The Other Side of the World

by Jay Neugeboren

  “Did he—did he do it himself?” I asked.

  “I don’t have details, sir. For that you’ll have to call Northampton. I have a number for you—two numbers, in fact.” He tore off a piece of paper from the kind of pad you use for giving out speeding tickets, and handed it to me. “Officer Burke. Michael Burke. He said he’d be there all morning, and that you can call him on his cell phone anytime—the number’s there. He said he went to high school with you.”

  I turned and saw that Trish was sitting in a chair now, sobbing away, Seana next to her, stroking Trish’s hair while Anna clung to Trish’s leg and told her not to cry. “Don’t cry, Mommy,” she kept saying. “Please don’t cry, Mommy. Don’t cry, Mommy Mommy Mommy…”

  The floor, tilted up at a forty-five degree angle, was rapidly approaching my nose, squiggles of black dots swirling in its path. I sat down, bent over so that my head was lower than my heart, and after about thirty seconds I sat up straight again.

  None of us spoke for a while, which made the room much too quiet—the trooper was gone, though I hadn’t noticed him leaving—so I picked up the telephone and called Michael Burke, and when I identified myself, he said he was sorry for my loss, and assured me he would take care of everything until I was back in Northampton. My father had died peacefully in his sleep, of heart failure, he said—that was the initial finding by the doctor, and he didn’t expect it to change. When the lights in much of the house had stayed on for more than twenty-four hours, a neighbor became concerned, and rang the doorbell and banged on the door and, receiving no response, had called the police. I thanked Michael and told him we should arrive back in town by early evening.

  I told Trish and Seana what Michael had told me—that it seemed Max had died peacefully in his sleep—and I added that he would have turned seventy-three on his next birthday, but that, as I’d often heard him say, he believed that everything past the proverbial three score and ten was considered extra—a gift—so that seventy-two wasn’t a bad run.

  “Still,” Seana said, “when you’re seventy-two, seventy-three doesn’t look so good.”

  We were quiet again, and after a minute or two I decided to fill the silence with words by telling a story about my father, though it was a shame, it occurred to me, that I’d already told Seana the one about him and the man in the subway. Still, with Max, I knew, if you used up one story, another usually arrived pretty quickly to take its place.

  “You know who my father’s hero was?” I asked.

  “Barney Ross?” Seana said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Jackie Robinson?”

  “Not that kind of hero.”

  “Primo Levi?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Henry James?

  “Only until he found out what an anti-Semite James was.”

  “I forgot about that,” Seana said. “So I give up. Who was your father’s hero?”

  “My father’s hero,” I said, “was a baggage guy at Bradley Airport. He met him when he and a colleague were going to a convention together. The colleague—his name was Friedman, Wolf Friedman, or maybe it was Freeman without the ‘d’—was a guy who got off on being snide to everybody. He’d published a few books of poems, and wrote about Frank O’Hara and that crowd, and was the kind of New York guy—I think of him as being from New York, though it turned out he came from Omaha, Nebraska, where his father was a kosher butcher—but he was the kind of guy who has to make a joke out of everything. And he used to brag about the critiques he laid on grad students—on their writing—and how under his tutelage—that’s the word I remember Max said he used—he could get them to break down in class and cry.”

  “That was Freeman—without the ‘d’—all right,” Seana said. “A schmuck-with-earlaps, first class. I got him good, though, at least twice. Remember, in Plain Jane, the butcher who gets castrated by a group of Algerian men for raping one of their daughters? I named him Freeman Woolf. But that was just an old-fashioned novelist’s revenge.”

  “And in real life?” I asked.

  “Freeman was famous among grad students for being a stinker,” Seana said, “and he was after me all semester to meet him for this or for that, so once grades were in—ever the practical young woman, moi—I agreed to meet him in a bar in Holyoke, and we were in a booth, and it was dark, and he was breathing hard. He put a hand on my lap and leaned close, and I blew on his ear and kept my eyes on his crotch. As soon as he was ripe, I reached over and grabbed his teeny-weeny and squeezed until he begged me to stop or to unzip him, and when I let go, I said I was curious about something—that I’d been wondering what his pecker got like when he had a hard-on.”

  “Though I doubt my father used a similar tactic,” I said, “he probably said clever things to Freeman too. But Max never bragged to me about ways he put people down.”

  “Your father was a man of elegance and discretion,” Seana said. “A mensch of mensches, as we say in Gaelic. He could be playful in unpredictably inventive ways. But he was rarely mean.”

  “Rarely?” I asked.

  “Nick could be mean,” Trish said. “Like his father. But Eugenia and I get along well—she comes here when I have my down times, and she’s great with the children. And a lot tougher than she seems. But even so, I want you to know about a decision I made this morning.”

  “Go for it,” Seana said.

  “As Charlie knows, my parents are both dead,” Trish began, “and I don’t talk to my brothers and sisters anymore.”

  “I have no brothers,” Seana said. “But same story here.”

  “That’s sad, isn’t it?” Trish said.

  “Not if you knew my sisters,” Seana said.

  “I’m like Nick,” I said. “Neither of us had brothers or sisters to not talk to. Friends like you two were always my family.”

  “Lucky guy,” Seana said. “In my book, the idealization of family does as much harm as believing that falling-in-love with a one-and-only being the be-all and end-all of life. Friendship—having good friends you can count on, like you two—like Max—always trumps family.”

  “Can we drink to that—and to Max?” Trish asked.

  “A splendid idea,” Seana said, and then: “Okay by you, Charlie?”

  “Yes,” I said, and would have said more, but was afraid that if I did, I would break down completely.

  Trish poured three glasses of Jamison’s for us, and, silently, we raised our glasses, clinked them, drank.

  Seana spoke, with a brogue: “‘For what could be worse than drink?’ the young Irishman asked, and his father answered, ‘Thirst.’”

  “So after Nick left us,” Trish said, “I made Lorenzo and Eugenia legal guardians for Gabe, and later on I added that they be guardians for Anna too, because at least if something happened to me, Lorenzo and Eugenia would have the wherewithal to raise them, or to see that they were taken care of, which I knew I couldn’t count on Nick for. But now that Nick’s gone, I’ve changed my mind, and I’ve decided to call my lawyer and ask him to draw up new papers making you two the guardians.”

  “But you haven’t asked us if we agree to be guardians,” Seana said.

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Seana said. “But a question first: Your departure from this world isn’t in the works, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cross your heart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, as judges are wont to say, we’ll take it under advisement, okay?” Seana said.

  “And you, Charlie?” Trish asked.

  “I agree with Seana,” I said. “I’m flattered, Trish—honored, really—but I think we should give it some time. I know what you’re like when you get high, and I’m not sure, with the news about my dad, that I’m capable of thinking clearly right now, even if I seem to be rational…”

  “And you’ve been off your meds,” Seana said.

  “Okay, okay,” Trish s
aid. “Sure. And thank you both very much. Thank you. I feel better now—a lot better. I mean, not better that your father’s gone, Charlie, but…”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “…but even when I go back on my meds—lower dose, right?—and you’re gone and I try to get back to what passes for normal life, I know I’m going to stay firm about my decision. I just know it because it feels so right—it just does,” she said, and then to me: “Do you still want to have your own kids some day?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “If you didn’t have any, would that be a loss—something that would diminish your life?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I remember how enthusiastic you were when we talked about maybe having kids together, you and me—but you were calm too—like it was something you’d always known about yourself. It made me care for you a lot.”

  “When you and Nick had Gabe,” I said, “I was happy for you and sad for me—that I wasn’t the father.”

  Trish put her hand on mine. “You weren’t, Charlie. I know you worried about that, but you can trust me on this. You’re not Gabe’s father, okay?”

  “Max was just like a mother to me,” Seana said.

  “What?” Trish said.

  “Max was just like a mother to me,” Seana said again.

  “Oh,” Trish said, and nodded several times. “Sure. I think I understand.”

  “Do you really?” Seana said.

  “As I was saying,” I said, “my father and Freeman were on their way to a convention somewhere—Baltimore, I think—yes, it was definitely Baltimore because when Max came home he promised to take me to the aquarium there—and Freeman was ragging on one of the guys who check in your stuff curbside at the airport. I don’t know if the man was white or black—I don’t think my father would have made such a distinction…”

  “But if he memorialized the event in prose, he would have,” Seana said. “He would have been specific, so that you would have seen the man. You would have believed you knew him.”

  “I’ve always pictured the man as being black and toothless—the men who did that work at Bradley were mostly old and black—” I said “—and after Freeman checked his bags and left, my father apologized for the way Freeman had treated him—rude, and no tip to boot—and the baggage guy gave my dad a big grin, and said, ‘Oh that’s all right, sir—I’ve sent his bags on to Los Angeles.’”

  “Your father would have done the same had he been in that position,” Seana said. “Max had great empathy—a large capacity for negative capability.”

  “I don’t see what’s negative about what he did,” Trish said.

  Seana kissed Trish, and said she’d explain what she meant later. Then, so I wouldn’t feel left out, she kissed me too.

  “Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fare,” Seana said. “Said the pieman to Simple Simon, let me taste your wares.”

  “So?” I said.

  “So I met your father and moved in with him on a day in which he’d set out his wares. Nor was he wary. Nor was I. Though he can at times be wearing. Are you aware of that, Charlie, you only begotten son? Max the pieman, not Simple Simon…?”

  “Did you taste them—his wares, I mean?” Trish asked.

  Seana started laughing at Trish’s question, but, as if seizing her laugh in an invisible fist, stopped abruptly and, slowly and in a low voice, began reciting Max’s name, “Morris Herman Eisner… Morris Herman Eisner… Morris Herman Eisner…” and then started punching me, first with one fist and then with the other—left, right, left, right—while continuing to repeat his name: “Morris Herman Eisner… Morris Herman Eisner… Morris Herman Eisner.…”

  I didn’t try to block her blows, and when she saw I was just going to sit there and take it, she hit me a serious one-two combination, chest and shoulder, after which she got in my face and asked me if I was a wimp or what, and when was I going to hit back.

  “Maybe later,” I said.

  “Is that a threat or a promise?” she asked and, stepping away, tried to repeat her question—to show she was making a joke—but she couldn’t get the words out, and she collapsed on me. “Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, Charlie—what will we do without him? Tell me, please. Tell me…”

  “What I can do is to write the story you believe he wanted me to write,” I said.

  Seana sucked in an enormous batch of air then, and gradually got herself under control. She didn’t say anything, but she put an arm around me, which I took as her way of showing approval for my decision. The floor had been descending slowly and steadily, like the near half of a drawbridge falling back to where it was supposed to be, and now that Seana had stopped crying, I figured it was okay for me to let go, and so with her to one side of me, Trish to the other, and Anna holding tight to my right ankle with two hands, I let myself heave in and out for a while and, my throat good and raw even before I began, I roared out all the curses I knew, and then made up a few new ones.

  Charlie’s Story

  In order to understand Singapore, the most important thing to know, Nick had told me at our UMass reunion, was that you weren’t allowed to chew gum there. For natives, chewing gum—or even possession of gum—was a crime punishable by heavy fines, and for foreigners like me and Nick—or for tourists, or for anyone doing business there—cause for immediate deportation. The same went for using a toilet and not flushing when you were done.

  There was more: You could be fined for spitting, jaywalking, littering, chewing tobacco, or for owning obscene material, play money, or toy guns. For more serious crimes, there was prison and caning—they were big on caning—and for trafficking in drugs (500 grams of marijuana would do the job), the death penalty. Per capita, Singapore had the highest number of death penalties in the world.

  It also had the densest population of any country in the world except for Monaco, and the highest standard of living, along with the most desirable quality of life, especially for business and professional people, of any city or nation in Asia. An island of less than two hundred fifty square miles (not counting about twenty square miles of small islands that were largely uninhabited), it had all been rainforest once upon a time, the way some of Borneo still was.

  From a miserably poor third world country (its population was about the same as that of countries like Norway and Denmark—just over five million), it had, in less than half a century, transformed itself into the most efficient place in the world to do business—a completely air-conditioned, high-tech preserve that offered exceptional levels of service, comfort, and safety.

  Its harbor was the most gorgeous in the world, Nick claimed, more beautiful even than Hong Kong’s. Unusually wide and deep, it could accommodate more than seven hundred vessels at a time, large or small (Singapore became a major east-west port after the opening of the Suez Canal in the late nineteenth century, when it was part of the British empire), and at night, lights sparkling on the water as if they were stars in the darkest of skies, it was especially beautiful. But what, in addition to its physical beauty and technological efficiencies, made Singapore more deliciously inviting than Hong Kong, according to Nick, was that, whereas Hong Kong was vibrant and exciting—Shanghai, Rome, and New York City wrapped up in an exquisite Asian paradise—Singapore was blissfully bland.

  To live in Singapore, Nick explained—despite its ethnic mix (Chinese, Maylay, Indian), and despite the food, customs, and traditions that came with these cultures, along with the cultural residue from the British, and from the World War Two Japanese occupation—was to live nowhere. And given what the world was like, Nick had concluded, living nowhere was the place to be.

  His theories about living nowhere were hardly new—he’d been pushing the same line at UMass (and not long after he’d quit the football team, early in his junior year—he’d been All Conference at halfback the previous season, with pro scouts showing interest), when he’d carry on about the homogenization and Americanization of the world
: how instead of living somewhere, people were now living anywhere.

  If you were transported blindfolded to a shopping mall in Houston or Seattle, Atlanta or New Orleans or Boston, he’d point out, and you took off your blindfold, how would you know where you were? All across America, small towns were dying, and the people who lived in them were praying for Wal-Marts and contracts for new prison construction to save them. Large cities, ravaged by crime and drugs, were rotting away, and if and when they renewed themselves, they did so in ways that made them look like every other city trying to renew itself. Whereas until recently most people had grown up somewhere—in towns, cities, and neighborhoods whose identities were marked by particular cultures, ethnicities, and traditions—most of us now lived anywhere. So that the secret, Nick said, was not to want to drown in yearnings for what things used to be like, or might be like again, but to see that living anywhere was merely a way-station on the road to something infinitely better: to be living nowhere, and that, he said, was what would set you free.

  The thing to do, therefore, he argued, was not to get trapped by the past or the future, but—how Zen could you get? he’d laugh—to accept the world and yourself for what they were, to live in the moment, and—not quite as Zen—to rejoice in earthly pleasures. And there was no better place in the world to do this than in Singapore.

  After my father had met Nick a few times, he talked about him—this when I’d come home mid-week (I lived on campus at UMass, about a dozen miles away in Amherst) in order to pick up hiking gear for a trip Nick, Trish, and I were planning to Mount Washington—in a way he rarely talked about any of my friends, telling me he found him remarkably intelligent, but cautioning me to be wary of him.

  My father was married to his fourth wife at the time, Geraldine Strober, a professor of chemistry at Hampshire College. About seven months later, Geraldine, thirty-six at the time (two decades younger than Max), would die of ovarian cancer, and my father, honoring her wish not to die in a hospice or hospital, would care for her at home through her final months. On this night, however, she was as delightful and warm—as seemingly healthy—as she’d ever been, telling stories about growing up as an army brat at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri, where her father had served, and where her grandfather, a major with the Sixth Infantry, had become friends with Major Tadeo Terriagaki, an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army who spent six months attached to the Sixth Infantry, and who, a few years after his stay at Jefferson Barracks, would figure prominently in the attack on Pearl Harbor.