Jane had never been fond of people. She didn’t like their voices or the way they looked at her, surely judging, thinking she was too awkward or too thin. She didn’t like the way they would never understand, and the way they expected. She didn’t care for the threat they would pose to her life and to her heart if it became somehow involved with one of them, and she certainly didn’t like the germs they all carried on their hands.
No, she was much safer in all respects staying in and only exposing herself to the harmless Russian man who came to her door once a week to deliver her laundry and dry-cleaning. He had kind gentle eyes and an honest voice, although he rarely smiled. He was exercising his rightful freedom in America instead of St. Petersburg, because America is “where freedom belongs,” or so he was always explaining. He also explained about how the restructuring of social order in Russia was about as intelligent as ice cream in December, and that true Russians appreciated the status quo. Then he would go on to say that it was not worth giving anymore thought to, as Russia was impossible to understand with your mind. He whistled between his teeth, and winked his eye too.
Jane liked the brief interactions that she had with him, and delighted in the small moments of fantasy that he brought her when he would explain about his country with such vivid and colorful detail. Jane also felt a certain sense of security in the packages of clean clothes that he was always bringing, it was as if he meant to protect her in that way.
Jane’s grandmother brought in the groceries and spent the rest of her time isolated in the back quarter of their apartment. Grandmother stayed in her room not because she was an introvert herself, but rather because Jane was one. They had never really understood one another, and always seemed to clash if given the chance. After all, Grandmother had been beautiful and desired, not at all like Jane who looked pleasing but very plain. Grandmother was always divine, always unforgettable . Why she had even met Lindbergh, and Pierre Salinger! She had met them alright, and she always reminded Jane.
“Jane you have got to get out into the world, and make something of yourself! Be memorable!” her grandmother would accuse, “you live in Manhattan, the grandest city in all of the world, and yet you insist on wilting in this apartment day after day, nothing more than a withering wall-flower! I went out, I went out and I met Lindbergh, I went out and I met Pierre Salinger!”
Jane would never address her grandmother’s accusations. She knew that she was acting in the safest and most responsible way to her own preservation. She had strayed from this good sense once before and taken a lover the previous year. A delicate man in Brooklyn with fine chiseled features, who she had seen on a rare trip out of her apartment to the dentist.
She had taken two trains to get to her appointment, and had confronted all of the strangers and their ailments, and all of their uncomfortable impositions on the subway before arriving. When she walked into the office she was almost completely unnerved by the discomfort of the subway experience, and by the daunting idea of the human condition itself, when she saw him. He had seemed remarkably harmless as he was gentle in spirit and turned out to be humble writer, who was living modestly as he was dedicated to his craft. He had been able to sense her discord when she walked into the dentist’s office, and he had done his best to comfort her.
They had spent sporadic stolen moments together for a period of about eleven months after that day at the dentist’s office. Jane was inexperienced and fearful of their encounters, and was unable to explain herself to him. She didn’t know how to surrender to the idea of him, and she couldn’t reconcile her feelings with the inner conflict that desiring him brought about. When he met another woman he was cautious in breaking the news to Jane, but he did so all the same. It was possible that Jane was not anymore broken than she had been before meeting him, but it was also possible that she was. Jane decided then and there that she would never risk another lover.
This looming day now was hanging over Jane’s head. It was going to be her thirtieth birthday on Saturday, and her grandmother knew it. Her grandmother knew it and she was not going to ignore it, nor would she let it go. Her grandmother was going to force something upon her and show no interest in her discomfort or in her heart which would be so ill at ease. Jane knew that she had to figure something out, a plan, a diversion, or even a trap for her grandmother. What would a trap look like, she wondered? Oh if only she could come up with a trap for her grandmother! Then she would be able to bask in the invisibility that she was certainly entitled to.
Oh why wouldn’t grandmother just leave her alone! Well, Jane knew that this wasn’t going to be an option. If she didn’t act grandmother would be inviting people in, and they would bring germs and harm into the sanctity of their home! And for the people, Jane knew that she would be expected to dress, and to smile, and to speak intelligibly to them. Oh she just knew she could not have that! She had to come up with an alternative immediately!
“Grandmother …” Jane called out gingerly through her grandmother’s thick bedroom door.
“Jane, was that you that I heard? Speak up and open the door!” her grandmother insisted. Grandmother had always been so gregarious and at times even ostentatious. Jane thought this so queer and wondered at her foreign nature.
“Jane! Come in here!” Grandmother demanded, “Stop slumping around in the hallway! And speak up for goodness sakes!”
“Grandmother, I have been invited to see the Christopher Wool exhibit at the Guggenheim this Saturday.” Jane offered this explanation, as she had been watching the morning news and had been informed of the artist’s show at the museum, thankfully.
“You’ve been invited?!” Grandmother demanded again, and almost shouted, “by whom?! Jane, Jane! I said by WHOM have you been invited? Because I have plans to make you know, plans for your birthday.”
“Well thank you, but I don’t need any plans, because you see I have been invited.” Jane turned and quickly walked out of the room, running away from Grandmother’s protesting calls.
So for the moment some relief was Jane’s for the taking, ephemeral as it was. She knew that grandmother would not embarrass herself in front of friends for an unreliable granddaughter, who may or may not have been invited.
Three days passed, in nervous unresolved angst, and on the eve of her birthday, Jane faced the fact that she was going to have to make an outing. This outing would spare her from the intrusion of the unsavory and unsafe strangers in her home. This outing would ensure the sanctuary and the asylum of her private world, and it would keep it clean, the way it should be. She could not have anyone infiltrating there, especially when it had taken so long to restore her invulnerability after the detrimental and sorrowful episode with her lost lover.
Yes, this was the lesser of two evils, she would go out and face the world with all of its dangers, and spare her gentle home the people and their impending storm. So goodnight for now, she would try to find some ease in her sleep, because she knew she would need it more than anything in the morning.
The astringent sun rose that next day betraying all of Jane’s prayers against it, although truth be told, she had never really believed in the efficacy of prayer anyway. She raised her head from the pillow knowing that she must face the imminent fear of this day, her birthday. She walked timidly and ever so quietly out of her bedroom and tip-toed down the hall to the bathroom. The last thing that she wanted this morning was any attention from her grandmother, and she would make certain that she was not heard.
Inside the bathroom she lit her small gardenia scented candle and let the reassuring smell rise into the air and wash over her. She imagined that the scent would somehow bring her the protection that she needed for this impending day. Next she took an extra hot and extra long shower. She scrubbed her hair and face, and scrubbed her hands an extra time before leaving the bathroom. If she was able to start off cleaner, it might provide more protection from all of the gross violations that she would surely encounter outside in the world.
She dressed sensibly so as to best guard herself, and she saw her clothes as her suit of armor. A stiff wool tweed pant, with a long-sleeved turtle-neck covered by her knee-length down-jacket, and a scarf, hat and gloves. The only part of herself that was exposed was her face, which was the best she could do. But she knew that the most important part, her nose that would be breathing in all the germs, was still vulnerable. Breathing the safe air in her apartment for one last precious moment, she turned her front-door knob and stepped outside into the world.
The wind outside was unforgiving with stinging cold, and it whipped up against her in unpredictably cruel rounds. The thermostat in the window of the deli beneath her Chelsea walk-up, read just 31 degrees, and it was surely accurate. The painful air almost brought tears to Jane’s eyes, but she feared the thought of icicles on her eyelashes, and she restrained herself. The sidewalk was swimming with New Yorkers full of intentions that she could not predict, and she walked quickly so as not to meet the accidental glance of a stranger.
The streets seemed more busy than usual and the traffic and strident sirens weighed on her fragile psyche. She was unsure exactly about which train she was going to take all the way from Chelsea to the Upper East Side, but she did not slow her walk for fear of being exposed to one of these speedy stranger’s unwelcome obtrusion.
She walked quickly and intently through the painful air. The cold sting had surprised her, even though she had felt it before. She walked passed the Flatirons Building, and paused as she loved this building. She remembered learning as a child in school about how the Flatirons building was classified as a Renaissance Skyscraper and she knew that the facade had been restored. She also knew that she loved this building for being a New York City icon, and for the fact that it was shaped like the cast-iron clothes iron that was collecting dust in her kitchen, a remnant left over from her grandmother’s youth. She paused only for a moment’s admiration because the frigid air required that one keep moving.
Jane hurried for another block and a half before she saw a subway station which read “Uptown 6”. This moment she knew that she had to gather all of her strengths and face all that may lie there below the streets. She turned, and descended the stairs to the subway.
The air in the subway was thick and heavy, and the yellowy brownish light coming from down the track failed to reassure. The air was all around her, and it was not clean. Jane hesitated to breathe, and the musty smell of too many bodies surly was not any incentive. But her body’s natural instinct made the unfortunate decision of breath for her, and soon there after entering the subway station Jane took her first breath of what she considered to be highly compromised air.
Instead of looking in another person’s direction, Jane fixated on the seemingly endless rows of columns lining the track that were each labeled with the number twenty-three. She seemed to be able to make out the twenty-three going down the line on about eight columns. That seemed to be a good sign as both eight and twenty-three, she had been told, were lucky numbers. If she could subscribe to a concept like luck, she knew that she would need it now more than ever as she waited to get on the subway train.
The train came then quickly and hauntingly with a raw and metallic sound, and the doors opened with a foreboding iron clank. Strange people piled out of the train shoving their way past Jane and making her heart race. She followed a small stream of fluorescent light that shown between the hordes of people onto the train where she decided to sit instead of holding onto the pole that she just knew had been touched by thousands of people before her. She retreated into her mind and kept her breath at an even shallow steady pace. She tried to look through the people as if they were only ideas, or even shapeless forms. She tried to forget the fear. She thought about her gardenia candle and its smell that was shielding her there, and it almost worked all the way up until forty-second street. The thought distracted her anyway.
The next stop was forty-seventh street however, and there a large angry woman got on the train with an equally large, but very dull and broken-spirited girl of about nine years old. The woman smelled like sweat and hotdogs, and she chewed gum with an obnoxious fervor. She shoved the little girl into the corner then yelled at her for bumping into the man next to her.
“I told you not to bump into these folks on the train!” the woman hollered, “No one wants to see your dirty ass touching them! I told you already and you need to come correct!”
“She didn’t touch me,” the man next to the girl offered to the angry woman, “She just touched the sleeve of my sweatshirt. This is a good sweatshirt, really warm.”
“Oh yeah?!” the woman’s loud voice bellowed back at the man, “well I have a sweatshirt just like that one! I do only mine is turquoise! It’s just like that one! And its a good one!”
The angry woman’s voice was so loud and abrasive that it sounded like she was verbally attacking the man, even though she was just talking about a sweatshirt.
“How do you spell animal?” the little girl asked the woman.
“What do you mean how do you spell animal girl?” the woman raised her voice even louder, “you better learn how to spell animal! Its a-n-i-m-a-l, and you better figure that shit out for yourself next time!”
The woman verbally abused and humiliated the girl for the next twenty-six blocks, where she shoved the girl again and got out at seventy-forth street in the Upper East Side. Jane wouldn’t be getting off the train until eighty-sixth street, and she wondered for the rest of the time where the angry woman was taking that poor girl.
Jane wrung her hands together nervously remembering the woman’s loud voice, and shiny round face. Jane kept her hands clasped tightly together, so that way they were clean. An elderly Asian man sat next to her typing frantically into an I-pad in between sneezes, and each time he sneezed he wiped his nose into the sleeve of his plaid wool coat. Jane held her breath for as long as she could, and then when she couldn’t, she only took in tiny sips of air. She knew her efforts not to breath wouldn’t matter anyway as she was sitting in a tank of recycled stagnant sickly air.
The back of Jane’s neck began to feel uncomfortably hot, and her stomach soured with a twisting prickly feeling. She knew that she wasn’t going to be able to make it much longer. She clasped her hands tighter. The elderly man sneezed again.
“Eighty-sixth street” the subway operator called over the sound system. Jane clutched her purse tightly and with great relief, exited the train. Outside again on eighty-sixth and Lexington, Jane hurried around the corner to eighty-eighth and fifth. She enjoyed so much the peace and sophistication she felt in the Upper East Side, and after being transported so callously like a small herd animal, she reveled in the quiet uncrowded streets.
She thought about how much more inclined to participate in the world she would be if she was able to live within the dignity of these city blocks. The only other person she saw walking along eighty-eighth street was a steady old man in a cap and overcoat walking a small dog, he was not at all menacing or abusing. A few more minutes and she was finally there, Frank Lloyd Wright’s cylindrical museum, one of New York’s most important landmarks, she walked through the revolving door and stepped into the Guggenheim.
Inside Jane felt overwhelmed and overcome by a sense of calm order. The architecture the minimalism and the soothing seeming infinity of the structure’s upward spiraling design, brought a lightness and ease to her heart. She sensed a profound comfort in the presentation of the room, so much so that the many people whom she did not know, who would otherwise be threatening her, started to successfully fade into the background, and then into nothingness. No one was left, no one there to harm her, no illness, no piercing eyes, no disapproving stairs, no cruel or judging words, no paradigms in which she could never take part. She was presented with ultimate peace and a beautiful unexpected solitude in the unlikely safety of this public space. She walked slowly up the spiraling ramp which extended almost to the building’s skylight, in a pristine and blissful silence of splendor.
The Christopher Wool exhibit featured a series of painted words and photos of life in New York City. The monochromatic paintings displayed words such as helter, anarchist, mercenary, adversary, comedian, paranoiac, and more. The words brought about an association with a certain brand of violence and sense of chaotic abandon, however Jane felt at the same time that Wool was depicting a level of harmonious order synonymously, as he had aligned all the words within a carefully balanced grid.
As she ascended the gentle slope of the ramp gallery, she seemed to lighten with each passing moment, which was delightfully surprising to her. The light shining down through the main gallery skylight was an emancipation of her internal conflict with humankind, and she could feel the weight of fear melting away from her being. What joy as her lungs expanded with a sense of relief, and she felt a calm that was usually so foreign to her when faced with a public interaction.
She spent over an hour basking in all of Wool’s raw but simplistic artistic perfection before she decided to leave for home. She had so loved how this New York artist Christopher Wool, seemed to know just how to sooth her nerves here in the midst of this grand structure which is said to be “the temple of the spirit.” This amazing day, this thirtieth birthday for Jane had proven to overcome all of her fears and reservations about taking part in the outside world. Jane felt exhilarated and free, it was incredible! She had faced all that she despised, all that she feared, all that is wrong, and she had somehow overcome it!
Leaving the museum Jane decided to reward herself for the magnitude of her day’s efforts by taking a cab home, even though she knew that was a waste of money. She walked to the curb of fifth avenue to hale a cab, and immediately one stopped for her. A kindly Indian man who spoke English, graciously sped her back down to her apartment at twenty-third and ninth, where she happily paid the twenty-six dollars. She ran up her stoop with an unexpected and even welcomed exuberance, and unlocked her front door. She was partially running back to all she knew as comfort, but she was also partially running out of excitement, which was an emotion that she met only on very rare occasions. She came into the dark hallway where she could see the light coming from beneath her grandmother’s bedroom door.
“Jane? Is that you dear? Jane? Happy Birthday Jane.” Grandmother stayed in her room.
“Thank you.” Jane replied softly, grateful not to have to explain.
Jane hung her coat in the hallway closet, and quickly washed her hands and face in the bathroom sink. She seemed to be intact, and her joy in that moment would surely protect her from any outside illness. She retired to her bedroom, where a tiny and cautious smile came across her lips. Here where she had expected to be so disenchanted with this day, so fearful, and so exposed, here, this birthday, a miracle had happened! She had enjoyed a piece of the outside world! She was thirty, she had remembered and felt excitement, she had confronted the threat of humanity, and in the face of all of that, she was still safe. Accomplished now as she was, she was free to breathe.