Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,1

and I sigh and say, Swamped. A little joke. In the same way, I delight in answering the door for my grocery delivery with a tie loosened about my neck and an air of exhaustion and world-weary distractedness. You can leave it just inside the door, I always say, & then walk into the kitchen, calling back over my shoulder little mundanities about the weather or a sports team. Once the boxes are all accounted for, I tip the driver with cash that I keep hidden in a drawer on my nightstand, on the inside of a hollow book. I obtained the book as a child—it was my prized possession, a hollow book!—and it has proven useful to me since. All the food I order for delivery is paid for by credit card on the phone. Tipping is the only thing I need cash for, so for a long time I have relied on the large store of bills that years ago I procured from the bank. I have no plan for when they run out. I never thought I’d need one.

The very very last time I went out of my house was in September of 2001, when I grew so lonesome watching the news that I opened my door and walked to the bottom of my stoop and sat on it, my head in my hands, for an hour. & I wished I had someone to talk to. It felt as if the world could end. Some very bad memories came to me one after another in a row. I heard what I thought was a woman screaming but that turned out to be peacocks that occupy the courtyard of a church near my brownstone. Then I hauled myself up and I walked to the end of the block, and then I walked one block beyond that, & then another, & then another. Finally I reached the corner of Ninth Street and Eighth Avenue, where two groups of women were standing in tight little circles, visibly upset. One young lady, holding a bewildered two-year-old in her arms, was crying and being heartily consoled by a friend. When I walked by them they hushed and looked. Beyond them I had a view all the way down Ninth Street toward the water & the horizon, and if I squinted and looked to my right I thought I could see black smoke rising into the sky, though I could not see downtown. Now I used to go into Manhattan quite a bit when I was younger & Manhattan was of course where I used to teach & although I didn’t like teaching I thought of my students and my former colleagues & prayed for their safety and well-being. I thought of you & felt glad your dreams of living in Manhattan had not come true. I was overwhelmed with sorrow and nostalgia—

self-pity and pity for others, which, in me, are often the same emotion. I stood until my feet could no longer bear my own weight and then I lumbered back, pausing seven times to catch my breath. The women were gone now and the streets were empty. At the bottom of my stoop I looked up to the top of my own twelve steps and vowed that I would not leave again, because you see I had no one to call, and no one called me on that day, & so that’s how I knew I did not need to go out of my house anymore.

Since that day I have been completely reclusive. Of course my natural tendency has been toward solitude from the time I was a boy, but for many years I had family & other people who kept me from shuttering myself in too tightly. I had you for a while, and people like you. But I am no longer in touch with any friends or relatives. My mother was dear to me but she died young. For several reasons that I will give you if you care to know, I do not speak to the rest of my family. Nevertheless, they have made me financially stable for the rest of my life & I do not need to earn money to be so. This too has helped me to get bigger and bigger & has allowed me to stay inside my cocoon of a house.

•

Now I spend each day in much the same way. In the morning I furtively collect the newspaper from its place on my