Excerpt: I HEART NY

This novel excerpt was written by Mel Rosenthal in Catapult’s first 12-Month Novel Generator graduating class

I heart NY splits its focus between Alaina and Lily over nearly 40 years as each young woman learns to love (and loathe) the city. The New Yorks of their respective youths lie decades apart but they strike similar parallels of self-destruction while vying for self-fulfillment and great love. Following her mother’s death, having never known her father, Alaina, age 12, moves from upstate into NYC to live with her aunt. She has more independence takes full advantage in order to uncover the full potential of her new surroundings, but when a dangerous relationship in high school nearly ends her life, it breaks her aunt’s trust and she starts at NYU a few months later, alone again. Alaina feels unmoored until she discovers Lily’s journals and learns of their overlapping secrets and addictions. Though she tries to veer away from the only path her mother has left constructed for her, she tests her own sobriety and sanity in search of herself, clinging to the models she finds in her friends who try to show her a world that is different from everything she thought she knew.

*

Lily- 1967

Her mother hadn’t warned her. So when she fell out of the treehouse behind their home in Cold Spring, and in addition to her scraped and dripping chin and elbow, her crotch was seeping a dark red patch onto her torn white stockings—Lily was scared. J.J. was at sleepaway camp, their mother was at the store or at bridge club, and her father – who knows, was probably grading papers or smoking a cigar with the neighborhood men. They all had so much respect for him, unofficially the “Colonel” though just a professor and, long ago, a private, but he was as chilly as the town’s name, he could have been its very namesake in fact, and he would have no sympathy for his youngest daughter, no matter where she was bleeding from. If she’d fallen differently and had a bright, white bone broken and protruding from her skin, maybe she’d get a pat on the back and an ice cream cone after a visit to the hospital, but as it was then, Lily figured her only option was to run away.

She thought to rinse off her face, arms, and hands, and between her legs, though she wasn’t sure which bandage was the best fit. She ended up stuffing some toilet paper into her underpants, held in place by her only pair of trousers, and then skipped out to the train station across town. The man at the ticket window chuckled at her request for a one-way ticket to Beacon, purchased in her collection of dimes and nickels. He asked if she’d need a return fare and Lily said no, she wouldn’t be back, but he slipped her the extra ticket anyway and she quietly accepted and tucked both carefully away into her pocket. Sore all over, she gratefully took a remaining window seat on the cramped train, and watched, wide-eyed for the whole 10-minute journey up the river. Out of the train she had to jostle through the crowd of departing commuters and asked this other ticket man, the other man’s twin, certainly, where the nearest soda fountain was. Just a quarter of a mile through town, he advised, gesturing with his hands the turns she had to make. Lily thanked him and tipped him a nickel “for his trouble”.

She waddled out of the station, toilet paper gathering in a clump up by her butt. She held her head up, across the park and around a corner until she arrived as instructed, ready for the “best milkshake this side of the Hudson”, as was loudly advertised on a sign above the bright red awning. Deftly climbing onto a spinning counter stool, she sighed with relief, sure that she’d made the right choice going there. Here sister might have nagged her for not going south instead to New York City and “real” diners and Broadway shows and horse-drawn carriages (and drugs, she’d added behind their mother’s back, recounting a recent trip with her classmates) but Lily was simpler, only 12 and frightened, she thought more clearly in new surroundings, undistracted by nostalgia or familiar faces.

In the Beacon diner she quickly caught the attention of a waitress barely older than J.J., who asked what she could get Lily.

“A choco malt, honey?”

Lily consented with a “Yes, ma’am”, in awe that the young waitress knew exactly what she’d been about to order. She wiggled a little on the stool, attempting to rearrange the mess in her pants, and awaited her sugary delight. At the end of her second shake (strawberry this time), Valerie, the waitress, wondered if Lily needed a trip to the restroom.

“And, perhaps,” she lowered her voice, “A tampon?”

Lily’s flush and stillness was all the answer Valerie needed. Valerie waited until Lily had finished the final slurp and the dinner crowd had dispersed to offer a Lily a hand as they went together to the ladies’ room. Alone in the stall, Lily used Valerie’s verbal instructions to navigate her first tampon insertion. It was an uncomfortable success. The young woman promised that it was her best bet, though she could send Lily home with a few pads to get her through the night, if she preferred. At her crinkled brow Valerie added that she should change out whatever she was using every four or six hours, depending.

“Depending on what?”

“Well the flow.”

“Flow?”

“Oh honey. That’s what it’s called, like ‘Aunt Flo’? It’s ‘that time of the month’, it’s your period.”

“Ok. Thanks for….” she gestured around herself.

“Don’t worry about it. I was scared too my first time. It’s unnerving but it’s natural!” She clutched her side. “Ah, mine gets a little painful, do you need some Advil too?”

Lily’s stomach did feel upset but she figured it was from all the ice cream and shook her head.

Valerie hugged her and held onto Lily’s chin, so matronly for a teenager, before guiding her back to the front of the restaurant, wishing her luck and hoping Lily might come back soon. The next malt would be on her, she promised.

“Oh I will!” she trilled, excited by the prospect.

Valerie chuckled and turned away.

Alone again, Lily felt more confident as she made her way back to the train station, all the wiser.

Alaina- 2007

It was the best chai latte I’d ever had but I couldn’t acknowledge the superior quality as it burst onto and singed my tongue. No. It wasn’t the fruity oak of a red wine, which in that moment of stress I craved.

I exited the café grumbling and weaving through the excited tourists who’d come down St. Marks specifically to try the “best coffee in NYC.” I was on a self-indulgent break before I headed back up to the office and I couldn’t get the scent (or taste) of a smooth Cab off my tongue. Were my hands shaking?? No. I’m just salivating. That’s better, classy.

I didn’t know why I was surprised. Molly had been warning me for months… years? But something felt off now, and it wasn’t my wino-like desires—there had to be something underlying this. I couldn’t just be addicted to booze all of a sudden.

I skipped out on happy hour yesterday, right?

No.

Or was it last Thursday that I went straight home after work?

Nope.

Well, yes, I went straight home but then Eliza knocked on my door with a bottle of the exact red wine I was drooling over now.

A bit of saliva dropped onto my to-go cup and splashed down the front of my blouse. In the middle of crossing East 13th Street I halted, closed my eyes and held in an exasperated scream, disguised it as a dramatic sign and released it in time with a cab laying on the horn to my immediate left. The guy inside flipped me off as I shuffled backwards onto the curb. I threw the delicious chai onto his bumper and he stopped the car as abruptly as I had myself moments ago.

The driver door shot open, and I bolted south. Another cacophony of car horns lit up the street, leaving his angry rambling garbled and unintelligible behind me. As I ran, New Yorkers turned toward the noise, shaking their heads at the drivers they refused to be, but which they needed desperately when in a time crunch or thankful to not be headed uptown. They were thankful to just be, they said, and added another tidbit about how New York is going to hell in the oft repetitive conversations of old friends still trying to impress each other.

On Bowery I ducked around a water bottle delivery at a bodega, leapt out of the way of the open basement staircase, and I tumbled onto the front step of a hipster enclave. A smoking man gripped his butt between his teeth and applauded. I momentarily considered flirting my way into a free drink (ooooh, a tall pour of red red wine) but I ran the scenario in my head and decided that since not getting the signed contract in my bag to Kathryn by EOD would be the end of me, I had to hustle away sans any drink, caffeinated, overpriced, or otherwise.

I pouted. Sweat tickled the back of my neck. I adjusted my skirt and the strap of my messenger bag and left the bar (and the strange, sexy man) behind.

I had until 6PM but at 5:34 the turnstiles at the 2nd Ave were already wrapped and “blocked” by that stupid pale red tape. The one inch of plastic in between me and the cardswipe wouldn’t stop me, but rookie cops standing behind a well-worn gray-white fold-up table (“all-bags-and-large-containers-are-subject-to-random-search-by-the-police, thank-you”) probably would. I cursed myself for not grabbing a refill of motor oil grade espresso aboveground while I had the chance. With a light, jittery buzz I might have given the officers a challenge. Too bad that I was exhausted and sober and barely clinging to my job. I felt positively pathetic.

I stomped back up the stairs onto Houston, weighing my options. I could hail a cab at the corner by the basketball court and speed west, perhaps a more direct route than if I waited across the street, though, if facing east, we could go up FDR Drive.

I laughed out loud. The FDR would be at a standstill, as would much of the rest of the east side of midtown. I apologized to my poor, abused lungs before I ran the half-mile west to the Bleecker Street station, hoping the next 6 train would have just enough space for me and my precious contract.

Heaving breaths and drenched in sweat, I contemplated what would happen if Kathryn gave up on this author I’d inspired her to pursue—she would probably give up on me too? What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I acting like such a lame-ass? Yes, I was in a bind if I didn’t follow through here. Yes, I only had $25.87 left in my bank account (good thing I skipped the cab, getting reimbursed at the office is a joke; it would have been 30-60 days before I got my fare back). Yes, I needed a smoke, a slug of wine, maybe a snort, if only my brain could calculate the correct a way for me to purchase each with the spare change I clung to. YES, my story did unfortunately sound familiar, but I still didn’t understand how I got to all… this.

*

Mel Rosenthal studied photography at Rhode Island School of Design and works in advertising. A lifelong lover of reading, she started writing as a child when she realized she could record the elaborate plots she had her dolls act out. In 8th grade Mel won an award for a short story about talking animals and knew one day she’d be an author. She lives by the beach in Connecticut with her husband and her extensive collection of to-be-read books.