Anna's House

I write more than you know. I was sorting through my stuff and I found this little piece that I like. I wrote it last September when I was visiting Anna in Balitmore. I had forgotten my camera and really wanted to make sure that I remembered what happened.

She's moving out of that little apartment now, but here it is preserved for all time.


1.

This weekend, I'm visiting Anna who has been my friend since we spent a summer on a Scientific Compound in rural Maryland. It had a gate with key cards, wild acres of deciduous forests, a communal kitchen and everything. We met while I was watching Lifetime movies. I was sprawled out on the couch when she and her mother walked in, asking were they could buy a lamp. "It's not bright enough in that room for her to read at night" her mother had said.

"There's a lamp under the bed," I replied.

Everyone is automatically my friend until one of us decides otherwise, that's why I'm never uncomfortable giving advice to strangers.

"No, It's not bright enough" said her mom.

"Oh, well, in that case I don't know" I said. They left, and I went back to my Lifetime movies. Anna says now that she was disturbed by my choice of programming but that she came to understand it. I'm sure she's my most level headed friend. She often pauses before answering questions, that's because she's thinking, which she does more of than most people. Or me.

Anna has recently moved to Baltimore to attend Grad School. I told her not to, but she won't listen. Perhaps Grad School is one of those mistakes worth making. We'll see, when we're all Club Members, if it was in fact worth it.

She has described her apartment to me on the phone as "cute" and "you should see my wood paneled wall!" I've imagined her apartment as a spacious city apartment with large windows and cute antique appliances that she has furnished in her minimalist hippy sort of style. She's the kind of girl that uses natural shampoo and keeps a sparse pantry of organic staples, so it follows that her apartment would be furnished with books and scented with patchouli. But Anna is not a hippy. I would say she's more rural-frugal. That means she likes books and thinking and eating good food and is practical in her decor and lifestyle; she is not overly concerned with appearance or style. Which isn't to say that she doesn't have it.

2.
The stairs creak and sag. They ease under weight and conform to the stress, it seems unsafe for two people to be on the same flight at one time. If you make it up the stairs and over the threshold, the apartment is all downhill to the far corner of the living room under the windows that are closer together at the bottom than they are at the top.

Anna's boyfriend describes the living room wall as the face of a stroke victim. The eyes each hold a cat, blinking in the sunshine, like pupils. There are two marble fireplaces and ornate heat grates but not a square angle in sight. Anna is sure that the fire places are hazards and instead stores things in them, like cables for the TV or a yoga mat.

Her bedroom is connected to the living room by a small hallway that holds her closet. There is no light in there so she literally dresses herself in the dark. I had long suspected that this was true, but now it has been confirmed. It is also possible that she removed the light herself, as an excuse.

On the closet floor, there was a mysterious puddle of goo on the floor that she described as "The pool of quicksand in my closet". She asked the previous tenant what they knew about it and she said "It was there when I moved in, just put a box over it". I hoped that it was a door to the netherworld, or Narnia. Anna is sometimes pragmatic and went to the hardware store to ask advice. They told her, "Wear gloves, and a mask. Be careful. If it is mold get out of there and call your landlord right away". It was easy to clean up though, Anna just scraped it off the floor. Anna thinks that it was probably a puddle of paint thinner, spilled 10 years ago and neglected ever since.

Everything is an adventure in Anna's house. When the house was divided into apartments the most reasonable place to put the bathroom, it seems, was in the hallway next to the front door. Privacy was accomplished by installing a row of closet doors. The whole bathroom can be opened up into the hallway. The toilet leans backwards towards the wall, so it is effectively a recliner. When the plumbing was installed, it must have been late in the afternoon, towards quitting time. No care was taken to make sure the pipes and the holes through the floor were the same size. It appears that they cut the holes larger than necessary, either on accident or for ease of instillation. As a result, there are several large holes in the floor of the bathroom and in the kitchen, as well as in the ceiling where ventilation ducts were installed. If there is anything positive about Anna's apartment, it's that it is on the top floor. Eventually, when the inside of the building gives its last sigh and collapses inward on itself, Anna will be on top of the heap.

3.
Anna and I have modest goals for the weekend. We will attend a baseball game, count hipsters and perhaps drink some coffee. I got up very early this morning to catch my flight. Because our afternoon activity today was climbing all 228 spiraling steps of A Washington monument in the neighborhood, we've returned to the apartment to rest and eat before we go back out to the baseball game. It is A Washington monument, as in the indefinite, any monument to Washington because I can't bring myself to give it a definite article. The Washington Monument is in Washington, D.C. and we are in Baltimore. Anna thinks that it will only take us 20 minutes to walk to the baseball stadium, but I think it will take us longer. We sometimes have little faith in each other, but she was right. It took us 25 minutes, though we were walking at quite a clip. I was excited to see the game though, and especially excited that I could walk there.

I love this city. There are buildings and sidewalks and people on the sidewalks walking from building to building. In Miami, where I have the misfortune to live currently, pedestrians are viewed skeptically or suspiciously. As in: "What kind of crazy person would be out walking around here?" or "Why can't you use gas like the rest of us?" Partly that attitude is related to the unfortunate weather we experience in the tropics, but mostly it is due to a more modern and less friendly breed of city planning.

Miami wasn't particularly livable until air conditioning was invented near the middle of the last century. People came in droves to the city from the north and the south at a time when cars were both fashionable and presitious. The city was made for cars and for the people who drive them. For a person to eschew automobile transportation is moderately blasphemous. Attitudes are changing slowly, but the roads can't be rebuilt easily in a city over run with people and poverty.


4.
When I woke up, I regretted that third beer. Like every other time this has happened, it seemed like such a good idea at the time. It was necessary, maybe, but mostly it was just there. Last night, we went to the ball game. I love to drink beer at baseball games, but I hate to pay for it, so for that reason I must avoid baseball game beer. As a reward, I had one when we returned to the house after the game. I think there may be many things wrong with me, but the one that bothers me most is my inability to drink any quantity of alcohol without being scratchy throated, bleary eyed, and headache-y in the morning. I must have a sub-functional alcohol deyhydrogenase, or something. Daylight is burning though, and it's Sunday.

I like Sunday well enough. I used to love them, before Laura went and got a second job and a hobby. She loves biking now, and Sunday mornings are for biking, not for newspapers, pancakes, eggs and drinking coffee until I am sweaty and nervous. Sunday is just another day when I get up after Laura has already left and is only a vague memory of a kiss goodbye from a blurry helmeted and lycra clad figure backlit by the hallway light. I walk the dogs and read the paper by myself before spending at least an hour laying on the couch, feeling sorry for myself and constructing a pep-talk in my head that will get me off the couch and doing "something useful". Or, mopping the floor.


But it is Sunday and I am not alone this week. Anna and I are making latkes now. They are very good with lamb, but we're not eating lamb today, we're having
latkes with apples. The kitchen is bright but not sunny. The sun is high enough now, in the middle of the afternoon, that it's just slanting in through the window, glancing the plants and lighting Anna's back as she watches over the Latkes. Flipping them, patting them down and dodging the popping oil. I'm doing dishes, standing sideways to the sink to avoid bumping into Anna and trying not to lose any silverware through the hole in the floor on the far side of the sink. She's only got one big spoon left.

Her Kitchen, like the rest of her apartment is clearly an afterthought. There are no counters, only a hodgepodge collection of furniture that has been re-purposed as kitchen counters. A sewing desk holds the spices and a set of utility room shelves double as cutting blocks and dish storage. The fridge is positioned next to the window and across from the stove in such a way that the door only just clears the stove. To open the fridge fully, without being squished between the door and the stove, you must open the fridge completely which creates a small passage between the open door and the stove where you can step around. Anna peers over the side of the door to ask me what I want; the fridge door is a barrier or a sort of wet bar. One person can open the fridge, scoot around it and offer drinks from behind it, like a bartender.

10 potatoes russet or red not yellow gold
2 medium onions

2 eggs

1/4 cup flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp pepper

vegetable oil to fry

Grate potatoes and onion into colander over bowl, force out excess moisture. Yellow gold potatoes are too wet, that's why you shouldn't use them. Mix in egg and flour and spice. Heat 1 inch oil in large frying pan. Check the temperature of oil with small piece of potato. The oil is ready when the potato bubbles enthusiastically. Drop the batter by tablespoon and fry for several minutes. Flip them when the edges just start to brown. Drain on paper bags or paper towels. Serve with plain yogurt, apple sauce or whatever.

I try to decide what I would call my dish if I were on Top Chef. I've decided that the latkes today will be called "fried potato spiders with fresh apple relish and natural yogurt". I think this is a winning dish.


Anna told me that while she was going to Philosophy College that she ran across a footnote in a play that described a statement as the "Monosylabic turning point of the play". As in: Huh? Ohh. Umm. Ok! Shit.

The apogee of the plot, where everyone pauses to listen to the main character deliver the line breathlessly. I'm trying to decide what the monosylabic turning point of my life is.