Our first box apartment in Brooklyn holds a lot of memories

I write this instalment surrounded by boxes, cat paraphernalia and the unique accoutrements necessary for New York apartments (spring-loaded “no drill” curtain rods; air conditioning unit insulation materials; a bar we’d attached to the roof as a makeshift piece of gym equipment; a pair of “anti-cockroach” slippers.) This week, we are finally leaving The Box and moving into a much nicer apartment, thanks to the fleeing of the rich from NYC during the pandemic. We couldn’t be more excited.

This tiny little slice of Brooklyn holds a lot of memories for us. When we moved in on 1 April 2020, we assumed lockdown was going to last a couple of weeks. We wore scarves around our faces and winter gloves because shops had run out of surgical masks and plastic gloves; we cleaned with lemon juice and vinegar because Target was bereft of antibacterial wipes, and we guarded our 18-roll stack of toilet paper jealousy, carefully rationing every square. We moved in with two boxes of stockpiled pandemic supplies: dry pasta, rice, tins and beans, and waved goodbye to our neighbours on the opposite stoop. Over the next month, we watched the police arrive and take away the basketball hoop in the park opposite so teens wouldn’t gather to play during one of the strictest lockdowns in the world.

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Throughout April, May and June, we lay awake as ambulance after ambulance went past, sirens screaming, seemingly endless. We gave the parked emergency vans a wide berth when we walked, worried we might catch the mystery infection in the air. When the lockdown allowed for one hour of exercise per day, I got into running for the first time in my life, sweat pouring off me as I battled the humidity. It felt almost taboo to see other people outside the house. In May 2020, E and I were so starved of interactions that we ran down our street to watch a plane fly over our building. We were in the biggest city in the world yet we were isolated from everything.

During summer days, we stood on the roof and watched the silent city below us. When bars allowed takeaway drinks in July, we took cocktails up there and sat on beach chairs, remembering the year before when we’d done the same thing by the sea. Black Lives Matter protests erupted in our area, and we joined them. Our street was then cordoned off by the police and we were put under curfew. I argued for 10 minutes with an officer outside my building that I shouldn’t have to show ID to get inside my own house. With horror, we watched white police accost black protesters minutes away from us, throwing them to the ground and yelling obscenities.

Sometime during those protests, we realised we would have to cancel our September wedding. We contacted parents, friends, family members and suppliers through those sticky days, wedged in between our makeshift work-from-home desk and the air conditioner in 35-degree heat. We held Zoom meetings sitting beside each other, making copious use of the mute button (we still do.) We joined online exercise classes just to socialise. We did a stag night and a hen night with headphones on, connected to screens with friends across the Atlantic trying their level best to make things fun, while the other person sat on the bed and tried to read. On our birthdays, friends had cakes delivered to our apartment.

We clung on for Christmas, then realised we’d still be here for Christmas as well. We did our first Christmas Day and new year without any family. We relied on the kindness of friends for a weekend getaway to Connecticut, courtesy of someone’s parents who could no longer fly over, and another getaway to Vermont in January. We spent a shivering Christmas Eve in a makeshift tent with hot cocktails and a work friend, dressed in seven layers and ski coats, while the snow fell around us. I remember looking out into the snow and saying: “We’re living in someone else’s bad dystopian novel.”

The commute we had indexed for was never done, not even once. Instead, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge rather than use the subway and sat on benches with our friends, discussing antibody test results. We wandered through an empty Times Square and a socially distanced Riverside Park, passing cinemas advertising films that had come out 12 months before. We watched the dark financial district on the Manhattan skyline at night from the promenade in Brooklyn, and we took an almost empty boat down the Hudson, which usually would have been teeming with tourists. We ordered food from our favourite restaurants, desperate to keep them in business, but even this week two at the end of our street closed down, signs in their windows reading “OUT OF BUSINESS. SERVED BROOKLYN FOR OVER 20 YEARS.” Instead of a honeymoon to southeast Asia, we took a short train ride to an isolated cabin upstate for a few days and had our first unmasked walk in months round the deserted grounds. We bitched and moaned about people wealthy enough to have been able to permanently escape the pandemic that way.

We tested our relationship in 300 sq ft, and it held. Sometimes, we each went outside to cry alone so the other wouldn’t see. We talked about our future, the marriage we’d want after lockdown came to an end, the relationships we’d have with our families. We watched nieces and nephews grow up over Zoom. We spoke more with our parents than we ever had, everyone secretly worried that everyone else might drop dead at any moment. We worried we’d never see our loved ones again; we planned fantasy routes out in an emergency, via Canada or Mexico or the Republic of Ireland. We learnt a lot about each other’s working day. We entertained an increasingly demanding cat rescued from a feral colony.

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We strapped on plastic boots and battled our way through bleak snowstorms in January and February. We prayed for the winter to end. We rescheduled the wedding, then rescheduled it again. Now, we’re holding our breaths for October 2021. We tentatively believe we will see our families this year. We have proper masks to wear for our move and the basketball hoops in the park are reinstalled. We went out for dinner to our favourite place down the road to say goodbye to the area. Vaccinated waiters took us to beautifully prepared outdoor tables in the springtime sun. Leaves are growing back on the trees that line the concrete pavements.

I wouldn’t say I’m fond of The Box – many times throughout this year, I hated it with a passion – but it did get us through these tough times. I won’t miss its thin walls, its idiosyncratic heating system, its strangely persistent plagues of mosquitoes and its disconcertingly low ceilings. I think it’s safe to say, however, that I will never forget this weird little place on Bergen Avenue. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, a little part of our lives is forever suspended in a studio on Bergen. Goodbye, strange friend.