Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Liz Mathews

Now that the Union Square theater has become one of the few in Manhattan without a reported bedbug infestation, I had little problem winding up there on a recent half-day Friday to view Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But the movie and the theater have little to do with this.

Prior to the show beginning, I told the friends I was with to save me a seat, and dashed to the bathroom. Now, careful reader, you may recall the bathroom attendant I wrote of approximately one year ago, the one charged with standing in a bathroom without air conditioning, to direct a line of fidgety women. The one who was entirely positive even though her job left much to be desired.

At first I didn’t recognize her, this being one year later. Sure, I’d seen her a few movies ago, taking tickets and sweeping the lobby, and I was relieved yet somewhat saddened that she still had a gig at the theater. But now one emotion has settled in.

“Ladies, please take care to remember your valuables. Thank you for choosing the Union Square Regal Theaters. We appreciate your business and hope you enjoy your time with us,” the voice over the intercom in the bathroom sounded.

Except that there isn’t an intercom in that bathroom.

The voice was coming from the bathroom attendant, perched on top of a mobility scooter and moving slowly toward the sink area. As I washed my hands she moved past me to the bathroom’s exit, ever mindful of the other people in there, her voice still the canned one comparable to those featured on the new fleets of subway cars, or escalator safety reminders.

“Clear away from the entrance, please. Coming through. Please clear the entrance. Coming through. Step away from the entrance,” she sounded, back ramrod straight, all the way out the door.

And as I walked out after her, I thought of all the ways that people can change over the course of a year. And how, sometimes, the changes that occur are far from the ones we had hoped for.

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by Liz Mathews

On a recent Saturday afternoon I and my friends Pete and Harlan were seeking a bench in Tompkins Square Park. Pickings were pretty slim—it was a nice day—but then we came to the middle of the park, where a stretch of empty benches existed on both sides of the walkway.

Of course, the reason that everyone else in the park was not sitting on these benches was likely due to the crowd of 20-to-40-somethings and their pit bulls a little ways in, clothed in dingy black and brown attire, hair askew and taking naps or stumbling about in mid-afternoon dazes. Also, because it may be relevant, there were at least five pairs of shoes dangling from the branches overhead.

Still, we sat. We chatted. The group of gutter punks did their own thing and the pit bull puppies acted cute but dangerous.

Gradually members of the group edged closer to us.

“Got any good advice, young man?” an equally young man with a maroon mohawk asked Pete in passing.

“Sunscreen,” Pete replied.

Mohawk stopped. “That’s a good one,” he said.

Next, a woman approached with a summarized version of her life story. “I’m going home to Providence this afternoon,” she told us at the end of it. “I had to cry to my dad to get him to pay for it, but he broke down and when I get there I’m going to see my kids,” she said.

That’s great, we agreed. Thank goodness for your dad, and your ability to turn on the waterworks, we said without saying exactly that.

“I like to give out hugs,” she told us. My two friends stood up, hugged her.

“That’s my junkie husband,” she pointed to the man sitting next to Harlan. “Been with him for six goddamn years. My dad hates him. I guess this is love.”

While she was telling us this, her junkie husband was preparing a syringe of blue liquid. “That’s the stuff,” he said, turning to Harlan and flicking the cylinder. “Don’t you kids ever try this… because you’ll fall in love with it,” he said and jammed it into his arm.

Next thing we knew, the junkie husband was off the bench and standing in front of us. “Yup, I’m high,” he said, turning to me. “You have the most amazing eyes. What’s your name?”

I squeaked it out and the junkie husband held out his hand and I shook it, a little freaked out that he was still holding the syringe.

“My turn,” his wife said, and he got busy preparing drugs for her.

We took this as our cue to head out—plus I had an ice cream date to get to. But such a legitimate reason for leaving did not ease the consciences of the gutter punks.

“Look what you did, you asshole,” the wife yelled at her husband, “You scared off the nice people!”

He, in turn, stopped trying to shoot her up behind her ear. “Don’t go!” he cried. “We’re sorry! Don’t leave because of us!”

No, no, we tried to assure them. We have to get somewhere—it’s not you! we said with the hope we were being convincing. Have a safe trip! we encouraged, with regard to both the drugs and also their travels to Rhode Island.

And we left. And we felt genuinely bad for making the drug addicts feel like they made us feel uncomfortable. And it was a while before I could wash my hands.

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by Liz Mathews

In years now long gone, summer vacations around the Midwest were what my family did, yet regardless of where our vehicle took us, there was really only one destination for my sister and I: the hotel swimming pool. My parents were well aware of this, and, because flaring tempers on family vacations were inevitable, they did everything in their power to avoid trouble from the beginning. This included booking hotel rooms in hotels with pools.

Visiting the Badlands during a tornado warning? Gazing upon the purple beauty of a waterfall in the Ozarks? Counting the number of forest fire warning signs in Manitoba? Sure, those things are fine, whatever. Dog-paddling in the lukewarm water of the humid hotel swimming pool room? I’m there before you can say “No lifeguard on duty.”

My sister, too.

So a few weeks ago, when our mother confirmed that yes, there was a swimming pool at the Crowne Plaza in Wauwatosa, swimsuits were the first things in our respective bags. My family descended on Wisconsin from various places in the United States, and congregated at my aunt and uncle’s home for an evening of eating and boozing. And then more of the eating, and also the drinking. The idea of the hotel swimming pool lingered, though.

It was late by the time my family made it to the Crowne Plaza. Still, since it was open 24 hours, my sister and father and I looked in on the pool. I was dissuaded by the teenage girl in her bikini and her boyfriend in board shorts. My sister’s face showed obvious disappointment, but we agreed that bright and early the next morning, the pool was ours.

Except that it wasn’t. At 8:15am there was a middle-aged man checking his Blackberry in one of the lounge chairs, and an older man doing who-knows-what in the deeper end of the pool. My sister and I entered the water. It was colder than expected. We stood awkwardly. We swam the width of the pool several times, only to then stand awkwardly again.

Soon enough the old man exited the pool. “I hope I wasn’t in your way,” he said as he passed us with his snorkel mask. “Oh, no,” we assured him.

The other man continued his Blackberry checking. We continued being in the hotel swimming pool.

After we’d done some racing up and down the length of the pool, and zombie walked some more lengths, an older woman entered the room and started working out in the whirlpool. We stood awkwardly some more, and considered the clock on the wall.

It took us a while to actually extricate ourselves from the pool, despite the sense of uncertainty that pervaded the whole swim session. Maybe we were clinging to memories of our younger selves, of summer vacations and breaks from schoolwork. Maybe we just didn’t want to fight over the shower. I can’t speak for my sister.

But if this is growing up, then what I can do is sigh.

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by Liz Mathews

You’ve seen her all across the United States, primarily in middle- to upper-middle-class neighborhoods, where all the children have their own bedrooms and mothers fret about balanced meals and getting to soccer practice on time. She is tall and slender and sports shoulder-length hair, typically drawn back into a loose ponytail. She favors shorts or skirts in the summertime that are cut high enough to suggest something, but are still long enough to pass the scrutiny of parents and schoolteachers. She is thirteen to seventeen years old, probably a good student but keeps it on the down-low, and has no problem speaking her mind when something’s on it.

She wants to be an artist or a writer. But she has a problem.

“My life is just too good,” she says. “I don’t have any struggles, so I don’t have anything to write about.”

She will pause, and twirl the end of her ponytail around a finger.

“Ashley got upset with me when I told her that,” she’ll continue, “And told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. Like I should be happy or something! Nothing I ever create will have any substance. I haven’t suffered.”

Then she’ll sigh. Maybe she’ll have a stick of Burt’s Bees pomegranate lip balm in her pocket, which she will take out and apply.

“I mean, maybe I shouldn’t complain. Maybe I am lucky. But I haven’t ever starved, and I’m not manic-depressive, and my parents aren’t divorced. Nothing I create can possibly say anything.”

And here, you will sigh, though as imperceptibly as possible. If you are her friend, you will remain silent because you know that any response will be the wrong one. And even if you aren’t her friend, it’s best not to say anything. Telling her, “Eating disorders worked for a friend of mine,” is not appropriate. And suggesting that suffering isn’t all it’s cracked up to be will fall on deaf ears.

After all, the grass is greener on the other side, even when that grass that’s so desirable is lush with thistles and snakes.

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by Liz Mathews

You
You go upstairs to the vending machines to get a Diet Coke. While there, you notice that the snack machine has Twix, for once. You drop $0.75 into the machine and step back in anticipation. The coil around the front candy bar unwinds. You wait for the bar to fall. The coil unwinds more. It stops. The Twix dangles maddeningly.

You attempt to shake the machine, but the machine is too heavy. You consider hitting the machine, or body slamming it, but then think of the people working in the offices nearby. Your shoulders fall with disappointment and you leave, the Twix still dangling out of reach.

Your Coworker Jen
Back on the 14th floor, you approach your coworker Jen. “Is there any way to get back $0.75 the vending machine stole?” you ask her.

“Email Office Services,” she replies.

So you do.

Office Services
Office Services does not respond to your email, which is mostly fine with you because you feel like an ass for bugging them. But then, on the third day, an email appears:

“Leave a note with your name and extension on the machine, and the vending machine guy will either get you the candy or your money.”

Great! you think, because here is a solution to a problem you’d forgotten about. Except then you think about it some more, and realize that everyone in the entire Flatiron building could read your note, and know that you are a cheapskate and a glutton.

But then you think about it even more, and write that note and run upstairs and tape it to the machine.

The Vending Machine Man and the Woman Who Leaves You a Voicemail
More days go by, and you forget what you’ve done. One morning you return to your desk and notice you have a phone message.

“Hi. I’m calling from the 19th floor, right by the door on the south side. The vending machine guy left you a candy, some M&Ms, because he didn’t have any Twix. You can stop by whenever to pick it up,” the voice trailed off with slight annoyance.

You’d thought you were embarrassed before, when you left the note. But now that an innocent bystander has been drawn in, you seriously consider abandoning your candy in effort to save face.

But she already has your name, and extension. So you trudge up to the 19th floor, and seek out this woman who sits by the door, who you walk past every time you decide you’d like a Diet Coke. She hands you the peanut M&M’s. You can barely look her in the eye. “Thanks,” you say, and then, “I’m sorry.” She has no response.

You, In Conclusion
That day during your lunch break you stop in the Duane Reade across the street and by a 12-pack of Diet Coke. This ensures that for at least three weeks you won’t have to show your face on the 19th floor.

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by Liz Mathews

The dog walked into the train car, ears flopping and tail wagging, a brown mass of furriness on a long green leash. As if it were a person, the dog went for the only empty seat on the L heading out of Bushwick toward Manhattan, and then began sniffing the floor, as though it were a dog.

Attached to the other end of the leash was the dog’s woman, who immediately sat in the seat the dog had procured for her. She dropped her travel bag on the floor, barely missing the foot of the person next to her. Flipping her auburn hair over her shoulders, the dog’s woman focused her attention on the baby carrier she’d been clutching in her right arm.

Meanwhile, the dog, seemingly oblivious to this, continued sniffing the floor, its fluffy ears dragging like brooms.

It’s fair to say that everyone who had seen the dog board the train was now staring at the dog’s woman as she fumbled her way into the baby carrier. She put her left arm in, straightened her shoulders and passed the dog’s leash from hand to hand, flipping her hair back again. Next, the right arm, and another straightening of the shoulders. The carrier rested loosely against her chest.

The dog continued to sniff, unaware.

The dog continued to sniff, unaware until its woman started reeling it in on the leash. Then the dog continued to sniff, but it was a panicked sniffing, which is not sniffing at all.

Once she’d pulled it close enough, the woman snatched the dog up to her lap and immediately began manipulating its limbs into the baby carrier. Or dog carrier, as it turned out.

And then it was pretty much over for the dog. It put up a small struggle, but quickly realizing the futility of its efforts, the dog resigned itself to its fate. Soon all of its legs were sticking out of the padded red carrier, its little body sitting upright in an unnatural vertical position. The woman cinched up the carrier straps on her shoulders and sat back in the seat.

The dog, to its sorry credit, stared straight ahead as though it had intended things to unfold in this way. The subway doors opened at the next stop, people stepped off the train and others stepped on. The dog sniffed the air. And sniffed again.

And turned its head to the right, still sniffing.

In a handbag in front of the nearest door was a cocker spaniel, one leg hanging out of the bag. The dogs studied each other. Neither made a sound. The looks in their eyes said it all.

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by Liz Mathews

Several years ago I helped some friends move, and in the midst of unloading the moving truck, a Time Warner representative showed up to install an Internet connection in their new place. I was supremely impressed by my friends’ planning ability—the Internet, right away in the new place!—and have tried to do the same in my own moves ever since.

Thus, one day before officially inhabiting my current place, I spent the afternoon in the empty apartment, cleaning surfaces and waiting for the Cablevision guy to appear, anytime between 2 and 5 p.m. A young man in a navy blue uniform and neon orange safety vest showed up promptly at 3 o’clock. He asked if I’d been waiting long. Naturally I lied and said, “Not at all.”

The Cablevision guy checked out the apartment and told me he’d be right back. Twenty minutes passed before the doorbell rang again. I let him in and he walked into the living room with his stapler and cables and boxes. “Nice place,” he said. “But expensive neighborhood.”

Thinking of the past two neighborhoods I’d lived in, I disagreed in my mind. But out loud, “Where would be cheaper?”

“East New York.” He paused, looked at me. “But you don’t want to live there.”

I looked out the window while he connected the cable to the wall, and wandered from empty room to empty room as he set up the modem.

“Do you drive?” he asked. “Not here,” I said. “You’d never find parking out there,” he pointed toward the window.

And then we both settled in the living room while we waited for the modem to reset itself. He asked what time it was, and it was 3:30.

“I’ll be done early today—and I’m not going to tell my boss, either. When I’m running behind, it’s not like they send someone along to help me get caught up again. Nope.” I laughed because that was certainly the way of things most of the time.

He asked where I was from, what I did. He, in turn, told me that he’d studied to be a medical technician upstate, but hadn’t finished. He had a child on the way, so having a job and not paying for school was a necessity. But he’d go back. Cablevision was just for now.

The modem reset and he tested a few websites on my computer to make sure everything was in order. It was.

As the Cablevision guy packed up, he told me he and his girlfriend were going to the hospital soon to find out if their baby would be a boy or a girl. His excitement was palpable; its glow was highlighted by the orange in his safety vest.

I saw him out, and wished him the best of everything. I will likely never see this Cablevision man again, but I was excited for him, too. All the unknowns that stretched out before him, and then other unknowns and on and on and on into the future. So much to look forward to.

I, in turn, had the Internet in my new apartment.

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by Liz Mathews

Recently I spent some time in Iowa with my family, and was in the car with my mom and sister when we happened past an ice cream shop called Evs. Only open in the warmer months, Evs features such ice cream flavors as raspberry, lemon, vanilla, chocolate, peppermint, and so on, depending on what week of the month it is. Perhaps due in some small part to its limited availability, we like Evs a lot.

Since it was a Sunday morning, and since we were about to go home and have the large meal of the day, followed by some kind of dessert, Mom swerved into the Evs parking lot and gave my sister a wad of cash.

“Get a quart of raspberry,” Mom told her.

“Do you think lemon would be good?” I asked.

“If you want to try it, go ahead and get a pint of that, too,” Mom answered.

Cash in hand, Katelyn got out of the car and I followed suit. The same man as always was standing at the ordering window when we walked through the door. My sister requested a quart of raspberry.

“Anything else?” the man asked us, though only really looked at Katelyn, who is five years younger than me but possibly slightly taller.

“Should we get a pint of lemon? That’s smaller, right?” I asked my sister, knowing damn well a pint was smaller, because it cost less on the menu board. She shrugged. The man looked at her as she folded the money between her fingers. Obviously she was in charge.

“We’ll also take a pint of lemon, please,” I forged ahead. Katelyn gave a nod.

For the first time, the Evs man turned to me. “Would you like a lid or a spoon?”

A lid or a spoon, a lid or a spoon. Neither I nor my sister answered. It seemed early for just a spoon—it was still Sunday morning. Mom was probably wondering what was taking us so long. A Lid or a Spoon? Then both our reveries cleared. “Lid. A lid, please,” I answered, and Katelyn indicated her agreement with another nod.

Katelyn paid, and we went back to the car and our mother with the ice cream: a quart of raspberry and a pint of lemon. I assume my sister gave Mom the change.

“This is kind of big to get a spoon and no lid for,” I said, looking at the pint of lemon as Mom started the car. We told her the story of the question we had just been asked. “Well, some people would only get a spoon, sure,” she suggested.

The three of us mused on who these people might be as we sped toward home. And by the time we hit our driveway, we’d decided that maybe a spoon and a lid would make some kind of sense.

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by Liz Mathews

For two years, back when I lived in Park Slope, I would see Grandpa on a near daily basis. Sometimes in the early dark mornings of winter, after I’d finished my run, I’d stretch outside our building and watch as strange men would help Grandpa into a van to take him off to wherever older men spend their days when not at home. He was a fragile-looking guy, and though he was probably only 70 at the oldest, Grandpa looked about 89 or 95, so while lifting him into a van wasn’t necessarily a feat of strength, it was a careful process in the morning moonlight.

Other times I’d spot him several blocks from our building, and excitedly point him out to whomever I happened to be with. “That’s the old man from my building!” I’d exclaim. “And far from home!” My friends never seemed that impressed, but would humor me with an, “Oh, huh,” and steer conversation back to what we’d been talking about before.

Most often, though, and on Saturday mornings in particular, Grandpa would be sitting in a lawn chair in the entryway of our building, a forty of Olde English at his feet and a cigarette between his gnarled fingers. The door to the street would be tied open via a rope mechanism that I could never figure out how to use myself, and anyone going in or out of the building would inevitably get caught in a conversation with Grandpa because his chair took up the whole doorway.

“HiiiIIIIIIIiiiiii!” Grandpa would start off, and follow it with his signature toothless grin. “How are you?!” Typically I’d tell him I was doing good, and ask him the same. “I’m fine,” he’d say, trailing off, his voice becoming much, much quieter and more despondent. But then, “Have a good day!” he’d finish, his moment of self-reflection seemingly forgotten.

Sometimes there would be more of a conversation. On the day many Americans voted for Barack Obama, Grandpa was waiting around in the building at 7:30 a.m. when I returned from voting. “I tried to cast my vote,” he told me, “but the line was too long. My legs couldn’t take it.” Another time I ran into him in our building on Mothers’ Day. “I wish I could visit my family,” he explained as we stood on the second floor landing, “but they live in Atlantic City. And no one has a car.” We related over being far from our loved ones, and I went to my apartment. Later on my roommate Mackenzie came home with the news that Grandpa had wished her a Happy Mothers’ Day in the hallway just moments before. My other roommate, Chris, and I wondered if Grandpa knew something about Mackenzie that we did not.

It’s been well over a year since I moved from Park Slope and last saw Grandpa, though I understand he’s still doing all right. A few weekends ago while I was out for a friend’s birthday, Chris sent me the following text with a photo attached:

“Ummmmm… Guess who’s at Southpaw? Listening to funk and smoking Marlborough Reds?”

Mildly intoxicated and not sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me when I looked at the picture, I texted back, “Who? Where? What?”

“Grandpa! From our old apartment!”

He seems to be doing all right, indeed.

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by Liz Mathews

Before Rosie’s couch became mine, it was known as the dead lady’s couch. We called it that because that’s what it was, though we also called it that because deep down, Rosie’s couch made us uncomfortable. Or at least it did during those months that my friends owned it, in between Rosie’s passing and my possession of the pink, floral-patterned piece of furniture.

When my friends still lived on Crescent Street in Astoria, Rosie was their landlady. They lived in the apartment above the old Greek woman, and despite some of her old-fashioned, non-PC views of society, memories of Rosie continue to warm their hearts. After all, it’s hard to find a good landlord, and the little lady with the gap between her front teeth was just that.

The morning of her death, then, was a sad one. And though there was no reason for them to feel this way, my friends felt a smidge of guilt about her passing, as if they could have prevented it somehow in the way they’d lived above her as tenants. When her couch was offered to them, they accepted it but never sat on it, placing it in their living room and allowing the rest of us callous jerks to bounce on its cushions and joke about how they’d killed their landlady to own her couch. I can understand why they were happy to offer it to me several months later.

And I was happy to take it, since I needed the seating, and since I hadn’t known Rosie outside of my friends’ hilarious imitations of her “Yeah! Yeah, yeah!” staccato response when she wanted to be agreeable (and she was often agreeable). So now Rosie’s couch sits in my living room.

I sit on the couch everyday, and normally I don’t think about its history—yet its battle scars and triumphs are there. The couch has lost a few inches since it was Rosie’s: it was a tight squeeze up and down that old Astoria staircase and the feet just had to go. One of the armrests has been mended with pink thread after a moving mishap tore a gash in the fabric. The couch has served as a stepping stool when some friends attempted to fix the track light above it during a party—a vain endeavor since the light continues to only work occasionally. On Saturday afternoons the couch is a makeshift drying rack when I return from the laundromat, its back the ideal place to drape damp sweaters. It’s played a bed to travelers from as far away as Germany, and is the perfect nap spot when sleep overwhelms my attempts to watch DVDs.

Since Rosie last saw it, her couch has dutifully held hundreds of backsides in both its second Astoria home and its current location in Brooklyn. And though a piece of furniture is little in lieu of a human being, and though I never knew her in person, I think Rosie would be pleased to know that something of hers has gone on to serve others so well. In the background right now, via the voices of my friends, I hear Rosie agreeing with “Yeah! Yeah, yeah!”

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