Quinn on Books: The End of the World as We Know It

Review of Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter by Kate Walter
Review by Michael Quinn
The start of the pandemic was like a game of musical chairs. The music suddenly stopped. We all scrambled for safety. We worried for (or laughed at) the ones without a spot (the pandemic also revealed the mean-spirited among us). But we all anticipated the music starting right up again and the game resuming as it did before.
Two years later, we’re still waiting. It’s clear people are fed up with that. Impatience has meant the end of a lot of the rules we’ve been arguing about. But does that mean the pandemic is over?
Our memories are as short as our tempers. We’ve already forgotten how it was in the beginning. How scary things felt. How quiet things got. How we started compulsively washing our hands. How we wiped down our groceries with Clorox wipes. How we started standing six feet apart.
Governor Cuomo. Remember him? He gave those daily reports that made people feel like someone was in charge. An illusion of safety, but a helpful one.
Few of us had heard of Zoom, and then that’s all anyone talked about—over Zoom. We were all so confused. We were told we didn’t need to wear masks, and then we should (sometimes even two), and then none, and then one again—but this time only this special kind that was out of stock everywhere.
Remember how isolated everyone felt? Seniors were hit especially hard. Kate Walter, a writer in her seventies living in Manhattan, has created a carefully-observed time capsule of her life these last two years in her essay collection, Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter. Walter, a retired writing professor, describes it as “my personal story, my opinions and observations, my emotional reactions from my point of view as a journalist.” It’s a kind of pandemic diary that testifies to the power of positive thinking.
Walter recorded what was happening in real time (many of the essays were originally published in the Manhattan newspaper The Village Sun) so they have a fantastic immediacy. She writes in a clear way with an eye for interesting details. Her observations poke awake our own dormant memories and make us realize things we’d noticed, but had forgotten, busy as we were absorbing so much change.
Walter lives alone in a 600-square-foot apartment in Westbeth Artists Housing, a naturally occurring retirement community in the West Village. Finding herself alone after a decades-long relationship goes belly up, she never gives up hope for a chance to have one more great romance. Pre-pandemic, she puts herself out there. She attends Middle Collegiate Church (“one of the most progressive churches in the city”), and belongs to writing and singing groups. She goes to the party of a new acquaintance and realizes almost everyone is wearing a hearing aid. Oh no, she thinks. It’s an old person party. What’s a person like me doing in a place like this? Of course we don’t see ourselves the way we see other people—and the way other people see us, she realizes. Old age has a way of sneaking up on all of us.
So does a pandemic. Almost immediately, everyone’s confined to their apartments. Earlier disasters—9/11, Superstorm Sandy—“brought us together as we helped our neighbors,” Walter writes. “The virus forces us apart.”
As “a fairly tech-savvy senior with a great internet connection,” Walter tries to make the best of it. She has good practices in place: she meditates, she keeps a gratitude journal, she practices qi gong. She sees a therapist (“for decades in various locations”), the mysterious Dr. R, who helps Walter interpret her crazy pandemic dreams. Walter relays one about a bridge, curious about its meaning. “‘Will we ever get to the other side?” Dr. R said dramatically.”
As a social creature, Walter is soon climbing the walls. She misses museums and bookstores. She misses the stimulation people provide. Cheering for essential workers every evening is a welcome respite from the exhausting undertaking daily life has become. Going out is dangerous and involves outfit changes, the donning of masks, and an endless supply of hand sanitizer.
A trip to buy sweatpants is planned with the precision of a military operation. The goal is to risk exposure to other people. Even under the best of circumstances, Walter hates shopping. Once inside the store, though, she discovers herself “desperate for an in-person conversation with anyone about anything, I actually enjoyed talking to the store clerks about styles and sizes, colors and fabrics. What was happening to me? Was I turning into my mother?”
From her mother, Walter and her two siblings have inherited a little bungalow on the Jersey Shore. Walter finds refuge there for the summer, but is also “blinded by houses with two or three Trump banners blaring from their rooftops.” (In quiet protest, she puts a Biden bumper sticker in her window.)
Whatever dangers it holds, the city is really where Walter feels most at home. It’s where she came to be herself (she came out as a lesbian in 1975) and she’s never forgotten how lucky she is to live here. Throughout Behind the Mask, Walter always counts her blessings. She notices and appreciates things about the place where she lives, and engages with the world around her. This makes the city feel like more than a home—it’s a community.
She plants tulips in the park near the Stonewall Inn. She peeks into the window of a dearly-beloved, now shuttered neighborhood store. She pops into her favorite wine shop and chats with the clerk at her local branch of the New York Public Library (“my second home”). She eats lunch outside and enjoys the sun on her face. These sound like little things, but they’re the kinds of things that give life great meaning when you pay attention to them. Of interactions like these, Walter writes, “These brief encounters give me hope. They remind me of the life I used to have and will someday have again.”
When the pandemic first started, I thought there’s two ways we’ll look back on this. Remember when we wore masks? Or, remember when we started wearing masks? Will this be a passing interlude, or an eternity? Either way, the wait is turning out to be a long one, so grab a book. Kate Walter has written a deeply personal one about what we’ve all been through that will give you a new appreciation for your own experience—and for the city we all call home.