A Boy in the City

A brisk walk down Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City took us to the Journal Square PATH train station. Four trains came and went and then there was ours, to the WTC stop. Charlie had been poking in the refrigerator and cabinets all morning, even after a big lunch of bean thread noodles and vegetables and chicken, and his voice sounded agitated notes as we walked towards lower Manhattan. We went by Wall Street and past the U.S. Courthouse and a very large police station, and Chambers Street somewhere along the way, then the Nha Trang Vietnamese Restaurant. We went down Worth Street and into Chinatown and then we were in Little Italy, with sidewalk tables set with bottles of San Pellegrino water though you’d only want to dine outside in a coat and sitting close. We went down Mott Street and towards West Broadway and walked in slush piles streaked with dark gray and balled up blue coffee cups and we turned and “there it is” said Jim—-a Whole Foods store on the Bowery. Charlie went straight to the sushi counter and chose his latest favorite—eel (I hold my dad responsible for introducing him to this latest delicacy). And then to the bakery section for dessert, where Charlie was hard-pressed to choose between a brownie and “white cake.”

A young man with Asperger Syndrome once told us that he loved to be in New York city because he could be among so many people, and yet be by himself. Something about the city, a noisy riot of smells and sights and people in all manner of dress and dogs and garbage bags stacked on the sidewalks and one storefront after another beckoning with the promise of a refrigerator case of sodas and steam coming up out of the grates of the sidewalk and so many languages spoken and Charlie’s humming (aggravated soft moans for awhile) blends in —something about all of this makes for a place that Charlie strides comfortably among.

And stride he must. “Piggy back, Dad,” Charlie requested, but now he has no choice but to stride on his own two feet. “Yellow car!” Charlie said when a taxi stopped at an intersection and Jim and I speculated about what kind of comedy it would be if he somehow got in a cab which drove off before we knew it and we got into another cab and went for one madcap chase through Manhattan traffic. “Not going to happen,” we said. Charlie stepped in a slush puddle: “Your foot’s gonna be wet,” I said, and Charlie kept walking, a little more carefully around the puddles beside Washington Square Park, which we walked by after eating and on our way back to the PATH train on 9th street.

We had a longish wait and Jim and I kept saying “stay on the black part,” as Charlie kept roaming towards the yellow line on the edges the platform. When the train came roaring in, Jim grabbed Charlie’s hand and we ran towards the front to get a seat, now almost ducking into cars full of standing passengers and now running, running, hurrying, until we finally shot into a car where there was one empty seat between two really tall men. It all happened very fast and Charlie did not sit down as the train started to move but put his hands between his knees and yelled,

“JP!”

That’s the name of his favorite instructor, who is no longer in Charlie’s classroom and working at the high school.

“JP!”

Charlie sat down and growled and the two men glanced up, only with their eyes under baseball caps. One was wearing a suede jacket with Sean John imprinted on the sleeve; the other man motioned to Charlie and, through the noise of the train, I heard the word “mother” and he slid one seat over. I thanked him and sat down beside Charlie, who was bent over staring at his gloves.

“We’ll see all your teachers tomorrow,” I said. “Everything’s off one day because you had the snow day and no school on Friday.”

“School tomorrow,” said Charlie and, as we rode to Hoboken and Pavonia-Newport and Grove Street, his shoulders lost their stiffness and he looked with interest at the little boy across from us and at the tall man sitting beside him.

We got out at Journal Square and Charlie walked up the escalators to street level and trotted ahead of us down Kennedy Boulevard, and the lights of Jersey City shone bright, every step of the way.