Hi Julie:

When I heard the news, I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I hopped in my car. I think I just meant to head to the gas station for a six-pack and then hang out by Sherman Falls to think a bit, but then I cranked up the playlist and twenty songs later I was in the Bronx, parking in the old neighborhood—Hillside Homes. I think I knew right away it was a mistake to come, but what’s another mistake, right? Not the first, won’t be the last, not for me at least.

I parked the Jeep on Wilson and headed down the concrete path to where the tunnels split, and you can take the stairs to Fish Avenue.  It seemed every building held a memory. On the right, 3470 where the Rossis lived—how many of them were there, fifteen or so? Then 3468, where I first alighted from Queens after my mom died. On the left, 3466 where Peter Peg Leg’s mom would throw down singles and change for the ice cream man.  Shit, Julie, that was forty years ago. Saying that is as surreal as a Salvador Dali painting.

I made a left, went through the tunnel under Sammy Chu’s apartment and into the Cherry Blossom Court. It’s the best time of year to be there, the pink blossoms floating in the breeze and falling to cover the ugly pavement. Unfortunately, they had just mowed the grass so that nasty smell of bleeding chlorophyll overwhelmed the blossoms. The people in Connecticut can’t understand how much I hate that smell. Mown grass is the perfume of suburbia. Another reason to hate it.

The field in the center of the court looks different and everything looks so much smaller. I mean, I remember coming up to bat and thinking how far I would have to hit the ball to make it over the fence. Now, I look at it and I don’t see how we didn’t break the window of every apartment that faced that field.

The monkey tree is still alive. I’m not kidding. Remember that day when we were all hanging on that one branch together and we heard the creak. Tariq was like, “Oh, shit,” but before we could let go the tree just keeled over.  I fell on my face, you landed on my back, and Sammy broke his wrist.  Remember the panic we were in trying to concoct a story that didn’t involve climbing a tree his mother specifically told him not to climb? Man, I sometimes think that making up excuses for the stupid shit we did is what kick-started my career as a writer. We knew we had to be tough to live in Cherry Blossom, and that tree was no exception. It has spent the last forty years growing horizontally, like the world’s thickest vine.

It was tough to see it that way, though. I wanted it to be standing tall. Maybe I wanted it to be dead and gone. Somehow, beyond my admiration at its clinging to life, there was something pathetic about it as well, spread out with its limbs vainly reaching upward as if it wanted the sky to pick it up.

I wanted it to look exactly like it did the first day I met you. That was when my family moved to Hicks and had the garden apartment with the little yard.  I came outside, and there you were, hanging upside down on the limb we eventually overloaded with miscreants. I liked your upside-down smile, and the three feet of jet-black hair that fell nearly to the grass below those sparkly almond eyes.  How hard did I crush, Julie?  Diamonds, but you knew that.

You won’t be surprised to know that I actually knocked on the door of my old apartment. There was an older black woman living there with her grandson, who was probably the same age we were when I first saw you. She was so welcoming when I explained why I knocked, and invited me in.  I told her I just wanted to stand in the yard and didn’t want to disturb them, but she insisted, and made me eat one of her chocolate chip cookies and tell her about what Hillside looked like when I lived here.  She was nice, but the apartment was suffocating and brought to mind too many nope moments for me to stand. It was weird how much of the furniture was arranged exactly how it was when I lived there. There was a recliner by the front door, black, not brown, and the couch lined up along the left wall, with a lamp behind it. How many times had I read by the light, hearing my father moaning in his needle dreams in the next room? I politely said my goodbyes and walked—calm on the inside but every fiber in my legs wanting to run—out into the yard.

I could almost see us rehearsing on the slate tiles, the amp plugs running into my kitchen window. Tariq on guitar, with his dreads tucked into his tam, and you, resplendent in a peasant blouse and skirt, with a million scarves on your mic stand. Me, cringeworthy in a guayabera—what was I thinking? If ever I deserved one of Tariq’s “stupid white boy” cracks, it was when I wore that shirt.

While I was standing there, my mind in 1980, don’t you know a security guard ambled down the path, gave me a nod, and then headed into the back door of the laundry room. That was your favorite way to go home, even though it felt like backtracking to me. We always took different paths to the same place. Like in high school, when everyone went their separate ways and you wound up at Art and Design and I went to Science. We just fell out of our routine, and out of each other’s lives. I swear, Jules, my breath caught the day Tariq and I were auditioning singers and you walked into the studio. You never told us you could sing before that. We had just heard a dozen of the worst yowlers ever. I felt like if I heard one more wannabe Whitney Houston oversouling “You Give Good Love,” I would scream. When you said you were going to do Roberta Flack, I panicked, because I didn’t know how I was going to tell you no when you inevitably sucked. I could never tell you no. I had already decided that I was going to make Tariq do it when you stepped up to the mic and opened your mouth. That angelic voice grabbed my soul, and ripped it out of my body. That was the end of auditions, and you were in the band.

\You and I were a thing for five minutes, but we were much better as friends than lovers. I still can’t hear Roberta Flack without thinking of you.

Well, I think I have babbled enough. I have to tell you one more thing, though.  As I walked out of the yard, and past the monkey tree, I spotted something in the grass. It was a piece of phyllite. I guess it isn’t surprising. The field is full of it, but it just reminded me of the time we were hanging out the day before your Bat Mitzvah and you were so nervous. You found a piece that had so many stripes in it you said it looked like fudge swirl ice cream—you were so fascinated with it. When I said it was phyllite you teased me for days about being a nerd. From then on, I was Professor Tom.

I stuck the phyllite in my pocket and headed back to the Jeep.

The ride back was longer. I finally broke down when I saw Candlewood Lake, and New Fairfield, where we once again reunited after decades running parallel in our solitary worlds.

It took me all night to write this. I really didn’t know what to say, I guess. If you were here, I would say I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you, and maybe I’m angry at you. Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you call someone?  It’s late. I’m going to try to sleep a little. Now that I’ve written this, I don’t know what to do with it. In the morning I’ll go to the cemetery. I want to put the phyllite on your headstone, and maybe tell you that I love you one more time.

Goodbye, Jules. You passed the audition.

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