I Totally Meant to Do That

by Jane Borden

  On top of the van: nothing

  In the back of the van: half of what was left in Greenpoint

  In the front of the van: a very sullen mood

  On the dashboard: Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos

  On the phone: Kokie’s increasingly annoyed girlfriend

  “I don’t think you can make your thing,” Kokie said after hanging up. “Do you have to be there?”

  “Yes. I’m writing an article about a comedian,” I said. “His show is tonight, and the story’s due tomorrow.”

  “You’re a writer?” Georgie asked.

  “But it’s already almost six!” Kokie argued. “Where is it?”

  “Oh no,” Georgie squealed. “She’s gonna write about us!”

  “Manhattan,” I answered.

  “Manhattan?!” Kokie exclaimed. “No way you’ll make it—no way.”

  Georgie pulled his fingers into air quotes and said, “ ‘My Day with the Sanchez Brothers. By Janie.’ Oh no!”

  “We’ll have to get the last load tomorrow morning,” Kokie proclaimed.

  Now it was my turn to hustle. “I know we can do it,” I said. “I’ll e-mail the show’s host and ask him to put the comic up last. That’ll buy us an hour. And I can save more time if I don’t have to call a car service—why don’t you take me into the city, and I’ll throw in an extra twenty bucks? Plus tip for you both would be three hundred and sixty.”

  Kokie pursed his lips and shifted his eyes from side to side, adjusted his rearview mirror, sat up taller in his seat, and finally said, “OK, but we’re stopping for pizza.”

  “What,” I asked sarcastically, “those Doritos aren’t enough?”

  “That stuff’s terrible!” Georgie said.

  Diet advice from the diabetic.

  Then he added, “You should really write down that title I gave you, Janie. It’s good.”

  I didn’t tell him, but I already had.

  We split a pie and got back on the road, so that this time my BQE coma was also induced by carbs. Then we coasted along the section by the water and fell back into our now familiar pattern:

  Doll.

  Rising.

  Orbit.

  On.

  Lug.

  TRIP FOUR OF FOUR, 7:45 p.m.

  In Georgie’s mouth: the Doritos

  Waving good-bye behind us: my two former roommates

  “They seem nice,” Kokie said. “You’ll miss them.”

  “Are you kidding? She’ll wake up tomorrow and be happy not to see nobody,” Georgie said.

  “It’s true,” I agreed.

  “You can walk around naked if you like,” Georgie added. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “Well, I definitely wouldn’t be able to if I had to come back here tomorrow and meet”—I pulled my fingers into air quotes—“the Sanchez Brothers.”

  “Oh shit, Kokie, did you hear that?”

  “Yeah, she’s making fun of us,” Kokie said playfully.

  “Janie, you’d be lucky to spend another day with the Sanchez Brothers.”

  “And anyway, this one ain’t over,” Kokie added. “We could still get a flat.”

  “Why do you say that!? Don’t say that!” Georgie cried. “You’ll jinx us.”

  “I’m not gonna jinx us,” Kokie spat. “Would you quit with the nagging!”

  “Well, if we do,” Georgie persevered, “let’s hope it happens in your new neighborhood, and not here.”

  “Oh yeah, you saw that place on Fourth Avenue?” Kokie asked.

  “There’s one on Third, too,” Georgie answered.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Tire shop,” Kokie told me.

  “Actually, I think I saw three on Third,” Georgie continued, and then looked at me. “You didn’t see them? They’re all around your new place.”

  “Yeah, and also those churches like Henry’s,” Kokie said with concern. “I don’t trust those storefronts. I think they want your money.”

  “You shouldn’t say that,” Georgie argued. “You don’t know that. You’ve never been.”

  They continued to bicker over whether or not Henry’s pastor was fleecing him, but my mind was stuck on the auto shops. Were there really that many? How had I not noticed?

  Afterward, of course, I did. The following week I wandered the perimeter of my apartment’s immediate area—from Seventeenth Street to Ninth Street, up Fourth Avenue and back down Third—with a pen and paper. Here’s what I found.

  FOURTH AVENUE

  -at Prospect: M&M Corp Auto Repair

  -between Prospect and Sixteenth: Prospect Auto Glass

  “My Day with the Sanchez Brothers,” By Janie

  -at Sixteenth: Castle Car Service

  -between Sixteenth and Fifteenth: N&N Brothers Auto Repair

  -at Fifteenth: Strauss Discount Auto

  -between Twelfth and Eleventh: Danny’s Rim and Tire Shop

  THIRD AVENUE

  -around the corner on Ninth: Top Notch Auto Repairs Inc.

  -at Ninth: Enterprise Rent-a-Car

  -between Ninth and Tenth: Mexico Tire Shop

  -near Eleventh: Bay Speed Collision and Repair

  -at Eleventh: El Differente Auto Repair

  -between Eleventh and Twelfth: Scarlino Brothers Fuel Oil Company

  -at Twelfth: Masters Auto Body

  -around the corner on Twelfth: Carlos Auto Repair

  -at Thirteenth: Getty Full-Service gas station

  -next door to that: V&H Auto Repair Corp

  -around the corner on Fifteenth: New Star Auto Repair Inc.

  -across Fifteenth from that: Good Guys Auto

  -between Fifteenth and Sixteenth: MINHS Auto Care Center

  -around the corner on Sixteenth: the Public Auto Auction, where one can “stop and save thousands” on “bank repos, off lease, seized” cars, and which is peppered with dozens of triangular flags, and topped with a supernaturally large, yellow inflatable gorilla; it’s the Putt-Putt golf course of vehicular vulturing.

  “Three on Third”? Actually, there are fourteen in my immediate neighborhood alone. In an area eight-short-blocks by two-long-blocks, there are twenty businesses dedicated to transience, to keeping people on the move. Um, I think I found my nest.

  The only other industry with anywhere close to as much representation in Gowanus is sign making—banners, neon work, and other signs, which I am clearly no good at seeing. How daft am I? Apparently something must be the size of a NASA rocket for me to notice it. And, PS, I googled that orbital launcher–looking thing, the New York City Hamilton DOT Plant: It makes pavement for the city’s roads. Pavement!

  Once again, I had failed to recognize an egregiously overt metaphor. And once again I say to you: I can’t make this up! I still don’t believe in fate or predetermination, but these coincidences are racking up. I’m starting to wonder if coincidence is like déjà vu: Instead of paranormal shenanigans, it’s just the experience of your subconscious knowing something before you do. Taking me to Gowanus was my subconscious’s way of saying, “Oh, you’re only happy when you’re moving? See how you enjoy living in a racecar pit.” As if it caught me with cigarettes and now my punishment is to smoke the whole pack.

  Generally, people with wanderlust at least get to see the world. The most exotic species I’ve spotted is Brooklyn’s indigenous yellow gorilla balloon.

  As Kokie’s minivan pulled onto the part of the BQE that runs along the water, I thought to myself, Truly this is the seedy side of addiction.

  TRIP TO THE COMEDY CLUB,

  8:40 p.m.

  In Kokie’s pocket: $360

  Checking her watch: me

  Taking forever in the bathroom: Georgie

  “What’s he doing in there?” Kokie asked the wall.

  “Beats me,” I said, humming the Jeopardy! theme in my head. Another few minutes passed, and then Georgie appeared.

  “What the hell!” Kokie demanded.

  “There wasn’t any soap!�
�� Georgie yelped. “But under the sink I found some SoftScrub.”

  “Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Kokie commanded.

  In the car, he consulted the GPS again, asked me for the comedy club’s address.

  “You want to use the GPS in Manhattan?” I asked, realizing that the Sanchez Brothers probably don’t spend much time on the island, and relishing the opportunity to cash in on one of the few benefits of being a weed. “We don’t need GPS,” I said. “I can get us to Midtown.” Easy. I devoured those neighborhoods years ago.

  Georgie began to speak dreamily about the night’s remaining few hours. “I’m gonna lie back and do nothin’. Maybe watch some TV. Maybe not.”

  Kokie, meanwhile, was anxious to meet his girlfriend, who had called several times now. “She said you must be pretty cute for me to be so helpful,” he told me.

  “Tell her (a) I’m paying you and (b) I have a boyfriend.”

  “I don’t know why she gets jealous,” Kokie said. “She’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, so why’s she always saying she’s fat?” Georgie asked rhetorically. “I don’t understand why women always think they’re fat.”

  “I don’t think I’m fat,” I said.

  “Naw, naw, you’re just saying that,” he replied.

  “No I’m not; I really don’t think I’m fat.”

  Georgie spun around in shock: “Are you serious?”

  “Are you saying I should think I’m fat?”

  “No no no,” he backpedaled.

  “I don’t believe you,” Kokie said suspiciously.

  “Believe what you want,” I taunted.

  We bickered and picked some more, and then we arrived, at 9:05 p.m. There was no time to dwell on good-bye, no opportunity to make this moment any more important than whatever would follow it. So I slapped them both on their backs and said, “Today was fun. Thanks, guys.”

  As I crawled out of the van, Georgie said, “I gotta be honest, I didn’t think we would make it.”

  So I put my hands on my hips, stuck my neck out far, and said with as much exaggeration as possible, “See?!”

  no political lie has left an American surprised. Similarly, when I opened a puffy envelope from Aunt Jane and found inside another manners guide—delivered six years after the first and annotated this time in pencil—instead of saying, “Oh. My. God.” I merely thought, Yep, that makes sense.

  Sarah Tomczak’s How to Live Like a Lady is adorned throughout with illustrations of women from periods past: a flapper holding a candlestick telephone, a corseted grande dame admiring her feathered hat, a young miss gazing dreamily upward at a pencil-thin mustache. The book betrayed its obsolescence before I’d read a word.

  But read on I did, because I found the gesture adorable (beside the underlined phrase “quality cashmere,” she’d scribbled “at least 4 or 6 [better] ply”), because I ultimately had learned something from the first guide, and because it arrived with the subtitle “Lessons in Life” at a time when I needed answers. On a recent Saturday, the day after my sister’s birthday, while I was sitting in a coffee shop reading, I missed a call from my mother and got this voice mail.

  “Well, we’re all here having lunch for Tucker’s birthday: Dad, me, Jane, Lucius, Lou, Marc, Franklin, Borden, Victoria, Tucker, Wes, and baby Wes. Just calling to say we miss you.”

  Hearing all of their names, listed like that in a row, illustrated exactly how much my family has grown. Sure, I went to the weddings and christenings—clearly, I’m aware. But I didn’t truly understand. Because, when I am away from them, I don’t sit and imagine them all having brunch together. Being in purgatory doesn’t just mean they can’t see me; I can’t see them, either.

  So I knew without really knowing that since I’ve been in New York, my immediate family has doubled in size. The bigger it gets, the smaller that I, in relation to the whole, become. That’s a good thing. Like the ply count of cashmere yarn. The higher the ply, the thicker and heavier the strand. But as my family evolves into superrobust textiles, I’m the stray thread that’s been picked loose from the knit, the one you either weave back in gently or yank out with one quick tug.

  After almost eleven years in this city, I still live out of a suitcase, unsettled here, but unwilling to move home. I’ve been so consumed by this quandary, I’ve written a book on the subject. Even so, however, I always knew how it would end: New York. I choose New York. Or so I thought, because when it came time to turn in the first draft, I did so without a final chapter.

  I didn’t know how to finish this. And when I got that voice mail, I figured out why: Because, by the time I’d reached the end, my options had changed. I thought I was choosing between two geographical locations, between two ways of life. But that’s not true. North Carolina isn’t a lifestyle; it’s my family. Or maybe it’s not that the options changed, but just that I grew up enough to see them differently. Again, it’s as if I knew it before I knew it.

  So now I’m all confused again. Here or there—which is home? Or, rather, the true task is to discern which of the two is more of a home than the other. I’m Southern by default. But I’m also a New Yorker. Right? I love this city … don’t I? Sorry. Why am I asking you? I’m all mixed up, so much so that I sought counseling from a chintzy etiquette paperback.

  Because it had arrived with a North Carolina return address, and came from the self-help section, I gave it weight, combed it for clues like it was a Dead Sea Scroll. Huge mistake. How to Live Like a Lady might not offer bad advice, except when suggesting “weird and wonderful diet tips” as a small-talk topic, but it is grossly underqualified for the task I’d assigned it. On the list of what should be “Inside a Lady’s Handbag,” I found “lipstick,” “small hairbrush,” and “spare pair of panty hose”—seriously, who wears panty hose?—but there was no mention of which state’s driver’s license.

  I mean, obviously. There is no self-help publication for my conundrum, I said to myself, and threw the flimsy manners guide onto my desk in frustration. But when it landed with a thud on top of the first draft of this manuscript, I realized I was wrong. There is a guide. I’ve written a book on the subject.

  Maybe the answer is in my words. Maybe I already know it without knowing it. I only need to read between the lines, find the clues that my subconscious left behind. I’d been combing the wrong scroll. Once again, even though Aunt Jane could never have imagined this, she’d still delivered the advice I needed.

  is a loosely organized collection of stories from one decade in the author’s life. Contained within its pages are no abusive parents, violent accidents, or horrifying sexual exploits. In fact, there is little action whatsoever. Rather, Jane Borden thinks she can tease dramatic tension from indecision, from a childish reluctance to settle down and cultivate a home. Although she should feel privileged even to have a choice, she can’t focus on the bigger picture, possibly due to a substantial preoccupation with food. Muffins, french fries, mayonnaise, brownies. We get it, Ms. Borden; you like to eat. Maybe you should put cookies on the book’s cover jacket.

  First, however, it requires an ending; as you said, “it is cowardly to live a life without making choices.” To achieve this end, try following your own advice: “search for patterns and meaning in stories that have already been written,” “see allusions and draw conclusions where a writer didn’t intend them to be.”

  “Duh: If I’m not looking at you, you can still see me.”

  So now, instead of arguing with Candace Simpson-Giles, Sarah Tomczak, or for that matter Jesus, I’ll cross-examine myself.

  “The most perfect relationship I’ve ever had was with a total stranger.”

  Wow, straight out of the gate: what a horrifying thing to say. It sounds like the title of a stalker’s autobiography. Read it out loud in a deep, husky timbre. Or, better yet, use a Hannibal Lecter voice and exchange the word relationship for meal. Either way, that’s not a quote; it’s a cry for help.

  “They’d start saying they were tired:
tired of hangovers, piles of garbage, and the stench of urine, tired of screaming neighbors, and the constant rumbling of trucks in their dreams. Tired of New York. So they’d leave.”

  I wrote the first draft of that essay six years ago. At the time, I recognized the five nuisances in the first sentence as necessary evils. But these days, when a Midtown sidewalk suddenly becomes a man-made trash tunnel with walls stacked four bags high, when I accidentally lock eyes with a pee-smell contributor in medias res, when I’m brought to tears by secondhand verbal abuse, or when I’m startled awake—dunh-dunh-dunh—over and over—dunh—dunh-dunh—by the never-endi—dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh, the experiences leave me heavy, cranky, and in the mood to watch a bad romantic comedy. They make me tired.

  And if I agree with the first sentence of the quote, then I must agree with the second, which ultimately leads to the third. Score one for the home team.

  “I’d been looking for impediments in my environment, when I should have clocked the faces of people successfully avoiding those obstacles.”

  So I’m just following everyone else? Um, if a pedestrian jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would I?

  “What beautiful cooperation is born from the perpetually imminent threat of death.”

  Another horrifying exclamation. Instead of New York or North Carolina, perhaps I should consider Kabul. Crisis is attractive because it allows the brain a singular focus, commands it to ignore every obligation in life save the avoidance of bodily harm. Therefore, it can be abused as an excuse to procrastinate. The relationship is similar to that of an addict whose only concern is the acquiring and consumption of junk. Hm. A quick word search confirms that this is the fourth time I’ve described myself as addicted to New York. Consider this my intervention: another point for the home team.

  “No one spends that much time in a store the size of a minivan unless considering a major purchase.”