I’d wander while my mother worked. She was preoccupied enough to allow a curious, book-obsessed fifth-grader to romp through the cobbled, stinky streets of Lower Manhattan while she toiled in a small office. She knew that I yearned to discover, and she made sure I did it alone.
I’d submerge into the concourse of shops beneath the towers, reading Mad in Waldenbooks or sitting on a bench and stabbing at the crosswords in Games magazine. I’d eat croissants from Le Bon Pain, head back outside to ogle the big red sculpture across the way, furrow my brow at the ancient headstones at the tiny church a few blocks over, or meander to the South Street Seaport just to look at the dead fish.
Everywhere I went they stood over me and looked after me. They were like my identical-twin brothers, these two enormous beacons, the guideposts that led me to wherever I wanted to go. If I ventured into the subway and stayed on for a few stops, I knew where I had to go just by looking up at their brilliant steel and glass.
If I wanted a cheap thrill, I’d ride their elevators until my ears popped, jumping up right as the floor started to fall down, pissing off the businesspeople stressing inside.
One day a friend of mine met me down there and I took him through my towers. I showed him the studio where CNN was broadcasting live. We went up all the way, one hundred and seven floors, to the observation deck, the “Top of the World,” and talked about what it would be like if we fell from up there.
How long would it take before we hit the ground? We shook our heads and laughed. Why talk about things like that? We moved away from the railing.
I took him into the plaza with the fountain, the big bronze ball atop black stone with water flowing in circular perfection, the towers rising so high above it that they blocked out the sun. I told him I sometimes liked sitting near there on nice days, reading. He gave me a funny look.
I still hadn’t figured out how life would map itself out for me with a father that only showed up on Thursday nights and Sundays. I knew I’d have to get used to these solo adventures, to make sure to log the faces of strangers who brushed into me on city sidewalks, the moments of hilarity tracking the stunted dances of pigeons, and the outlines of high-rises against brilliant sky into my mind so it could spill out years later in a big, tattered book.
I didn’t think about that as I scampered like a dwarf over the carpeted lobbies of the tallest buildings I’d ever see, twenty-five miles from my suburban house but, I was sure, at home in the epicenter of my hopes and dreams — the place where I felt most alive. The place where I felt big.
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