The Goofy then the Grave
3/21/2020 — Carlisle, Massachusetts
3/22/2020 — Carlisle, Massachusetts
Tuesday March 17th was St Patrick’s Day, the Irish version of Purim: we survived calamity, it’s getting warmer, let’s party. Both peoples skipped it this year. (As of this writing it was just Nowruz in Iran, their biggest holiday.) In the spring of 2020 green beer, hamantaschen and white fish must go untouched, and perhaps unmourned if you tell people you’re keto and think fish is gross. (Full disclosure to maintain my journalistic ethics: I think fish is delicious and I’m strictly keto except when eating.)
Speaking of fat storage, I had skipped the gym Monday out of fear of contagion even though a gym buddy texted to say he was lifting. By Tuesday all New York gyms had closed. I was now ansty to work out. It had been three days since I had lifted. Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays I heft, pull and push various pieces of gym equipment; Tuesdays and Thursdays I pedal a fixed recumbent bicycle for an hour. Yep, I like structure and routine. I hadn’t been to the gym since last Friday. How do I compensate for a facility full of machines, cardio equipment and weights when all I have are sneakers?
YouTube played an outdoor High Intensity Interval Training video. A very muscular man with an intense gaze and washboard abs sprinted up a park staircase. He did box jumps and chin ups. He talked about recovery and heart rates. I felt ripped just looking at him. I put on my sneakers and walked to a turf-covered pier in the Hudson River near Charles Street. It’s where HIIT people like to work out in the neighborhood. I spent half an hour looking less like chiseled social media beefcake and more like Richard Simmons circa 1985, minus the huge hair and crying. (That last part I did on the inside. Actually no. It felt brisk to work out, if not lonely.)
I jogged in situ with knees up, pumped my arms like I was in Ibiza and did countless pushups — who I am kidding? I banged out exactly 80. So proud. So strong. Maybe I was like the buff YouTube guy after all.
During the critical recovery period, which I predicted would last at least 24 hours, I sat and watched the pier.
A couple performed synchronized horizontal maneuvers, yet several feet apart, in gym clothing and outdoors. Not as fun as it could have been for them. A father kicked a soccer ball with his young boy. I wanted to join just to hear a kid laugh, but I didn’t know them.
My exciting plan for the day, Big Tuesday for all you political nerds, was to watch the primary returns at my friend Sabrina’s place in Hudson Yards. We had been texting as anxiety crested and troughed in unsynchronized moments throughout the day. Is it smart or stupid to get together? Ok let’s do it. Wait, is your sofa wide enough to sit six-feet apart? Which is worse: griping about the Democratic establishment’s fundamental neoliberal conservatism alone or together? Fear, indecision and Manhattan’s diminutive proportions had us see-sawing all day. Finally we said screw it, let’s get together. She went out to forage salmon. I thought of buying tulips.
New Yorkers walked alone or in pairs along the West Village streets. All stores except for a Rite-Aid had shuttered. Signs taped to windows said, “we’re closed.” Out of scores of restaurants only a few were open, and only serving takeout. One owner had placed a cash register on the sidewalk. A trickle of cars drove down Hudson Street. Planes still flew north every few minutes, either to LaGuardia or after taking off from Newark. The city felt thin but resilient, like a marathon runner half-way through a race. But to where?
I came home, kicked off my gym equipment and ate a quiet lunch.
Coming from Newton, Massachusetts and now living in New York means I have a clutch of city friends who hail from home. One day in the late ‘90s or early 2000s each one of us had put on our big boy pants and migrated from the Boston suburbs to the chaos, culture, charms — and employment opportunities — of the five boroughs. Well, of the two boroughs: Manhattan and Brooklyn is for gentrifiers like us. Over the past 10 days I had been keeping in touch with old friends as the encircling snare of coronavirus tightened. How are you? How are your parents? What will you do?
I washed my dishes as one of my oldest friends, a man I used to scrap with in our elementary schoolyard before developing a lifelong affection and admiration, let me know that he and his family had driven their minivan from Park Slope and to a Rockport cottage, along the rugged New England coast north of Boston. He suggested I hop in my car and follow.
Minutes later a high school friend called. I had thought he was in Chelsea, a ten minute walk from my apartment. We had been talking the past few days as he battled anxiety and I remained calm — then we’d stop and switch seats, he’d comfort me while I freaked out. He had decided to drive to his family’s place on Cape Cod. Now that he was there he felt much better and wanted to share a succinct message: go.
My 74-year-old mother, an ex-New Yorker from the Bronx, was curiously not issuing her usual barrage of directives, which adapt with the theme of the times. Lately it had been: clean your hands, don’t touch your face, whatever happened to that nice girl Rebecca you told me about and oh did I mention that my friend’s daughter’s aunt’s neighbor from college has moved to Manhattan and you should look her up on Facebook… Imagine these words getting smaller and smaller but never ending, it’s an asymptote of Ashkenazi maternal worry.
Just kidding love you mom! She still lives in my childhood home with my beloved step-father, age 81. I also have an ex-step mother, two sisters and four adorbs nieces in the North End of Boston. I had been thinking about them all. Then Farmer Andrew called to check in. “Dude you should go.”
It felt like everyone I knew had teamed up with the Massachusetts Board of Tourism to deliver a marketing campaign for one. It went something like this. “My dear friend Zachary, of lovely three-hundred-year-old Newton, come visit the historic Bay State, be a short drive from your mother and step-father, be near your sisters and nieces. Spend time with the friends who know you best in the world and who love you. Or die in New York.”
I said I’d think about it. It was 4pm, I had to shower and figure out where to buy flowers at Manhattan’s dwindling retail options.
Then the ex-Park Slope, now-Rockport friend texted again. “Go now. Lockdown could get more severe quickly.” I hadn’t seen the news for the past few hours. I clicked to the New York Times. Coronavirus cases had were now in the triple digits, soon to be quadruple, then quintuple. De Blasio said the entire city would close in 48 hours. A rising sensation quivered in my chest.
By now I had already heard that an acquaintance had fallen profoundly ill with flu-like symptoms in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. A friend in Sunset Park, Brooklyn had canceled weekend plans. “I came down with a weird virus…” her text read.
Then my phone buzzed with yet another message.
“There’s a confirmed case in my building and another in self quarantine for exposure,” a friend wrote. He lives two blocks away.
“Get the fuck out of nyc,” Andrew texted.
“Now”
“Go”
“Tonight”
The quivering vibration turned to a thrumming, throbbing roar. I went to my closet, pulled down a book bag, travel backpack and rollerboard. I counted out 11 pairs of socks and underwear because 11 is my lucky number. I grabbed shirts and pants, a pair of boots, a prayer book, a Jewish bible and a Ta-Nehisi Coates novel from the New York Public Library. I put back the novel. I filled a small dopp kit and ziplock with toiletries, some of which in later days would make me laugh — hair paste and Trojans, yet no allergy meds or band-aids. Vain, optimistic, or absent. I opened my cupboard to grab a bag of whole coffee beans and paleo granola. I went back to my night stand and took the Coates novel.
I thought to text Andrew and write, “I need you to give me shelter,” to elicit an affirmative declaration, a contract made in a moment of utter desperation, but that seemed self serious. I called instead to say I was leaving.
In twenty minutes I had packed three bags and filled a water bottle. I had stuffed my pockets with a passport, two pocket knives, wallet, keys and a lighter. I kissed my mezuzah and humped the luggage down three flights of stairs.
Outside. People walked their dogs. A kid pushed a scooter. I felt sheepish fleeing but it was too late to backtrack. I lugged my possessions a half mile to a parking garage on a Hudson River pier. I took quick breaks to shift my grip. I didn’t pause to think I had now found replacement weights for my padlocked gym. It was hard going but I still managed to jaywalk because New York.
Along West Street, nearly at the garage, my phone wailed with an emergency alert. On a break to change my grip again I took out the phone: COVID-19 is all I needed to see. Three loaded bags and a sharp sense of mortality clutched my body as I ran. Made it to the garage, muscled up a flight of stairs, found my car. Stowed the bags. Pressed the clutch. Shifted into first. Go. Just go.
I raced through Connecticut at 80 mph. There were few cars on the road and the only police I saw were untangling accidents. I had to stop for gas and food. Gas stations were open. The Wendy’s dining room was closed. It took me a few minutes to figure out the drive through: a speaker asks you what you want the very moment you see the menu board for the first time, then you drive up and pay at a window, then drive to another window for the food. Then you park and eat.
A little over three hours later, which is breakneck timing, I collapsed in a Best Western motel on Route 2 in Concord for $83 a night. It was too late to disturb my farmer friend’s family by barging in and besides, what if I inadvertently infected them? The words, “I’m here from New York!” suddenly sounded chilling, not charming.
I washed my hands in the bathroom sink for twenty seconds. I put on sweatpants and had a call with my brother Marc. I shut off the lights.
I had made it out.
Now what?