“You can’t go home again, but you can shop there”
A delicacy from the Mexican restaurant that used to be our old apartment in Queens, NY
In the dark comedy Grosse Point Blank, a hit man who wants to get out of the business tries to visit his boyhood home. When he finds the address, he sees that his house is gone and, in its place, there’s a 24-hour convenience store. He remembers that his old bedroom was where the microwave ovens and frozen burritos are at the store. As Martin Blank, the hit man, John Cusack says, “You can’t go home again, but you can shop there.”
I had a similar experience taking a virtual Google Maps tour of my old neighborhood in Queens, New York. I found the Italian drugstore, and the site of the former German deli and Chinese laundry. My school and church, St. Bartholomew, are still there and look just the same, thank God. In fact, the church looks even more beautiful than I remembered.
It was only when I found the four-story building where we lived that I had a Grosse Point Blank moment. The first floor of our apartment building, where my family and my aunt’s family lived, is now a Mexican grocery store and taco stand. The awning has our address and the front window of the grocery store is my aunt’s former bedroom window that faced the street. (My sister surmised that our aunt’s spirit is still in her old apartment and is probably badgering the Mexican restaurant’s staff about brewing coffee the right way.)
The building’s facade from the second to the fourth floor looks exactly the same, so I had a case of deja vu at the same time that I had a Martin Blank moment. I suppose the frozen burritos at that grocery store are now where my old bedroom used to be.
If I ever get to go back home to Queens, I may stop in and shop there.
