Heavyweight Check In 4

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I loved living in Brooklyn, but when Auggie was born, Emily kept going on about Minnesota.

She's from there originally and wanted Auggie to have family around.

A A backyard, a sandbox uninhabited by rats.

That summer, during a visit back home, Emily showed me all that Minnesota had to offer by taking me to the state fair.

At one point, Emily pointed out a large, wobbly, Hasidic man who appeared to be wearing a tractor tire threaded through his belt loops.

You see, she said sweetly, there are Jews in Minnesota.

The Minnesota offensive continued along.

Emily looked at photos of houses online with hedges to trim and fences to mend.

Having never owned a house, none of it made sense.

In Brooklyn, we lived across the street from a Chinese takeout.

A man named Albert brought our garbage to the curb and once a month vacuumed the building hallway.

What could be better than that?

But then, Emily fell fell in love with a house in Minnesota, a small enough place, painted green.

In the photo, I could see a garden hose out front.

I am not going to water the lawn, I said.

I hate those guys.

Guys who water their lawns?

she asked.

You know what I mean, I said, wearing shorts, waving to passers-by like they're in a David Lynch film.

And then we put in an offer.

It was like a bad dream.

Surely I couldn't be leaving New York.

Surely something would happen.

Something would keep us from going through with it.

When I told my boss Alex about my wife's plan, I prayed he'd put an end to it, forbidding it outright.

All this plan was missing was a good forbidding.

You can work remote, he said.

We moved at the end of January during a polar vortex.

That first night in my new home, the rooms were bare and cold.

I can't feel my feet, I said from under the blankets.

Spring will be here soon, Emily said.

She'd been saying it all day.

It was always about spring being here, and oh, how great that'll be.

You've never smelled peonies so fresh, never tasted hot dish and tater tots until you've had them warmed to perfection under the Minnesota sun.

That first night was so quiet, the noise in my head so loud without Brooklyn to drown it out.

At our bedroom window, I looked out onto the street, desolate under the street lamps, everything covered in ice, glistening like knives.

Quietly, I wept.

Spring will be here soon, Emily said.

And sure enough, she was true to her word.

Spring is here, or what passes for spring in Minnesota.

The April snow has almost melted, and I can just about see the sidewalks.

It's time to put away my longjohns and roof shovel, and whether I can smell them from behind a facial mask or not, get ready for the peonies to bloom.

It's like the best time of the year.

I love the spring.

All the buds are starting to come out.

It's really pretty.

So now that the weather is getting nicer, my dad and I have been taking walks together.

Yes.

I left Brooklyn about a month ago.

I moved back home where I grew up.

20 minutes north of Manhattan.

And so my dad and I, when we're off on these walks, we invented this game sewer stones.

We pick up rocks and the object of the game is to bowl them into the sewer drains.

My go, Mayo?

Boom.

Is that 2-1?

It's 2-1.

Hold on, though.

Hold on.

Is this a game that you guys played when you were a kid?

So it's a lot like a lot of the games we used to do when I was little.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah, let's see it.

Let's see it.

Very nice.

Do you find that you're doing like a lot of the stuff that you used to do?

I feel like I'm just like a kid again.

The other day, I found a pair of my dirty socks on the floor in the dining room.

I looked at them and I was like, are those my socks?

Like, I feel like I'm

regressing.

Yeah, exactly.

Are your parents happy to have you back?

Uh, yeah.

Yeah.

My mom offered to cut my hair.

She used to cut our hair when we were kids.

Like, I have these really distinct memories of her kind of like laying this towel out on the floor, this like ratty green towel that we never used otherwise, and like bringing a chair into the bathroom.

And she still has that ratty green towel.

Okie dokey.

You're really going at this pretty quick.

I'm winging it a little bit.

Whoops.

Sorry.

I think my mom is happy to be taking care of us in this way that she hasn't had to in a long time.

Do you want me to put my head down more?

Do you enjoy it?

Yeah, I love this.

This is looking really good from the back.

Whoa!

We've come so far from oops.

Do you want me to go even shorter back here?

Maybe a little?

It was already pretty short, but I kind of just wanted her to keep cutting.

I just wanted to let her do that.

Jonathan, what have you been up to?

Well, thank you for asking.

Sure.

A good portion of my day is given over to trying to keep my three-year-old entertained.

And I am just shameless.

I'll do anything.

And I invent all these different characters, like Robo Papa.

Whoa, whoa, Papa.

Yes, uh, geek.

And like, when I start talking to him, normally he'll be like, no, no, no, I don't want to talk to regular Papa.

I want to talk to Robo Papa.

Are we going to, am I going to purchase?

Whoa, whoa, Papa.

Robo Papa.

If he doesn't get his fuel, he gets brain damage.

Brain damage.

Emily hates it so much.

TV is,

you know, we try to keep it limited.

So we're trying to teach him that, you know, there's other ways to keep him entertained.

You know, like old-timey ways.

So the other day we built this puppet stage.

Welcome, boys, and girls, and girls, and ladies and men and gentlemen

to the puppet show.

Yay!

And Emily pulled out this puppet, Johnny, that I made when I was 11 years old.

I was so bereft of friends that I made this puppet named Johnny and I totally forgot about him.

Like it had been, you know, it was like 40 years.

Oh, no, no, no.

Oh, yeah.

No, no.

Oh, yeah.

I thought that thing was thrown out.

It brought back memories of like just loneliness.

And

you made a puppet and you named it your name.

Does it look like you?

Emily would argue that it does look like me.

And she kind of brought Augie on board.

Augie, do you think this looks like Papa?

No.

Yes, it does.

How does it look like me?

It looks like you because

Papa was hair.

Yes, Papa doesn't have any hair, but if he had hair, he would look just like this puppet.

Although this puppet doesn't look like

basically Johnny and Swipy.

Swipy is this other puppet that we have, a raccoon.

Okay, we're gonna see a play between Johnny and Swipy.

It was really hard to get off the ground because Aggie is like he was just really over-directing me and everything I was doing was wrong.

Oh, it's one of those typically hard to work with directors.

It just ended up devolving into this like big dance party and Augie made us all dance.

They dance in place.

I don't know, it was just fun and it just seemed like licensed to just do crazy things and like we still haven't taken down the puppet, the puppet stage in the living room.

And it's nice that we actually have a living room.

Yeah.

You know, we didn't really in New York.

Things were just

things were a lot smaller.

And

so that's, yeah, that's nice.

You know, the last time I visited New York was right before everything changed and the three of us got together for drinks.

I think it was the night that the Gimlet offices shut down.

And it was the last, I didn't know it at the time, but it ended up being the last day that I went to a bar.

Me too.

And there was something else noteworthy about that evening that we've since talked about.

It was the last time that any of us shook hands with somebody else.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Someone that we ran into that evening at the bar.

You ever heard of award-winning producer of The Jinx?

Can you say award-winning producer of The Jinx again?

Award-winning producer of documentary The Jinx.

Jinx.

We happened to run into a former coworker of ours, someone who used to work at Gimlet, Mark Smerling.

Yeah, ever heard of Crimetown?

Crimetown?

You know, recently Dr.

Anthony Fauci made that statement about how we may never return back to shaking hands.

Yeah.

I mean, it's weird.

It's weird to think that Mark Smerling might be the last person that any of us end up shaking hands with.

Yeah.

Do you think that, I mean, were we the last people that he shook hands with, do you think?

Well, there's only one way to find out.

I'm looking across the room.

And there's Stevie, who you can't forget.

The unforgettable, the unforgettable Stevie Lane.

Yeah.

So I got up, went over and shook your hands.

Your hand might be the last hand we ever shake.

Lucky you.

I could have gotten you all sick right there.

Is it the same for you?

Were we the last people that you ever shook hands with?

Hmm.

It probably is.

It seems like right after that, things started to close in.

Yeah.

And, you know, my contact with the outer world sort of vanished.

Where are you right now?

Brooklyn.

I'm in Clinton Hill.

Me too.

I'm in Clinton Hill.

Oh my God.

I might have seen you rather than thinking about it.

You guys should just open your windows and you can yell to each other.

Were you born in New York?

Are you from New York originally?

I'm a Jersey boy from South Orange, but I've been in New York since I was eight.

Is there still an upside to being in New York?

Like, do you have moments where you're like, you know what?

It's still good to be here somehow.

Well, food delivery is a big plus, you know, although we have to like use all kinds of toxic chemicals to clean off the bag and the wrappings.

You know, living in New York is, it just is not the place to be during a pandemic.

Oh, there is one magical thing.

I can get a parking spot real easily.

That's a plus.

A thing I've really been missing about New York is like being in a hurry and being like, I don't have time for a real dinner.

And so you're like getting a slice of pizza and eating it really quickly on the street because you have some place you're trying to get to.

Yeah.

Like I just really miss

places so much.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I was thinking about the thing that I think I really love about New York is like the feeling of being alone around other people.

Like I would be out by myself, like on the train alone, or like walking home on a Friday night and just passing bars and hearing like the hum of people's voices in bars.

Like it just made you feel like you were like a part of something, even if I wasn't with people.

Yeah.

And now it's like instead of being alone with other people, I'm just like alone alone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like everyone's gone.

I can't do anything.

And I mentioned it to someone who is still in brooklyn yeah and she was like but don't you kind of feel like proud that you're still here and i was like yeah actually like i do like i feel like that's the thing that feels like unchanged is that like

there's like a feeling of like when you're living in new york that like everyone's miserable and like stressed out and in a small apartment but there's this pride in

the fact that you're doing that.

Do you know what I mean?

Like

everyone's really unhappy, but you're like, um, I actually like sitting at my computer till 8 p.m.

and then eating a piece of pizza on a dirty street.

Yeah.

It's like irrational and unquantifiable, but you just sort of feel a love for the place.

Yeah.

You know, there's that cheer every night at 7 p.m.

for healthcare workers.

Yeah.

Have you participated?

No, I haven't.

And it makes me feel bad because I'm like, I know it's a nice thing.

But then, I mean, but you're probably like someone who, like, when, when you go to like a sporting event of some kind and everybody starts like clapping their their seats and singing, We Will Rock You, like you're just like, I'm going to sit this one out.

That's true.

And when I go to a show and they say, how's everyone doing?

I just say, fine.

I just like feel like I'm not going to be like, woo.

I don't think I've ever heard you make that woo sound.

But last night when it happened, my downstairs neighbor started blasting that.

you know that New York, New York song.

Oh, the Sinatra song.

Yeah.

Start spreading the news.

Yeah, that one.

And he was really like blasting it.

It was really loud.

And he was like singing along, and everyone on the street was like doing their cheer.

And like people were getting excited about him playing the song and were like cheering.

And it made me like so emotional.

Yeah, I don't know.

It did give me like a little bit of that feeling I'd been missing of like here we all are in the city and like I'm alone, but I'm

also with other people.

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