Wednesday, February 4, 2009
"Simone and I are now friends on email"
Simone was my next door neighbor the whole time I lived at 81 First Avenue. We shared a wall together and heard each others whole life. When I sent her the last story I wrote few days ago, the part she responded to in the story was how I stopped at Walgreen’s on way home to buy new nail polish. She wrote back:
WOW you are wearing nails polish? i am surprised you would do that in the Bundoock, or maybe you have a very social life or just having fun or bored or plain sophisticated? LOL
And for some reason yesterday afternoon I emailed back about the nail polish. I said “you introduced me to nail polish Catherine and I have been wearing it ever since, I love it. And I dress differently in Tucson than I did in New York. I wear skirts and tops, not jeans, and most of my skirts have ruffles on them, and they are all summer clothes and pretty.”
In fact in New York I dressed in rags. I don’t know why? It was a habit I fell into and once I fell into that habit I stayed there.
But in Tucson my Higher Self wanted me to shop to buy pretty clothes, to buy new clothes and to dress pretty and so I have. And it turns out to be very good idea for me. It really lifts my spirits and adds tingle to life, like seltzer, makes it more bubbly and elated, adds oomph. I like wearing new pretty clothes now.
After I wrote Simone that little email about wearing nail polish all the time, it makes me happy, and how I dress differently in Tucson, it makes me happy, I decided I would find the tiny little story I wrote two years ago before I was on email with Simone about my last day in New York and leaving New York for Tucson. I thought she would enjoy reading it. She is a part of that story even tho she is not in it. I spent my last morning in New York in Simone’s apartment. I had brought in all my house plants to give her, also to tell her I was moving to Tucson that day. Hiroko was there visiting. I lived in apt 3B, Simone was in apartment 3C, she shared her other wall with apartment 3D which is where Arthur and Hiroko had lived when they lived in New York. Then Hiroko had a baby girl, and then Arthur got a teaching job in Ojai California and they moved there. But we all stayed close with them, me by mail, and Hiroko (who was a painter like Simone) would sometimes come to New York and stay with Simone. Altho sometimes the whole family came in. And when I brought in my house plants and to tell Simone I was moving to Tucson, that day Hiroko was there, she was staying with Simone visiting. I brought in the tiny little very pretty evening bags Irene had given me and gave them to Hiroko and she loved them.
And I guess that was the last time I saw Simone. We were on the phone quite a bit when I first moved here, but really not that much, maybe 5 short phone calls. Our relationship was neighbors, not on the phone. We saw each other 20 times a day on the steps or in front of the house or in her apt. or mine, but we had never had a telephone conversation before. And our conversation when we saw each other was mainly “show and tell.” She would show me the new thing she bought for her apartment or the new nail polish she was wearing, or her new perfume. I would see her outfit and how pretty it was and comment. Simone never wore jeans, only pretty skirts and pretty tops. Really our whole relationship was about clothes. We both love clothes. And of course nail polish, perfume, and lipstick, which we both love. Altho Simone wears all of the above, and at the time I just dressed in rags.
The other half of our relationship was the unseen half. Which was that the wall between us was paper thin, so we each heard each others whole life. So really we were more like sisters, each having our own room, and our own parallel lives. She had her friends and I had mine. Altho there was one friend we shared, Micheline. And I guess Hiroko. Altho Hiroko was much closer to Simone than me. And I guess Randi who moved in when Arthur and Hiroko left. But Randi became best friends with Simone, whereas Randi and I had small bud of friendship. But Simone and I shared all the neighbors, and in our tiny tenement all the neighbors were very close. Most of the other neighbors had been born in their apartment and grown up there. They were part of the immigrant wave to the lower east side.
After our 5 phone calls our first year, my first year in Tucson, I rarely talked to her. Occasionally when I wanted to buy a gift for my mom-- since Simone always wore expensive French lipstick, I would call up and ask “What shade are you wearing now? What do you love most?” And she would say the Dior shade she is wearing for winter and the Dior shade she is wearing for summer now. And I would find an expensive department store in Tucson which sold fancy French lipsticks and buy both for my mom.
But that was ages ago. And then in November my Higher Self suggested I call her. I didn’t recognize the voice on her answering machine, I thought maybe she had moved to North Carolina, I had found out she bought a house on the beach there. But I left a message anyway. I didn’t expect her to call me back. There was some point when we each obtained the other’s email address and she never emailed me back. But to my absolute shock, she did call me back this past November, two months ago, and we had a really nice conversation, and we gave each other our new emails. And this time email took. We do correspond on email.
It was so close to the election when I called her, maybe a week after it, that we each summoned up our courage and told each other our politics had changed, and we were both amazed we both see things the same way now. That made a very close bond. Because in the circles Simone moves in in New York, and with me with all my old New York friends, how Simone and I see politics now is taboo. It is grounds for being an outcast. We are “one of them” instead of “one of us” -- the awful evil people, the dullards and the despised by all sophisticates and intelligentsia, the trailer trash redneck contingent. Which is so funny considering that Simone is a little French girl, and I am a little Jewish New Yorker whose parents were Reds, a bona fide red diaper baby. And Simone comes from the French aristocracy originally, altho she and I became hippies in the '60s, even tho she was still a stewardess then for the French airlines. I don’t think Simone was from high up aristocracy, her dad worked for French NATO, and Simone grew up in Morocco, her dad was stationed there. But her parents went to all the balls and dinners at the French embassy, it was classy life.
But in New York she met John, who had a nice life back then and was a photographer. They moved to the French countryside and had their two children, I guess they married there. And then came back to live next door to me. When I met them it was a just quick stop-over. John’s sister had found and rented the apartment for them, they were en route to New Mexico. But it is almost 30 years later and Simone is still in that apartment, her daughter is married and living in Brooklyn, I don’t know where her son is now, he was two years old when they moved in. John’s life in New York did not work out. Eventually Simone forced him to leave. And the last I heard he was living in Woodstock. But Simone told me on the phone in November he is now in Heaven. Which is OK, John refused to make a life for himself when his wife kicked him out. He was always completely in love with Simone, he always wanted Simone. He chose to sink into a life of misery when he couldn’t have her, it is better he have all the happiness Heaven offers, the world held nothing for him without Simone.
But I think that is a part of our tremendous closeness now, I mean the sisters aspect between us. We each lived thru with each other all the trials and tribulations our marriages went thru at the same time. We each heard it thru the walls and saw it happening for both of us. Simone and I have no secrets because we each were witnesses to everything the other went thru. And you could say as a result we each know each other’s strength. Simone had to rebuild her life from scratch without John and I had to rebuild my marriage from bottom up. We each rebuilt our lives from bottom up and we each saw the other doing it.
But any time we attempted to be regular friends, to share thoughts with each other, it never worked. We were never able to click. Which is odd, because we each clicked with Randi, with Hiroko, with Micheline, but we never clicked with each other.
But we did click on the phone in November when we talked about politics. We each were amazed we saw it all the same way. Isn’t that interesting. It is politics which has brought me and Simone together as friends. Now we email together like regular friends.
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