the last five percent of my morning commute
Last summer sometime, I noticed a man on the 57th Street subway platform. He was standing on the far edge of the platform, right at the spot where I always get on and get off to maximize my subway efficiency. He was wearing jeans, white tennis shoes, and a short-sleeved button-up shirt. He had horn-rimmed glasses and a haircut and gray goatee that were almost sporty in their precision; had either been more artfully done, or were his jeans not working-man's jeans, or were his tennis shoes loafers, he would have passed for natty. A copy of the Daily News was folded in half and tucked under his right arm. He was scanning the crowd with an air of quick apprehension, looking for a face he wasn't seeing. I saw disappointment, or rather, I began to see disappointment over the next several months when I saw him in the same spot three times a week with the same expression, same paper under the same arm, same clothes. Well, the clothes changed with the season: The shirtsleeves gave way to a denim jacket, which gave way to a black coat with a fur-trimmed hood like my father wore in the eighties.
I assumed he was-not crazy, exactly, but that this ritual was what kept him from being so. That he came here, to this exact spot on the 57th Street subway platform, three mornings a week, stayed for-let's say half an hour-looked for someone who may or may not show up and who probably doesn't exist in the reality you and I inhabit, and left once he'd reached an approximation of satisfaction.
On the morning of a snowfall, his expression changed a split second after I glanced at him, confirming his presence (it was a Wednesday; I expected him). His tense study of the crowd gave way to a smile. There's a notion that you can tell if a smile is genuine by whether or not a person's eyes crinkle along with the upturn of the lips; that was not true in his case. The expression in his eyes lit up, but it was as though the lines around his eyes were so stuck in their tracks that they couldn't bend even for the moment they waited for three times a week.
A young woman, maybe eighteen or twenty, walked toward him. Without breaking for any bodily contact or even a brief standstill of how-are-you or what-do-we-do-now, he took pace beside her and the two of them walked up the stairs side by side. At 9:30 on a Wednesday morning at the 57th Street subway station you can't overhear anyone's conversation, even though few people are talking (we haven't had our cawffee yet); the din of feet and briefcases and the good people who open their umbrellas for snow opening their umbrellas for snow drowns out whatever murmurs might be happening. I could hear the tone of their conversation, though. He was talking more than her, in a slightly rushed staccato; she answered in a similar staccato but responded more with bobs of her head. She had hair that was likely dyed to achieve her glossy back, and she had the carriage of a dancer-quick, economical steps that seemed effortless, her head held high-though it may have been the artfully sloppy ponytail she'd tied her hair in, or her oversized tote bag, that made me think that.
Normally I walk down 57th Street to get to my building; the morning bustle still tickles me even though I have walked it literally more than a thousand times, maybe twice that. That day, I walked down 58th, at a reasonable following distance. They walked closely together but not too familiarly. He kept bumping into her, less out of pervy intention and more out of what seemed to be simple excitement; he kept turning his head to look at her face, which was lovely, and she never seemed to mind. I wanted to hear what was being said: Was he pestering her? Was she his daughter? Were they friends from Alcoholics Anonymous or TOEFL tutoring or do people go to church still? But the only words I could make out in their back-and-forth were hers: She's not doing well. I stopped following them, out of respect for a combination of whoever she was, their ritual, and my 10 o'clock meeting.
It had never occurred to me that the person he was waiting for not only existed but would be happy to see him-she had a smile too-and that they would walk down 58th Street together crunching the snow. It should have made me happy: a partial satisfaction of my curiosity about him, a union holding something that looked like mutual joy. But it didn't. He had appeared to me so lonely for so long that even though he's back to the jeans jacket now and will be in his shirtsleeves soon, that lonely is how he appears to me still.
I assumed he was-not crazy, exactly, but that this ritual was what kept him from being so. That he came here, to this exact spot on the 57th Street subway platform, three mornings a week, stayed for-let's say half an hour-looked for someone who may or may not show up and who probably doesn't exist in the reality you and I inhabit, and left once he'd reached an approximation of satisfaction.
On the morning of a snowfall, his expression changed a split second after I glanced at him, confirming his presence (it was a Wednesday; I expected him). His tense study of the crowd gave way to a smile. There's a notion that you can tell if a smile is genuine by whether or not a person's eyes crinkle along with the upturn of the lips; that was not true in his case. The expression in his eyes lit up, but it was as though the lines around his eyes were so stuck in their tracks that they couldn't bend even for the moment they waited for three times a week.
A young woman, maybe eighteen or twenty, walked toward him. Without breaking for any bodily contact or even a brief standstill of how-are-you or what-do-we-do-now, he took pace beside her and the two of them walked up the stairs side by side. At 9:30 on a Wednesday morning at the 57th Street subway station you can't overhear anyone's conversation, even though few people are talking (we haven't had our cawffee yet); the din of feet and briefcases and the good people who open their umbrellas for snow opening their umbrellas for snow drowns out whatever murmurs might be happening. I could hear the tone of their conversation, though. He was talking more than her, in a slightly rushed staccato; she answered in a similar staccato but responded more with bobs of her head. She had hair that was likely dyed to achieve her glossy back, and she had the carriage of a dancer-quick, economical steps that seemed effortless, her head held high-though it may have been the artfully sloppy ponytail she'd tied her hair in, or her oversized tote bag, that made me think that.
Normally I walk down 57th Street to get to my building; the morning bustle still tickles me even though I have walked it literally more than a thousand times, maybe twice that. That day, I walked down 58th, at a reasonable following distance. They walked closely together but not too familiarly. He kept bumping into her, less out of pervy intention and more out of what seemed to be simple excitement; he kept turning his head to look at her face, which was lovely, and she never seemed to mind. I wanted to hear what was being said: Was he pestering her? Was she his daughter? Were they friends from Alcoholics Anonymous or TOEFL tutoring or do people go to church still? But the only words I could make out in their back-and-forth were hers: She's not doing well. I stopped following them, out of respect for a combination of whoever she was, their ritual, and my 10 o'clock meeting.
It had never occurred to me that the person he was waiting for not only existed but would be happy to see him-she had a smile too-and that they would walk down 58th Street together crunching the snow. It should have made me happy: a partial satisfaction of my curiosity about him, a union holding something that looked like mutual joy. But it didn't. He had appeared to me so lonely for so long that even though he's back to the jeans jacket now and will be in his shirtsleeves soon, that lonely is how he appears to me still.