Earmuffs

 

You are trying to recall your last crowded group gathering before COVID, seven-plus months ago. All you can think of is that trip to Target last March, on the day it was announced that school would be closed for two weeks. (Two weeks. Ha!) You and the girls raced out as if there was someone behind you with a whistle, to get craft supplies. (You wrote about this in a previous blog: the click-click of four-year-old Ruth’s tap shoes on the slick floor, the joy and attention it brought from mobs of other shoppers, much to the chagrin of your ten-year-old daughter, Opal.) There were no masks yet, no idea of what was to come. You went through $100 worth of craft supplies in two days. You had yet to learn to pace yourself.

 

But that doesn’t really count as a crowd, does it?.

 

Was it volunteering at Opal’s school? No. Going to a movie? No, that doesn’t seem like a crowd, either. The last legit crowd occurrence was when you flew to NYC to visit your uncle in February. It was a visit that hinged on crowds. The throngs at the Met. The hordes at the Broadway show that spilled out onto the wet street that was smeared with the neon of the marquees.

 

But what particularly comes to mind for you from this NY trip, a memory that would have completely dissolved had not the crowd question been introduced, was the coffee shop.

 

You stopped off at a coffee shop on a frigid day. It was so crowded that you had to stand off to the side, awkwardly juggling your bag and coffee and winter gear, while trying to act casual and breezy to keep from feeling like you were hovering over the other customers. You struck up a conversation with the busboy about lemon cake and wound up buying a slice, because what else were you going to do? 

 

Then a slot opened up at a sort of bar-table that looked out the window passed the fractal-ice designs on the glass (you think of Dr. Emoto and his work on how water has consciousness and you assess that these ice fractals look pleasant) at the people beyond the glass, bustling buy with coats pulled up over the ears, and strollers covered in wind-breaking plastic as if the kid inside was a pumpkin loaf wrapped in cellophane.

 

The real estate at the coffee-shop bar seat was minimal, not nearly enough square inches for your coffee, your book (The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr) and your lemon cake, so you nibble at it from a to-go bag in your lap. The removal of your coat was such an ordeal that you considered leaving it on until you felt a tiny tributary of sweat drip between your boobs and you think, fuck it, and lumber through. 

 

The guy sitting next to you did not acknowledge your presence either before or after the wild-armed coat removal. He was wearing huge headphones that, at first glance, you thought were earmuffs. The man—about your age (forties), dark hair, glasses, was all you got from your quick glance—stared into the screen of his computer like he was saving the world with the click of his fingers on the keys. As if he were to look away for but a moment, the world would go down in flames, so I should be thanking him for not acknowledging my presence and focusing on the task at hand. 

 

The man was the poster child for social distance before it became a flagship term in our vernacular. He seemed perturbed by all the people, the way my four-year-old Ruth comes out into the living room then promptly tells us all to BE QUIET.

 

You think of school cafeterias, subway cars at rush hour, and of all the things that are crammed onto a shelf before you watch the home makeover show where the lady tells you, things must have room to breathe. Your limbs are glued to your sides, elbow to shoulder, and yet your elbow keeps grazing his. You assess that turning your head to even mouth hello would have registered your faces entirely too close, nearly nose to nose, and the thought of such intimacy makes you suddenly feel shy and strange. So you just stare down at your book, nibble your bread, and calculate that this is simply how it is done in Brooklyn. 

 

You feel the need to greet—and be at least acknowledged by— three people, as you walk in the arctic, urban side-wind back to your uncle’s apartment. It takes a concerted effort, but is what is needed to balance it all out.