Fast forward. Pull back the curtain. Look through the glass.
There, just on the other side, on the top floor of the City-County Building, the girl sits at a long, important looking table, its polyurethaned surface so shiny you can see the clouds reflected in it, right back up to the sky.
It’s the tallest building in the city, she realizes, as she watches the cumulus cotton balls slide across the conference table and all the way over its edge, disappearing into people’s laps; khaki pants and folded, manicured hands. We’re closest to them, she realizes. Of all the people in Eastern Virginia, all up and down the shore and inland for so many miles, we are the closest to the clouds. A quick flicker of pride pricks at her lips, pulling their corners up into the slightest of grins.
Her fresh notebook, poised and ready, is inkless yet, save for the date: July 14, 2008. Her pen and yellow highlighter still smell of the packaging from whence they came just this morning. The packaging, incidentally, stands as the only contents inside the black metal wastebasket under her desk – her brand new desk in the room just down the hall from where she sits now, the one marked “Intern.”
In about five minutes, the City Manager of Newport News will walk in and call the meeting to order. Professionally speaking, this is her first one – the first meeting of her life – and for the next five minutes and seventeen seconds, she revels in that truth, in the adultness of it. It’s all happening now, she muses, feeling as if she’s teetering right on the edge of her real life, on the sheer possibilities of it all; the potential posing a significant threat to her sense of composure. This is my life taking flight, she thinks.
The glassy-eyed woman who sits catty corner from her winks a wordless message of support, a gift of muted encouragement, and the girl offers a slight wave in return. This woman is a primary reason for her being here, she helped her get the job. Or, internship, rather. But internships always lead to jobs, she reasons, so same difference. She’d submitted an application to the City of Newport News’ municipal internship program, with fingers crossed that she’d land in the office of the City Manager, the very top of the heap.
The bookmark in the drawer of her nightstand reads: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”
Perhaps the applicant pool was small, or maybe she’d beaten out hundreds of Public Administration graduate students from across the state. She preferred the ignorance of not knowing, enjoying the belief that she’d been granted the internship because she was most deserving, a lost star who’d finally found her time to shine.
This woman, who seemed to always look as if she was on the verge of tears, had contacted her with the news that she’d been selected. It was exactly one month after her return from Spain and her time away in the mountains. “Congratulations!” she’d said on the other end of the call, her voice jumping up and around the static from a bad connection.
Phone in hand, the girl looks out her bedroom window as the happy news sinks in, savoring it slowly like the cherry-flavored lozenges she enjoys sometimes, even when she’s not sick. She rolls it around in her head. Outside, through the windows of the third-story apartment that she shares with her husband, the phone lines bob and sway in hazy weather. Gauzy clouds roll in overhead, throwing their ombre shades of blue and gray.
After several no’s and rejections and missed opportunities, to the girl this call feels like an open door into a promise, a promised land; into a new chapter of life. This is it, she’d thought. Here I go.
At 24 years old, she’d not yet referred to herself as “woman.” This was due to a number of things, largely her small breasts, which seemed to her no more impressive than those of a child. Or it could have been her high-pitched voice and too-fast manner of speaking. If you try to make your voice lower you just sound insane, she knows. So, there’s really no changing that. Maybe it’s time to stop this, she thinks; stop making light of herself all the time, making excuses. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the closet door before her and made a silent resolution. She resolved, there in that moment, to try taking herself more seriously.
***
Two years prior, almost to the day, she’d been seated at an equally glossy, yet decidedly less important-looking table in the graduate program offices of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs – SIPA, for short. Dozens of floors above the city, her favorite Manhattan, she stared down at the sprawling urban expanse, home to millions of hearts and their beating. To be suddenly so far from her home in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia while simultaneously within arms reach of her wildest dreams made her feel drunk on the reality of it, the collision a dizzying mix.
“Miss? Yes, hi. We just need you to fill out your housing papers and you’ll be all set. You can go ahead and move in today. Do you have your textbooks yet?”
From her perch high above the streets of Morningside Heights, she sipped from the scene before her, drinking it all in. The midday air draped itself over the cityscape and it seemed almost a living thing. Heavy with humidity, it shimmied and shook in the radiance of the summer-scorched concrete that stretched out as far as the eye could see. The room itself was simple enough, its distinctive smell by far the most notable descriptor. Filled with a heady cocktail of olfactory stimulants, this room had bombarded her with its notes of academia as soon as she’d walked through its door. A very distinguished perfume.
Glass cleaner. Old worn leather. Noxious floor polish. Cheap carpeting. A rousing mix of fancy New York colognes and eau de parfums.
She had to stop herself from actually sniffing the stack of new books that sat in front of her, the ones the program coordinator had scooted across the gleaming desk; her requisite first semester list. Spines not yet cracked, these books smelled like ink and fresh paper and were really very lovely for all their newness. She wanted to smell them up close, but refrained. What an odd first impression that would make, she reasoned.
In contrast to those fresh books, was the dank pungence of the old, used ones – they were everywhere. Precarious stacks, columns, and rows were crammed into the room’s every nook, jammed into each available space. There were massive, imposing textbooks, manuscripts, scholarly journals, and bound dissertations dating back years. Weathered by many hands, they sat still now, silent on their shelves. With its unmistakable musky fragrance, time had gotten hold of those books and had its way with them.
But stronger still, more overwhelming than the pulpy decay of all the books, was the air of importance they gave off; to her they reeked of it in a way that was discomforting, intimidating. She fidgeted in her chair, pretending to thumb through the shiny new textbooks as a sense of dread sank in, dripping its toxins down into her gut. Parasitic.
Her chair was scooted up against an interior wall so that the huge panel of windows opposite her showed off the city brilliantly. She figured that was purposeful, almost as if to say, Look where you are. Look how high above it all you float. You’re a better you, up here. And to think: this is just the beginning.
***
I’d applied to the program on a whim, not thinking for a second that I’d be accepted. The Environmental Science and Policy master’s program was a one-of-a-kind thing, Reader; world-class and innovative in its approach to preparing its matriculants for impactful, exciting careers all over the globe. The acceptance letter brought with it the feeling of having been welcomed into an exclusive club, and for a little while, it changed how I saw myself. You’re a better you, up here.
“Congratulations!” It read, and that’s really all I needed. In the nano-second in which it took my brain to register that word, those five syllables, my life flashed before my eyes. Supposedly, this is something that only happens in heart rending, dangerous situations, or in moments when death seems imminent. But it isn’t really true, at least not exclusively so. Years of striving, years of gritty, ambition-filled work – a lifetime of dreaming – had, it seemed, transported me here. I deserve this, I’d thought, savoring each and every word on that acceptance letter as if it had been heaven sent. At the time, it felt like it had.
I gathered my papers, my stack of squeaky clean new textbooks, and the keys to my very own New York City apartment and stood to leave. New York was beautiful, and if I squinted, everything looked alright. The life laid out before me seemed almost as it should, everything in its right place. Right school (Ivy League!). Right city (New York!). Right future. Mise en place. But still, something felt off.
***
She couldn’t make a good cup of coffee to save her life. That’s what she told me as she set the chipped, white mug of inky black liquid in front of me. Kiss me! I’m From New York, it read. The incessant honking of the yellow taxi cabs just outside the small East Village diner seemed to chide the mug’s cheeky sentiment. More, “kiss this!” than “kiss me!”
I found it all so charming; so very New York. The soul of the city, come out to play. Leaving it, saying goodbye to The Big Apple and its endless charms would keep me feeling gutted for months, reeling from having made the decision to do so. In the six days since I was handed the keys to my apartment, I’d moved all the way into it, and all the way out. I’ve always been on the fickle side, but this was really something, even for me.
I found myself now, sitting in a nondescript diner in the East Village, waiting for Lucas, my boyfriend at the time, to arrive from Kentucky with my parent’s car. We’d fill it up, bid farewell to my favorite city, and vanish with hardly a trace; like I was never even there at all.
My few meager belongings now lined the curb in front of the beige, four-storied building on 119th street, the place I’d been so proud to call my home just one week prior. The bad feeling that had settled down into my gut as I went through the motions with the graduate program coordinator, high up on that 33rd floor, had grown into a full-blown panic, my symptoms of self-doubt and “imposter syndrome” escalating quickly.
Orientation unfolded as they often do; I met my classmates, collected packets of stapled syllabi, and tried to get a grasp of things, of people – my new peers. I listened in awe as everyone told their stories. We’re not in undergrad any more, Toto.
These people, having traveled from all over the world to learn here, to participate in this program, spoke of the deep, meaningful work they’d done that had ultimately led them to Columbia. From the Peace Corps and jobs at remote whale sanctuaries to impressive degrees in environmental law and judicial clerkships in Washington, the students with whom I was sharing these classrooms came forth with such purpose, such incredible confidence, and so much resolve in their quest to, in one way or another, save the world. It brought into stark relief my own utter lack of direction and left me feeling embarrassed, like I had a bright red “X” flashing over my head, signaling to everyone that I was the misfit, the imposter in their midst. What fragile sense of belonging I’d had when I began this New York journey was abruptly and effectively shattered.
When the time to introduce myself drew near, I scanned the large lecture hall filled with the fresh faces of people who at least gave off the impression that they knew what they were doing, and why they were there. With sweaty palms and what felt like an audible heartbeat, I tried to think of something to say that would sound right, would sell me as someone who also belonged there.
I wanted to lie to them; to tell everyone things that were greater than the actual truth of me. Places I’ve been, things I’ve done, and where I hoped to go – marvelous, interesting, and worthy things; worthy of taking up space in that room. But instead, I said nothing. The words simply did not come, false or otherwise.
It became clear to me that I was really there not to study Environmental Science and Policy as I should have been, to dive in and learn. I’d subscribed instead to the idea of it all – the city, the school, the shimmer.
After wielding a kind of privileged tone deafness through the whole process of getting myself there, I’d finally climbed and fought my way up into the illustrious Ivy tower, only to realize that I’d missed the entire point. I had no idea what I was fighting for; I was just fighting for fighting’s sake. My naivete and utter lack of responsibility felt shameful then, a feeling that burned into my cheeks and made me feel sick to my stomach.
For a long time, almost my entire life, I’d been building a floating castle of hopes and dreams that had no foundation, no structure – not really. It lacked solid ground and simply had no place to take root. My bedroom growing up exemplified this. Blue ribbons, certificates, trophies. Junior Class President. Editor-in-Chief. Student of the Month. Varsity soccer. Oxford University study abroad program. Hospital volunteer. National Honor Society. Glittering receipts from years of trying to be what I thought I was supposed to be, what I thought I needed to be to get to the next thing, to be a great success. No direction, no end goal. This was my shrine to myself; a museum of accomplishment that I’d been curating my whole life. See, look! Look what I’ve done! This one proves that I’m smart. This one shows you that I’m a leader, that I’m capable. This one shows that I am worthy; see, my name is printed on it in gold letters. So, it must be true.
It was a saturated, self-aggrandizing display of More! More! More! How much could I be and do and show for myself?
The guidance counselor’s office in my high school was filled with the silent voices of the many motivational posters adorning its walls; I could practically hear it, a whispered chorus that greeted me as I walked through the heavy glass doors. Like framed displays of platitudinal aspiration, they drove home the need to “be all that I can be,” and to “Reach for the moon! Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
“Students with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.”
Maybe this is true. I’m sure there’s so much validity to this sentiment, but it’s missing some very important context. I was a student with tons of goals, loads of them – quite literally a poster child for this very notion. I could have ripped it off the wall and worn it like a sandwich board. More! More! More! No one told me the most important part, though. The secret to success isn’t just the possession of a goal, like the poster would have you think. That’s not really it. You have to give your goal a reason, a justification. Because then, once you reach it, it will have somewhere to grow and flourish right along with you. You need to know why the goal matters, why it exists in the first place; because a goal that exists solely for the sake of success is one that runs a high risk of burning out.
Once you’ve gone through the whole ordeal of reaching your goal, and you’ve met it face to face, you need to know what to do with it, or it will start to wither, vanishing into thin air before your eyes. No matter how hard you worked to get there, if you can’t remember why you set the goal in the first place, or you never even had a real reason to begin with, you will find yourself alone, colder than you’d like. There you’ll be, grasping on to the specter of a dream once held. Like trying to hold onto a ghost; lonesome and empty. A goal that is set purely for the sake of reaching it, with no guts to sustain it through its afterlife, is a hollow thing, doomed to crack and crumble. Dead on arrival. It will break like bones.
A palace filled with shiny things – a collection of trophies to show what you’ve done and where you’ve been – it might look nice on the surface, impressive. But it’s a lonely place.
Reality began to creep in then. Like an unwanted houseguest in this castle of dreaming, it set fire to my lifelong reverie, sending its ashes down into my core. And so, I got up and left. I simply walked out of the lecture hall, out of the Columbia program entirely. Exit stage right. And that, was that.
***
“What can I get you, hun?”
She snatched the pencil out of her high-perched bun, readying it to take my order. The perfectly sharpened tip never actually met the surface of her small pad of paper, though. It seemed like more of a formality; those things we do for show because they’re expected of us, not because they really matter or make much difference.
It was a sultry morning, wet with humidity. I had ambled all the way downtown and into a small, nondescript diner looking for a break from the heat, from the packing, and from the weighty sadness my recent decision had wrought. I left my building and just walked and walked, southward until hunger stopped my feet from their aimless wandering.
Like a spinner in some sort of child’s game, there I’d landed. By chance, not choice, I stood in front of the greasy spoon-looking spot that couldn’t have had more than five places to sit along with a large L-shaped counter, every inch of which was filled with delicious looking fare, odds and edible ends. Condiments. Piles of napkins. Jars of toothpicks. Pies spinning in a gleaming glass case.
In my haze, I stepped inside and selected a bar stool up at the counter. I had no intention of staying any longer than was necessary to grab my order and go. Lunch in a park somewhere was what I wanted, with the sights, sounds, and smells of the city wrapped around me like a quilt; beautiful, alive and pulsating.
Not totally sure what to order – New York-style delis and diners were a new frontier to me – I had initially gestured to the plate of food sitting on the end of the counter waiting for pick-up, to be delivered to a patron seated at one of the small tables by the front window.
“That looks really good.” I said, nearly salivating the words out. “I’d love whatever, umm, whatever that is. A cream cheese bagel?”
My short time in that diner brought with it an unexpected blast of relief, a feeling of respite in the midst of what, for me, was a tumultuous and emotionally draining time. The relief I sought first came in the form of the food – the bagels, chivey cream cheese, aggressively pulpy juice – but eventually settled in as I warmed up to the buoying company of the waitress whose name tag read “Susie Q.” I called her Susie while I was her guest there, as I’d decided not to take my lunch in the park after all.
Oh, I just love this song! She’d said to no one in particular, as she hummed and sang along to the music coming from the small radio behind the counter. Girl put your records on … tell me your favorite song … just go ahead, let your hair down. I’d sidled up to “her” counter and at this point, had declared my temporary residence on one of the bright red stools with which it was lined.
She’d caught me staring at her small pad of paper as I officially rattled off my order, as if I was expecting her to begin scribbling something down any second, and she just smiled. “This little pad has been empty for years. I keep it handy though, right here in this pocket, because I always think today will be the day my memory fails me. Hasn’t happened yet though! She exclaimed proudly, tapping her forefinger on her temple. The old mind is still sharp as it ever was.”
I noshed gratefully on the steamy-soft, remarkably delicious bagel, dragging it through the mountain of herbed cream cheese on my plate with great enthusiasm. That food was so delicious. Better than just “good.” I found myself savoring bite after bite and not wanting to leave; the meal and the company had ushered in a restorative sense of calm, a bubble that I didn’t want to burst. Not yet.
Oh, good morning Sal! Will it be your usual today?” Sal was one of her regulars.
That day at the diner, I watched Susie Q and Sal weave their way through conversational pleasantries with beautiful familiarity and an almost tangible sense of comfort. You could tell that they’d had this same talk – exchanging the same series of questions and answers – for quite a while. His “usual” was a tuna melt on rye with Swiss and cheddar. She poured him a Coke while the bread was toasting, and by the time she’d placed the finished plate on the counter in front of him, complete with crinkle-cut potato chips and a dill pickle spear, they’d already caught up on just about everything that mattered.
As it turned out, Sal had been coming to that diner for years just as I’d suspected. After he’d paid his bill and tipped his hat to both Susie and me, the awkward eavesdropper, Sal made his way out the door, disappearing into the nation of yellow cabs.
The boundaries of their interactions fascinated me. From what I could tell, the entirety of Susie and Sal’s long-term relationship had existed within the confines of those diner walls, never to venture outside so as to risk tainting the quality of the diner dynamic.
But still, somehow, it had managed to be a very caring, appreciative, deep relationship, more than meets the eye. Sal’s son had his first cheeseburger in one of the diner’s booths, and Susie had been their waitress. He’d taken his family there to celebrate birthdays, Yankee’s victories, graduations, and even a lost tooth. Susie told me all of this while I sat there at the counter, completely captivated as I ate my ice cream sundae, which I’d mostly ordered as a stall tactic. Susie had insisted on giving me an extra scoop of their freshly made vanilla, saying it was “too damn humid outside to not eat extra ice cream.”
My time spent in New York was so brief that summer; over before it ever really began, and certainly not long enough to become a regular anywhere. I, too, paid my bill and said goodbye to Susie Q, disappearing through the door, into a late spring day whose sunshine was so fierce it seemed ready for a fight. Before I left, I turned around to give her a wave and I caught her dancing to the song that she’d been singing quietly as she went about her work.
Was it the food that I hadn’t wanted to leave? I’d wondered about this. Maybe it was the company, sweet and unexpectedly welcoming. Or was it more that I didn’t want to step outside again, through the door and back into the world, into the facts of me. I was leaving; abandoning this once-held dream because it had proven, in the end, to be more of a mirage. It wasn’t what I thought it would be. When I’d tried it on for size, in the light of day and not in the confines of my own mind, it didn’t fit the way it was supposed to.
Maybe I can stay for another iced coffee; just one more.
Summer came like cinnamon, so sweet.
Little girls double-dutch on the concrete.
Tell me your favorite song.
Go ahead, let your hair down.
The song that had been playing on the radio before had taken up residence in my head, it was good and stuck there now. I liked it too, even more so after that day. Suzie smiled at another patron who’d just entered the diner, a newbie like myself, and assumed her position, pad and pencil at the ready, as if she was really going to write something down this time.
“I just put on another pot of coffee,” she said. “But I have to warn you, I can’t make a good one to save my life.”
As Lucas and I drove down the westside highway later that afternoon, I stared at the city as it flew by; getting smaller, turning into a memory that would hold me captive for a long time. We pulled onto the bridge and it was like watching an old movie reel scrolling by in split-second glimpses, perfectly framed by the rails and beams. With all its grays and blacks and blues and glass and steel, the city faded into the background as we worked our way toward Jersey.
I said my goodbyes to the island that used to be mine.
