Nick Davis – on an anniversary.

New York City
August 10, 2000

Hi Stacy –

Hey there, how’re things? We’re back from Maine, which was great, but we decided, following my therapist’s advice (which I think may have been misguided) that it would be better for me to be in New York City today – on July 25 – than up in Maine with my Dad.

Twenty-six years ago today my mother died. She was killed in a freakish car accident here in New York City, in the village, at the corner of Bleecker and Charles Streets. There is now a stop sign at the corner. There wasn’t twenty-six years ago. Two taxis came tearing down those streets – the drivers were named Aderinto and Baeradi, the most wonderfully musical names – and collided. One of the cabs spun around and slammed into my mother, who was standing with my brother at the corner. I think my brother and mom were waiting for a friend of hers – or maybe they were walking over to the friend’s house. Earlier in the day, she and my brother had gone bowling. My brother, then eleven, bowled a 168, breaking his previous record of 163. I’m not sure if he’s ever bowled higher than 168 since then. My father and I had gone to the New York Public Library for the day. He had research to do, and I tagged along. I was nine years old and spent most of the day reading a biography of the baseball pitcher Bob Gibson. The only thing I really remember is that Gibson seemed like an unusually angry man. And that he played with the Harlem Globetrotters for a time. And he may have come from Omaha, Nebraska.

Anyway. Back to the taxis. My brother says he can still remember watching the accident – it happened, as all accidents do, in slow-motion – and thinking that it was going to be cool, that they were going to collide. And then as he realized how close they were going to be, he jumped back, and reached for Mom, grabbed at her. (Our neighbor, a man with the name Yudell Kyler who, when I saw him last, about twelve summers ago, when I conspired with the gods to spend the month of July on Charles Street, had an unusually dark little hair growing out of the middle of his nose – Yudell Kyler saw the accident and used the word “clawed” to represent Timmy’s action in jumping back and reaching at the air for my mom.)

But, of course, one of the taxis slammed into Mom and threw her into the air and she landed on her head on a mailbox. I have never been particularly persistent in trying to conjure this part, what it looked like. But Timmy, who had run a few steps down Bleecker, came back, and the taxis had stopped, and a crowd gathered, and somebody put a pillow under Mom’s head, and somebody else got Timmy an ice cream cone, I don’t know what kind.

As Dad and I approached from the Sheridan Square subway station, we became aware of flashing lights and sirens. Some kind of commotion. As we got closer, Dad gripped my hand really tight, and I remember thinking that he was being silly. Then an old woman came up to us and said, “Mr. Davis, are these your wife’s pants? I think these are your wife’s pants.” And she had these folded-up black pants in her hands and I thought she was insane, but Dad started running down the block toward our house, pulling me.

Timmy was upstairs – in Yudell Kyler’s apartment. It strikes me now that I had never before been to his apartment, though he lived right upstairs from us, but at the time I do remember thinking what a soft and nice place he had. Timmy told us about the accident, which didn’t seem too serious to me, and Dad went off to the hospital, and another neighbor, Dick Meryman, a close family friend, came by and took us – walked us – back to his house on Horatio Street.

It was on the walk to Horatio Street that I think I must have first sensed that something serious was going on, because I remember I told my brother one of the worst lies I’ve ever told in my life. We were big Mets fans, all of us were, and as we walked along, silently, the three of us – me, Timmy, and Dick Meryman, stalwart family friend – I became seized with the idea that I had to cheer Timmy up. And so I told him, “Tom Seaver pitched a perfect game today.” As soon as I said it, I realized how transparent it was. There had only been about twelve perfect games in baseball history, what were the odds on something like that happening? And I thought, “Jesus, why didn’t I just make it a shutout?”

We must have been at the Merymans for a few hours. We ate dinner with their two daughters, and they served us hamburgers and baked beans, our favorite. And at some point during dinner, we turned on the TV. And there was a Mets game on. I was mortified. They hadn’t even played yet! I was too horrified to even say anything.

When Dick Meryman came in and said that our father was upstairs, was back from the hospital and wanted to see us, I was already feeling pretty bad. Timmy had said at dinner, “You know, Mommy could die,” and I thought, “No, she’ll come home with a big bandage on her head, but she’ll be fine, and she’ll tell funny stories about the whole thing.” But the feeling was not a good one as we walked up the stairs to the Merymans’ living room – they lived, and still do, in a very nice brownstone – and there was Dad with the news.

So now it’s twenty-six years later, and my therapist is telling me that it’s better to be in New York with these memories on this day than up in Maine under the clear blue sky. Well, my therapist has other reasons – I have other reasons – for not wanting me to be up in Maine on this particular day. But I’m not so sure. I’m awfully glad that we’re headed back there next week.

Because this memory – these memories – well, there’s no getting away from them in New York in the summer. Jane and I live in the Village, and this morning, I took Lily, our eleven-and-a-half-month-old girl, out for a walk. Men don’t get to be pregnant, but we do get to wear our children in those front carriers – mine’s a Baby Bjorn – and without a doubt the closest times I’ve had with Lily are on these early morning walks. So the sun’s just coming up – Lily is, euphemistically speaking, an early riser – and I’m walking down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square park. The city’s looking great, the Washington Arch is glowing proud, the doormen are nodding at the beautiful smiling baby on my belly as we go by. All is right with the world, and I’m reflecting on where I was twenty-six years ago, and how wonderful it is to have a daughter all these years later, what a redemptive kind of place this planet can be –

And then my heart has stopped beating because just as I’m stepping down off the curb of the Washington Mews – that little alley that empties onto Fifth Avenue between Eighth Street and the park – my new shoe, the left one, a fat little wallabee kind of thing with a sole that is way too thick for someone who has basically spent his whole life in sneakers, has buckled under me, turned over, and at the same time a little blue minivan has been pulling into the Mews, and I’m off-balance, and it all passes very quickly, and nothing happens, I should be clear about this – absolutely nothing happened, no one was ever in the remotest kind of danger, not Lily, not me, not the Aderinto Baeradi type who was driving the minivan…

But suddenly the world isn’t looking so good, and the park when we get there feels muggy and dirty, and the kid playground is sticky with old soda and Lily doesn’t really want to be in the swing and before long we’re leaving – retreating – from the park, and scurrying back to the comfort of our home. And at every light and stop sign – the Mews, do I have to tell you, has neither – I’m looking both ways and holding Lily tight as I cross and basically reminding myself of a teacher I had in the seventh grade who was the first and only agoraphobic I ever met, who when I saw her on Broadway one evening looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

So I think maybe it wasn’t the best decision to come home from Maine. Whatever problems I may have up there, I’m rarely assaulted by the kind of fear that routinely grips me in New York in the summer. Especially today.

Lying low till midnight,

Speak to you soon,

Nick