Revisiting the Past

This week, I decided to fly my daughter to NYC to see some Broadway shows and generally traipse around the city for our summer vacation. It made sense to stay on the Upper West Side due to its proximity to Broadway and Central Park and the fact that it’s calmer than most other parts of the city. Plus, I lived there when I worked at Random House, so I have a better handle on it than other parts of Manhattan.

The only issue is that there aren’t a ton of hotels on the UWS. And of the few that are in that area of town, there is one that I was studiously avoiding. In the end, though, I realized it was the hotel that made the most sense and so I booked it, gearing up for a very different experience than I’d had the last time I stayed there.

The last time I stayed at Hotel Empire was in mid-December 2009. On that trip, I spent a whirlwind twenty-four hours in NYC that ultimately accounted for one of the more cinematic memories of my life. I went to see a friend who was on her way up play at a jazzy little club downtown. The guy I had a crush on at the time was there, also visiting town. After the show, we wandered through downtown, parked ourselves at a dimly-lit speakeasy for a few hours, and then returned to the Empire. I remember walking through the park on my way to the subway the next morning, feeling as if I had stepped into the scene in 500 Days of Summer where Tom Hansen breaks into song and dance. I felt alive and invigorated in the most beautiful way. It was the night itself, the guy, and also where I was at at that point in my life. It felt as if everything was coming together in a way that was even better than I had ever dreamt it might, and I was simultaneously flying and felt a deeply grounded warm contentment in the core of my belly.

Four days later, in what felt like a personal nuclear explosion, my brother died. Both my world and my heart shattered.

Probably because of that fact, the night at Hotel Empire has lived on in my mind all of these years, perfectly preserved in Technicolor. It was both an end and a beginning, at a moment in time when I was utterly unaware that I was balancing on a steep jagged precipice that would change everything.

That guy and I continued to have what I will call a “relationship,” for lack of a better word, over the next year. He was actually the last person I spoke to the morning when my dad called to tell me that Nick had died. Much like the memory of that night at Hotel Empire is preserved in my heart and mind, so are those peaceful moments that morning before I heard the news. There was a blizzard outside, but my room was cozy and bright. I stretched out in bed languidly talking to this guy on the phone about not much of anything, delighted to be starting the day with his voice rumbling in my ear. Everything felt innocent and full of promise, a blank page upon which we were writing the introduction to our new story.

By the time he called again that night, everything had been violently decimated. I remember telling him that we shouldn’t talk anymore, that he was off the hook. I didn’t know what was going to come next, but I did know that it’s certainly not what he signed up for less than a week in. To his credit, he didn’t go anywhere in a scenario many people would have run from.

The relationship was long-distance, but for the next couple of months, we talked every day. Those calls were the only bright spot in my day most days. I assigned him a unique ring tone so that I could feel a prick of pleasure every time he called—a slight inhale of hope and relief, reprieve from the dark sludge that had settled over my life. He felt like the most tactile connection I had to The Way Things Were, to how I thought the future might look.

And then, over time, things got more erratic, until they finally tapered off altogether late the following November, right as I was hit with a crescendo of painful days, walking through all of the “lasts” that had happened the previous year in the days leading up to Nick’s death. Once the relationship finally gasped its final breath, it hit me that I’d been holding on so tightly—even when it wasn’t great—because it blocked the real pain. I had been through the heartbreak of a relationship that wasn’t working out before in my life; I knew I could withstand that. And if I was focusing on that pain and confusion, it distracted me from the real pain and heartbreak in my life—pain and heartbreak and grief of a volume and depth I wasn’t so sure I could survive.

But, of course, I did. And once that guy was out of the picture, I could finally really walk through it.

I don’t think about this guy much anymore, but I did have cause to think about him this past week. I thought a lot about how, no matter how things ended, I admire him. He stood up in the face of a daunting set of circumstances. He was there in the darkest, most smotheringly painful hours of my life. He gave me hope for a future that was tolerable. He was a voice on the other end of the line and, in the moments when we were together, a warm hand holding mine. I remember that year after my brother died only in an erratic series of overly-lit painful flashes. I can’t really imagine how I must have been in those months, but I’m sure I wasn’t myself. I’m sure I was a disaster. (And I say that without any self-flagellation—of course I was a disaster.)

So, this is all to say, I had reservations about staying at Hotel Empire, because I associate it with such a specific moment in time in my life; one that I’m so far removed from now in so many ways. A moment when I was someone else, when it seemed that the future would be different than it turned out to be. A complex time that I associate with both intense beauty and hope and searing pain and loss.

But, you know what? It felt so good to go back. The hotel was shockingly as I had remembered it, just ten-plus years down the road. And now I had my daughter’s hand in mine instead of his, which is even sweeter. It felt almost as if there was a ghost of me in the lobby, a younger, fresher version of myself who I have so much love and affection for. There are parts of her I wish I could get back. And, yet, there is a wisdom and depth to me now that she didn’t possess, and that I earned the hard way. While I would never want to go through what I went through again to get to this point, there’s still so much to be grateful for. There was so much joy to this trip to NYC, to witnessing Izzy take it all in with youthful, innocent abandon. It all felt like another layer of healing to a wound that, while faint now, will always appreciate the cool relief of some salve.

All of this was a good reminder of where I’ve been and of how there is brightness even in the darkest of times. Of how there are helpers in our lives who are not meant to stand the test of time but, rather, to usher us safely from one side of the raging river to the next.

Thank you for the hand, T.