Postcard Stories

Brooklyn, New York / Paris, France (Part 4 of 4)

Even though I convinced myself I’d be fine if I had to spend the night on the street, it was a relief when I found a cheap room in a motel near the main square.

In the room, I laid down on the tough springy bed in the glow of YouTube Seinfeld clips I had stored on my iPhone before I left. The clips were from the episode The Comeback, where George Costanza goes to outrageous lengths to get back at a fellow employee who’d insulted him. After coming up with his retort much later, George flies all the way out to Akron, Ohio to deliver it – only to be stifled once more by the quicker witted employee.

I watched and re-watched this clip, laughing at first, but soon felt a creeping sadness at the reality of it.

“The French have a term for this condition,” Haidar had told me one night, back in Paris, while crouched on the ground behind his bicycle.

“What condition? I don’t have a condition.”

“L’espirit d’escalier,” he said.

“The wit of the staircase?” I asked, visibly annoyed.

“Yes, or staircase wit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s where a person is only able to come up with a witty remark, decision, or action after it’s way too late and the moment has passed.”

“What does this have to do with anything, Haidar?”

”A person who undergoes this process is a victim of a subconscious act of self-sabotage; the brain working to block out any potential response to a situation until it’s safe, and after-the-fact.”

I nodded, listening.

“This leaves a person in a state of constant anxiety.”

I missed Haidar. I missed his calm pragmatism. I missed sleeping on his shoulder at night.

I remembered what he’d said, before walking out of the bedroom.

“People react to tragedy in absurd ways,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You’re not going to lose me,” I said.

I fell asleep in the motel that night with damp cheeks, to the cool bass pops and scat of the Seinfeld theme, unsure of so much in my life at that moment.

I continued my search early the next morning, loitering in textile factory parking lots, and confronting random people with the Rabinowitz name to no avail.

I fantasized about going door to door until I found a Rabinowitz, but I was scared to actually go through with it.

I needed a new approach.

I walked over to the local public library to track down any record of the family. Yet, once inside, my rejuvenated energy was soon gone after a frustrating conversation with a curt, disengaged, librarian as we both struggled to understand one another.

I sat on the library stairs, and leaned forward on my knees. I felt disappointed and tired. A half eaten street-cart kielbasa sat on a paper plate beside me, my lips still tingling from the viscid cooking oil.

I knew Haidar had been right all along. How naïve was I. I felt homesick and inadequate. I felt resentment and anger.

And it came to me. Alton’s death; the story I’d been trying to repress for a month. That fucking idiot. How could he have been so selfish?

The official pronouncement had been drowning in the East River, but that wasn’t the entire truth. During a week long drug fueled bender, Alton and some buddies holed themselves up in a South Williamsburg hostel collecting dumpster items to build some sort of demented “submarine” with the goal of propelling themselves under the half mile width of the river to Manhattan. There was no point, they just wanted to be able to say they had done it. It’s so stupid, and meaningless, and absurd. Needless to say, their ingenious plan backfired. Three days later, Alton’s body was fished out of that stupid toxic fucking river. It was all over the New York news apparently.

When I’d broken up with him before coming to study abroad in Paris, I still loved him. I don’t think he believed that I did, but it was true. I was younger then and didn’t know what I wanted. Plus, I was being influenced by the grand dreams of movies and television, which is a dangerous thing to do if you want to maintain a relationship. I knew I didn’t want to be in a relationship while studying abroad. I was worried he’d hold me back.

I broke it off the night before I got on the plane.

I only talked to him once after that. He’d called me late one night last winter from a pay-phone somewhere crying unintelligibly about the jacket and Karol. I shouldn’t have felt guilty about Alton’s death. I didn’t owe him anything. But I did.

I thought back to Brooklyn. I saw myself seated at my desk, in my bedroom, younger – with a scrunchie holding back my hair. I had a stack of encyclopedias next to me, and scribbled away at a notebook for English class. I finished writing, and flipped back several pages. I thought to myself for a second, chewed on my eraser, and titled the story: The Birdseed Man.

“You lied to me,” Alton had said over the phone that night. I could tell he was crying. I could hear him wiping the snot out from under his nose.

“That’s not true,” I said. “Some of it is true. The name’s are mostly true. The family really came from Żyrardów.”

“Yeah, but –”

“But what?”

“You played it all off as true. I believed you. I believed in a fantasy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “My mother took care of his wife at the nursing home.”

“You used him.”

“No. But I took snippets from the stories I heard from her, and embellished the rest. I’m really sorry.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Karol is a real person. I know him now. You can’t just make up stories for people you don’t know.”

“I was fifteen years old, Alton. We were just kids. I had a big imagination. I didn’t know you’d take it so seriously.”

“I don’t know what to believe any more.”

“Stop being so melodramatic. You need to grow up.”

“How can you say that?”

“Excuse me?

“You ran away. You left everything behind for some fantasy.”

“That’s so far from true.”

“Growing up isn’t running away from your problems. It isn’t leaving everything behind.”

“So that’s what this is about.”

“I didn’t have a place in your fantasy life so you ditched me.

“No, Alton.”

They remained silent on the line.

“I want to see you,” he said.

“I’m not planning on going back anytime soon. I live here now.”

“No, I want to come to France. I want to see you.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Please, Lydia. I need to get away from here. I’m not –”

“You’re not what?”

“I’m not well. I’m not doing well. I don’t feel good. About myself. I need to come see you.”

“How will seeing me change things?”

“I don’t know, but please.”

“Will you listen to me? I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Is France near Poland?”

“No, it’s not. Why?”

“Please. We can go to Poland together.”

“Why would we go to Poland together? What are you talking about?”

“I need to get to Żyrardów.”

“What?”

“Because.”

“Why?”

“I have the jacket.”

“You have it?”

“Yes, I have the birdseed jacket.”

“How did you get it?”

“Please let me come see you.”

“No, Alton. Okay? I said no. Enough already.”

“Fuck you, Lydia,” he said.

He hung up. It was the last I ever spoke to him.

I cried my goddamn eyes out on those library steps, trying to compose myself, trying to think of what in the hell my next move would be.

I was about to give up, and fell into a swift panic of self-doubt. What was I even doing here? I knew I had to leave that night, if I wanted any chance of retaining my job at the bookstore.

Haidar hadn’t texted me since mid-day last night. The factories would be letting out soon.

I mustered up the strength to try my luck once more.

Outside a weathered red brick factory, I encountered a pudgy woman wearing a hair-net who happened to be fluent in English. She introduced herself as Lusia. I explained to her the reason for my trip and she claimed to know of a man by the surname of Rabinowitz who worked in the factory. She she’d bring him out to me when the whistle blew.

I waited.

I chain-smoked about a dozen Sobieski Premiums until my throat burned. Two hours went by, before I heard the whistle.

I watched close by, as the workers began spilling out of the factory, not unlike the Lumière film of a similar situation. Sure enough however, the hair net woman returned with an attentive, stocky man. She introduced him as Adam Rabinowitz. We spoke briefly, his English stable enough to get by, and to my sudden disappointment he claimed to know nobody in his family named Józef or Karol.

I almost gave him the jacket then, to clear my mind of it, but somehow it didn’t feel right. After thanking him, he and the hair net lady walked off together toward the parking lot.

Adam turned and hustled back over to me. He’d misunderstood my question, and repeated an apology several times, gingerly patting the tips of his spiky gelled hair as he spoke with all the tenderness of a cacti gardener.

He agreed to help.

Adam, and Lusia – to translate between us – took a ride in Adam’s truck out beyond the fringe of the city. Wrapped tight with neurotic energy, like a young Polish George Costanza, Adam flipped through the radio until I heard the strained melody of a familiar song. I shot my hand forward, gesturing him to stay on the station. Reworked in a sort of Polish teeny-pop song, the melody was unmistakably I Put a Spell on You.

The three of us listened, bobbing our heads as we zipped along a bumpy cobblestone road. The sides of the road edged with faded cinnamon brick apartment blocks patterned with ornate lampposts. Each of which appeared to switch on, so it seemed, right as we passed by.

We arrived at a small country house about a half hour later. It was now dusk. A small terrier nipped at my heels as we were ushered in through a tattered screen door by a wispy, and puzzled, old woman who Adam introduced simply as “L.” She grabbed onto my arm with her feeble, but assured grip, and lowered me down for a convivial kiss on the cheek. She couldn’t have been more than five feet and her quiet, dimly lit home smelled like a coffee filter, with chipped sea-foam walls in the crackling glow of the fireplace. A sudden, nearly perverse excitement shuddered through me as I looked around the home. My eyes drifting until centering on a bookshelf with a propped dog-eared photograph of a somber young man; Karol.

We took our seats. Our conversation began as a translational game of telephone. L spoke in her balsa frail whisper to Adam, who turned to Lusia, who finally relayed the message to me.

I learned that L had been in casual correspondence with her cousin Karol who lived in Brooklyn. I couldn’t believe I was actually here with Karol’s younger cousin. We sipped a strong rum tea and let the gentle hours of the country blanket the small yard, the woods, the history all around us. The rustle of the leaves quietly combating the interminable rumbles from Żyrardów.

It was around this time I mentioned the name Alton. Once the message reached L, she vaulted up suddenly on her cane, and shuffled over to a small wooden cupboard near the fireplace. She scuffled through a series of envelopes until she found what she was looking for and walked it back over to me.

My lower lip began trembling even before I saw the picture. It took a push of strength to fight off the tears when I finally saw it. The picture showed an early twenty-something Alton with his arm around elderly Karol on the front steps of his Greenpoint walk-up. Alton’s eyes were sunken seashells. He looked beat-down and strung-out. They were both smiling.

L explained that Alton had befriended Karol and would spend afternoons reading to him, and helping him around the apartment. I began to cry. L placed her hand over mine. Her hand felt like a leaf resting on mine, diaphanous and veiny. She looked me in the eyes, and told me that when Karol got sick, Alton arrived at his home every Sunday morning, and would walk out into the park with the jacket.”

“Even after he passed, he still took the jacket out into the park for the birds,” Lusia translated.

“Who? Alton?”

Lusia leaned in to clarify, and I saw L shake her head. It was an extraordinary pause for all of us, like the silence – I could only assume – of a soldier just after hearing the click of a landmine under his step.

We now, collectively, understood each other. Both people involved were gone.

And what I remember most though was the hiss and pop from the fireplace layering over our silence. I knew the real pain of all of this was yet to come, and it would hurt and sustain until I moved on, which I knew I’d have to. What else could be done?

After some meditation, I took a strong swill of rum tea, reached into my backpack, and handed the folded jacket to L.

“I think you should have this,” I said.

I motioned to Adam and Lusia that we should go. L sat there silent holding the jacket in her frail arms.

She spoke. Lusia nodded, and turned to me.

“Can you believe this gold laced trim?” she said.

We left L in her home, to the windless night of the countryside and rode back to Żyrardów in silence, zagging through several backstreets lined with semi-lit smoke stacks towering in the darkness above us. The sharp angles and dark contrasts of the city at night made it seem like we were driving through the set of a German Expressionist film.

*

As they walked away, Alton looked over his shoulder to catch one last glimpse of the birdseed man, but he was gone.

*

Adam dropped me off at the bus terminal, thanked me, and he and Lusia skidded off back in the direction of the factory. They very well could have been working the night shift. I didn’t know.

I sat on my backpack against a chilled tile wall, and waited for the bus. I was early, but I didn’t care. I wanted to wait, and wait. The terminal echoed with courteous Polish smooth jazz. I put on my sunglasses even though it was night, and lost myself in the courage to think about everything and nothing all at once.

Postcard: Found at JUNK in Brooklyn, NY in May 2010.

Brooklyn, New York / Paris, France (Part 3 of 4)

I spent the majority of my nights that month, after work, trying to track down any record of Karol’s family. I put in several calls to New York, but I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Later that month, I asked my parents to wire me a little extra money.

“For a vacation with Haidar,” I said.

They complied, even though I was still unsure of everything. Though now I had the money – once I could gain the confidence, or temporary lunacy – I needed to actually leave.

And after a couple of glasses of wine one night, I bought an overnight Eurail ticket to Warsaw.

I reluctantly told Haidar, as we sat together for dinner later that night.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said.

“I already bought the ticket,” I said.

“Are you drunk?” he asked, looking me over.

“Not really. A little.”

Haidar swiped his hand across the table. His food and dinner plate clattered to the ground. Chicken and rice was strewn all over the ground.

He stormed out of the kitchen.

I found him out on the fire-escape, a few minutes later, smoking a cigarette.

“It hurts me Lydia.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, it hurts me that you care so much about this Alton, this other man, that you’d do this for him. I don’t care about you leaving. You do what you need to do. But, you must still be in love with this man. I don’t see how –”

“– I’m not, Haidar. I love you.”

“Then, so what if he wants you to bring this thing to Poland? That’s his problem.”

“He’s dead, Haidar.”

“I know,” he said.

“Alton was kind of a fuck-up. He was my best friend, and I did love him at the time, but it was complicated. I grew up, and he didn’t. He had a lot of problems. He was really insecure, but also felt that he was better than everyone else. It made him a really unhappy person.”

“Then why?”

I paused, and looked out over the shingle rooftops of our neighborhood. A police siren kicked on nearby us, and built, and finally disappeared into the noise of the city.

“It’s like a burden. I want to do this because I want to free myself of it. I just can’t shake the feeling that I need to do this.”

“But what if you don’t find anybody?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you feel responsible?”

“For what?”

“For his death.”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever problems he had, you know, you aren’t responsible for what he did to himself. Only he is.”

“I know. I’m not.”

“You choosing to end the relationship, didn’t kill him Lydia.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to do this. You don’t owe this to him.”

We remained silent, and it was cold, and we were both shivering. I took his cigarette between my fingers and took a long drag. I blew the smoke up into the air. I felt the nicotine move through me in a wave. I felt a little better. Not good, but better.

And within the week I was off on a train in a semi-lucid dream state, nervous but living at the apex of the present.

France came and went. The grey drizzle on the train windows blurred the landscape as we scrolled by Belgium, slipped into the darkness of Germany by night and, finally, reached Poland.

I arrived in Warsaw a greasy, unwashed mess. Next, I located a well-worn bus depot out in the western portion of the city, the kind of place that has birds living in the rafters with scattered feathers all over the ground. A spidery glass dome loomed overhead, the overcast sky reflecting inward.

I sat on a wooden bench, much like a church pew, chewing on my fingernails. An older woman sat next to me, with her head wrapped in a nautically themed shawl.

“Żyrardów?” I asked her, though pronouncing it more like “zeer-i-dow.”

She smiled politely, but then returned to her book. Was my accent that bad? Did I smell? Regardless, I placed my headphones on, and thought of Alton.

The skeletal stomp of Screamin’ Jay’s I Put a Spell on You buzzed in my headphones as the white and navy box shaped bus rolled into the station. I could see it through the glass door of the boarding zone. The woman and I stood up and dragged ourselves across the station and up on to the bus. They never even took a look at my ticket.

Inside, the bus was nearly empty, save for a rural couple – a portly woman and a bearded man – both dressed in matching plaid work suits. They glanced up, observing me as I skirted along the aisle, with a sort of post-Soviet glaze clouding their eyes. I worked my way to the back and stretched out in an empty row of seats. I flipped my sweatshirt hood up over my head, closed my eyes, and slipped into the most ominous dream.

*

“Karol burst through the door into his home leaving. Once inside, he tore off the honey, seed, and feather covered jacket – frantically assessing the damage. As much as he tried to wash the jacket, scrubbing with various soaps and detergents, he couldn’t get the gooey substance off. Devastated, Karol went straight upstairs to his bedroom and, so they say, didn’t leave bed for the rest of the week. Elwira would bring him his meals and he lay there, staring up at the ceiling and smoking Sobieski Premiums, his favorite brand of Polish cigarette.

*

I was looking out the window of the bus as meteorites began splattering the Polish countryside. Inflamed chunks of pitted coal screeched above, tearing through the cloud cover, discolored veins across the overcast sky. The meteorites would strike the earth at a tremendous speed, rolling for hundreds of yards, ripping fresh trenches into the straw fields and snow covered grasses. Quaint, cream colored farmhouses splintered and collapsed as the meteors crashed through. Farm hands ran for their lives, scattering like ants across the field, until throwing their hands up in concession and falling to their knees in the muddy snow. A flock of dark birds swooped up and away, darting around the meteorites toward the grayed mackerel sky. Then, the punch of snare hits. The staccato bounce of a baritone sax began to soundtrack the scene. The flow and rhythm like an egg tumbling across a wooden tabletop. Screamin’ Jay’s cries seared above everything.

While the destruction rained over the countryside, I remember feeling strangely content inside the bus – the feeling when you wake up in the morning to realize that you still have three hours to sleep before your alarm goes off. I also sensed that Alton was there sitting next to me, but I don’t remember if he was actually there or not. Nobody in the bus noticed the chaos outside, immersed in books, or their own histories.

I woke up.

I realized that we were coming up on the city limits of a smaller industrial town, with smokestacks poking out through brick factories. It could have been a microcosmic Detroit, Akron, or even Brooklyn, but it was baby Karol’s Żyrardów –  jolting outward, beautiful, melancholy.

Or, at least that’s how it looked to me.

*

“When Karol’s strength finally returned, to the encouragement of his wife and son, he was able to leave bed and, without saying a word, he dressed himself and marched downstairs. On the kitchen table, lay his jacket. He approached it solemnly, and picked it up. He jammed his arms in the stiffened sleeves, pulling it snugly across his sloped shoulders. From there, he walked out into the cold winter morning toward McGolrick Park. The birds swarmed him again, but this time he remained still, and allowed the birds to latch on, feeding from the seed attached to his jacket. From that moment, at the close of 1994, until this very day Karol has emerged in his honey and seed doused coat and stood still, next to the bronze winged victory for precisely an hour before walking back up the steps to his home until the next Sunday morning.”

*

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Żyrardów, down through the main square, past old textile factories, squarish red brick buildings on all sides of the street. Outdated advertisements for deodorant painted on the sides of the buildings faded into the brick. It was extremely humid and, although it was mid-afternoon, the streets were quiet and empty.

When a stray person walked past I would mutter the name Rabinowitz under my breath, hoping that they might hear. Nobody did. I reeked of insanity, and was well aware of the challenge of randomly finding someone in a town of forty-thousand or so, but my iPhone wasn’t working, and I didn’t know what else to do. I felt impetuous and exhausted. I should have prepared more. There was so much more I could have done to prepare before I’d left.

On the far corner of the main square, I found a staggering gothic church, with two pointed spires jabbing the darkly clouded sky above. The massive front doors were bolted shut, but I wandered around the back of the building and found a sort of maintenance cellar door, which lead me down into a a series of darkened labyrinthine hallways sprouting underneath the nave.

Down inside, a bald groundskeeper with sullen cheeks ran up to me barking in Polish until finally giving up and simply pointing toward the exit. While walking back towards the door, I decided to go for it.

“I’m looking for a family from Żyrardów. Rabinowitz?” I asked.

He turned around, his eyes locking into mine, though the confusion was lightening.

“I am from this place? Żyrardów.”

“Rabinowitz?”

He smirked. He cupped his hands on top of his head like ears, and jutted out his teeth. I think he was going for Bugs Bunny, but he looked to me more like Nosferatu.

“No, not rabbit,” I said. “Nevermind.”

Oddly, he reached out, and shook my hand. He nodded toward the light out through the open cellar door at the top of the stairs.

I mumbled a thanks, and went back outside.

Behind the church, on the outskirts of a decrepit cemetery plot, I remembered the look Alton had on his face that morning when we were leaving McGolrick. There was something forlorn about it, as he tried to catch one last glance of Karol, yet my memory was somewhat fuzzy.

I sat down on a feeble wooden bench, and stayed there until the stars were out and I was shivering.

*

Seated on a park bench, Lydia and Alton remained silent, absorbing the story together. Karol had begun walking back home and the sun was fully risen, peaking through the bitter air as if reflected through a frosted window. A mini-van drove by along the south end of the park, carrying with it the bounce of a new Outkast single.

Lydia slapped Alton on the knee.

“Ow!”

“I’m hungry, let’s grab a bite to eat.”

He glared at her, rubbing his leg. “There’s some leftover seed on the ground. You could have that,” he said.

(To be continued…)

Postcard: Found at JUNK in Brooklyn, NY in May 2010.

Brooklyn, New York / Paris, France (Part 2 of 4)

Alton’s expression had changed.

“The Nazi’s found them didn’t they,” he said.

“Fortunately for the Rabinowitz family, a co-worker of Józef’s, Grzegorz, was an active member of an underground resistance movement that had been forming in the woods, outside the city limits. Grzegorz listened to Józef’s plea for help, and helped move the Rabinowitz family into his home to help provide a cover for them. And for awhile this worked. That is until, a few months later, in the early spring of 1943. The Nazi’s were tipped off of the whereabouts of the family, and the house was invaded and torn apart. Karol, however, now a young boy, remained unharmed. He escaped the raiding SS officers by hiding underneath a floorboard in the cellar, obscured by his father’s wedding jacket.”

Alton looked up to realize that the birdseed man was staring in their direction. He feigned a smile, and threw up his hand in a half wave. The birdseed man nodded, and turned back around. Several more squawking pigeons flapped by overhead toward swarm of feasting birds.

“The war ends. Karol is safe. Several years pass, and the teenaged Karol decides to emigrate to the United States by stowing away in the hull of a steamship transporting various goods over to America. Two and a half weeks later –”

“– Wait, wait, wait. Did they make it? Did the rest of his family survive?”

Lydia was taken aback.

“I don’t know,” she said soberly, self-consciously. She was at once reminded of the monstrous backdrop lurking, behind her story. She looked over his vulnerable expression. “I don’t think all of them did. I heard there was one relative he remained in touch with. A cousin or something. I think she was younger. I don’t know for sure.”

There was a long pause. Alton rubbed his cold, reddish nose, and remained silent.

“I’m sorry. I feel weird now,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“Do you want to go back home?”

“No, you should finish the story.”

“Where were we?”

“The US.”

“Okay, so Karol’s ship docked in a Brooklyn harbor, and he was able to sneak off the boat, and into the country undetected. Karol at this time was a brazenly handsome young man with a strong face and dark, wavy, hair. He quickly found a job listed in a newspaper, and began working in a local Polish sausage factory. Within a year or two he meets a beautiful young polish woman named Elwira and proposes, to her surprise, on their third date. Together they age gracefully and, for the most part, happily while raising their baby boy Józef.”

*

I knew I shouldn’t have, but one of those damp sleepless summer nights I typed Alton’s name into Facebook’s search bar, and left my curser hovering over his profile name. It was almost an act of self-punishment, some sadistic bullshit, but I couldn’t help it.

I clicked on his name. There he was looking back at me, a mega-watt profile picture worthy grin on his face. As I’d been dreading, his profile remained untouched, mummified in cyber-space. I could still message him, or comment on his wall.

LOL, sorry to hear you died Alton.

There’s no setting on Facebook for deceased, I thought. Seeing him still alive and well on Facebook was haunting, and yet comforting all at once.

I flipped through his photos.

Until I came upon a sudden acidic feeling inside my stomach. My palms prickled with sweat. My eyelids twitched. My breath shortened. I felt furious, and helpless.

Alton had been tagged in a photo after his death. I checked again, but it was true. Whoever had tagged him must not have known.

I caught my breath, and slammed my laptop shut. I couldn’t deal with this right now.

I undressed, and slipped underneath the bedsheets. I dug my chin into Haidar’s lukewarm spine.

But I couldn’t sleep. I laid there. I got up. I laid back down. I paced across the room. I bit my nails. Until I couldn’t take it anymore.

I opened the closet door. I reached into the back, underneath a pile of dirty t-shirts and jeans, and retrieved my backpack.

I took the bag into our kitchen, closing the bedroom door behind me. The sun was beginning to rise. The cold linoleum flooring felt good against my bare feet. I could hear the twitter of morning birds from the rooftops, and nearby windowsills. I unzipped the backpack, and removed the coat. It was sticky – covered in feathers, and seed, and over ten years worth of honey. I tried to unfold it, but it was difficult as it was course, and stiff.

I set it down on the kitchen table and looked it over. It was all I had left of Alton, Karol – any of them.

And I picked it up once more, holding it up into the air like a newborn. I threw it around my back, and put an arm through the rough sleeve. It was smaller than I’d imagined, and the fabric was rough and grating against my skin – like putting your clothes back on after being at the beach all day, after rolling in the sand. I slipped my other arm in through the sleeve and felt something as I cleared though the rest of the sleeve. A square piece of paper fell like a leaf onto the floor. I stood there, frozen, in the cool morning light of the kitchen. The apartment was silent, everything was calm and still.

I lowered myself down, and plucked the piece of paper off from the ground. I unfolded it, and looked it over. I couldn’t pull myself away. It wasn’t signed, but it was written in what looked like Alton’s handwriting, I recognized his childish scribbles at once:

Return this please. Żyrardów. I’m sorry, by the way.

I heard footsteps from the bedroom, and I scrambled up, folded the jacket, and stuffed it back into my backpack.

Haidar walked out, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“You’re up early,” he said, stifling a yawn.

I set the backpack down onto the ground and walked over to him. I threw my arms around his neck. His eyes went wide with surprise.

“What’s all this?” he asked. I took his hands into mine, and placed them on my waist, and we stood there in the kitchen, kissing, until we both were late for work.

Later that week, while drinking wine and watching Seinfeld DVDs on Haidar’s laptop, I turned to him lying in bed next to me and surprised him with it.

“I want to go away for a few days,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

His mouth was stuffed with sweet potato chips, caramelized onion dip on his mustache.

“I’m want to try and go find a family in Żyrardów.”

Haidar swallowed and sat up.

“Where is that?” he asked.

“Poland.”

He paused for a while.

“I don’t like this. This is weird,” he said.

“I’m not asking for permission.”

“You’re kidding. It’s so far away.” He sat up and closed his laptop. “And who are you going to see?”

“It’s this family.”

“Why?”

“I have a jacket that belongs to them.”

“A jacket? What?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a long story.”

“What am I missing, Lydia?”

“You’re not.”

“I’m confused.”

“I’m sorry, I know it sounds crazy. I want to try and find a family named Rabinowitz. They live in Poland.”

Haidar removed his glasses, pinching his nose in a doctorly fashion. “Do you have their address, or?”

“No.”

“Well then how are you going to find them?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are aware that we live in a globalized world with a thing called the postal service.”

“Said Haidar, condescendingly.”

“I’m worried about you, Lydia.”

AndI jumped up, moving over to the closet. I reached in, and retrieved the birdseed jacket.

“What’s really going on here?” he asked.

I tried to explain everything about the jacket, Brooklyn, my relationship with Alton, but Haidar still looked at me as if I had lost my mind. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell it hurt him to talk about my ex this way. I could tell he didn’t really understand.

I hadn’t – at that point – ever felt so distant from him.

That night we fell asleep that night holding on to each other as if we were falling with the balmy night-air rattling the shutters, and nothing really resolved.

*

“What about the birdseed?” asked Alton.

“The birdseed incident took place when Karol was much older, retired, out for a stroll near this very park. And, nearby, a delivery truck was unloading a shipment of honey crates. Somehow, right as Karol was ambling by, wearing his father’s wedding jacket, a cracked crate fell from the top of a forklift, spilling a thick sheen of golden honey all over the sidewalk, and Karol, and his jacket. Fearing that it might be irreparably damaged, he took off running back toward his home on the north end of McGolrick, cutting through the park. At that exact instant, a dangerously near sighted woman, named Kaska, happened to be chucking handfuls of birdseed from a small burlap sack.”

“How do you know everyone’s name? You remember all these little details?”

“My mom was the one who told me as to me. But, like everyone in the neighborhood knows.”

“Okay. Keep going.”

“A flock of pigeons had gathered in front of Kaska and, not seeing Karol sprinting by, she tossed a cloud of seed into the air. The seed collided with Karol, and stuck all over his jacket. Suddenly, the birds swarmed Karol. Hundreds of pigeons, from all corners of the park, attached themselves to Karol as he screamed for help. He tore across the park, swinging, and shoving, and fighting them off.”

(To be continued…)

Postcard: Found at JUNK in Brooklyn, NY in May 2010.

Brooklyn, New York / Paris, France (Part 1 of 4)

The first snowfall that November was ephemeral, lightly be-speckling the steamy blacktop roofs and fire escapes. The grey morning sky above glowed like a streetlight through wax paper. Alton walked quickly, Lydia at his side, both bundled tightly in thick down coats with faux fur fringing their hoods.

It was six fifteen in the morning, and they were already running late.

“Come on!” said Lydia, losing her footing on a slick sewer grate. Alton reached out, and grabbed her arm for support.

They hurried up Driggs, past Polish storefronts, flower shops, liquor stores. Alton stopped and glanced in at an unopened Polish video store, promoting the newest filmic superstars from Warsaw. Lydia grabbed his arm this time.

“Do you want to see him or not?”

“Who?”

They pushed on, until reaching the corner of McGolrick Park. The park was covered in a thin sheet of ice, and deserted. Several pigeons cooed, flying haphazardly over their heads.

Alton ducked.

“It’s too early for these fucking flying rats,” he said.

Lydia glanced over, patting Alton on the crown of his Rangers beanie. “Patience young Padawan.”

He jerked his head away as if a fly had landed on his nose.

They waited quietly, bobbing to stay warm.

“I’ll give you five more minutes,” he said, cupping his hands around a fetid yawn.

And Lydia pointed out ahead, her eyes aroused. “There!”

Adjacent to the bronze statue of winged victory, a shadowy mass lumbered back and forth. An ever-growing flock of pigeons began circling, attaching themselves to the object.

“What the hell?” Alton turned, confused.

Lydia grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him behind a sizable sycamore tree.

“Behold,” she said.

“Behold, what?”

“The birdseed man of McGolrick Park.”

Alton glared at her, deadpan. “This is why I had to get up at five thirty in the morning?”

*

I’d been living in Paris with my boyfriend Haidar, a psychology student who I had met during NYU’s cinema studies abroad program, for three years. Since moving to Paris and ditching my degree, I’d lost track of New York, and had almost forgotten about Alton altogether. It’s so strange how a person can mean so much to you at one point in your life, then so little the next.

The next week, after hearing the news, I had trouble sleeping and spent many nights sitting on the window ledge with my laptop, smoking cigarettes, habitually refreshing my Facebook page, staring out toward the the tip of the tower of the Mosquée Abou Bakr.

Alton.

The boy I used to hop the D train with to Coney Island on summer afternoons, or french-kiss on a blanket near the dog-park in Washington Square. The first boy I loved. The boy who’d play Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – his favorite – on acoustic guitar. The boy who would scribble poetry into his ratty spiral notebook.

But now the only associations I had, were terms people were attaching to his name.

“Rehabilitation.”

And “mental health.”

And “clinic.”

*

“Do you want to hear the story or what?” asked Lydia.

“The story?”

“Of the birdseed man.”

“I want to go back to sleep.”

Lydia cleared her throat.

“The legend begins with a jacket. A jacket that belonged to his father, Józef Rabinowitz. tailored to be worn at his wedding to the comely Ortensie on the eve of the third anniversary of Polish independence in Żyrardów. It was an elaborate, hand-made, hunter green woolen jacket, with ornate gold laced trim around the cuffs and collar. For the next decade or so Józef was never seen around Żyrardów without it. Money was scant around this time, but they were happy and in love.”

“I kind of hate you right now, ” said Alton.

Lydia glanced down, and grabbed at his icy palm.

He put his arm around her waist and together they stood with their noses almost touching. Alton lowered his head slightly.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He placed his chapped lips on her greasy cheek for a moment. She kissed him, and then shoved him in the gut. He groaned. Several pigeons scattered away.

“Back to the story,” she said.

“Fine,” he said.

“A few years later, in the summer of 1938. Baby Karol is born in a cramped attic above Józef’s shop, just weeks before the Nazi takeover of Żyrardów.”

“What happened to the family?”

“It was the most astonishing thing. The family was forced to hide in a tiny crawl space tucked away in the very attic where Karol had been born several weeks prior. The winter of 1938 was particularly brutal, and Ortensie feared for the safety of her newborn baby Karol. The weather was bitter, and rations were scarce. But, thanks to Józef’s wedding jacket, Karol remained warm and safe until spring.”

*

For the next few weeks, after the news, I could not get Alton or the birdseed man out of my mind.

I thought of them while sitting at the Oberkampf station waiting for the train, sipping espresso at the sidewalk café’s along Boulevard Voltaire, or tending the cash register at an expatriate bookstore down along the Seine. I thought about them while lying with Haidar in the grass at the highest point of the Parc de Belleville just north of our apartment.

I stared out towards the metallic haze over the city as a storm approached. He asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said.

One afternoon, while on my lunch break, I sat in the shade of the Pont de Sully to read The Films in my Life. I heard my name called out from a swaggering beanpole coming toward me.

“Lydia, my darling, I have a surprise for you,” he said.

I closed Truffaut’s bookand glanced up at the bony, disheveled, mess of a young man, and part-time shelver at the bookstore who stood in front of me. He spit into the water as he hopped to a stand still. He did his best to resemble a chimney sweep from Mary Poppins at all times.

“What do you want, Killian?”

“An all-American kiss for these weary Irish lips.”

“Oh, give it a rest,” I said, trying to hide the flush in my cheeks. I couldn’t help it. He was attractive in a sort of ragged way. He hopped down next to me with a large package wrapped in cut out, brown paper bags.

“Been sitting in the back of the shop for awhile now. Someone must have forgot to pass it on to you. Looks devious if you ask me.”

“How do you know?”

“Open it and we’ll see.”

I opened the package to find the birdseed jacket.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it, disoriented in the aura of the mythical thing. The entire city around me vacuumed to a halt; the rush of city buses, the twitter of birds, a crooning busker, the lap of the Seine, the incessant questions from Killian all dialed down, faded out.

I had so many questions, but I remained silent.

Everything came back at once, the sounds.

“What the hell is that?” asked Killian.

(To be continued…)

Postcard: Found at JUNK in Brooklyn, NY in May 2010.