Oh, you're going to give them a lecture? This from Marlou as we stood in the remarkably balmy October JFK Airport afternoon, basking in our arrival. The worst had come and gone, I knew that. I sensed that our holiday was on a roll when the American Airlines flight attendant asked me in San Francisco if my wheelchair had a quick-release means of disconnecting its battery. This was a good sign. There was every possibility now that my wheelchair would arrive at Kennedy intact. Yes, it took forever for the ground crew to work out the logistics of offloading the thing and getting it up the elevator to our gate. Never mind. A quibble. It was there, and I was here waiting for, yes, another SuperShuttle van. They kept materializing, these vans. The first was supposed to arrive within 20 minutes. So was the second, and the third. Which was why we were arguing, Marlou and I. One of us knew the better way to deal with these people, the more daring and assertive way. Naturally, that someone was me. Which was why Marlou was asking if I intended to give them, Messrs. SuperShuttle, a lecture. I did, a long condescending quiz about what they thought "accessible transportation" meant. Van after van had arrived without a wheelchair ramp. The truth was simple enough: SuperShuttle wasn't prepared and the one disabled van was stuck in traffic. Everything in New York is stuck in traffic. That's why we stayed in the heart of things, 7th Ave and 51st St. You could sneeze at every famous theater on Broadway. Stretch out an arm and you'd touch Carnegie Hall. It was all there, and in the end, so were we.
The streets of New York are broken. All of them, in all directions. Is everything under construction? Or is everything decaying? In the big scheme of things does it really make a difference? But the real difference occurs where the rubber meets the road. For a wheelchair, this meeting is constant and impossible to ignore. Moving uptown, one short block after the next, means dipping downward into the base material of Manhattan pavement. It's crumbling, scraped away here, rippling there. In a wheelchair, one doesn't dare forget about it. Traffic is threatening on all sides, pedestrians massing, while below, the asphalt roughens and smooths, rises and subsides. You might as well be crossing the Sierras.
Three days of New York-ish things. The food off the corner carts smells especially good these days. But buying food off the streets just isn't a suburban Californian's idea of what's safe. Good thing Marlou's friends nudged us to buy hot halal on a bun. We ate on a bench in Central Park. The world went by on roller blades, pushing perambulators and holding gradeschool hands. The sun shone, global warming reached the 70s, and our day was going splendidly. Marlou and I weren't arguing about the airport van and who was more assertive. We were getting the hang of travel. We had just asserted ourselves out of the Guggenheim, after all. It's a classy space, the Guggenheim, particularly seen from the outside. But with the outside under scaffolding and the inside under siege from conceptual artists, this October day the park was an infinitely better place to be.
Even better was the Morgan Library, the next day. Good thing J.P. Morgan knew how to make money and, above all, spend it on something other than hookers and fast cars. His library is a refuge, all about light and manuscripts and clinking glasses in the indoor/outdoor café. Okay, it's not really outdoors, but with the skylights one can pretend. The writer Eric Larsen, whom I'd met at the Minnesota Men's Conference joined us for a Dutch style lunch, the café's homage to van Gogh's letters on display next door.
Van Gogh was corresponding with the likes of Gauguin, discoursing on the cost cutting measures currently available in Provence. Eating bouillabaisse with aoli was a particularly effective budgetary measure, according to van Gogh, who was particularly cagey on whether or not he could actually put up Gauguin in his flat. Maybe, maybe not. And so the letters went on, while Eric and I went on about the display room. We agreed the whole thing was far too reverential. The two of us actually laughed at a decibel level approaching out loud, at one point. People glared. You would have thought Christ himself was there and getting a promotion. We all beat a hasty retreat.
Is Mahler's Second Symphony a load of bombast, or is it just a little immature? I was certainly immature the last time I heard it, on cassette tape. But it was what Carnegie Hall had to offer on that Thursday evening. And almost anything Carnegie Hall has to offer will do just fine. A magnificent place, the sound resonant and thrilling, even after the recent remodel. A thrill to be there.
Leading of course to the next day's thrill, the ultimate thrill, the one that arrived on time just outside our hotel and was finally, as though breaking a bad spell, not operated by SuperShuttle. It came from a limousine service, and the wheelchair ramp was already down and waiting on the 7th Ave pavement. I rolled onto it, the ramp ascended, and so did my spirits. True, I couldn't see much of anything as we fought our way through Times Square. I imagined, rather than saw, the diamond merchants on 47th St. Why not? We were on 42nd St, after all, heading for Brooklyn. Rolling down the expressway along the East River, I saw it as the van turned to mount the Brooklyn Bridge. It was still miles away, but unmistakable. One enormous ship across the river. What else could it be?
Seated in my wheelchair in the back of the van, it still was hard to see things passing by. Only distance shots, from that perspective. How could the streets of Brooklyn be even worse than Manhattan's? As we drew closer to the waterfront, the pavement all but gave up. I rattled, jolted and lurched, thankful that in a moment of caution and foresight, some force within me had successfully urged closure of my wheelchair's seatbelt. Bam. Crash. Can you see it, honey? Marlou was asking this question as the van thudded on and on as though crossing an entire freight yard of railroad tracks.
No, I told her. I bent low. The van lurched and flung me high. I bent low again, and there it was rising above the Brooklyn warehouses like King Kong. A ship. Our ship. We were close enough to even read the letters beneath the smokestack. Queen Mary 2. Empty taxis were flooding in our direction. How many cabs does it take to move 2600 people? They ship disappeared behind a warehouse, then we turned, the pavement smoothed, and signs for cruise terminal popped up spic and span. It was pouring with rain. I had forgotten about the weather and could've cared less.
We didn't have tickets, never had had them, and now I was relying solely on Marlou and our travel agent. We didn't need no stinking tickets. We had something better: Queen Mary 2 package tags. These had been placed on the handles of our luggage which disappeared as soon as it hit the sidewalk.
What is a cruise terminal? I had imagined something like a huge bus station, and I could see Marlou and I sitting beneath a low ceiling, gazing toward the doors leading to the ship. But all this had only happened in my mind. The real Brooklyn Cruise Terminal was the approximate size of an aircraft hangar, exposed girders, utilitarian in its look, but new, bright and carpeted. I asked Marlou to tighten my fanny pack. She groaned. My mother did this sort of thing too, but that's because she was my mother. Marlou does this sort of thing, because she's nervous, unsure of what will happen next and craving to fit in with the regimental activities of preboarding. Yes, that sort of thing occurs here. Inspection of bags, removal and reattachment of fanny packs. Showing, then showing again, passports. And the other thing also happens. The hustling of wheelchairs to the front of the queue. It was a long queue snaking around the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. It was a short ride to the men's room, the last delay. I thanked Marlou for tightening my fanny pack, giving her the measured irony I felt was due...just enough to keep me sane. Meanwhile, my bladder having been subjected to G forces throughout the hour-long van trip, my lower back jackhammered into contortions, the last pee on dry land seemed part of my mortal entitlement.
There was no one in the men's room. Just me and destiny. I zoomed across the carpet, back to the queue for wheelchairs. And there we were, at the desk. No ticket, no problem. Messrs. Cunard took our photos, savored our passport numbers, scraped life's essence off a credit card, and pointed us to the left. We rolled. Down the line of counters, 30, maybe 40, agents checking people in. Then through the doors and down the hall, stopping for another picture, this one for couples, for posterity and, doubtless, for profit. But we would worry about that later. The gangplank wasn't, really. For one thing, it pointed downward. For another, it looked like a clear plastic version of an airport jetway. The "clear" part was good, though, for rolling across the short watery gap from terminal to ship, we could gaze upward at the latter. And inside, which could easily pass for any good hotel. A couple of young people in gray Cunard suits smiling, welcoming, and pointing us toward deck 8.
It was all happening too fast now. A state room, like something out of a film, large enough to hold a king size bed, an ample balcony and a wheelchair-accessible shower. Then? The sail away party. Advertised everywhere, announced periodically...but where? Wherever the elevator went, through the doors that lay beyond...to the outside, the open-air teak expanses of a ship's deck 12 stories above Brooklyn. A handful of people milled about. But was it really only a handful, or atop this ship more than five football fields in length do the crowds only seen to thin? The rain had stopped and the drinking had started. Waiters wandered about with trays of champagne. Another bottle sat in an ice bucket in our room. The Commodore on the PA welcoming 1200 Brits, 800 Americans and 600 others aboard. A soul-wrenching bass blast from the horn, then...Brooklyn moving. No one said goodbye, not in this era of homeland security. The ship was full, but the pier was empty and the confetti mental. In the gray afternoon, a yellow light burned in the torch atop the Statue of Liberty. The wind picked up from nowhere. Though, gazing at the rate at which Staten Island was disappearing, I knew we hadn't picked up wind, but speed. The Queen Mary 2 can haul along at 30 knots.
Don't worry about the Verrazano Bridge, the Commodore announced. The ship clears it by 3 meters. I could see this was a lie. We were hurtling toward the thing faster than a city bus. First the ship's radar tower was going to get smashed, then its smokestack, and then there was nothing to stare at but the rush-hour drivers on the bridge who were staring at us heading out to sea.
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