Falling

It’s the 27th day of quarantine in the city, in the country, in most of the world. Seems impossible, sounds like science fiction, no—horror, rather, “The Living Dead.” We are the living dead. New York is a dead city. This country is dying, may already be dead. I wonder what it’s like to be young and new to the city, finding your way, hooking up, creating a life? Watching our democracy crumble? And now…a pandemic.

 Okay, stop running this nightmare script. Doesn’t do a bit of good. Look up! Feel the air on your face. I want to take my facemask off, the one I made from a pillowcase, but I don’t. The Internet assures me I’m better with it than without. I’ve taken this walk a thousand times. Beautiful as ever. And deadly quiet. I walk under a stone bridge, listen to the echo of footsteps. At my age just walking outside may be a deadly risk. But I assure myself I’m not foolhardy. I keep to myself except for infrequent trips to the supermarket. I touch nothing except what I put in my sanitized cart. I walk there and back, I walk the twelve flights to my apartment.

I notice that everyone is finally keeping the six-foot distance. If only we had started in earnest before... No, we were assured it was a Chinese hoax amplified by the press and the Democrats. The streets lights flicker on, reflect the damp pathway. A vivid red sunset burns behind the apartment buildings on Central Park West.

Who knows how many walks or sunsets remain for me? Should things go badly for me, I have a plan—and a gun. How strange that I, a third-generation Jewish liberal New Yorker, a former teacher in the public schools, have bought a gun. Yes, this contributor to the Brady organization and to Giffords, rented a Zipcar, wiped it down with what turned out to be my last antiseptic sheet, and drove to Yonkers. I learned that “tactical supply” means “guns.” They were thrilled to sell me a handgun and the matching ammunition. They told me about a range nearby where I could take lessons. Buying a gun, even in New York, is the work of a few minutes.  It’s meshuggeneh.

 But everything is. If I become seriously ill—they say it feels like glass in your lungs—I’ll dispatch myself—one click of the trigger and boom. Will I hear the sound? Regardless. I won’t burden a healthcare system that already breaking down. Won’t waste a ventilator. Don’t want to be in the ICU.

I’m still working on my letter, financial details mostly and the cremation I want. No funeral service. The one part of the plan I don’t like is the call to the police right before. I use my cell phone. They pick up. “Sixth Precinct, Sargent Davis” or Mahoney or whatever. I’ll be very clear, direct and matter-of-fact. “I’m sick—and when I finish our call I’m going to kill myself. I need you to send an ambulance to collect the body, my body before it starts breaking down. I don’t want my neighbors—” He interrupts, he wants my name. “Cecile Grief etcetera, etcetera. He interrupts again to keep me talking. I interrupt him, repeat the address, hang up. I hope I have the strength for all that. I should’ve thought about that before.

It won’t be easy. I know that, but the sudden time pressure—will help me get it done. Like when I turned 50, and my husband and I went skydiving. Watching couple after couple fly up and float down, I was sure I could do it.

But when our turn came, I didn’t want to, not one bit. But I didn’t back out. When we got to the plane, I told Jim to go in first. I wanted to be in front. That way I had to jump. If I didn’t, Jim couldn’t get to the door for his jump. As we flew up, as I watched the world grow smaller, first cars, then buildings, then a ship docked nearby, the idiocy, the foolhardiness of our act came at me in waves. I tried to focus on the clear, blue sky, the gentle countryside, but all I could do was try to imagine what it would mean to drop through the sky that long, long way.

When it was time, I followed instructions, put one foot here, the other out there on the wing where my guy was waiting. I felt myself being tethered to him. The plane engine was loud, the flight bumpy. I did the one thing we were taught, that is, to cross my arms on my chest holding onto the front straps. Somehow I managed to raise my second foot onto the wing, and I was in the hands of God, at least as God was manifest in my diver.

It’s funny how you create expectations for a thing you’ve never done, a thing you cannot really imagine. But from whatever movies I’ve seen, I imagined that the first moments would be a kind of swan dive looking straight down towards the earth, then the pop of the chute opening, then a sudden pull upwards. My diver, it turned out, had another idea to give me an extra thrill, he later explained. As we jumped into the ether, something went wrong. I saw a glimpse of the world below, then the bottom of the plane above, then I don’t know what because I had frozen with panic. A few seconds later when he had pulled the cord and we were pulled upward, I was a trembling. As we began gently floating held aloft by the parachute, a part of me understood that the danger had ended. We floated over farms and fields. But I just wanted it over. I declined his offer to do some gentle curves, and soon we made the easy slide down the grassy field, I unbuckled, and it was over. As I walked over to the little office, Jim had just begun his jump. It looked like fun actually; but it hadn’t been a bit fun for me.

I suddenly come back to earth, to this moment in Central Park. A family is walking toward me hugging the opposite side of the path. I haven’t thought of that day for such a long time. It was another world, not just because I was younger and not alone. It was part of a normal world where things generally functioned, before our world of the living dead.

I’m sitting on a bench in a part of the park I don’t know. There was a time when simply sitting in the dark would have struck me as dangerous. Silly. I smell the fresh piney air, hear the distant sound of traffic. I really do like this city, this park. I’m lucky. Yes, I knew it back then, and I know it now. Those of us here now may be the last generation. I stand and begin my walk back home, thinking of a concert I heard at Carnegie Hall. It was beautiful, and though it couldn’t be more than four months ago, it feels like a dream.