One Last Look Back

The driver of the “Happy Cab” (7th Avenue Car Service) could tell I was leaving Brooklyn. I don’t know if it was the amount of luggage—4 suitcases and a sewing machine for only three people--or if we had mentioned it casually as we drove up the BQE, three sandwiched in the back. My head kept resting on my sister’s shoulder, a common comfortable place. It was warm in the car, but a good warm. There was a chill outside. The chill that only exists in the mornings on those spring harkening days. It burns off fast once the sun's up but in the morning needs a bit of heat and a jacket to drive it out of you.

The driver—an old Brooklyn man weather in his face and voice, silver-gray hair poking out of his Mets cap—was playing Chet Baker, a perfect morning, mourning tune. He said how he never got Baker albums when he sang on them, “Made that mistake once.”

I said, “Jazz doesn’t need words.” He agreed. We drove on. There was no traffic. No nothing. A smooth stop-less ride up the East River into Queens—words that I wouldn’t have been able to picture seven months prior.

We dropped Petra and Eric off first. And then as we swung around to Terminal C, he asked me.

“You leaving Brooklyn?”
“Yeah…Been here seven months…”
“You’ll miss it…”
“I think I will…”
“It gets in your blood.”

He paused. He is filled with Brooklyn. Its in not in his blood, it is his blood—Prospect Park and 7th Ave. Bay Ridge. Gowanus. Down to Brighton Beach up to Green Point. It surges through ever little capillary and artery surging him to life. His gratey voice tells me “Here we are” and I climb out.” He opens the back door opposite me and checks the back seat for anything left behind. I check it too. He nods at me through the car—each of us on one side highlighted by the morning light.

We unpack the trunk, “suitcase, sewing machine, this thing.” And he pauses—and I don’t know if it is because he sees it in my face or felt it in my voice or was aware of the waves of regret and woe and fear pouring off of me—but he tells me—looking me square in the eyes:

“You’ll be back.”