DEBORAH, December 1976:

The five-year mark came and went some months ago—my arrival in New York. But like everything else, time just stretches and goes nowhere. What have I achieved in all that time? Good question.

I had this idea that New York would be everything Salt Lake City wasn’t. For that matter, everything Paris wasn’t, either. It sounds strange, but I was still so trapped there. You have these notions, these dreams you try to live out, and then some time passes. You end up serving beer and coffee at Fortuna west of Central Park. Slightly more promising than the old place, but that’s about all there is to celebrate.

I would rather be selling poems. Ha. That’s not going to happen.

The worst part is the feeling of not being good enough. Everyone I know says they like what they read, but I’ve only ever gotten rejections. I know it’s hard to sell something like that, but I still hoped I could sell something. Then I could support myself doing what I love—I know it won’t be a bestseller, but I could still keep a job on the side. I could have taught—and I do, sometimes, as a substitute. But it’s just a mess.

So that must be the conclusion on this five-year anniversary, as I sit here during the break at PS 84, coffee going cold, looking out at the schoolyard. The skyscrapers loom all around, but the children don’t care. They’re just playing. One of the little girls has dark, curly hair. Hannah would be seven now. I turn away from the window. Bury myself in small talk with the other subs. We have our own table. Yay.

I am 24, going on 25, but I feel completely stuck already. Like … this is it. That was my life. It’s crazy, but that’s how it is. Maybe because nothing has moved the needle for five years now … not towards what I want. Just a hopscotch of random jobs and lots of rejections. Sure I got my degree from CUNY but the children here don’t seem to care … 

Tomorrow, I have nothing to do. I have no shift at the café, no work at the school. I can just sit at home in my room and wait for my roommate, Claire, to come home from dance. Then I can try to put something down on paper with all the Upper West Side ruckus—outside my window, inside my head—but I don’t even know if I have the desire to write anymore.

And then there’s all the family politics. The Christmas obligations I have to deal with somehow. Mom and Dad have moved home. No more work in France for Dad, so now it’s just Salt Lake City again. It’s probably for the best; he’s been faltering, I think. At least we’re on speaking terms, with Mom acting as a go-between.

The question, now that it’s the first of December, is whether I go home for Christmas. It’s not like I’m excommunicated; the old man wouldn’t do that, after all. And I still believe in God. But I’m not really a part of it anymore. Maybe I should just do it for Mom, if she wants me to come home.

It would be nice to see Wilma again; she didn’t judge. She won’t this time either. I hope.

Then there’s the letter from Sophie, wishing me congratulations on Carter’s victory, as if I could be bothered to care about politics, or her politics specifically. I haven’t even finished reading it.

If I take Amtrak, it will be a nice, long trip. But it’s what I can afford. So that’s the decision to be made—for Christmas, there isn’t much else to decide.

There is only this eternal treading water that I hate. I don’t understand how I’ve ended up in this state at twenty-four. But I can try to write a poem about it tonight. At least then I’ll be doing something.

And who knows? Maybe one day…

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