January 18, 2009 
MAYBE it’s my imagination or simply wishful thinking, but it seems to me that there are almost no busybodies in New York. That is one reason I moved to the city when I graduated from college, one reason I love living here and one reason I’ll probably never leave.
I grew up in New Orleans, a city where Jerome, the man who cut my hair all through junior and senior high school, used to whisper to the other clients in his shop (while pointing to the top of my head): “She’s an underachiever; her poor parents are heartbroken.” Or “Her brother is a troublemaker at school.” Or “Her father drives an Edsel.” These strangers then turned to me and asked questions like “Honey, why don’t you study a little more, and what does your daddy have against Chevrolets?”
It wasn’t just Jerome. Whenever my friends and I were having burgers at the Frost Top or Camellia Grill after school, someone who knew my parents would appear out of nowhere to remind me that I was looking not-so-pleasingly plump and didn’t I want to reconsider that double order of fries. Or as she phrased it, “Ellen, sweetie, not that it’s any of my business, but I know your mama would say the same thing if she were here.”
Maybe if I had been the svelte-cheerleader-honor-roll type, I wouldn’t have minded living in a city whose residents believed that it takes a village to shape up a chubby teenager with lousy grades. But the fact was, and not even my mother would have denied this, I was something of a mess during my teenage years. It’s a situation I’ve been trying to overcome ever since, and living in New York, a place where people typically mind their own business, has been helpful. Or so I thought.
Sure, I’m delighted that my neighbors don’t have a clue, or give a hoot, about my weight fluctuations in high school or my brother’s behavior in sixth grade. I’m delighted to be an anonymous New Yorker living in a Manhattan high-rise, my home for more than 30 years.
Except for the occasional bubbly tenant who tries to make the big city just a little more like Altoona, or New Orleans, by organizing potluck suppers in the lobby, most of my neighbors say nothing more than “Have a good evening” or “Brrr — it’s cold outside” when we meet in the elevator. Sometimes we just read our mail, pet our dogs and say nothing at all.
But lately I’ve been wrestling with an unexpected problem, one that has nothing to do with anyone trying to sneak a look at my dwindling stock portfolio or my bank statement. While I’ve successfully kept my neighbors at bay all these years, I have, in the process, become so attached to people who aren’t my neighbors but who work in my neighborhood — the ones who sell me my daily newspaper, fill my prescriptions and work in the restaurants and shops — that I am nearly inconsolable when they move on.
One moment there was a bagel shop two doors away from my building, a place where I went practically every day for years and where Linda used to pack up my order and inquire about my poodle. The next morning it was replaced by a CVS Pharmacy. And Linda? Gone.
One day I walked over to the family-owned Italian restaurant on the next block only to discover that the restaurant had been boarded up and the family that had owned it was nowhere in sight. Here today, gone later today.
The Chinese takeout place that had delivered spicy chicken with garlic sauce to my apartment for about 25 years, a place where Allison, the friendliest person in the world, used to take telephone orders, recently closed without warning.
“This number has been disconnected” was the only explanation when I called. The fact that Allison used to surprise me with a quart of egg drop soup when I sounded as if I had a cold or an order of spareribs when I mentioned that my cousin was visiting did not mean there were going to be any long or even short goodbyes.
Most of the time, I didn’t even know the last names of the people who worked in my neighborhood. I certainly didn’t know where they lived or if they were happy or nervous about business. We’d shoot the breeze day after day, and then one day they’d disappear without looking back, or at least without looking back at me.
And now that my neighborhood is suddenly cluttered with “For Rent” and “Lost Our Lease” signs as so many stores are closing in the wake of the economic meltdown, I am realizing that these people probably didn’t value our so-called friendships as much as I did.
IT’S not that I am quiet and morose; in fact, I’m a regular chatterbox. I talk to the druggist and cashiers and clerks about the weather and the Giants and the noise. I talk to waiters about the food. But I reveal only what I feel comfortable revealing, and they in turn respond only to what I tell them. It’s as if they’re saying: “You want to talk about the heat and the noise, fine. But don’t mistake our relationship for a friendship. And don’t expect me to tell you that business stinks when I leave.”
Now that so many of my favorite neighborhood people have disappeared, their shops taken over by strangers or swallowed up by new condominiums and office buildings, I regret having been such a cold fish.
As hard as I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m a really friendly New Yorker, I still act a lot like that 14-year-old overweight underachiever with the Edsel-driving father and the obnoxious little brother, the girl who slunk around New Orleans hoping nobody would remind her to shed a few pounds and start hitting the books. To my amazement, to my chagrin, I have succeeded.
(This will go away.)
