We come back up the stairs and now we’re in the Big Apple, which is a name that’s too strange to think about. There’s so much to see, like a lady holding her phone far away and yelling into it and a man wearing a Beatles shirt who doesn’t see that I’m holding up my hand for a high five and also a man who hands me a paper that says 20% Off All Apparel. I don’t know exactly what apparel is, but it seems like a good deal. Too bad we’re not here to shop. I’m not sure why we’re here, actually. We’re on a Magical Mystery Tour.
Gavin looks down at me now with his sunglasses and his fuzzy cheeks, which are starting to look like Dad’s. “Do you know how to call a cab?” he asks.
We stand at the corner and he lets me do the waving, but the taxis zoom by like yellow submarines.
“Try this.” He lifts me onto his shoulders and we step into the street. I wave my hand until a taxi finally stops in front of us.
July 16, 2013. I called my first taxi.
The taxi lets us out at Seventy-First Street and now we’re standing on the sidewalk and Gavin is checking his phone. We head over to a little store with a sign that says HARDWARE and Gavin takes me inside. We go down a very crowded aisle to the back of the small store and then turn around and walk back outside.
“What are we doing here?” I say.
“We’re soaking it in,” Gavin says.
“We just walked in that store and walked right back out.”
“Yes, we did.”
Now we’re walking down Columbus Avenue and Gavin is looking at his phone again and we stop in front of a store called West Side Pharmacy. We go inside and Gavin heads to the counter, which is what you do when you want to pay for your item, but Gavin isn’t holding any items.
“See anyone you know?” Gavin says.
I look at the man behind the counter who’s busy helping another customer. He has glasses and a few pieces of hair and I know that I’ve never seen this man before in my life. But then I see another face behind the man’s head and this face I know well because it’s John Lennon’s face. It’s on a photograph that’s hanging on the wall. The whole wall is covered in photographs and I know a few of these other faces too because they’re famous and in some of the photographs I see the man behind the counter with his arm around the famous people.
“Can I help you?” the man behind the counter asks, and he says it like English is something he’s still learning even though he’s an old man.
“You like John Lennon?” I say.
He smiles and turns to the photo on the wall. “The best.”
“He’s my favorite and he’s also my dad’s favorite.”
“This was his pharmacy,” the man says. “We were friends.”
“No way. You’re lying.”
“I tell the truth.”
“So you’re saying John Lennon was in this store?”
He points to the floor right below me. “He stood in your same spot.”
I look down. It’s like I stepped inside one of John’s memories, and now I’m afraid to move even an inch.
We turn off the busy road onto a quiet street with a few city trees, which are trees that grow out of little wooden boxes on the sidewalk instead of grass. They’re nicer than the city trees we have in Jersey City because they don’t have empty plastic shopping bags stuck in their branches.
I’m having a hard time believing that I just put my feet where John Lennon put his feet and I also met someone who knew John and his family. I ask Gavin, “How did you know that John went to that store?”
“I read about it in one of your dad’s books. And you know that hardware store we went into before that? That used to be Café La Fortuna. That’s where John would hang out and drink coffee. He might’ve even written a few lyrics in there.”
“That’s so cool.” It’s like we’re going through a John Lennon museum but the museum is the whole city and there are no signs on the walls telling you why each spot is important. I can’t wait to tell Dad about this, but I’m also feeling pretty confused. “How is this supposed to help me with my song?”
Gavin walks with just the tips of his fingers sticking into the tight pockets of his shredded shorts. I want Mom to cut up my jeans the same way.
“Whenever I’m working on something,” Gavin says, “I always do a lot of research. When I got the part of Beau Kendricks on The Long Arm, Syd and I flew down to Louisiana. That’s where Beau is supposed to be from. I spent two days just walking around. Trying to see how he lived.”
“Is that what we’re doing? Research?”
“Sort of. I just thought it might help you to get out of your own head for a while. John Lennon didn’t just sit at home and write songs all day and night. He lived his life. He walked around. Drank coffee. Shopped at the pharmacy.”
“He kept making new memories.”
“Exactly.”
I think about that for a minute. “That’s why you came to stay with us, right?”
He looks confused.
“To get out of your own head. That’s what Mom said.”
“Oh,” Gavin says. “Yeah.”
We keep walking and I watch my feet on the sidewalk and I think about how nice this memory will feel when I remember it later. But I notice that Gavin’s feet are missing. They were right next to my feet a second ago and now they’re gone. I stop and turn around and walk back to where Gavin is standing. He nods across the street at a building as big and pointy as a castle. “That’s where John lived,” he says.
The Dakota.
I remember when Dad first took me to Strawberry Fields in Central Park and he showed me the plaque that says IMAGINE. The plaque was covered with flowers and some of the flowers were forget-me-nots, which are my favorite kind, obviously. Dad asked if I wanted to walk over to the building where John and his family lived and I said yes, but then he told me the name of the building, the Dakota, and I changed my mind because I know all about the Dakota—it’s where the worst thing happened to John.
Gavin takes my hand so we can cross the street, but I pull back. “I don’t want to.”
He looks at the Dakota and then at me. The whole place makes me itchy, like when you walk through a spider web and you tear it off your body, but it still feels like it’s all over your skin.
“Okay,” Gavin says, turning me in a new direction. “Let’s go visit Strawberry Fields instead.”
I stand on the corner and look across a different street where the city just disappears all of a sudden. I know this place too. This is Central Park. I don’t want to hurt Gavin’s feelings because he’s being so nice, but I don’t want to go to Central Park either. “That’s one of my dad’s memories. I don’t want to go there without him.”