Downtown

When you're alone and life is making you lonely You can always go downtown ...

The Petula Clark song may be upbeat and hopeful enough to score a Visa commercial, but it's never worked for me. Driving downtown makes me feel not just alone, but lost and terrified.

There's the inadvertent trips through Buffalo's blighted East Side, only a turn or two away from the tall buildings that form our pretty skyline, a detour I've taken on my way to temp jobs, baseball games and jury duty. There's the traffic circles, including the one that interrupts Delaware, the street the courthouse was on the morning I had jury duty. The case was a big one, a nun murdered by a crack addict--he'd confessed and she'd predicted it years before, in her journal, and had asked for mercy for her killer. The trial was about the sentencing, I think. I smelled novel, which the assistant DA must have suspected, because she kept asking me questions for no particular reason during voir dire. They used a peremptory challenge on me, and I still feel ripped off, not to be chosen, after missing three days of work, going the wrong way on a one-way street, and driving home in a big blustery snowstorm. I felt guilty after leasing a new car, instead of buying a used one like I intended, salesman's wet dream that I am, but that night, the traction control may have honestly saved my life.

My mother didn't drive on the thruway until she was in her forties, and I always thought I was braver than she is. Now I'm not so sure. I don't let fear stop me, but my incompetence always seems to trump my independence. Tonight I was supposed to see Orhan Pamuk, downtown. Instead I got lost. And scraped my car on a concrete abutment after getting in a tight spot in a parking lot (I don't need to be downtown to do that). I drove up and down Delaware in the dark, not sure where I was going. Somehow, the Google map printout didn't have the full address--I was supposed to arrive approximately one minute after turning right. I didn't check--I was too busy picturing turns, musing on the names of streets: the Scajacuada Exressway, Nottingham Terrace. My mother never would have ventured out alone in the first place. She would have made someone come with her. I didn't want to drag anyone along. The tickets were $25, a lot for someone who isn't really into literature.

Last year, I didn't go to see George Saunders because it was winter and dark and Canisius College, where he was speaking, is not in a good neighborhood. But I bought the Just Buffalo series, and so have three more chances to make it downtown and hear an acclaimed author read. I plan to make it, even if I have to walk. Or get a ride from my Mom. When she really has to, she drives on the thruway now.