I HAVE NEVER been colder than I was over the winter in 2010, when I lived with a man whom I did not love in a loft with no heat. I was little Kay, living with an icy shard in my heart, or maybe I was the Snow Queen, already frozen and incapable of feeling. I hadn’t really planned on moving in with this person, much less staying with him, but I lost my job in 2009. A casualty of the 2008 financial crisis, though for the magazine I worked for, that seemed like more of an excuse to lay people off than an actual cause. I struggled to stay in my apartment, finding freelance work here and there as the economy cratered, but eventually my landlord raised my rent and so, feeling desperate and unmoored, I moved in with my boyfriend.

Our relationship was a toxic mishmash of manipulation and codependency. I tried to leave; he punched the wall and fractured a knuckle. He needed me to stay because if I left, he would collapse; I needed to stay because I had nowhere else to go. I pushed all of my feelings deeper into the frozen chamber of my heart and focused on surviving. My boyfriend had a name for me when I acted icy toward him: Britta. It suited me. I often felt brittle to the point of breaking. 

We lived in an unheated, unrenovated loft in a decidedly un-hip neighborhood on the outer reaches of Brooklyn. The bed was on a platform reachable by a short flight of stairs. I hated having to pee in the middle of the night, to have to unwrap myself from the cocoon of heavy blankets and touch the cold cement floor, the cold ceramic toilet, to rinse my hands in the cold water. 

Nights were freezing, but days were little better. Very little light filtered through the dirty, south-facing windows. I hunted lazily for jobs online, blankets draped over my shoulders and across my lap. A space heater wheezed at my feet. No matter what I did, I could not get warm. 

One day a friend who I had worked with at the magazine reached out with an opportunity. An archivist needed help packing props from the Wes Anderson movie The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was made with stop-motion puppets. The puppets and the props had been used for a Christmas window display at Bergdorf Goodman and now needed to be packed up and sent across the country for storage. I enjoyed the movie. I needed the money. It was a no-brainer to say yes. 

The next day I took the G train across Brooklyn to Long Island City, Queens. At that point the neighborhood was being developed and was mostly industrial. The studio was in a former factory building and the heat, such as it was, was minimal. At least I would be active, which helped me stay warm. The archivist met me at the door. She had gotten the job with the filmmaker through family or friend connections. She was not the type to be dazzled by fame and viewed the job as an easy way to earn money before going back to work full time—she had a toddler at home of whom she was enamored, showing me blurry videos of him kicking a ball. When I asked what it was like working for Anderson, she shrugged, made a face, and stated that he was a complete nutjob. “Like, certifiably insane,” she added. It made sense. 

The rest of the crew consisted of the team from Bergdorf’s—a supervisor and two part-time assistants. They were primarily in charge of installing the window displays rather than designing them. The supervisor was an older guy, gay, who had worked at the store almost his entire adult life. The two assistants were in their twenties, a woman and a man, both artists. 

Most of the packing had been completed by the time I arrived, but I soon gathered that time was tight. The studio had been rented for a certain number of days, and packing the objects was taking longer than planned. Renting the studio for additional days was not in the store’s budget. The majority of the puppets were already crated, ready to be shipped to well-heeled funders who were receiving them as a thank-you gift. 

What was left, and which had proven to be more onerous than expected, were the countless sundry props, each of which had to be documented and counted by the archivist before going to the American Academy of Motion Pictures. 

I was tasked with carefully boxing dozens of plaster apples from one of the scenes when Mr. Fox and his cohort steal cider from one of the evil farmers. The male assistant joined me, and we chatted easily while we worked. He asked me what I did, and I told him about the job I’d had and lost, and how I was now writing freelance art reviews for Time Out New York. This impressed him, and he told me that he was an artist and had a studio somewhere in BedStuy. I asked him about his work, and where he’d gone to school. Time passed quickly. Soon it was lunch, and the archivist and I went out to a little café under the train tracks. I got soup in a paper container which I cupped in my hands, hoping the heat would penetrate the rest of my body. 

The rest of the day was pleasant, probably as pleasant as manual labor gets. I enjoyed wrapping the plaster fruit and admiring adorable miniature motorcycle helmets and goggles and other such items. The archivist thanked me for being there. They’d needed an extra pair of hands to get everything done. 

The next morning, I left for work with a lightness of spirit I hadn’t felt in months. People needed me. I felt warmer, looking forward to having soup at lunch and chatting with my coworkers, who I liked. 

That day I was again paired with the young male assistant, and we were tasked with packing tiny balaclavas worn by the foxes. As we worked, he told me about his plans to travel overseas. The icy shard in my heart began to melt. It was nice hearing someone else’s plans. I had forgotten that it was possible to make plans. Until then when I had thought about the future, it appeared to be blank. Hearing him talk, I saw that it was not blank, but an empty space waiting to be filled.  

Later, the Bergdorf supervisor came over to me and told me, sotto voce, that the assistant had a crush on me. I was floored. I had assumed he saw me as an older mentor type figure. I was startled to realize that I could have that kind of effect on someone. I thought I was invisible. See through. Like ice or glass. 

The next day was the last scheduled day at the studio. I arrived early, knowing that there was still a lot to do. The crew was already there, busy packing, and the archivist and the Bergdorf supervisor were both tense. They had different priorities. The archivist had to account for every single object owned by the film company. The supervisor had to account for every minute spent at the studio. One of them was focused on doing things methodically, and the other needed to rush. It was not a good situation. 

We all kept our heads down and worked as quickly as we could. I was now putting away the glass jars with the "Beans alcoholic cider" labels on them. The jugs were normal sized, and I needed two hands to hold them. One by one I moved them from a shelf into a box, marking a line onto the box as I packed so I could keep track of how many there were. After several minutes of this I got careless and grabbed a jug with one hand, turning quickly to put it in the box—and it slipped out of my hand and crashed onto the concrete floor with a terrific clang. I was horrified. The room went still. 

The archivist walked over. She told me it was alright. These weren’t high-priority objects. She took out her clipboard and crossed out the number of cider bottles, entering a new number, “minus one,” she told me with a wink. 

We finished the rest of the packing without needing to stay longer. I hovered, hoping that maybe there would be a chance to go out for beers to celebrate, but the archivist just took out a wad of bills and handed it to me. 

“Thanks so much for your help,” she said, warmly. “It really made a difference.” 

I accepted the cash and waved to the rest of the crew, including the one with the crush. I didn’t reciprocate his feelings, but on my way home and for weeks afterward I felt my heart beginning to thaw. The days were getting longer. Spring was coming. 

Friends, you might have noticed that there was a three week gap between this letter and the last. The end of May—Maycember, as it is sometimes called—took a lot out of me. There were recitals, dance performances; a "moving on ceremony" to mark Michaela's transition from elementary to middle school. Plus, after quite a bit of thought, I decided to apply for my teaching license so I can teach here in Chicago. And I have resumed work on Study Hall, my comic essay about prison education, and that just takes a lot of time.

All this to say, I just can't produce content at the same rate I have been over the past three or so years. I'm not giving up Mushroom Head, but I am rethinking it a bit...maybe it makes more sense to send out a longer and more carefully composed piece of writing once a month than the scattershot, throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-hope-it-sticks method of writing I have been using to push out a letter once a week. I'm not entirely sure yet. I would like to put out a newsletter twice a month. I will aim for that and, well, we will see how it goes.

Happy Juneteenth!

Claire

Thank you for reading! If you like Mushroom Head, please consider leaving me a tip, or share this with a friend. If you'd like to get in touch with me, please feel free to respond directly to this email. I'm always happy to hear from you! (Also, you might want to put the Mushroom Head email address into your contacts to avoid having it go to your junk folder.) And if someone forwarded this email to you, I hope you will subscribe, because you are welcome here.