An American Dream 

(This piece was the featured story in Necessary Fiction the week of October 24, 2012.)

The 100th Floor 

In all his days as a window washer, he had never once seen a door on the outside of the hundredth floor, until that day.

They'd started at the roof, as always, plunging their small platform over the edge and then riding it down, little by little. They enjoyed each other's company, but even more, they enjoyed the silence, the silence and the squeaking sounds as they worked over the glass. They enjoyed their own never-ending rhythm, fanning in graceful arcs, fanning and dunking and drying, complementing one other, filling in the limits of each other's reach.

They almost never looked inside the windows; they almost never cared to. The people inside were murky shadows, like ghosts, or underpaintings, or characters in an old, washed-out silent film. Their shapes distorted as the windows were doused, then wiped dry, doused, then wiped dry, and the men on the scaffold noticed the people inside only sometimes, the way one notices shells on the ocean floor, revealed after a passing wave, then hidden, then forgotten.

They loosened the ties on the pulleys and lowered themselves, and started again, window after window, floor after floor.

Outside, the Sun was an arm's reach away.

Outside, the wind was cruel.

Outside, they brought with them their own weather. On cloudy days, their scaffolding would sometimes seem to ascend above the clouds into a sunshine that no one on the ground could see. On sunny days, such as today, the window washers would sometimes disappear into a small cloud that hovered over their platform, perhaps fashioned from the water they were carrying and from the heat of their own breath.

It was from such a cloud, and dangling from a heaven-high roof, they wiped at the windows again and again and again; and in an otherwise unremarkable moment, their little cloud parted, and that was when he saw it—the door, high above him, high and to the right: a glossy black door with a brass knob that reflected the sunlight into his eyes, a heavy wooden door set into the vertical plane of steel and glass, an impossible door.

The other men were already unfurling the platform down the building and bringing the door farther out of reach, and he knew then that if he didn't reach for it, didn't at least try, then he'd never have a chance again, and never know what lay on its other side; and without a word to his colleagues and friends (for they preferred to work in silence), he stepped off the platform; and they never did understand why.

What a View 

Yesterday a man jumped from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, fell eighty stories to a sixth-floor landing, and died instantly. His name and motives are unknown. Police say he was about thirty years old, that he vaulted the ten-foot fence, and that the entire act was caught on the building's security cameras. The tragedy of the facts in this story are matched only by the tragedy of the facts that are not known.

"Why" is the question that casts the thickest shadow over suicide, followed perhaps by "how" — the head-scratching just barely precedes the rubber-necking. Why? Why why why why why? So many scenarios present themselves (a holiday weekend, for God's sake), but part of the chill it strikes in me comes from the fact that I'll never know. I'll never know whether it was planned and laborious (did he draw out the moment with a "walking meditation," up the 1860 stairs?), or an impulsive sprint? (How does one "vault" a 10-foot fence?, is one obvious question.) Did he give any consideration to the passersby on the street below; did he aim for the sixth-floor landing? Had he spoken to the tourists on the elevator, made eye contact with any children as he tipped over the top of the fence? Had he done research? Did he know that at least thirty others made the same jump before him? Did he plan a last meal? Had he taken out his trash, fed his pets, made any last phone calls? Was there an audience for his act, or an intended one? Did he want someone to feel very bad? Or was there no one?

The moment he let go of the fence, did he regret it? In the seconds that followed? How many seconds were there? How many thoughts does one have in those seconds?

Did he call anyone's name?

Was he crying?

It was a perfect, clear autumn day. From that height, he would have been able to see all ends of this enormous city, and still he decided there was nothing for him. He must have stopped to look, his last view of anything in this world. What did he see? God, what a view!

[Addendum]

P.S. Remembering David Okrent

While I'm going on about the morbid... I remember years ago reading a story in the Boston Globe: the body of a Harvard student was found one cold winter morning, dead from a single stab wound to the neck, on Revere Beach, miles from where he lived in Cambridge. No one was clear on what he'd been doing out there, or whether the death was a suicide or homicide.

The most striking detail about the story was buried a few paragraphs down: his parents learned of their son's death while eating breakfast in their Evanston, Illinois home — not from the police or the university, but from an agency asking if they would like to donate their son's organs. "He's a big boy," the father replied. "Why don't you ask him yourself?" The caller, realizing the parents hadn't been notified, hung up. The father spent the rest of the morning trying to reach his son on the phone , only reaching his answering machine, with an ever-longer beep.

As time went by, more facts came out in the case: the boy had a history of depression, and the knife found near the body was his own. But he had also just enthusiastically changed majors, citing better future job placement as a reason. There was evidence that pointed to suicide and evidence that seemed to cancel it out, and the police report, finally, was inconclusive. At the center of this sad story's grisly details, the most disturbing aspect of it is how much will never ever be known....