Another Life, Another Universe
Jim Jacobson listens to Nigel’s stories about New York
I sat on the train, concentrating on the hum and the click as the cars rolled on the rails. I cannot remember what town we were in, but about two hours into the trip, as I was sitting near a window and watching trees blend into a brown blur as we passed beside them, the oddest feeling took hold of me. I had forever altered my destiny with what seemed to me an act of pure impulse, yet ironically, there was something uncomfortably familiar about what I was doing. It was not the first time I had experienced this feeling and it would not be the last. Just as there seemed a certain logical progression as we moved from city to city, the rails seemed more than just a way of passage for the train. Just as the rigid steel of the rails held the wheels in place, I sensed a certain inevitability about the path I had chosen, almost like the rails, which patiently guided the train to its destination. I was never one to believe in déjà vu. If anyone had asked me at the time to describe what I felt, I probably would not have had the words to describe it, but I looked out the windows with a childlike preoccupation at the way objects would approach and recede as the train moved passed them, and I told myself I was afraid.
People would come and go. Their faces all seemed familiar to me. This one looked like my Uncle Mike. That one like my Aunt Jane. Sometimes I could not help but stare at these strangers and other times I had to look away. So many faces with so many shapes, yet all possess a common humanity. I thought a lot about what I would find when I arrived. Would the people be like my family and acquaintances at home? Yet, every image of New York I could visualize seemed in a fog, as though I struggled to see through a dark curtain in front of my eyes.
Several people came into the seats beside me and left when they reached their points of destination. With some, I tried to make idle conversation. With others, I was silent, afraid to say a word. We would sit for hours beside each other without so much as a hello. One elderly woman named Eleanor Bridges talked to me about her grandchildren and she showed me their pictures. Then there was a bible sales representative named Brian Whitaker who was on his way to Cleveland. He gave me a small pocket bible and preached a short sermon about my salvation. “He was a sinner saved by grace,” he told me. I told him that I knew about salvation. “He asked me if I were saved.” I didn’t know how to reply. His final words to me were these, “I pray you find the path of grace that our Lord has laid out for you.” In my life, I have often wondered about the path I am on. Finally, in Cleveland, another young man boarded the train and sat beside me.
He was also on his way to New York.
He was taller than I was and his hands were smoother than my hands, which had calluses and scars on them from all those years of farm work. I noticed them because he sat there looking at them for what seemed like hours.
“What’s your name?” I finally asked him. “Mine is Nigel Fox.”
“I’m Leonard Matthews,” He reluctantly answered. He did not seem to want to talk to me.
“Well, where are you going?” I asked him. “I’m going to find my destiny. I don’t know if you believe in destiny, but I do. I know there is something very important that I have to do with my life.”
He finally reluctantly answered me, “New York. I have a job there with my uncle.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m not trying to pry. I’m just bored to death. I’ve been sitting here silently for hours.”
“I’m never bored,” he answered. “I have so many ideas rushing through my brain at the same time, it’s like I’m conducting a symphony.” He paused a moment. “Have you ever noticed how the hands work?” He bent his thumbs across the palms of his hands. “The opposing thumb. Because I can do this, I can hold a hammer. I can turn a screwdriver. Things are possible for me that are impossible for the other animals. What an amazing feat of engineering in a simple pair of hands.”
I thought he was a little strange.
“Is that what you’ve been thinking about all these hours?” I asked him. “Some anthropologists argue that because we can do this, (He folded them again.) We developed technology.”
“Technology. I’ve never heard that word. Is it new?”
“I guess it is.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s the ability to take an idea here, (he pointed to his temples) and realize it in a concrete form. Like for example this railroad train. Someone had to think about it before it came to exist.”
For some reason, that phrase led to others and soon I could hardly keep him quiet. He told me all kinds of things, about physics and anthropology, most of which I did not understand, and then he talked about his family.
“My dad works for the telephone company in Cleveland,” he told me. “He repairs telephone wires.”
He reached into a satchel over his head and pulled out a book. “The Principles of Electricity,” I read the title.
“I’ve been reading this book. My plan is to get settled in New York and then to begin learning all I can about electricity. I’m hoping to get a job with the telephone company. My mother was a little frightened for me. I think it’s a good plan. I learn quickly. I should be able to pick it up in no time. What about you, Nigel? What are your plans?”
“My mother has a cousin she hasn’t seen in years. I’m supposed to get in touch with her as soon as I’m in New York.”
“My uncle has this job for me. Maybe if you can’t find anything else, he can help you.” He copied down an address for me. “It’s in Brooklyn.”
We talked for a little longer and then he began to read his book. We had so little in common and our lives seemed to be moving in such different directions. When we parted company after a few minutes of conversation on the platform at Penn Station, I was convinced I’d seen the last of him. I had no idea at the time that this young man would later become my closest friend.
To describe New York to someone who has never seen it is a little like trying to describe colors to a man born blind. It would be easy to say that it was not what I expected. I had no expectations concerning it, save one: it would not be like the farm and this expectation my experience quickly confirmed. When I emerged from the bowels of Penn station, New York and Wisconsin seemed like two different worlds, and I felt like Marco Polo, seeing China for the first time.
Towering over the city was the Empire State Building and I stretched my neck to see its spire. I remembered having gone with my mother to Green Bay to see King Kong when it had played there six years before. I could almost picture that huge ape, standing on its top and swatting aeroplanes with his hands.
I reached into my pocket and retrieved the paper on which my mother had hastily scribbled her cousin’s address. A cold and brisk breeze blew through my body. I struggled to read it, while the wind threatened to tear it from my fingers. Once I was sure of its content, I began what would become a day of erratic wandering. By midafternoon, I was seriously thinking about getting back on the train and going back to Wisconsin. It seemed hopeless that I would ever find the address. I kept forgetting if the avenues numbers went east to west, or west to east, and everyone who I stopped to ask directions seemed as confused as I was. Later, I would realize that many people in the City never ventured beyond the narrow limits of their neighborhoods. In those few blocks they called home, they were born, they worked, they married, and they died. Invisibly circumscribed in their neighborhoods of pavement and concrete, each captive region manifesting its own atmosphere and culture. In that respect, the only difference between New York and Wisconsin was that we had more room.
The wind had become more violent as I stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street. I had been all over the East Side looking for the address. Even with the grid of Manhattan, I felt lost. I was the edge of the Village, as I learned people called it. A street vendor had told me, when I asked him for directions, that it had become an artists’ colony, a haven for the bohemian and the “avant-garde.” I still didn’t know what either phrase meant.
I saw outdoor markets fruit vendors and newsstands. Newspaper boys were selling copies of the Post on street corners. They shouted vigorously about the headline of the moment. I saw the shops of butchers and tailors and delicatessens, all stretched out along a block of row houses four stories tall.
The woman I was looking for, was my mother’s cousin, named Melissa Wilson Brubaker, Wilson having been my mother’s maiden name. My mother had talked about her often. She had married a painter and they moved to New York to find fame and fortune. She said the most recent news she had heard from Melissa was that her husband had died and that she longed to see someone from home. My mother had written her a letter telling her I was coming. Neither of us knew what to expect, nor even if she was still willing to see someone. Yet in a city as large as the City, one relative, even a distant one, seemed better than having no relative at all. By my calculation, Mrs. Brubaker was approaching fifty, which at the time seemed ancient to me, although my mother never actually told me her age.
I knocked on the door of the second-floor walk-up and an older woman nearly sixty opened the door a crack and said, “Whatever you’re selling, I ain’t buying.”
“I’ve come to see Melissa Brubaker,” I said.
“Mel ain’t here.”
“When do you expect her back?”
“Look, buster, she ain’t here!”
She slammed the door in my face, but I was determined, so I knocked again. She opened the door again.
“If you don’t scram, I’ll call a copper.”
“I’m Melissa’s cousin from Wisconsin. I’ve come a long way to see her.”
“Mel’s never mentioned any family in Wisconsin.”
“I’ve got her letter somewhere in my bag.”
I searched through the bag and found the envelope and held it up for her to see.
“Mel’s at work. Come back later,” she answered.
“Where does she work?”
“What do you think I am, an information bureau?”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me.”
“You’d appreciate it if I’d tell you. How genteel! She works at a place called ‘Frankie’s’ four blocks west of here on the left.”
I had problems with east and west as I mentioned before, but soon I found myself in front of Frankie’s. It was a dinner club and I could hear music from the street. I had never been inside a dinner club. They had no such things in the county where I grew up. Like so much of what was to follow, it both frightened and excited me.
Inside, I discovered a small stage and rows of small round tables. A young woman heavily made-up and wearing a dress which was cut so low I wondered how she kept it from falling off, was singing a song which sounded very much like talking. I found a seat near the rear of the club, and I sat down at the table.
A young woman dressed in a black evening dress approached the table. She was without expression, looking much like the mannequins I had seen in Macy’s windows. She laid a fork and napkin in front of me and without changing her expression ever so little, she asked me, “What’s your pleasure?”
“I’d like to talk to Mel (I struggled to keep from saying ‘Melissa Brubaker.”
“You’re not going to order anything?” Her face became agitated.
“Do you have soup?” I timidly asked.
“Yeah, we have soup. What Kind? “
“Chicken, if you don’t mind.”
She turned around and left the table. Soon another young woman about thirty-six or thirty-seven, with short chestnut hair pinned back behind her ears, approached the table. I pondered if my order had so agitated the previous waitress that she decided to send another. Then she spoke.
“Yeah, I’m Mel, What do you want?”
“You’re Mel? I had expected someone much older.”
“Who are you?” she asked me.
“I’m your cousin, Nigel, from Wisconsin. Did you get my mother’s letter?”
“Yeah, I got it. But I don’t know what I can do. I got no room and my land-lady don’t take too kindly to guests, especially men.”
She had a rough edge to her voice, much harsher than I expected.
“So you can’t put me up for even a few days,” I complained.
“I can’t put me up for a few days. I’m two weeks behind on my rent as it is.” She paused. “Come on. Order something. It costs to eat and sleep in New York like everywhere else.”
“I ordered some chicken soup.”
“Order something else. The manager’s watching me.” She turned and looked at an older man sitting at the bar.
“Alright, what do you recommend?” I asked.
“The fish is the only thing edible.”
“OK, I’ll have the fish.”
She seemed a little uneasy about how long this was taking and she told me, “Look, I’m off at nine. We can talk then.”
When she left me sitting at the table, I listened for a while to the singer who sang one sardonic song after another. At that time, I could not recognize the style of music. Experience later enriched my musical vocabulary and I recognized the way that the rhythm and the harmonies blended together with a chant-like melody to form what I would later call “the blues”.
Her voice was ambiguous and tentative, and when she spoke, her dialect was distinctly Midwestern. I sipped my soup, nibbled on the fish, which the cook had heavily seasoned with garlic, and contemplated what dream had carried this young woman so far from home. Was it ambition? Did the same desire for change motivate her? Was she happy that she had made this choice? These were questions without answers.
I pulled out the small pocket bible, which the bible salesman had forced upon me on the train. A sincere interest in the scriptures had not motivated me, but boredom. I thumbed through the pages, read a little of Job and Jeremiah, but nothing interested me, and I put the bible back in my pocket. I remembered how animated the man was when he gave it to me. I had always had an odd problem. Religious zealots seemed peculiarly fascinated with me. I conjectured it was my face or some mannerism that attracted them. For whatever reason, those who wanted to save my soul continually confronted me.
Then a curious thing happened to me. A young man who had been sitting across the room came up beside the table and began talking to me as though he knew me. I did not know quite what to do. He finally looked closely at my face and realized his mistake. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I thought you were someone else.”
He excused himself and went away. This happened to me several times in that first few weeks. I still cannot explain it. Later, Mel came by and gave me my check. She chatted with me for a few moments.
“You’re crazy coming to this Godforsaken place. If I had the bucks, I’d be on my way home tomorrow.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s like Oz. I don’t know why I let David talk me into this.” A hard edge masked the profound sadness in her voice.
“Look, you pay my two weeks back rent and you can sleep on the floor. That’s it. You’ve got to spend your days someplace else.”
“Thank you,” I responded. I was genuinely relieved.
“And as soon as you can find your own place, you got to leave.”
“I understand.”
After she left me to serve another table, I reflected on all that had happened that first day. I understood on a superficial level what she meant about Oz, but it would take a greater maturity for me to understand the deeper meaning of her statement. I had seen the film and thought it rather silly and contrived, like many children’s stories, but upon reflection, I can see something mythic in its portrayal of that uniquely American impulse to dream of a paradise where dreams do come true. I genuinely believed that we only need to dream with tenacity and our dreams would come true. This same impulse inspired the Wright brothers to fly, Bell to invent the telephone, and my people to endure tremendous and unceasing hardship to settle and build a life for themselves in Wisconsin. At twenty-one, I did not understand any of this.
After finishing my meal, I walked around the neighbourhood for an hour or so and tried to become familiar with all the landmarks. Then I decided I would write my mother a letter and tell her I had arrived.
As I walked south toward Washington Square, I was frightened and unsure of myself, though I never would have admitted it at the time. I sat down on a bench and there began to write. I wrote about the train, about Leonard Matthews, about the bible salesman and finally about Mel. My tone was hopeful yet cautious. I told her I was OK and that she need not worry about me. When I finished the letter and placed it in my bag, it was after dark. I sat anxiously on the edge of the bench and looked up at the cold night sky. The thought never entered my head that within a few weeks, I would come to regret my decision and in a fit of despondency think of ending my life.
Those first few weeks were difficult. At night, I slept on a rug on the floor, with a blanket wrapped around me, and my bag propped beneath my head as a pillow. I could hear Melissa snoring on her bed, and some nights I heard her talking in her sleep, sometimes even calling out David’s name. I could see she was having a difficult time dealing with his death, but I was in no position to counsel her. In the morning, I would wake early, sore and hungry, and I would begin an arduous daylong search for work. I first read the newspapers to find advertisements for whatever unskilled labour positions were available. By the time I called, the employers had filled most of them, and the two or three remaining positions I would visit in the morning ended always in disappointment. By midday, I was usually dog-tired and hungry. Four weeks would pass, and my money was dwindling, and I still could not find work. To save money, I was only eating one meal a day, which usually consisted of fruit, raw vegetables, and white rice, which I bought for a quarter from a Chinese restaurant on Fourteenth Street. In four weeks, I had lost fifteen pounds. I was hungry all the time with a kind of hunger I had never known on the farm.
From the little I saw of Mel, I thought she was coping all right, but there were several times, I came home and found her crying, though she always pretended not to be. Once she sat up all night in a small wicker chair, staring at a photograph of her husband and sobbing almost inaudibly. I quietly watched her for most of the night, pondering what I might say to her to console her. But I had no capacity to understand the loss she was facing, nor the wisdom to know what to say.
One morning she asked me to find something for her in her closet. She seemed reluctant to go inside herself. I discovered she still had his clothes and shoes there, and all his paints and brushes just as he left them.
“Someone else could use these,” I told her as I lifted several brushes in the air. “I saw people selling them in the market on Fourteenth Street.” She rushed over and put them back just as I had found them.
“No, I could not,” she responded. “I just could not.”
Several of his paintings hung without frames on the walls, and there were a dozen or more others leaning on top of each other in every corner of the room. I was sure each painting told its own story, a story, which would be forever silent to me, and though I had never possessed a critical eye or any aesthetical sensibility, the works seemed good to me. They were mostly landscapes and studies of various sites around the cit. I also discovered several nudes that he had painted of her, which she had tried to hide from my inspection, but the apartment was so small, I could not help but see them.
Mel was reluctant to say anything about her husband. I could see that the grief from her loss was overwhelming. Whenever I tried to talk about him or about their time together, she would become intensely upset and immediately change the subject. However on one occasion when I was walking her home from Frankie’s, she broke down and began to talk about him.
“I was so excited when we came to New York with all those romantic images from the movies and it was not that bad for me when David was alive,” she began. “It was his city. We used to go to Central Park and have picnics. He would draw portraits for those in the park. We laughed so much. How was I to know it could not last?”
“How did David die?” I asked her.
“He was smacked by a bus on 42nd and Fifth Avenue. He never knew what hit him.”
“It must have been very hard.”
“The hardest thing was when they asked me to identify him. Seeing his body laid out like haunts me even now. I can’t put the image out of my head. Hard? It stinks. He drags me up here and then he checks out.”
I could sense the anger, anguish and regret in her voice and I tried to say something encouraging. “I wish I could understand. But I’ve never lost anyone close to me. I think you’re strong,”
“I’m not that strong, Nigel, Believe me, I am not that strong.” She tried to smile.
“What are you gonna do with your life, Nigel? Life here in New York isn’t the circus.”
“I’m not thinking that far ahead, I just want a job,” I told her.
“Nigel, you’re nuts. Go home to Wisconsin.”
I could not bring myself to accept that I had made a mistake, even though with each successive day my situation only worsened. I kept telling myself that I could somehow make things better for both of us, once I inevitably found a job. Then like a dam may burst or a volcano erupt without a warning the whole arrangement with Mel came to an explosive end.
I did not realize or understand what a volatile and dangerous situation I had created when I allowed myself to stay with Mel. I simply did not understand the forces that were at work within her. Then one morning, it was a Tuesday, I suddenly felt something on top of me and I woke to Mel kissing me.
Had our ages been closer and had she not been my cousin, I might have found the experience a pleasant one and even encouraged her to continue, But I felt violated. Not only had she barred me from the apartment, except in the dark cover of night, but she attacked me while I slept.
I tried to stop her, but she kept kissing me with a ferocity I had never experienced and she tried to unfasten my clothing. Finally, I pushed her off me and shouted, “Damn it! Stop it! Leave me alone!”
I grabbed my bag and ran out of the apartment. At the corner, I caught a bus and sat there in the back for what must have been several hours. The bus made its consistent cycle around Manhattan, while my mind jumped aimlessly from image to image and from memory to memory. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’ I kept repeating to my mind’s ear. I was broke and I knew I could not go back to Mel’s. Nothing had worked out as I had planned. Mel’s question kept haunting me, “What am I going to do with my life?” I felt like a failure and I seriously considered suicide.
Then I decided to get off at Central Park. My eyes were fighting back tears as I stood on a corner overlooking the park, and then it started to rain. At that moment if I could have clicked my heels together like Dorothy and gone home, I would have gladly gone.
What a pathetic sight I must have been, this twenty-one-year old farm boy, standing on the streets of Manhattan in the rain. I would have laughed at myself had the situation not seemed so hopeless. If I had been a religious man, I would have prayed, but I did not believe any outside power could save me. I was convinced I was a victim of my own decision and that there was an inherent logic to the punishment. In every man’s life there comes a time when he must face the senselessness of fate. A man of character accepts his plight. Still, I was angry, deeply angry with myself and I could not accept what had happened to me. Therefore, I resolved to end it all by throwing myself off a building. After I crossed the street, I began to walk. I stared up at the tops of buildings as the water soaked my hair. With my eyes blurred with tears, I resolved that I would use my last dollar to ride to the top of the Empire State Building and throw myself off in one last gesture of defiance. Then I heard something drop from my pocket and hit the pavement. When I looked down, I discovered the little pocket bible lying on the ground. Before I could even bend my back, an arm reached down to pick it up for me. When my face met his, it was Leonard Matthews, who I had met on the train.
“Nigel, is that you?” He stared into my ravaged face.
“Yes, it is,” I responded.
“You’re going to catch a cold out here. Where’s your umbrella?”
“I haven’t got one.”
“Here. Take mine.” He handed me the handle.
“I’ve wondered why you haven’t looked me up,” he said. “I figured you must have lost my address. Look. Let’s get out of this rain and find a place to talk.”
There was a diner not far from there and we both went inside. A hostess led us both to a table where we sat down.
“You wouldn’t believe what kind of job I’ve got. I work for my uncle at a small theatre. It’s like vaudeville. I operate the lights and curtains.” He seemed excited to tell me what he did. “And what about you?”
“I haven’t found a job,” I said with desperation in my voice.
“Let me give you my address again. No, better yet. Let me take you there. I’m certain my uncle can find something for you to do.” He paused. “It is strange meeting you like this. I wouldn’t have even been this far if I had not taken the wrong train.” I was stunned. I did not know what to say.
“Would you like something to eat?” he continued.
I was afraid to admit how broke I was.
“No, I’m alright.”
“Come on. Eat something. I’ll pick up the tab.”
We ordered something and a waiter brought it to us.
“Eat,” he said and I ate. If you’ve never known hunger, you cannot know what it felt like to eat again. I had taken several glorious bites, and then I began to cry. I tried to wipe the tears that ran down my cheeks.
“God, you don’t know what I’ve been through. Before you ran into me, I was this close to killing myself.” I held up my fingers.
“I told you to look me up. Why did not you look me up?” Then I began to tell him all that had happened since I had arrived in New York, finally culminating in our meeting that afternoon. When I finished, he was silent and his silence frightened me, but then he began to tell me something that we had not talked about on the train.
“I did not tell you why I left Cleveland,” he began. “I did not think you’d understand. (He bit his lip.) At home, I stand in my brother’s shadow. He’s the brightest and most talented guy I know, the kind of guy who wins everything he tries, and I’m just his kid brother, who keeps running behind him like a little dog. I never quite measure up to his stature. Well, I’m sick of it, and come hell or high water, I will make a name for myself in New York. I’ve had a few setbacks too, but I’m not going to let them lick me. No way.” He paused. “And you shouldn’t let these setbacks upset you either.” He paused again. “We live in exciting times, Nigel. In the next fifty years, a world as different from our world as ours is from the cavemen will be born. The possibilities are endless and electricity will transform it all. I went out to the World’s Fair, and I saw a device that could transmit pictures through the air, just like a radio. They call it ‘television.’”
Then as he had done on the train, he began to explain to me in very technical language what he saw as the possibilities for such a device. In that one short conversation, he was more of a prophet, than I have been in these past months.