A Place in the City by Mary Ann Sternberg

A Place in the City

I call it a cat-sitting gig but, in truth, the two weeks I spend in a friend’s apartment on New York’s upper west side in June, sieving the litter box and purring back at a feline, is the only way I’ve found to fulfill my lifelong fantasy of living in Manhattan.

I’ve wanted to live in the city since the mid-1960s when, as a college girl from New Orleans, I spent four years in Poughkeepsie and took every possible opportunity to explore New York City. My plan was to live and work there happily ever after college.

However, life, as it tends to do, unfolded differently and I returned to Louisiana. New York became a destination for business trips with my husband or the occasional holiday — always exhilarating, whirlwind visits, but never long enough. Shortly after my husband died, however, I learned that my friend Wendy needed company for her cats Happy and Eva while she and her husband spent time at a family cottage on the Maine coast. Did I want to stay in her apartment?

Which is how the longstanding desire to live in the city, even if only for two weeks every year, came to be a reality.

My pilgrimage begins when Wendy mails a small ring of keys — to the front door, (this is a no-doorman building), two apartment locks, and the mail box — which I juggle like a talisman as I bound out of the taxi, dragging my luggage up the building’s front steps and into the elevator.

Nothing much changes in Apartment 5A from year to year and I unpack amid familiarity. And then I walk to Fairway Market on Broadway and 74th Street, my favorite provisioning stop, with the excuse that I need breakfast fare and snacks. (Of course, like real New Yorkers, I eat out a lot.) Fairway has become as much a part of my New York as subways and theatre, with its splendid selection of everything and its great (though unintended) entertainment value. I sidle up to the counter where eight types of smoked salmon are laid out shiny and pink, ready to be sliced to order. This isn’t available back home and I’m now inured to the natives stirring restlessly behind me in line while I try to decide which kind I want. And, after wandering about, gathering exotic foodstuffs, I know home-girl form — how to make a quick dash with my buggy, elbows askew, in order to plant myself in the shortest checkout line.

I could have the groceries delivered to the apartment but, instead, I haul them home, through the bustling streets, with the plastic loop-handles of the heavy sacks cutting into my hands. It’s only because carrying groceries home is a great novelty; where I live, if I walked to the grocery, I would only be viewed as a pedestrian target when I crossed a certain major intersection.

In New York City I keep a flexible schedule. Many mornings, before fixing breakfast, I pull on sweats and stride briskly to the newstand a couple of blocks away for a paper. My route varies; sometimes I go directly, other mornings I detour through the edge of Central Park, watching sophisticated suits striding off to work, the rainbow of nannies pushing strollers and pulling toddlers, and joggers and bicyclers all stage-set against the park’s rich greens. But I do go to the same newsstand every year and one Sunday, a couple of years ago, after I’d failed to notice that the price of the paper had risen, I took less cash than I needed for the bulky Sunday New York Times. "Any chance you’d let me come back later with the rest?" I wistfully asked the man behind the counter, expecting a growl. "Of course," he smiled. "You’re a regular."

Some mornings, my time is tighter. On Thursdays, for example, when the New York Philharmonic rehearsal begins promptly at 10, I have to hustle to Lincoln Center at 9:30 to claim a good seat. I’ve been feeling slightly miffed the last few years by how much the audience has grown since I discovered this bargain concert a dozen years ago.

Usually, though, my day is determined according to where I’ll be for lunch or dinner, what I read in local publications or from friends’ suggestions, or on pure whim. So, for example, one day I had a late lunch date with a college friend in Greenwich Village and rode the #1 subway down to explore the area before we met. I had noticed in my gallery guide that the Chaim Gross Studio Museum was near our meeting place and, although I’d only vaguely heard of the 20th century sculptor, decided it might be a worthwhile destination. But when I arrived at the entrance, I found the museum closed. Hmm, I thought, and dialed the phone number listed in the gallery guide to find out what the hours were. "There’s no one here but me," said the woman who answered. "Where are you?"

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Culture and Arts, Relationships and Going Places, Home and Shopping, Travel, Senior Women Web, Authors, Mary Ann Sternberg

A Place in the City

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