As lockdown slowly lifts in New York, the new normal is profoundly unsettling
We woke up on Tuesday to the sound of drilling, something not heard in New York for three months. The streets are still on the empty side, and everyone is wearing masks, but as the lockdown eased this week – most shops remained closed, but construction sites reopened – the city entered a new phase. It should have been hopeful; last week, New York reported its first day with no deaths from the virus since 11 March. Instead, the slight relaxation of rules brought home how far things still are from normality.
There will be anatomies of how we changed during lockdown and whether any of the long-term predictions came to pass. In the short term, however, the experience of re-engaging with the city felt as uncomfortable as blood returning to a deadened limb. At the height of the virus, the sense of urgency ushered in an alternative reality that suspended the need to think much beyond the next day. Now, with no school until September and the temperate nudging towards 90F this week, there was a feeling of burnout. Everyone talks about the new normal, and here it was: anticipating a second wave, while trying to process what happened during the first.
Certain things during this period have become intolerable: lectures from celebrities, particularly those directing us to “be kind”; unmasked runners; men whose productivity went up during lockdown while their wives scrambled to fit work around the kids. I recently bought a book for my children based on the effusive recommendation of several friends, and found my tolerance for certain kinds of sentimentality shot through. Perhaps if I’d read The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse at Christmas, I might have loved it. But not now. There is a particular kind of English whimsy that revolves around the concept of cake and right now feels, very much, like not the time for it. (To give an idea to those who haven’t read the book, at one point the boy discovers something better than cake and it is – of course – a hug.)
Our own lockdown ended absurdly. After three months of avoiding the doctor, I made an appointment on Monday to see a podiatrist and have a verruca burned off the ball of one foot. The waiting room was empty, and when I arrived the nurse pointed a temperature gun at my head, but apart from
that everything proceeded as normal – albeit with a sense of outlandish decadence at entering a business for less than life-or-death reasons. I’m vain about my high pain tolerance, but when the doctor injected the underside of my foot, I swore so loudly and lengthily it felt like a release from all the weeks of pent-up emotion.
Time continues to pass strangely, its usual markers suspended. When school finishes in two weeks, we’ll hardly register the difference. There is no summer camp, no possibility of flying without risk. New York is suffering a huge budget deficit, thanks to the virus, and city pools won’t open this summer. At its height, we were grateful simply to be healthy. Now, for the lucky among us, this isn’t enough. By the very fact of this boredom and desire to turn to other things, the city’s vast divisions start to resurface.
Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, lost the heroic status he briefly achieved at the height of the virus – largely by virtue of not being Trump – when he endorsed the police during the Black Lives Matter protests last week. He permitted himself some cheerleading on Monday, saying at a news briefing: “New Yorkers bent the curve by being smart. We’re celebrating. We’re back. We’re reopening. We’re excited. Our mojo’s back. Our energy’s back. Great. Stay smart.”
I don’t know anyone who feels this way. The city feels flat and exhausted. It’s not celebrating in the slightest. More than 20,000 people have died. There are predictions that the unemployment rate will reach 22% this month. Everything that seemed like a temporary adjustment a month ago is starting to shade into the pall of something much longer term. Perhaps, as has been the case from the very beginning of this crisis, things will change rapidly again, and by next week optimism will kick in. But can we first have a moment to exhale?