I’VE GOT THE BLUES THE LENGTH OF A CITY BLOCK

by Meg Riley

The first thing I remember about my father's death is his shoes. His navy and white New Balance sneakers stuffed in the trash can of our family’s kitchen. I don’t know if it was the paramedics or my mother who put them in the garbage, but the sight of it shocked me more than his bare feet,

pale and swollen, resting on the marble tile of the kitchen floor, the only part of him still

uncovered by a knit throw blanket in the hours between the event itself and the removal of the

body. Not his body anymore, just a body now, with no need for running shoes. Nowhere to walk

to. It’s always the feet I think of first when I remember he’s dead.

I count my steps every day. I try to get the 10,000 that I’ve been sold as the bare minimum of

mobility, using an outdated pedometer app that sends me vaguely threatening messages if I

don’t hit my target goal: “Just a few steps can improve your mood!” or “Walking is a great way to

burn calories. It only takes 15 minutes to get back on track!” I resent the developers. But

counting is the only way I enjoy walking in the city anymore. I get my numbers up where I can,

going an extra block out of my way from the grocery store or getting off the G train two stops

early on my way home from work. During my lunch breaks, I leave my Union Square office and

take long, meandering routes down Fifth Ave to Washington Square Park or up Broadway to the

Flatiron Building. These are the times I fall back in love with New York City for a moment.

Upbeat music in my headphones, strolling the sidewalk outside the throng of rush hour, taking in

the sights like a tourist. But it doesn’t last. The tail end of my step journey—the long trudge

home to Brooklyn in the dark after work—is heavy and unforgiving. I’m weighed down by the

laptop in my shoulder bag and the dull pounding of a brick in my skull when I remember, once

again, that my dad is dead.

Of three things he was most proud: being Irish, being a writer, and being a New Yorker. I learned

to love books from him at the same measure that I learned to love the city, from Riverdale to the

Rockaways. He took great care in helping me to memorize our family history, the ancestral

homes in the Bronx and Fort Greene (his parents’) and the high-rises on the West Side Highway

(my mother’s). I still know the addresses of the apartments in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens

where he and my mom lived in the late ‘80s when they were first married and flat broke.

But I grew up on the West Coast, in a small town outside San Francisco, far from the icy winters

and shoebox studios I had heard stories about. So when I came to New York for college at 18,

up in the Bronx where my dad had also attended, the city felt like an inheritance. I used to

zig-zag down the paths between the gothic dorm buildings on my way home from the bars on

189th street and imagine him doing the same, our steps overlapping decades apart like a new

recording on an old tape.

A few years ago, he mailed me a copy of an essay he had written for a grad school course in

1992, a 12-page typewritten piece that expertly wove together threads of the fatigue and

mundanity of commuting on the New York City subway system, and of his recurring fantasy of

winning the lottery, so that the latter would no longer necessitate the former. He titled it, “I’ve Got

the Quick-Fix-Lotto-And-Commutation Blues.” He sent it to me during a period when we were

both exploring our creative writing instincts, and took turns sharing drafts of personal essays,

exchanging writing prompts, and emailing each other weekly newsletters with advice on writing.

On particularly bad days, I scroll back through our correspondence and pick out pieces of

encouragement, or linger on a simple sign-off: “Cheers to a good writing week! Love you!”

But I like having the physical copy of his essay the most. There are notes in the margins from

his professor, noting the better paragraphs and pointing out instances where the word “would”

was repeated too many times. So much of his writing reminds me of my own. So much of his life

reminds me of my own. The same nights drinking on the same college campus, the same grief

and confusion at being spit out into the world after graduation and not knowing if the city was an

enemy or an ally.

I have fallen in and out of love with New York at various intervals in our ongoing courtship. The

years straight out of school when I was unemployed and drunk in Queens, sleeping in beds that

weren’t my own, when I imagined all my bad habits might walk away from me if I woke up in a

different city as a different person. Or the later years in Bed-Stuy when I had finally outgrown my

vices and fell into a pit of boredom, thinking I had wrung all of the excitement out of my days

and nights and that it might be time to retire to a quieter life somewhere else. But always, there

was something that seduced me again. Sometimes it was as simple as watching the sun set

over the Hudson and getting a thrill from seeing the sharp needle of the Empire State Building

darken against the skyline. Moments that said, Tomorrow is a new day in the greatest city in the

world, and anything is possible.

My dad’s essay about commuting and praying for a Lotto win ends on a similar upswing. He

concludes hopefully, “But tomorrow all this will be an easily forgotten dream. In my wallet, there

are a couple of tickets in which I have the utmost confidence.”

When he died (bare soles of his feet in the kitchen), it shocked me to see that the city didn’t also

mourn. I returned home from his funeral in California expecting the streets to be empty. The

flags at half mast, the stock market shut down. They should have closed off Park Avenue and

blocked the entrances to the Brooklyn Bridge. That they didn’t, and that the city continued

moving and screaming without him, made an enemy out of me.

The year after passed in splices of muted color and heat and silence, like an express train

hurtling past an empty station. On the mornings that I joined the strap-hangers in the crowded

cars that he once wrote of, I sometimes caught a reflection under the dim yellow lights of a

woman who used to be me.

I walk as a form of couples therapy. I count my steps up and downtown in the hopes that

another thousand will make me forgive New York. But I see him in every landmark: the corner of

6th and Houston, the White Horse Tavern, Keen’s dining room, the Top of the Rock, the

Brooklyn Museum. All the places we shared too many gin and tonics when he came to visit me

after college, the restaurants where we talked endlessly about books and music and writing,

where he would say, “How lucky am I to have a daughter that I like hanging out with?” And I

would think the same thing, but I wouldn’t say it.

I have to look away now when I pass middle-aged men in Brooks Brothers button-downs or

fathers with young daughters. I can’t go into a steakhouse or a cocktail bar without playing Spot

the Difference. What’s missing from this picture? Note the empty barstool, the single, sweating

glass of gin; the space where a pair of reading glasses and Moleskine notebook might sit.

I walk even when the temperature drops and the wind picks up. It doesn’t deter me. This new

life has no seasons to it. I trust that at some point I will turn a street corner and fall in love again.

I know if I get to 10,000 steps I will outpace the fear. I will wear myself out so that I’m no longer

afraid of the shoes in the garbage, of the bottom of a drink, of the other side of the table.

I’m getting there slowly. I measure my progress in small moments of joy: watching Christmas

lights being strung up against the brownstones, sitting on the top deck of the ferry as it dips

under the Manhattan Bridge, turning down my street to see the stark outline of the Empire State

against a cloudless sky.

I’ve worn the same pair of running shoes for the last year. I can’t bring myself to throw them

away. A pair of once-white Hokas worn down to the nubs, coated in street grime. They have no

padding or arch support anymore. Pieces of the rubber soles peel off every time I take them for

another lap around the block. Soon they’ll have to go in the trash. That’s okay.

When I’m ready, there’s a box waiting in my bedroom that holds a brand new pair, pristine and

unburdened, in which I have the utmost confidence.