pinch me - I am Alice

There are memories stored in all of the objects in my office. I throw most of them away, reducing everything to the bare essentials one more time.  There is a new pile of E's drawings, some watersplashed with distorted faces, some half-finished. A testimony to how many long nights she spent with me here, eventually falling asleep on the sofa.

There is dust, and the smell of stale bread crumbs. There are boxes here that have lived full lifetimes. Still kicking, still holding together, with ancient tape crusting the corners. These boxes have crossed oceans, and could they ever have imagined they will live behind a Soviet hotel?

All at once the room is empty. The floor is littered with dustballs and clumps of E's colored clay, some broken broken crayons, a handful of discarded business cards.

I remove the sign outside the door and shove it in my bag. 

The burly truck driver is sweating like mad, swabbing his short grey hair. I must pay him extra to help me with the couch. I give him half a bottle of whiskey as a gift.

There is the exhilaration of quickly saying goodbye to this room, and giving the key to the guard. This room where fights thundered through the walls, where chairs were broken to bits.

And then, suddenly swinging into the passenger side of the truck. We are high on the road, looking down at well-dressed ladies in fur-collared sweaters, at guys behind black windows opening them a crack to flick a cigarette butt into the street. I remember riding with Fred so many mornings in Redhook, when Brooklyn was still the Brooklyn of my fantasies, populated by wise-cracking old men, bubble gum popping prostitutes and mythical pizza parlors. We carted scenery to all kinds of places, sometimes a fancy showroom on 57th Street, where we ogled the office girls in their perfect white pantyhose and slit skirts as we cued up for the freight elevator. In that truck we argued about the correct way to grill a steak, and agreed on the best chili powder (ancho, followed by pasilla). In that truck we lived lifetimes in bridge traffic. 

And now somehow, in Moscow I ride high on the road again, thinking pinch me - I am Alice. I have to get the Tajiks from downstairs to help me, bargaining with them to carry the sofa up nine flights for $30 and to take the rest up the elevator for $10. I hide the cat in the bathroom and she scratches on the door as the apartment fills with a choatic array of drawers and well-taped boxes, a glass tabletop, a damn good espresso machine.

I pay them, they do not shake my hand but offer their forearm, some strange custom I try to act unsurprised by. And then the place is quiet beyond quiet. I let the cat out. She climbs and sniffs everything. I sit on the sofa, missing the pillows - they are somewhere. I look out at the pale sky, the low hanging clouds. I will take E from school in a little while, I will call N now and tell her everything went fine.

I place the sign on the windowsill, and pull the rabbit doll from my bag. This is where the magic will happen now.

winter, please not yet

There are strange black insects coming from the bathroom, like miniature moths. They lay dead, scattered across the windowsills. They flutter randomly around the kitchen, even when there are no dirty dishes. E has been sick, nothing more than a thick cough and the need to curl up under the covers watching a Pixar marathon. We have been home together in our pyjamas for days as I work and cook and coax her into taking cough syrup.

There are bursts of snow flurries, banging against the windows like tiny bells. And then the sun returns painting the sky's hard edges. Autumn is almost over. It is time to surrender to the immortal winter. Time to pull the warmest coats around us. Time to soak beans for chili. Time to carve a pumpkin before they are gone, maybe make something from that collection of magnificent leaves we gathered one afternoon.

untitled from marco North on Vimeo.

On Saturday E's mother comes to take her for a night, randomly enforcing the schedule after leaving her with me for six days. My little girl is on the mend, and I will spend the evening with N. We will drive around the city, buying concert tickets, gifts for a child's birthday party. We get stuck in traffic, suddenly starving.

We sit for hours in the kitchen, long after dinner is gone. Just the smell of ginger and black vinegar, of smoke. Her hands turning in mine, it grows late. At this very moment I will learn that E is coughing terribly. I will find out that her mother gave her no medicine, just a dinner of cheap pasta. Nothing to drink but tap water. E will not sleep well.

On the next day we will gather her, feed her apple juice and tiny sandwiches. She will open her eyes wide her voice leaping into the room. I will dress her in new black tights and a party dress. She will dance in a room of older children, like a Lilliputian princess. She will win a few prizes. She will play for hours without coughing.

The grownups will hide in the kitchen, tossing back shots of cheap vodka, chasing them with crude slices of smoked fish. Some of the little boys will terrorize some of the other boys, strangling them, stealing hats and costumes, threatening to kill each other, to crush skulls against the floor. The girls are more quiet. Some will twirl in circles, working the karaoke machine in the corner. There will be competitions when they must blow matches through a straw and into a bowl. There will be dress-up games, counting games. A thousand pizzas will arrive and disappear. One is pepperoni, and not for them.

I sit with N, her fingers twirling around the back of my neck. We drink strong tea and clap our hands for the winners. Sometimes the tea spills on my leg.

The autumn sun is crashing through the windows, drawing silhouettes around balloons before they pop, around toilet paper mummies. I breathe deeply and close my eyes for a second, thinking I can hold winter off for a few more days. I wonder if I can hear E coughing. I open my eyes and she is there, and has won a fabulous pair of glasses.

I am the hot, I am the cold

Another anniversary is ringing in my ears. A year ago, I was sleeping on the floor on a series of sofa pillows. I was waking up to a madwoman pouring boiling water on me. I understood there was nowhere I could go, and that E who slept on the couch and woke up to all of this needed to be protected. I stayed in that house as long as I could, knowing I would take E to school every morning and make her dinner every night. On the weekends we would disappear to the ancient Moscow Zoo, concrete and shit and lethargic animals covered in callouses. She would eat some chips. I would eat a sausage and feel a little bit sick from it. If we remembered, there would be bread to feed the ducks, the geese, the giant carp in the sluggish water next to the flamingos.

We hid together. We spent hours on the playground until it grew dark, until we were starving. We kept away from her at all costs.

Impossible to believe that things could change, after years of solemn acceptance. But nothing did change. I just got out, and found a way for E to spend four or five nights a week with me. The slow burn that started that July had gained incredible momentum. Regrets were blurring past me, I was a juggernaut,  a man trying to ride a rocket out the front door without crashing into the walls.

A few days ago, the threats grow more brutal, more precise - surgical. Back then she threatened to have me killed in a vague, angry slur of words. I knew it was just a tactic. But no one wants to be told "I will have you killed very soon".  You don't digest well after that. You don't sleep well, especially on the floor.

Now, I am scrambling as usual to run interference, to pay the bills, to keep good food around, to sleep a little. Being a single parent, all alone in a foreign country is one fierce pair of shoes. But when you do make a good bowl of soup, when your kid does take a bath singing like a wild angel you feel a profound sense of accomplishment.

This morning, taking E to school in the cool autumn air, she smiled up at me, twirling her fingers around mine.
"Pop." She said. "Pop, I don't know everything."
"You know plenty." I said.
"Pop, I am going to ask you a lot of questions, OK?" She asked.
"Like what?" I said.
"Like, are there any blue cats?" She asked.
I shook my head no.
"Like, umm - when it will snow in New York?"
"Not until December. " I said. "But, here I think this week."
She bit her lip in thought.
"Like, why can't I just live with you?" She asked.

We kicked the dry leaves on the sidewalk.
I took her inside, kissed her goodbye.

Downstairs, I used the old bathroom by the entryway. No lights on, just crumbling paint and old white tiles. I stared at the sink, where the hot water comes from one faucet and the cold from another one. Turning them both on, letting them run together in the basin I stared at my hands in the dark morning light. I thought about how it would have been easy to turn off all of my feelings when that madwoman poured boiling water on me. I imagined a way for the guilt and sadness, the wounded confusion could be turned off, but all the sweetness could remain, all of the cool hands on foreheads, the surprises, the music. I thought about how everything is one jumble, like it or not. Too easy, any other way. Everything comes out of one spout. I could not have survived if I did not leave myself open to a shy woman in my kitchen last January. This is my weakness that is used against me time and again, but I cannot live any other way. My head is firmly attached to my shoulders. I am the hot, I am the cold.

hold on, clap hands

The fountain in the courtyard is turned off now.  The sun is not up yet, and a lone man in orange overalls is sweeping leaves. The heat is banging around the pipes, but not really working. E is snoring lightly, the cat curled around one of her elbows.

I make coffee in the darkness, thinking about two deaths from last week. One, a girl I have not seen in almost 30 years. The other, the wife of a dear friend. One killed by cancer after a long struggle. The other - suddenly, violently, randomly. I am never prepared for loss, even when it is expected. I believe everyone will live for millions of years. I cannot imagine being awakened in the middle of the night by the crash of furniture breaking, of heavy footsteps, of the loud smack of gunfire. I cannot imagine months of chemotherapy, of a loyal husband holding me until I fall asleep .

It is beyond me.

I am working from home now, in order to take E to music school two times a week. She sits in the tiny classroom, following the pudgy teacher's fingers as they conduct. The parents sit in a cluster in the back, furiously scribbling notes for what to practice at home. Some are busy sending text messages or playing games on their cel phones. I watch the children's faces, the ones that are desperate to get out and play. They could care less about do, mi and and fa. One at a time, they go to the chalkboard to be quizzed. E is right every time. There is a quiet perfection to this hour we spend in the music school. She glances back at me sometimes, not for approval - just comforted I am there.

After bringing her to regular school, I return home. Between the software chugging away, tiny white dots flying around a logo, I sip cold coffee, check emails. One is from my expat bandmates, a new pile of song fragments to listen to, if possible throw some harp on them. And suddenly I have pulled out the new harmonicas I bought myself for my birthday, and it's so easy to play on this one called hold on.  Chugging into the microphone taped to a soda bottle, playing the harmonica is like sad breathing. It's a lost, atmospheric blues that bursts into clicking flurries of melody, then back to a slow, measured backbone. And then there are a few thoughts I have about vocals, just some ideas to share and I am sitting alone in the bright apartment, howling like a wounded animal. I am clapping my hands like thunder. The words are tumbling out - my eyes squeezed closed.

hold on, brother

hold on

you got to hold, baby's gone

hold on, baby's gone

time is running down

time is running down

you've got to hold on to what you've got now

you've got to hold on to what you've got now

baby's gone

baby's gone

baby's gone

sweet baby's gone

My voice is gone after this, just a crude whisper. Things crept up on me, I tried to make something out of them. I have to go get E in a few minutes. 

I dream I can fly. I dream a tiny insect becomes a giant black dog. I go to a punk rock concert with N and we stand in the back of the great room, a cloud of smoke hanging in the rafters, kids bouncing off the walls, men drunk stepping on our shoes, women spinning in wild circles, their bra straps hanging around their elbows. We listen to the thump and moan and smile at each other. We hold each other and sway. The songs are amazing, the guitar is sublime. The beat is furious, ahead then behind then dead center. Sasha is singing with his hands in the air. They love him. They know all of the words. He is some kind of hero. 

And then when the crowd clears, the floor littered with broken bottles and two million cigarette butts, we drift off to find some french fries and tarragon soda. We go to sleep under warm blankets. 

And now the sun is shining. I walk E to school. Three women are sitting on a park bench smoking cigarettes, their coveralls hanging from their waists. I bring E inside and fold her clothes, and then back in silence. The three women are working now, digging the dark soil, turning the earth back upon itself. There are boxes of tulip bulbs they are planting. Winter is coming. The ground will soon grow hard. 

The apartment is cold and quiet. I call N to wake her up. I ask her if she has had any dreams like I always do. She has dreamt both she and her sister are pregnant. How many months? I ask. Four, she says. Ah, so you can still wear pants somehow, I say. Yes, she says, laughing as she stretches. And how does it feel? I ask her. Good, she says, Good.