Renewal

On the way down to Coney Island last weekend we passed one of those buildings in Brooklyn, damaged, burned out. It was between a sausage factory and an asbestos-removal operation, and seemed even among all the other rundowns to be particularly gaping and bruised.

On the other side of it was a more or less complete wall, with a sign proclaiming the services of a building repair company, shouting in bright colors "Give your building new life, no building too incomplete." Underneath was a sign for a church, saying "Spiritual renewal, restructure the House of the Lord," only the H was missing and the L was tall.

We were going down there, to Coney, for the first time since December, when Tawnya and I had last been there. Katie, and Richard whose car it was, hadn't been there in two years. Richard's voice was loud and annoying, and the car had no suspension, so the ride sort of matched the driver.

"Don'worry bout da seats! Jus' sit to da side, an' da fuckin' springs won't stabbyas so much."

It was a brutal day, back in December. The blizzards weren't so much the problem last winter as the sheer cold. Bluenose and redface everywhere. We had taken the train, going to see her mom.

After getting out in the ghostly station, empty of all the summer rumble, we took the walk down Ocean to the Wave Views, one of the last buildings down there that isn't a project. Her mom wasn't home, so we went back out along the shore and walked along the boardwalk. Completely snowed in, so we had to be careful.

"You know, it used to be mainly the rich that came down here," said Tawnya as we walked through a landscape that seemed utterly abandoned for years. The skeleton of the old rollercoaster loomed behind us as we walked, the line between the grey horizon and the sea barely visible.

"Yeah, but then they brought the subway in. Something else happened then."

Coney Island burned down several times around the turn of the century. They always rebuilt it, ricketier than before. We walked past the freakshows, boarded up for the winter. Clowns and bearded fireeating women. They say Harry Houdini got his start down there. Escaping from straightjackets, tightspots, lifethreatening situations.

The wind bit into our faces and we winced. We were utterly alone. Our shadows walked in front of us like our breath, in silence. Then some toothless guy out of nowhere walking along, skinny, mumbling about something. Seems he sold stuff there in the summer; he was acting like he was carrying something, balloons maybe, and mumbling towards us like he wanted us to buy something. But he wasn't carrying anything.

"Do you think mom's using her walker?"

"I don't know. Last time she wasn't."

"Shit, it sure is snowy. I hope she didn't try to go to the store alone..."

Just to be sure, we started walking in that direction.

We found her on the stone pathway nearest the building covered in snow, a bag of groceries beside her. She was really just a shape, a form in the snow with a bit of hat visible, but it looked like she was about to move. She wasn't. She'd been there since the night before.

Tawnya hit the ground screaming.

The snow just fell on both of them.


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