Apartment #982: Trenchcoats and Flames

I roughly pushed open the door to the rooftop of the apartment building and hurried through. My arms were full, and I was sure to drop something if I didn't move quickly. The door banged shut behind me in the good breeze that had worked itself up throughout the morning. I dropped my armfull of objects and settled down next to the flowers I had planted so carefully a few days before. Besides looking extremely battered by the storm of the previous night, they looked to be doing well. I had always loved pansies, and the pansies themselves seemed to somehow be thriving in the gloomy environment that was Washington Heights.

I dumped the contents of the metal wastepaper bin I had carried most of the things upstairs in onto the dirt next to me and set the bin in front of my folded knees. I opened and placed carefully around me the candles that had been left on my doorstep by the woman who owned The Wrath. "I haven't seen her since that day I went in to get candles myself," I wondered aloud. "Is she alright?" I arranged the candles in a semicircle and stuck them into the dirt so that they stood on their own. I pulled a pack of matches from the pile next to me and lit the candles one by one. They made me think of my mother.

Now that the canldes were lit and the flames danced merrily in the breeze, I began on the pile that I had dumped so unceremoniously beside myself. First, I picked up my apron from the bakery and dropped it back into the trashcan. A cloud of flour rose above it, making me wrinkle my nose. "I'm so sick of flour and bagels and fingerprints," I muttered as I lit another match. "I'm so tired of that man who makes my life a living hell every time I walk into the bakery." I held the match for a moment, letting the flames creep up the matchstick. "I'm done with taking his thinly veiled insults and his condescending looks." I dropped the match into the trashcan and watched as the flames crept quickly along the fabric of the apron. When the fire had been going for a couple of minutes, I looked at the pile next to me again.

I picked up my little bottle of liquid hand sanitizer and stared at it a moment before dropping it into the trashcan as well. The flames flared as they came in contact with the hand sanitizer. "I'm done with you as well," I said to it as the flames died down a bit again. "I'm done with sticky and fingerprints and smudges and dirt and stains and everything like it. I'm done. I won't worry about it anymore. I won't. I can't." Next, I dropped a pile of neatly folded letters into the bin, the ones from my mother that I had never answered. It was time to put my anger behind me, or at least to try to talk to her again. I had proven that I could live by myself, she had to agree with me now. Finally.

I stared at the paper napkin sitting next to me for a long moment before picking it up. It was from the diner down the street. I had had it clutched in my hand when I had run out on Kevin before. When I finally got home, I was still holding it. "Silly Maria," I told myself, "you hold onto things longer than you should, just learn to let them go, learn to leave them alone and in the past." I dropped the napkin on top of the letters and watched as the paper was quickly eaten by the flames.

There was only one thing left in the pile now. I had cleaned the trenchcoat and folded it as neatly as I could. The folds were messy now after being carried up the stairs in a wastepaper bin, but I could still see the time and effort I had put into making to coat nicer. I hadn't gone looking for its owner though. Besides the fact that I didn't really want to see him after he had witnessed my breakdown in the street, I didn't know where to begin to look for him. I had realized that I didn't even know which floor he lived on. "Shows how much people notice around here. I've been living in Washington Heights but I still don't really know anything about it. I could tell someone where the diner was, but I don't think anyone would understand if I tried to tell them about the people."

I picked up the trenchcoat and stared at it. It was a mark of the past, a reminder that I didn't want with me when I left. While this place had been relatively good to me, helping me find myself again, helping me forgive people, I didn't necessarily want to take any of it with me when I left. But as I leaned over to drop the trenchcoat into the flaming trashcan, I couldn't make myself do it. I paused there for a long moment, stretched out, leaning over the trashcan, trenchcoat in my hands, but unable to finish the action. Finally, when I realized that it was impossible, I moved back to my seat and set the coat down beside me again. I sat there silently and watched as the flames in the trashcan burned lower until finally the flames in the trashcan and the candles around me went out, burned to ashes and melted to waxy stubs.

Before I moved again, I thanked my mother, silently this time, for what she had driven me to accomplish. I thanked the people of Washington Heights who hadn't killed me or stolen my belongings or made me walk on sidewalks. But I wasn't one of them.

So, I stood, picked up the trenchcoat, and slipped into it. I picked a pansy and stuck it in my hair. I walked away from the trashcan without looking back, I walked through the door and down the flights of stairs, all the way to the bottom of the apartment building. I walked through the entryway without changing my course because of the vending machine. I hopped the sidewalk outside and turned down Bucher Drive. I walked past the park without looking right or left even though there was an ambulance parked on the other side of the street. I continued to walk even as people gathered around the park, watching as a stretcher with a small form on it was lifted out of the wreckage of a fallen tree and carried to the ambulance. I walked past the synagouge and the bar; I walked past the Last Resort Thrift Shop without pausing.

I walked in the beautiful sunshine and the breeze. I walked in the road because where else was I supposed to walk. I walked right out of Washington Heights without looking back.