Only in New York by Lily Brett

Author:Lily Brett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760140526
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2014-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

New York is a very good city for those of us with a propensity for loneliness. It is always crowded. Crowded with the warmth of life and movement and purpose. The city sort of sweeps you up in this warmth. You can be on your own in New York. And not alone.

I have often felt alone. In reality, I am not really alone. I live with a man who loves me. Who loves me when I look terrible. Who loves me when I am being unreasonable. Who just loves me. I have children who like me. And my children have children.

My father is still alive. He loves me. And I have close friends. In the middle of this cornucopia of love, I can, and often do, feel an immense loneliness. A loneliness so steeped in me that it feels like part of my circulatory or auditory or vascular system. It is not a good feeling.

I don’t feel the loneliness when I am with my family or my friends. I often have a fantasy of sharing a building with one or two of my children or one or two of my friends. I think that could dissipate much of the loneliness. But in this increasingly mobile and increasingly expensive world, that fantasy doesn’t seem possible. And maybe it wouldn’t work.

Last year I visited my younger daughter when she was living in Seattle. On the first day of my stay, after an endlessly delayed flight from New York and my arrival in Seattle at two a.m., I was standing in the kitchen of my daughter’s house. Things were not going well. My daughter, whom I adore and almost ache for when I am away from her, can be quite bossy in the kitchen. She is a very good cook and fussy about how things are done in kitchens, especially her kitchen.

I made the mistake of asking her not to be so bossy.

What followed was a few minutes of very tetchy exchanges until her three-year-old walked in and said, ‘Are you two fighting?’

‘No, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘We are just having a discussion.’

He walked out.

‘He is not stupid,’ I said to my daughter. ‘He knows we are fighting.’

The tetchiness continued. At one stage, I said, a bit hastily, that I might as well go home. At that point her three-year-old re-appeared. He looked solemn. He stood in front of us, pointed his index finger in our direction and, with a firm flourish of his right arm, said, ‘I want this fighting to stop.’ He then turned around and marched out of the room.

My daughter and I both started laughing. She apologised for her bossiness and I apologised for threatening to go home. After that it was, mostly, smooth sailing.

I do spend quite a lot of time alone. And it suits me. It is the time when I think and the time when I write. I don’t feel at all lonely when I am writing. I don’t know where the loneliness goes.

I have always felt a loneliness.

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