The Girl on the Q Train

Newkirk Plaza. The bank where my mom opened my first savings account is still there, with a different name. I remember the blue passbook, with all its empty pages, waiting to be filled. I remember her telling me that interest was compounded daily, and I remember having no clue what that meant. I’m still that way about money.

It was weird, taking the brand new Q train from the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Newkirk Plaza in Brooklyn. A “plaza” that hardly resembles what most of us would expect a plaza to look like, no bustling open space surrounded by cafes and upscale stores. Even the term “brand new” in New York can be misleading, conjuring up, as it does, images of gleaming perfection. The Q train is nice enough; the seats are not yet cracked, and graffiti is minimal. Occasionally — very occasionally — it pulls into a bright and architecturally modern station that has not yet been permeated by the stench of petrified urine.

It was weird for a lot of reasons, this voyage down memory subway tracks. I left my mother in a hospital room in an upscale neighborhood that always seemed more suited to her than the gritty streets of Brooklyn where, despite her incongruous designer wardrobe, she has always felt so at home. I travelled, alone, lost in my thoughts, back to the place where I grew up, where foreign lettering on awnings lining potholed commercial thoroughfares are the roadmap through a rambling mosaic of ethic enclaves. I am flooded by memories at both ends of the Q line. More visits than I care to count to world renowned medical complexes on the north end, my childhood to the south, and everywhere in between.

The old bank. My elementary school, still surrounded by a concrete schoolyard enclosed by a chain link fence. The apartment building on Foster Avenue where I would meet my friend Miriam on the way to school, where her mother always made the most exotic treats. The curb outside where I once saw a dead cat, flattened by a car. The Bohack store where my friend Eileen and I used to go get giant pickles for a nickel from the pickle jars — half sour for her, sour for me. Bohack is long gone. Now it is a sprawling Jewish school.

It was weird, as I turned the key to enter the apartment where I grew up, knowing that nobody would be greeting me on the other side. The day my father died there, I remember how empty it felt. I had just seen him there, that morning. At least my mother was there to greet me then. This time, nobody.

I was collecting her things for her, for what will hopefully be a brief rehabilitation for a broken hip. I was in a hurry to get back to the Q train, but I had an irrepressible urge to spend some time, to look at all the albums and the pictures. To inspect the neatly aligned contents of my mother’s refrigerator, to poke around in the closets where a few keepsakes remain — from my own childhood and from my children’s visits. A party favor from my Sweet Sixteen; an almost full box of Lincoln Logs, reminding me of all the times my father sat on the floor with my kids, building.

For years, I have encouraged my mother to move to Manhattan. Where the restaurants are. Where the stores are. Where, in her designer outfits, she blends. But on this visit to the old neighborhood, and the old apartment, by myself, I felt a sense of relief that she has stayed. It’s a vestige, all this stuff, but it’s my vestige.

I glanced at her nightstand before I left. We are reading the same book: The Girl on the Train.