Deer on the Road

Between Hastings and Dobbs Ferry on the Sawmill River Parkway in the thin morning light, a flashing yellow arrow on the back of a police HELP truck guided cars to the left lane. Of course, I started looking for an accident. About fifty feet further, a deer lay on the pavement, ripped open, gutted.

Lo Siento

Yesterday I walk to my car parked a block away on 109th. Coming towards me is a woman, nicely dressed, weaving along the sidewalk. She says she needs money for a MetroCard. I suspect she's not sober. I say, "I'm sorry," something I learned to say in Madrid where I was told to say "Lo siento" if I wasn't going to give money to a beggar, as if I were saying, I'm sorry I can't give you anything, I'm sorry you need to ask.

Where's a Terrorist?

On Friday I'm on my way to Philadelphia via Amtrak; I'm at Penn Station in New York at Zaro's Bakery to pick up an egg salad sandwich. There's a woman in line in front of me asking what kind of Danishes they have. She's rather big, a blouse coming untucked from her navy skirt that hangs to mid-shin. She's hanging onto a suitcase on wheels. The saleswoman says, pointing to another counter, "They're over there. You can go over and pick one out."

"But I don't want to go over there. I want to pay here."

"I can go with you," the saleswoman says.

"I don't want to go over there." She's giving the salesgirl a hard time.

I say, "why don't you just tell her what kind of pastry you want and she'll get it for you."

She looks at me like I'm crazy, pays for her other order, and mutters as she walks away, "Where's a terrorist when you want one."

Milk Run

6:00 am. Coffee's made, already poured into the mug I take in the car with me to work, but I'm out of milk. I grab my purse, a jacket, take the elevator down, hope to find a store open. A homeless woman puffing on a cigarette butt passes my building as I rush out.

"Do you have 50 cents?" she asks.

"What do you want?" I ask.

"A cup of coffee."

The storefront kiosk is closed. East of Eden, its vegetables and fruit spread before it under bright lights -- is closed. I run into Absolute Bagels, ask for coffee with milk, plan to buy the woman a bagel as well, run out to ask what she likes -- seeds or no seeds -- and order a cup of milk to bring home. I open my wallet to pay. No money. Not a dollar. The coffee is on the counter. I start to walk out -- but the woman behind the counter pushes the coffee towards me. "Take it."

I hand the coffee to the woman; she's thin, has ink dark skin, stooped shoulders, lips that draw in over her gums. And I apologize that I have no money to buy her more.

She is not alone. It seems there is someone who has staked out every city block asking for money or food. Yesterday, walking down Broadway to the subway to get to a reading at NYU's Torch Club, I passed a man asking passersby, "Will you buy me a hamburger? Will you buy me a hamburger?" I was late and rushing and the words didn't resonate until I was a half block away. I thought of turning back. I thought, again, of my former mother-in-law, a survivor of hunger and Auschwitz, who instead of giving money to beggars would take them into the nearest diner and order them a hamburger, pay for it, and leave them there to eat it.

They sit before handwritten, cardboard signs telling you that they have no work, that they have a family to support, that they haven't eaten all day, that they are hungry. Down in the Village, beside the ABC subway entrance, a man in his 70s had his foot on a fire hydrant, playing his acoustic guitar like he'd played backup for Rod Stewart or Mike Jagger; slides, trills, fancy fingerwork, incredible sound. His gray hair hung stringy to his shoulders, his face was pale and wrinkled, and his guitar case lay open to receive dollars.

The Conductor and the Soldier

I am sitting on a bench at the 125th Street Station in Harlem as if I have a front row, center seat. It is where I always sit in order to watch the sun rise over Queens and the RFK Bridge. The sun's light has not yet broken the horizon; it's still dark.

The 6:05 to New Haven pulls in; doors slide open, and like a stage set lit in yellow light, a soldier in untucked desert fatigues, an ipod wire leading from his overstuffed pocket to his ear, leans against the right wall. He holds the cord between his index finger and thumb as if it is a cigarette.

A conductor appears from stage left. "You have to pay," the conductor says. The conductor is an African American. His conductor's cap covers his neatly combed graying hair.

"I never have to pay. I'm in the military. I'm serving my country. I have to be on this train. I have to get to my reserve unit. I have to be on this train." The soldier is white. His wet hair hangs below his matching camouflage cap. His baggy pants are tucked into the tops of his well-worn boots, army boots the color of desert.

"You pay or you get off," the conductor says.

The soldier refuses. He says for the four years he's been in the military, he's never paid to ride the train. He speaks calmly. He does not raise his voice. He is seething beneath his calm and he steadfastly refuses to pay or get off the train.

The conductor won't let the 6:05 leave the Harlem station. It is now 6:12. He speaks into his walky-talky. Two young cops arrive. They talk. The soldier pleads, "I have to get to my reserve unit. I have to be on this train." He does not raise his voice.

I wonder what the soldier does when he is not in uniform. A Wall Street banker? A chef? A grad student? The soldier goes back into the car. I think they're letting him ride. He returns with over-stuffed bags the color of forest camouflage. He steps off the train and drops his bags on the platform.

"I have to be on this train. I have to be on this train. I have to get to my unit," the soldier says.

"If I let him on I'll lose my job," the conductor says. Then he walks down the platform toward another car to board the train, his back to us. He turns and calls back, "I served in the military for 20 years," then he boards, the doors slide shut, and the train finally pulls away from the station.

The 6:09 to Stamford arrives at 6:23. I suggest the soldier get on and transfer to the New Haven line in Stamford. He boards, takes a seat, his bags at his feet. The train departs. I hope he doesn't get thrown off at the next stop, at Fordham in the Bronx.

The cop, about the soldier's age says, "It's a courtesy that the military rides for free. But not a policy. It depends on the conductor." The policeman seems relieved that the soldier is off the platform and on his way. Then my train, the 6:13 to Southeast, arrives at 6:25.

And I think of my former mother-in-law who, after Wold War II, after spending her 16th and 17th years in concentration camps in Poland and Germany, was allowed--like all the war's refugees--to ride the trains across Europe for free.

The Bus and the Train and the Vespa

Out on Broadway at 5:40 am yesterday waiting for the M60, trying to save the 10 dollar cab ride to the Harlem station at 125th. Last time as I waited for a cab, two M60s whizzed by empty. For $2.25 the bus takes just about as long as a cab ride. A block from the stop at 110th, an M60 whizzed by. I ran, chasing it, hoping it would be stopped by a red light. No luck. Waiting at the stop in front of the Westside Market's fruit display, a guy griped that the bus wouldn't come for another 20 minutes. I panicked. We checked the posted schedule. He's right. The M104 wouldn't come until 6:00. But the M60 comes every 7-8 minutes -- and there would be another at 5:47. As we waited he quipped to a passerby he knew, "You gonna vote, Bro?"

At 5:47, right on time, the bus arrived at 110 and Broadway. I got a single seat next to the window. Twelve minutes later, I was getting off at Park Avenue, in front of the kiosk where I buy the New York Times and the Caribbean Cafe where I buy strong Cuban coffee -- and sometimes this sweet, hot, crushed almond cereal that's served in a coffee cup.


At 6:00 am, from the Harlem River train station above 125th, the RFK bridge was a silhouette against a cream colored sky, newly light on our first work day after the end of daylight savings time. The train arrived at 6:13. By then, the black, two dimensional bridge was gaining depth against a pale milky-blue.


Coming home, I waited in the sun on the Chappaqua platform for the 2;46. I wanted to get back to vote for Mayor Bloomberg. I liked Thompson, but Bloomberg seems to have brought back the city to life. Guillani saved it from its horrible turn toward crime, Bloomberg, without being owned by special interests (except his own), seems more a benevolent, disinterested ruler -- making the city vibrant -- and seemingly safe (after the horrible 70s when it was scary to walk on Broadway at 72nd and worrying you'd get mugged -- a word we rarely hear anymore -- I'm knocking on wood.)


Caught the Lex Avenue train south, got off at 86th, voted at our old polling pace on 88th between Lex and Park, then caught the M4 that goes up Madison Avenue, across the top of the park on 110th, and all the way to Broadway where it I got off and it continued north to the Cloisters. Crossing south on 109th, walking against the light, not seeing any on-coming traffic, very tired, in a daze, I walked into a man's out-stretched arm. He had a plastic water bottle in his hand, wore a jean jacket, a pale blue knit cap, and like my mother's arm stopping me from falling forward in the front seat when she stopped too quickly, like a safety boy's arm stopping me from stepping into traffic, like an angel, he stopped me from walking into the path of a speeding Vespa. I thanked him without catching a glimpse of his face, and continued across the street toward home.

At the Railroad Crossing

The red and white striped arm that stops traffic from crossing the railroad tracks that cross Roaring Brook Road fell as I approached. Usually I'm frustrated by the short wait. And always I'm grateful for the that arm that falls to stop us from crossing the tracks as a train speeds by. Over 45 years ago -- we were only 12 -- we lost one of our friends because the driver, his cousin, of the car he was in, crossed tracks (on the way to a football game in Ann Arbor, Michigan) and was hit. When I wait for the train to pass, I think of Wally Strauss whom I danced with at our first dance parties and who teased me for liking Andy Modell. Wally's was the first funeral I'd ever been to. I remember at the front of the chapel his casket, his cousin, Jimmy Prentiss's (also a friend), and their older cousin's who was driving.

A note: We moved two weeks ago from the east side to the west side to make my commute easier. It still takes about 40-45 minutes to drive up to Chappaqua. But the home run is much easier -- almost always 45 minutes (with parking available in a school zone good after 4 pm just down the street from our apartment), rather than the hour and 15 to hour and a half commute to the east side, because of the clogged Deegan or the trek from the west side on 96th Street, through the park on the transverse, to park -- if I was lucky -- on Fifth Avenue near the Guggenheim, a few blocks from our apartment on 86th and Madison.