald up by being better and more competent, a real leader who is respected and effective and admired. Donald can’t fight back by shutting Cuomo up or reversing his decisions; having abdicated his authority to lead a nationwide response, he no longer has the ability to counter decisions made at the state level…What he can do in order to offset the powerlessness and rage he feels is to punish the rest of us. He’ll withhold ventilators or steal supplies from states that have not groveled sufficiently…What Donald thinks is justified retaliation is, in this context, mass murder.

For his heroic service, Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palm. He was returned to the United States and died at Fort Monmouth, N.J

For his heroic service, Cher Ami was awarded the French Croix de Guerre with palm. He was returned to the United States and died at Fort Monmouth, N.J. on June 13, 1919, as a result of his wounds. Cher Ami was later inducted into the Racing Pigeon Hall of Fame in 1931, and received a gold medal from the Organized Bodies of American Pigeon Fanciers in recognition of his extraordinary service during World War I. - from the Smithsonian

…in a contest against passion, truth always makes a poor showing.

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Even the few who had come through the incident largely unhurt looked like shades; greeting the new arrivals with yellowed grins and vacant eyes.

Each man was the miserable monarch of a kingdom that squirmed with vermin, one that consisted of the dirt and a bit of sky each one could see from the dirt, of their feet in their boots in the mud—a kingdom indistinguishable from a grave.

Battle was said to harden a man—during my youth I’d heard this stated in the same offhand tones used to discuss first Communions and debutante balls—but in my case there had been no hardening, only a constant effort to hold together despite proliferating cracks.

“What did they see, Mama?” I murmured to her. “What was it that came to meet the birds that flew into the west?”
…My mother turned her face to me ov

“What did they see, Mama?” I murmured to her. “What was it that came to meet the birds that flew into the west?”
…My mother turned her face to me over her shoulder. “What came,” she said, “was night, and all its names.”

…not all migrations end with a return home. Every memory begins to cut if you hold onto it too tight.

If Simorgh unveils its face to you, you will find
that all the birds, be they thirty or forty or more,
are but the shadows cast by that unveiling.
What shadow is ever separated from its maker?
Do you see?
The shadow and its maker are one and the same,
so get over surfaces and delve into mysteries. - from that poem

The first funeral I attended was held under a black froth of wings. The deceased was a crow that had been gashed in the belly by a red-tailed hawk…That was the day my body started conspiring against me. I’d gotten my period.

I am tied by blood to Syria, and the country where my father was born is suffering while the country in which I was born still views us as not fully American. Where, then, does that leave me? And for people of Syrian descent living in diaspora, particularly for the generation of children who will grow up in exile because their parents left Syria for safety reasons, what can we take with us? What do we carry with us that cannot be lost? - from the Goodreads interview

We parted. I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“Tell me something beautiful,” you said.
I opened my mouth and out came the only thing that I had ever known to be as beautiful as it was true, that I had once met a woman who knew how to fly.
You clasped my chilled hand in yours and lowered your gaze to our fingers. I hoped I’d said the right thing. My mother always used to say that people in mourning prefer not to talk about the earth.
“What a wonderful thing,” you said, “for just one instant, to be so close to God.”

…she told about the coming resurrection, when our dead would rise from their graves and walk the Westside streets.
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…she told about the coming resurrection, when our dead would rise from their graves and walk the Westside streets.
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A Westsider should know better. The dead do not return; grief does not subside. Our memories fade, until those we loved are no more real than paper saints on a wall.

Originally, Westside was imagined as a straight mystery, but as I found myself writing the early chapters, it occurred to me that the street scenes I was writing felt eerily empty. I wondered why that might be, and gradually (over the course of two or three very painful drafts) evolved the concept of a city where the Westside is desolate and isolated and the Eastside is vastly overcrowded. - from the Bidwell Hollow interview

I was born and raised in Nashville, Tenn. As early as six, I remember wanting to live in New York City—this probably had something to do with obsessive rewatching of Home Alone 2 and the fact that Eloise was one of my favorite childhood reads. Even after I learned that living in New York usually doesn’t mean life at the Plaza Hotel, I was infatuated with the city, where I moved for college in 2006… One of the many reasons why I’m thrilled to continue working on the Gilda Carr series is to give me a chance to hang out with my own imagined version of New York—where, coincidentally, the rent is very low. - from the Bidwell Hollow interview

I paid my nickel and cupped my hands under the hose, slurping up whatever didn’t run through my fingers. I wiped my hands on the patron to my left, who was glassy with drink, his mouth stained bloody by the beet red liquor.

All I want is to help people—give them food, shelter, a midwife, a chance. But all that costs a hell of a lot of money, and crime is the only thing that pays.

The will to survive is fundamental to us all. But in a life-or-death situation—when calm, careful planning, and logical thinking are what’s needed

The will to survive is fundamental to us all. But in a life-or-death situation—when calm, careful planning, and logical thinking are what’s needed most—research shows that most of us will lose our shit.

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Being able to navigate your mental and physical response to fear is your number one survival skill. It can also be the best ally you have in any intimidating situation life throws at you. Managing your fear requires deliberate acts of courage. It is a choice that you make, and it’s one that everyone is capable of making.

…when it seems like the world is ending, being willing to help others is the antidote to fear

…now I knew there were so many ways to get hung from a cross—a mother’s love for you morphing into something incomprehensible. A dress ghosted in a

…now I knew there were so many ways to get hung from a cross—a mother’s love for you morphing into something incomprehensible. A dress ghosted in another generation’s dreams. A history of fire and ash and loss. Legacy.

Look closely. It’s the spring of 2001 and I am finally sixteen. How many hundreds of ancestors knew a moment like this? Before the narrative of their lives changed once again forever, there was Bach and Ellington, Monk and Ma Rainey, Hooker and Holiday. Before the world as they knew it ended, they stepped out in heels with straightening-comb burns on their ears, gartered stockings, and lipstick for the first time.

When she looked into her future, she saw college and some fancy job somewhere where she dressed cute and drank good wine at a restaurant after work. There were always candles in her future—candlelit tables and bathtubs and bedrooms. She didn’t see Aubrey there.

Every day since she was a baby, I’ve told Iris the story. How they came with intention. How the only thing they wanted was to see us gone. Our money gone. Our shops and schools and libraries—everything—just good and gone. And even though it happened twenty years before I was even a thought, I carry it. I carry the goneness. Iris carries the goneness. And watching her walk down those stairs, I know now that my grandbaby carries the goneness too.

…as we dance, I am not Melody who is sixteen. I am not my parents’ once illegitimate daughter—I am a narrative, someone’s almost forgotten story. Remembered.

That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each prese

That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each present moment joins it, on and on. Yet that is far too simple. Inside us, time sways backwards and forwards from now to then, here to there, and nothing of it is lost or goes away, but it all hangs everywhere, translucent in the air. Some men turn away, and walk on, saying that the past contains only their former selves and ghosts of people and deeds. Others, like myself, live every day with it. One minute I am in Nieuw Amsterdam, the next pulled on a string into the other time that comes with me, so that here on the Heere Gracht, or as I walk across the marketplace, you and I talk.

Looking back is a game for fools and not one that I like to play.

So I see her as I have never seen a woman, her whole nakedness, half in my plain sight, half reflected in the water. And in the same instant, or so it feels, she lifts her head and sees me there. Her furious eyes strip me of everything and make me as naked as herself.

From that day the sun shines on everything in the world. It feels to me as if I have a new knowledge, and that the change that came over me when you first fixed me with your glance was the beginning of it. This knowledge is not from a person or a book. It is a knowledge of what is, neither sacred nor profane, but just the world itself.

Stand still in a full silence and it’s loud with noises. A heron takes flight; he creaks like a ship in sail. Ducks scuffle in the reeds. I hear the beat of wings, the movement of creatures in the grass, water rippling, and the wind that accompanies me everywhere, sighing and roaring. Nature, that seems so quiet, pours out its songs. Even in the darkness there is a velvet purr of sound, of moles underground and field mice above.

In the summer I may paddle on for days. I catch fish and travel as the wildmen do until I reach the far end of the island where it breaks into numerous inlets and beaches. Then I walk down to the open ocean and feel myself to be not a man but a part of nature, as is a star, or a dolphin that leaps for joy out in the bay. Far away round our earth lies the old world, while here I stand on the new. Waves rush up to my feet and then pull back, marbled with sand and foam.

The author said: “Growing up in Norwich I was certainly aware of the fens, and I remember passing Ely often on the way to visit my grandparents in Cambridge. The great skies of East Anglia have always been inside me, and I still love flat landscapes and marshes.
“I am sure that inspired my choice of the fens when I thought about climate change, flooding and the changing use and exploitation of land and people.”
“There are little details in the book that come from my family history in Norwich,” said Tillyard, “Jan, my hero, buys boots from Norwich, where there are fine leather workers who have begun to settle there, fleeing from persecution in France.
“This is what my own Huguenot ancestors did. They were leather workers who by the 18th century had set up in Elm Hill in Norwich. The business eventually became Norvic Shoes, with a large factory in St George’s Plain.

That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each prese

That is what I believed: that time nibbles away at the future, and in that moment puts the present behind its back. The past retreats as each present moment joins it, on and on. Yet that is far too simple. Inside us, time sways backwards and forwards from now to then, here to there, and nothing of it is lost or goes away, but it all hangs everywhere, translucent in the air. Some men turn away, and walk on, saying that the past contains only their former selves and ghosts of people and deeds. Others, like myself, live every day with it. One minute I am in Nieuw Amsterdam, the next pulled on a string into the other time that comes with me, so that here on the Heere Gracht, or as I walk across the marketplace, you and I talk.

Looking back is a game for fools and not one that I like to play.

So I see her as I have never seen a woman, her whole nakedness, half in my plain sight, half reflected in the water. And in the same instant, or so it feels, she lifts her head and sees me there. Her furious eyes strip me of everything and make me as naked as herself.

From that day the sun shines on everything in the world. It feels to me as if I have a new knowledge, and that the change that came over me when you first fixed me with your glance was the beginning of it. This knowledge is not from a person or a book. It is a knowledge of what is, neither sacred nor profane, but just the world itself.

Stand still in a full silence and it’s loud with noises. A heron takes flight; he creaks like a ship in sail. Ducks scuffle in the reeds. I hear the beat of wings, the movement of creatures in the grass, water rippling, and the wind that accompanies me everywhere, sighing and roaring. Nature, that seems so quiet, pours out its songs. Even in the darkness there is a velvet purr of sound, of moles underground and field mice above.

In the summer I may paddle on for days. I catch fish and travel as the wildmen do until I reach the far end of the island where it breaks into numerous inlets and beaches. Then I walk down to the open ocean and feel myself to be not a man but a part of nature, as is a star, or a dolphin that leaps for joy out in the bay. Far away round our earth lies the old world, while here I stand on the new. Waves rush up to my feet and then pull back, marbled with sand and foam.

The author said: “Growing up in Norwich I was certainly aware of the fens, and I remember passing Ely often on the way to visit my grandparents in Cambridge. The great skies of East Anglia have always been inside me, and I still love flat landscapes and marshes.
“I am sure that inspired my choice of the fens when I thought about climate change, flooding and the changing use and exploitation of land and people.”
“There are little details in the book that come from my family history in Norwich,” said Tillyard, “Jan, my hero, buys boots from Norwich, where there are fine leather workers who have begun to settle there, fleeing from persecution in France.
“This is what my own Huguenot ancestors did. They were leather workers who by the 18th century had set up in Elm Hill in Norwich. The business eventually became Norvic Shoes, with a large factory in St George’s Plain.

Only in the Westside could a woman with blood in her hair stroll down the sidewalk on a weekday afternoon, wearing nothing but a slip and hearing o

Only in the Westside could a woman with blood in her hair stroll down the sidewalk on a weekday afternoon, wearing nothing but a slip and hearing only the chattering of a few far-off birds.

Just as despair was sinking its claws into me, there was a great bang, the flinging wide of the door to the street, which was down a short set of s

Just as despair was sinking its claws into me, there was a great bang, the flinging wide of the door to the street, which was down a short set of steps to my left. The wind rushed up from outside, rifling the papers on the office desks, guttering the weak flame in the fireplace, and extinguishing my candle. I heard the door slam shut as I groped for matches. There came a heavy tread upon the stairway, every other as sharp and as distinctive as a hammer blow. I’m afraid I’m only courageous in the articles I pen, and so my hands shook badly as I relit the wick and spun to encounter the intruder.

He stood in the dim light of the entranceway. His beard, his glare, his stillness put me off. He exuded a sense of tension, a spring about to snap, and stared at me imperiously as if I had intruded upon him.

If there’s one thing Ahab’s Return, or The Last Voyage isn’t, is a work of scholarship. One need not have even read Moby Dick to enjoy it. If a reader’s heard of Captain Ahab, merely heard of him, and knows he had a run in with a white whale, that’s plenty. This is not to say that the experience isn’t somewhat enhanced by the reading of what I once heard a wizened woman describe as “that wicked book.” - from Ford’s site

At times, [Malbaster] was asked to speak, and it was evident he was no orator. His vocabulary was limited, but he spoke in such vague generalizations that the throngs of his compatriots found in his words enough room to nurture their own grievances and fears. His message was one of selfishness. “Life and resources and wealth are limited. They should be only for those of us who resemble those of us. All others should be driven out and/or dispatched of. A simple enough ideology for the masses.

I write to see where her story is going, to find a place where I can meet her and regain control. What I’m looking for in the storyline is a crossroads, a juncture where the boundaries of our personal tales intersect with the tales of others. I must be on the lookout for it every time I put pen to paper. And when it presents itself, I must act swiftly and decisively.

…he started out with his eyes firmly on the guiding star, his feet planted on the path, but that’s the thing about the life you walk—you start out poi

…he started out with his eyes firmly on the guiding star, his feet planted on the path, but that’s the thing about the life you walk—you start out pointed true North, but you vary one degree off, it doesn’t matter for maybe one year, five years, but as the years stack up you’re just walking farther and farther away from where you started out to go, you don’t even know you’re lost until you’re so far from your original destination you can’t even see it anymore - Don Winslow

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown - Henry IV Part 2 – W. Shakespeare

The street stays with you.
It sinks into your pores and then your blood.
And into your soul? Malone asks himself. You gonna blame that on the street too?
Some of it, yeah.
You’ve been breathing corruption since you put on the shield, Malone thinks. Like you breathed in death that day in September. Corruption isn’t just in the city’s air, it’s in its DNA, yours too.
Yeah, blame it on the city, blame it on New York.
Blame it on the Job,
It’s too easy, it stops you from asking yourself the hard question.
How did you get here?
Like anyplace else.
A step at a time.

Malone drives past the Wahi diner and the mural of a raven on 155th. Past the church of the Intercession, but it’s too late for Intercession, past Trinity Cemetery and the Apollo Pharmacy, the Big Brother Barber shop, Hamilton Fruits and Vegetables and all the small gods of place, the personal shrines, the markers of his life on these streets that he loves like a husband loves a cheating wife, a father loves a wayward son.

New York City is a great town and everybody knows it. It’s a place of unparalleled opportunity and a proving ground, so much so it’s a cliché. As t

New York City is a great town and everybody knows it. It’s a place of unparalleled opportunity and a proving ground, so much so it’s a cliché. As the old song goes, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” The thing no one likes to sing about is that New York is a town filled with thieves, pimps, cutthroats and cheats; guys and dolls dressed up in all sorts of threads with dark skills perpetually on the hunt for easy marks that are found on practically every corner.

Daytime boozers scattered along that bar like worn and beaten garbage cans emptied and tossed to the curb.

The sound system was like something NASA might’ve invented to orbit earth to share the music of the universe with the good people below.

Arriving in a Roaring Twenty
at a time of hope and plenty
Full of vim and joi de vivre
Aimed to stay and wouldn’t leave

Lilly made her mark with Macy
w

Arriving in a Roaring Twenty
at a time of hope and plenty
Full of vim and joi de vivre
Aimed to stay and wouldn’t leave

Lilly made her mark with Macy
writing rhymes to make the case he
needed to attract the shopper.
Many tried, but none could top her.

Used her wit to publish books
of poems with a jaundiced look
At romance. And with each edition
earned more cash and recognition.

A true and very public spinster
’till a special guy convinced her
She should wear his golden band.
And risk some tarnish to her brand

The street provided inspiration
all her eighty-plus duration
As she walks this night we see
a passage through our history

When life seems gray
And short of fizz
It seems that way
Because it is.

In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in

In the arc of an unremarkable life, a life whose triumphs are small and personal, whose trials are ordinary enough, as tempered in their pain as in their resolution of pain, the claim of exclusivity in love requires both a certain kind of courage and a good dose of delusion...Those of us who claim exclusivity in love do so with a liar's courage: there are a hundred opportunities, thousands over the years, for a sense of falsehood to seep in, for all that we imagine as inevitable to become arbitrary, for our history together to reveal itself as only a matter of chance and happenstance, nothing irrepeatable, or irreplaceable, the circumstantial mingling of just one of the so many millions with just one more.

It was one of those times when my wife, in a flurry of OMGs, blew through our front door and announced in full capital letters. YOU HAVE GOT TO SEE THIS. The this, of course, was the book under review here, Shop Cats of New York. If she had done this twenty years earlier, I would not have been very interested. And my first wife probably would have wondered just who the hell that woman was. At that time I was not only cat-free, but the proud owner of a considerable cat allergy. Things change.

As happens with about half the marriages in the USA, my first went the way of dial-up. In late 1998, I was looking for an apartment, but also someone else to share the rest of my life with. I suppose one could say that at the time I was a bit of a stray, not exactly homeless, but certainly unsettled. I partook of Match.com, including the sort of profile millions of other people have penned. Mine was probably typical enough, blah-blah-blah, three kids, blah-blah-blah, systems analyst, blah-blah-blah Mets fan, blah-blah-blah, and Sorry, no cats. Allergic. I met several women, but was particularly intrigued by one. Despite the fact that we had engaged in a considerable series of on-line exchanges, it turned out she had issues with reading.

The first time I went to visit my new friend at her place, I was in for a surprise. She was sharing her apartment. Her room-mates kept their distance but they made their presence felt anyway. In short order my eyes began to itch. Soon after, my nose began to run. Within thirty minutes of my arrival I was struggling to breathe and bolting for the door. Ummm, about that cat thing.

I guess she was interested enough in me to risk not copping to the kitties. And I guess I was interested enough in her to take on a steady diet of whatever allergy med seemed to work at the time. It also seemed a reasonable thing to try to build up a bit of tolerance. About a year later, I was living in a garden apartment in Park Slope, with access to a back yard, when I started getting a regular visitor. This good-sized black cat showed his puss near my back door more and more. I started putting out some food for him. Then left my back door open until he began risking visits inside. After a few of these. I closed the door behind him. He did not seem to mind. I called him Pitch. He was my first cat.

According to Neergard pharmacist Lana, “Ivy was found as a wee kitten pulling tricks on the gritty streets of Brooklyn’s Park Slope.”

We moved in together in 2001, marrying later that year. My Pitch joined her Madison, Winnie and Bo. There would be more. One morning a small stray tried to follow Mary Ann into the subway. It was not her first encounter with this kittie. She was so small we believed her to be a kitten. Concerned for her safety, she brought the wee beastie back upstairs before heading out to work again. I was not thrilled at the prospect of yet another cat being added to our pack. We put her in my daughters' bedroom. That night when Mary Ann got home from work, she came into the room, and there I was like a thief with his hand in the cookie jar, holding this little cat in my arms in the same way I had held my tiny humans not so long ago. Forgotten was the notion of trying to find another home for her. I looked up at my wife, sheepishly, and said, “She had me at meow.” Turned out she was as large as she would ever get. We called her Little Cat. or LC for short.

Customers come in with their dogs assuring the staff they are ok with cats, to which the staff responds, “Well, our cat is not ok with dogs. If you see Tiny up in the shelves following you, your dog is being stalked.”

In the mid aughts, a work friend of Mary Ann’s at Harper was about to relocate out of the country. His wife had gotten a job with the State Department, and they had very little notice before they would have to leave. In order to be able to take their two cats along, they would have had to put them into seriously prolonged quarantine. They were not confident that both would survive the experience. That is how Anakin and Kiki joined our herd.

When I asked the only desk-less guy there [MPH messenger service] if he was security, he nodded in Sammy’s direction. “He’s security.”

In 2011, a surprise was found at my mother-in-law’s place in Wilkes Barre. A stray had taken up residence on the back porch. When Mary Ann, there for a visit, picked her up, there were two babies beneath her. Her mother was actually ok with taking them in. The mom was named Isabelle and the babies were Oscar and Felix. We had intended to head out there for a visit a few weeks later. Get Isabelle to the vet, and have the babies checked out. But Hurricane Irene had other plans, and we did not manage the trip until enough later to matter. Isabelle had managed to get mommified again, this time with Scout and Boo. So we had a triple-A team of cats in residence in Wilkes Barre. It was good company for mom, who was getting on. We helped out with cat costs, buying food, litter and dealing with vets. We had expected to bring them to Brooklyn over time. It was during this period that another arrival turned up. Tabitha had been showing up in the Wilkes Barre back yard looking for food, and getting it. But came inside a time or two when it got very cold. One time was when we were there on a visit. She came into the kitchen, but was so terrified of the other cats that she hid under the stove. To our great surprise mom-in-law asked us to take her back with us, afraid that her brood would harm the outsider. In January 2015, my mother-in-law passed, peacefully, in her sleep, a favorite German shepherd companion at her side. Our triple-A team would be moving up to the majors. Well, somewhat. Some of them were particularly gifted at evading capture. But we did bring home Isabelle, Scout and Oscar.

We have lost several of our four-footed children to the ravages of age. They had lived lives that were respectably lengthy, but it was heart-breaking to lose them. There would be two more sets of incomings. We have a friend in Wilkes Barre who is a registered cat-rescuer. She is a saint, in our view, who has helped many a feline shift from living on the streets to finding a safe, loving home. However, there was a time when she needed a temporary place for many of her wards. Mom’s place in W-B was offered, and a dozen or so squatters took up residence. Two of them took a shine to Mary Ann and me when we were there. The result was Nala and Julian. On another trip to W-B, we had intended to retrieve Felix from the cat angel of W-B, but he was clearly happy to remain where he was. It so happened that at the time there was another resident in that illustrious cat house that was in need of placement. He was young, but no longer a kitten. What set him apart was that he had an extra digit on all four paws. We named him for Ernest Hemingway, as the cats at Papa’s Key West home were known for being polydactyl. So Nesto signed on.

All stories are love stories. Paul remembered someone famous saying that. Thomas Edison’s would be no exception. All men get the things they love.

All stories are love stories. Paul remembered someone famous saying that. Thomas Edison’s would be no exception. All men get the things they love. The tragedy of some men is not that they are denied, but that they wish they’d loved something else.

Each week, sister Sonja said, Start at the beginning, her dark fingers bending around a small black notebook, pen poised. Many moments passed befor

Each week, sister Sonja said, Start at the beginning, her dark fingers bending around a small black notebook, pen poised. Many moments passed before I opened my mouth to speak. Each week, I began with the words I was waiting for my mother…

My brother had the faith my father brought him to, and for a long time, I had Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying, Here. Help me carry this.

On a different planet, we could have been Lois Lane or Jane or Mary Tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas. We could have thrown our hats up, twirled and smiled. We could have made it after all. We watched the shows. We knew the songs. We sang along when Mary was big-eyed and awed by Minneapolis. We dreamed with Marlo of someday hitting the big time. We took off with the Flying Nun.

Maybe this is how it happened for everyone—adults promising us their own failed futures, I was bright enough to teach, my father said, even as my dream of stepping into Sylvia’s skin included one day being a lawyer. Angela’s mom had draped the dream of dancing over her. And Gigi, able to imitate every one of us, could step inside anyone she wanted to be, close her eyes, and be gone. Close her eyes and be anywhere.

Bushwick was the character I knew the best. And then I wanted to create a narrative around it, so I invented these four girls and their stories. I also wanted to talk about girlhood, what it means to grow up a girl of color, and what it means to grow up inside the backstories and dreams of your parents, who have their own ideas of where you should go while you're trying to make your own space in the world.

We pretended to believe we could unlock arms and walk the streets alone. But we knew we were lying. There were men inside darkened hallways, around street corners, behind draped windows, waiting to grab us, feel us, unzip their pants to offer us a glimpse.

We lived inside out backstories. The memory of a nightmare stitched down my brother’s arm. My mother with a knife beneath her pillow. A white devil we could not see, already inside our bodies, slowly being digested. And finally, Sister Loretta, dressed like a wingless Flying Nun, swooping down to save us.

When the girls admire him a young man takes it as a matter of course; but when a widow selects him for her attention he thrills with the knowledge th

When the girls admire him a young man takes it as a matter of course; but when a widow selects him for her attention he thrills with the knowledge that he is being stamped with the approval of a connoisseur. - Helen Rowland

LOVE, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest. - Helen Rowland

Everybody seems to be going through life at automobile speed nowadays; but alas, there are no sentimental garages by Life's wayside at which we may obtain a fresh supply of emotions, purchase a new thrill or patch up an exploded ideal. - Helen Rowland

The bartender. The bar. So forbidden and masculine, an unimaginable place for a girl to find herself—alone!—until now. Until suddenly boys and girls are going to saloons together, and they aren’t called saloons any more. A whole new vocabulary is springing up overnight, it seems, like mushrooms or crocuses, all clustered around the underground slaking of illegal thirst, and it seems the more illegal the thirst is, the more ordinary and acceptable it’s become to slake it in mixed company, among strangers. And the vocabulary has something to do with that, doesn’t it? Hooch, speakeasy, blotto. Silly words, trivializing the laws they’re breaking. Trivializing everything in the world.

Love is like appendicitis; you never know when nor how it is going to strike you—the only difference being that, after one attack of appendicitis, your curiosity is perfectly satisfied - Helen Rowland

After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man's so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her. - Helen Rowland

Dear Murph,
It occurs to me—your brooding mind being what it is—that you may think I’m trying to lock you up in the loony bin. I’m not. You proba

Dear Murph,
It occurs to me—your brooding mind being what it is—that you may think I’m trying to lock you up in the loony bin. I’m not. You probably ought to be locked up in the loony bin, but that condition long preceded your recent shenanigans. I’m concerned that you’ll harm yourself. It’s that simple.
Your dutiful and loving daughter,
Máire

Dear Dutiful and Loving,
I’m sorry, but I never had a daughter, and I don’t know anyone named Máire. My friend Greenberg used to sing about a table down at Morey’s. Is that you? Or are you the old gray mare, who ain’t what she used to be? Ah, but who is?

Dear Murph,
Go fuck yourself.

Dear Máire,
Oh! Now I remember you.

I know I don’t look it, but I’m Irish. I lived in Ireland for a while, my first child was conceived in Ireland, I speak a little Irish, I went back last year, I’ve been back a few times, there’s something in me — I don’t know, maybe the milkman was Irish — that grabs and embraces that country. Add that to the fact that my great, dear friend McCourt, he was a great guy. And he and I talked together in the department where I teach now, and we drank together and sang together — if you think I’m good, and boy am I good, you should’ve heard McCourt — we used to sing all night. I don’t know why this stirred in me before, but I wanted to write a satirical model, and I tried twice. And I started channeling McCourt. I could hear his voice in the dialogue. - from the Chautauquan interview