By Danny Rose

April 29, 2011

Incident on a Train

By DANIEL ASA ROSE

The guy behind me on the train was whispering into his phone, something about his soon-to-be-ex demanding the house on the river. Something about how he wakes up nauseated, almost as if he were undergoing chemo, which he would prefer because at least cancer would be an enemy he could commit to hating instead of being conflicted the way he was, still loving his pre-ex but needing to fight her as hard as he could. With my head against the window in the seat ahead, I was feeling vaguely nauseated myself, when I became conscious that a woman’s voice was calling out weakly from the front of the crowded compartment. “Help. Someone help me.”

Four or five tall men from various blue upholstered seats were already standing and moving sturdily toward her up the aisle. Soon I was among them, though not at all sturdy, and in my socks.

At the front of the train car, in the two seats that always face each other, a big man with a wild, vacant gaze was drooling, locked in a rigid forward position; in the opposite seats, a young mother was trying to protect her two little children from his blind lurch. The tall men were already restraining the man, though it was obvious he meant no harm but was operating from panic deep inside some sort of seizure.

The frightened mother was whimpering, “I thought he was just trying to be friendly, but then — ” as other men hustled her out of her seat and into the aisle with us. She and her children looked frozen with shock despite being encased in thick parkas.

“I’m a dad, give me the little one,” I said, and lifted her in my arms. The lightness of her being flooded me with warm memories.

Everyone in the full compartment was transfixed by the commotion. Our posse moved down the aisle to where two worried-looking people were gesturing that they had given up their seats. We got the mother and her children into the seats and sat them down.

The older girl stood against the window in her black snow boots while I slid the little one into her mother’s arms. I leaned over the mother and rubbed the back of her parka to try to make her tears go away.

Two or three nights earlier, I saw a video of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler on “American Idol” comforting a contestant’s disabled fiancée in her wheelchair, rubbing her head and neck as he murmured kind words in her ear, and that’s essentially what I found myself doing. Funny, because I always thought I hated Steven Tyler. That rubbery face seemed sexually infantile, as if he were halfway between a tantrum and an orgasm, but here I was taking guidance from his treatment of the woman. I was doing the same thing, rubbing and rubbing and speaking words of comfort to the children: “He didn’t mean any harm, he was having a medical problem, your mother is just a little stunned but everyone is safe.”

I kept it up until the mother came to herself enough to smile and to begin hugging her children extra well. I stood up; my back stiff. I turned and touched the tall men on their arms with admiration. “Thank you,” I told them, “you acted so fast!” Checking the front of the car, I could see that the drooling man was being attended to by two capable-looking conductors.

I made my way to my seat in my socks, keeping my gaze down because I felt the eyes of many people on me. When I got to my seat, the guy behind me was off his phone.

“Are they going to be all right?” he asked me.

“Yes, everyone’s fine,” I told him.

I hesitated, then said, “I want you to know that I couldn’t help overhearing a little of what you were saying on the phone before, not a lot but just enough to tell me that you and I are having an identical crisis.”

He stiffened, unsure whether to take offense or be embarrassed.

“I’m going through it, too,” I said, “and you were using some of the same words I use these daysto try to explain how horrible it is.”

His face softened. “Good to know I’m not alone,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, “I bet half the people on this train are going through times just as bad.”

That cheered us both a bit.

I like a few things about the piece, which, like a lot of these 'Lives' essays, has a specific and intended shape. Something happens to the narrator between the moment when he first listens to the "pre-ex ambivalence" conversation and he allies himself with the man behind him: he has a chance to go back into becoming the strong family-connected dad, reassuring the mother and children as if they four formed the family he is now losing, or seeing fall apart. The framing device and its relationship with the seemingly random event that happens in between is wonderful.

It seems to be this writer's style to yolk together disparate things, thus the title of his book at the bottom of the page. The Steven Tyler paragraph throws us at first, but it too, is shaped: it ends on the narrator becoming part of that family. And why is he watching American Idol? Are we to guess that he is not connecting with his own family at home, or that he is watching it with his (older, no longer carry-able) kids?