When the earth began to move, I was on lying on my bed with my cats in my lap. My son was in his room across the hall. The bed began to shake and I thought, inexplicably: is my little brother doing this? And then I thought, ‘Oh no, are we under attack again?’ (having 9/11 on the brain the way I and many other New Yorkers do). The cats lifted their heads at me looking for answers as the building swayed and the door to my bedroom opened and closed. When it was over, I called out to my son, asking if he’d felt anything, but he, an almost teenager, was oblivious. I went online to see the origins of the trembling I’d felt — the world is so nuts these days, was it al-Qa’eda, a bomb, my upstairs neighbours remodelling?
•••
My thoughts turned to my brother again. When we talked later that day, he said something about how we live by ignoring the threat of natural disasters, but I feel oddly grateful for them. Not that I like a natural disaster — who does? But I am sick of all the self-inflicted wounds my country has crippled itself with — the banking mess, the Bush tax cuts and the crazy deficit, the war in Iraq, the stupid wasteful infighting over the debt ceiling. With an earthquake, we can’t justifiably blame ourselves (although there are those nasty building codes and nuclear power plants sitting on fault lines to contend with). It offers a momentary escape from guilt.
•••
After the earthquake, all the talk was of Hurricane Irene, hurtling towards us from the Caribbean. Would she come all the way to New York or wouldn’t she? How bad would it be? We live in Manhattan, should we stock up on supplies? This was our dinner table conversation: I said to my husband, ‘The hurricane is your problem, I handled 9/11.’ And it’s true in a tiny way. Ten years ago, I was the one who ran around getting food, money, water, while my husband watched the unfolding horror on the television at home. Our son, not yet three, was asleep in the stroller in the living room. It was our daughter’s first day at kindergarten, all the way across town, and the school urged us to let the kids stay for the remainder of the morning.
•••
On Friday night, however, as we ate our takeout sushi and reheated chilli, my husband would have none of my memory of the situation. ‘I stayed home and protected the boy from terror,’ he said, mock-serious, and my daughter cracked up. And she’s right, it’s humorous — how we think we can protect anyone from anything, with our water bottles and flashlights and high hopes. But cosy together before the storm, we laughed and laughed and laughed. After a lot of hype and fear and preparation, the hurricane pretty much came and went here in the city. It wreaked havoc instead on the suburbs, upstate, and on huge swaths of the east coast. There is clearly real pain to go around — 40 deaths last time I checked, billions of dollars in damage. For us it was a lot of rain, CNN, booze and hot fudge sundaes. Cabin fever.
•••
When my husband and son ventured out after the worst of it had passed on Sunday, all of Broadway was shut down. My guys found one open diner seven blocks away and returned a bit spooked by the ghost-town vibe. By the time my daughter and I went outside, a mere half-hour later, rebirth had begun — bars, restaurants, our corner store reopening as we strolled past them. We went for ‘cocktails’ — for me a glass of wine, for her a diet soda — to celebrate being sprung. Today I had lunch with my agent, who lives in Connecticut. No power, no water, no school — happy kids!
•••
I returned home in the afternoon, picking up where I’d left off, lying on my bed. I am on what my publisher calls a ‘radio tour’. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had to have four months of bed-rest. Now I find myself remembering the frustration, anxiety and unproductiveness which accompanied that inert time. I spend the bulk of my days surrounded by cats, newspapers, magazines and my laptop, waiting for the phone to ring. The radio interviews are scheduled at intervals throughout the day, so it’s hard to get immersed in something else between calls. I never quite know who I’ll be speaking with when that phone finally rings, and sometimes I actually forget that the phone call I’m on has more than one listener at the other end. This is both a hindrance and a help, since many of my interviewers ask me questions i am not equipped to answer, about mental illness, legal liability, child welfare. ‘I’m not a psychiatrist,’ i sometimes say in what i hope is a nice way, or ‘not a sociologist’. ‘I’m a novelist — i make stuff up.’ But sometimes i just spout off.
Helen Schulman’s novel This Beautiful Life is published by HarperCollins.
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