This is a piece of fiction excerpted from a larger project I’m working on, but I have been thinking about New York - and how it feels to leave New York - a lot this week, so I thought I’d post it here.
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In 1947, a twenty-three-year-old girl named Evelyn McHale wrote on a piece of paper, “He is much better off without me…I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody.” Then she crossed it out, stuck the paper in her purse, and leapt off the Empire State Building. She landed on a limousine eighty-six floors below in eerily perfect repose - her feet bare, her hands in white gloves, her make-up still thick and perfect in the way middle-class women in the 1940s wore their make-up thick and perfect. Life magazine ran a picture of her corpse lying atop the wreckage of the car it crushed – the Picture Of The Week! The photographer titled it “The Most Beautiful Suicide.”
Last night some guy whose name has not yet been released by authorities followed Evelyn McHale’s journey out of obscurity. His picture’s not in the paper because unlike the beautiful and perfect Evelyn McHale, this guy splattered on the sidewalk in front of a bus. But the fact that he even reached the ground is remarkable. In the decades since Evelyn McHale became famous, the people who decide such things decided that the people who install such things should install steel netting on the sides of the Empire State Building for the sole purpose of stopping people from becoming this kind of ghastly celebrity. Modern jumpers attempt their leap from this mortal coil only to find themselves confused but very much alive as they sway in the wind a few floors down. But the guy who obliterated himself last night defied the odds. He started at the opposite end of the platform, ran as fast as he could towards the edge, leapt out over the railing and cleared the nets.
I wonder if the guy Evelyn McHale didn’t want to marry was angry when he heard about her suicide. I wonder if he shouted despondent clichés like, “Why didn’t she talk to me?!” or “I should have been there!” I wonder if he kept a copy of that Life magazine picture and late at night when the woman he settled for and the kids they made were asleep, I wonder if he took the picture out and looked at her corpse and whispered quietly again and again, “Evelyn Evelyn Evelyn…it wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
Maybe Evelyn McHale was gay. Maybe the idea of male penetration – the grunting, the sweat, the slobber – made her queasy, even with a good man like her soon-to-be husband. And it being 1947, she had no outlet, no way to communicate to her not-worth-sticking-around-for, never-to-be husband that things weren’t going to work out for them — not because anything they did, but because of who they were.
Did she consider less spectacular, less newsworthy ways to die? Did she try to get a gun? Did she spend an evening in her kitchen holding a butcher knife, failing to work up the courage? Did she consider pills but ultimately decide they were too pathetic? I hope not. I hope she knew from the moment she decided to leave New York that her only way out was to crash back into it.
The captain is making an announcement. Once we’re airborne our flight time will be an five hours and forty-five minutes. It’s going to be a little bumpy on the way out, then it should be smooth sailing the rest of the way to LAX. We’re next in line for take-off.
What I really admire about Evelyn McHale and that soon-to-be-named guy who splattered the sidewalk last night: they left New York on their own terms - their escapes documented, their mysteries celebrated. Most of us come to New York and live in New York and leave New York without New York ever noticing.
The woman next to me in the aisle seat is reading Confederates In The Attic. She finally finished reading that sequel to The Da Vinci Code, whatever it’s called, on her flight to New York so she picked this book off a shelf in her daughter’s apartment because it looked interesting. Her daughter’s doing very well in advertising so she paid for her to come visit for her sixtieth birthday. She likes visiting New York but she doesn’t understand how anyone could actually live here. Too many people! So far she doesn’t like the book very much. The author is condescending towards southern people but she figures that’s understandable since the writer’s a Jewish Yankee who won a Pulitzer Prize, and she hates not finishing things so she’s plowing ahead.
Why did Evelyn McHale write it down? “He’s better off without me. I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody.” Who was she writing it to? And why did she cross it out? Will the splattered guy also have famous last words? If I was in charge of carving his tombstone it would just say, “He did it. He cleared the nets.”
We’re flying over Manhattan now. The woman in the aisle seat beside me has her eyes closed and she’s taking deep breaths through her nostrils. She doesn’t like flying. It’s not the crashing the scares her. If the plane’s going to crash it just means it’s her turn to go and God wants her to come home. No, what scares her is the all the bumping around, the turbulence. You just never know how bad it’s going to be or how long it’s going to last.
