TV

I sat with the young Rabbi who told me about how amazingly lucky she was to have found love with her second marriage after marrying for all the wrong reasons with her first. Her gratitude was overwhelming, or perhaps I was pre-menstrual, but I was overcome with joy and emotion for a second and suddenly blurted out "I so hope that happens for me. I'm divorced."

She had kind eyes. She reminded me of my therapist. She smiled kindly and asked how long it had been since we were separated. I told her two years and she said, very matter-of-factly, "You are just now remembering who you really are."

I sat on that for the rest of the day, worked late into the evening and then headed to buy a television.

I had been without a television for about 6 or 7 weeks. While I'd never say that I'm a couch potato, TV soothes me and I'm one for watching an hour or so before bed and the news in the morning. Every morning. And then one day there was picture and no sound.

It was an old TV set, a big and bulky and dust-creating king of hulking thing. When we were first married my then husband wanted a TV in the bedroom. He so rarely wanted anything or had a preference for much, that I was happy to oblige despite hating the concept of TV in the bedroom. One day I came home and there was the grand behemoth sitting there in the living room. He'd trolled Craigslist all day and managed to get it up the four flights of stairs and he'd done it all by himself.... another thing he wasn't very inclined to do. I was happy.

Anyway, when the sound didn't work, I wasn't terribly surprised.

For some reason though, the day I spoke with the Rabbi, like many, many days before I got off of the train and didn't go to get the TV. For weeks I just watched the news without sound, piecing together stories of what I thought was going on. I'd leave to get the TV and forget my credit card. Or, I would lament that I could never get that behemoth of a TV out of my apartment without assistance, so why bother moving it. But that particular day my handyman called me about a small repair in my bathroom and, since he was already inside the apartment, I thought I would ask him to remove the old TV. Knowing that not even the comfort of silent pictures lay before me, I had planned on getting of the train and heading directly to Target to purchase a state of the art flat screen TV. Instead, I took myself out to dinner.

My divorce wasn't terribly complicated. I always thought it should have been more so since we'd been together for so many years. The only complication inserting a real moment of real life messiness was an outstanding IRS bill that was largely due to my having a poor accountant. After more than two years, that very day of the Rabbi's talk with me, I had mailed a check for the outstanding balance to the government.

Sitting down to eat and having a glass of wine, I thought I should share the news that the final sticky tie between us was finally undone and he could rest assured that his assets wouldn't be seized on my watch. I intended to scratch out a very simple note on my black berry and instead managed to type out on those little keys all the apologies for my failings in our marriage that I'd never been able to say to his face. I wasn't sorry that we weren't together, I didn't pretend to be. But I was sorry that someone had given me their feelings and I really hadn't taken better care of them.

And, in the middle of the restaurant, I just started to cry. I headed home and the TV was on the curb and I could not stop crying. This old an dumb and now totally useless television set- nothing but pictures and no sound- and the last remnant of my marriage that had still been in my apartment. It broke my heart to see it go. I knew a better TV was just around the corner. One that fit the space and was up to date and didn't need dusting and banging and prodding. But it still made me sad to see the big lug outside.

Very Short Story

I was at the check out counter contemplating cash for my return or store credit when I heard my name.

"You don't recongnize me do you? It's me, _____."

Immediately I knew that I'd always known the face. It was a facebook face. One that I hadn't seen in real life in years. The funny thing about Facebook is that it blurs the line between high school friend/ old co-worker from five jobs ago/ random colleague you met a conference and B-list reality show celebrity from a show you don't watch. You are familiar with the face, but in a totally decontextualized way.

This particular face in front of me at the store belonged to the High School friend category. It had, like lots of faces from those days, become more handsome, more comfortable, wider and more placid then a teenage face could ever be.

"How is the business?" he asked.

"It's good, Thank you."

"You seem really busy."

The other really weird thing about Facebook is that people actually do get "updates" about your life. I was really busy. I also knew that he was doing stand up comedy and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I knew his day-gig involved working in a bookstore. I asked about both. It was a conversation that reminded me of an Art History test- somewhere, at some time, you just KNOW who painted which painting when they show the slide. You didn't even know if you knew it. If someone would have asked him about me or me about him out of the context of seeing one another, I don't know that either of us would have been able to recall what the other person was doing with his life.

I was about to collect my cash and dispose of my now empty bag when he said;
"You know, I was just thinking about you the other day. I was thinking about the day you discovered I was afraid of heights."

"We were practicing for some play together and Mr. Smyth asked me to get up onto this pretty short ladder and I really didn't want to do it. A few weeks later we had the same shop class and I needed to get on a ladder for something and I asked someone else to do it for me. You pulled me aside and said "You're afraid of heights, aren't you?" I don't know if I knew I was afraid of heights myself until that point. You always helped me avoid them from that point on."

We said our goodbyes and I was amazed. I tried for days to remember this interaction that had stayed with this other person for all these years and I couldn't.

I used to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge all the time. It's a lovely walk, but half of the time walking is spent dodging bullets of camera shots of tourists from Italy, Memphis, Pakistan, Greece. I always wondered whose photos I was going to be a part of without ever knowing it. Who might know my face without me realizing that they did. Memories are so much like tourist photos; these iconic images from your life that you review and look at again and again. So much so that you remember all the things and people in the background that weren't so much the subject of the shot, but overtime they've become iconic parts of the composition.

I couldn't remember the conversation where I'd diagnosed my old classmates phobia, but I started pondering all the conversations that I had with other people that I've never forgotten but was certain that they had. I couldn't stop thinking of all the people that perhaps I'd left an impression on and all the many people that had impressed me. The guy in the post office in college who dumped my freshmen roommate, the dance teacher from when I was eight, my second boss who I loved and hated. And now, the class mate who was afraid of heights that I ran into in a book store.

The next week, he was dead. A heart attack at 32. I found out, of course, through Facebook.