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The New York City Bus

Anne Turner Taub

    Simon Berry was a loner. It was understandable. He had been the only child of two elderly parents who had tried their best not to ignore him, but were not very successful at it. At times they left him home alone, having forgotten that he even existed. But he was not an unhappy child. He did not mind being alone, never felt lonely. As a child he had friends, well, not really, and as an adult he had even less. But he was a very calm, not at all unhappy, person. In fact, people were amazed at his calmness, “How can you be so quiet, so calm, after this happened,” or “that happened”.
    In fact, you might say, he had never felt a real passion for anything, except perhaps an occasional overwhelming desire for peanuts. In fact, his acquaintance with anger had never existed until he began taking the Second Avenue bus to work. There was no subway on this side of town—oh, yes, the Second Avenue subway would one day materialize—it had been a gleam in some politician’s eye for over thirty years and now, all these years later, it was still gestating in hopes of a successful delivery. In fact, you might say, Simon had never really felt the pleasure of red-hot anger at anything. Until, of course, when the wheelchair lady appeared in his life. After many years of pleasant, non-disturbing non-emotions, he had carefully learned to experience the feeling of what he considered truly justified hate. Generally speaking, he had no ill feelings for old people. Actually, he liked them. Though they appeared with their time-consuming canes and walkers, they had the decency to have their doctors’ appointments at off-peak hours. In fact, he was often amused at their psychedelic orange-red or Count Dracula black hair. It made him think of the joke that one knew when a woman was a widow, because at that time her hair changed from gray to black.
    But most of all, he hated the woman in the wheelchair. For the first time in his life he had learned the self-satisfying pleasure of red-hot fury. Why didn’t she die, he asked himself. Why doesn’t she stay home and take her medication, talk about her aches and pains with her physical therapist, and dribble over photos of other old people she couldn’t talk to anyway, because they were all dead.
    Why did he hate her? Because he told himself fiercely, she should not even be allowed to travel, except in a hearse. Every morning at rush hour, she came at exactly the same time he did, giving him a warm smile of recognition, assuming that he felt a typical New York kinship, based on years of taking the same bus at the same time with never a word of conversation except her cheery hello. He never answered, never smiled back, but it had no effect. She continued to smile at him each morning. She was always the first passenger allowed on the bus. All the other passengers waited patiently in the rain, or the heat, or the cold, or the snow, or whatever the gods had decided to test them with on this day, while the whole torture-boarding of The Lift began.
     First came the insistent beep-beep announcing that the lift was now about to be lowered, so that every one could fall back out of the way, and into each other. Once the lift had been lowered to the ground, a small flap raised itself up, then flopped down so that the wheelchair could roll itself up onto the lift. Once that was done, the flap raised itself vertically up into the air so the wheel chair could not roll off. When the lift was elevated to normal level, the bus driver rolled the wheelchair off the lift, ready to place it in its “assigned spot.” By this time Simon, who had never known real frustration in his life, was green with impatience. But the ordeal was not over. There was more to come.
    The “assigned spot” consisted of a three-seat section occupied by passengers who now had to leave in order to raise the evacuated seats back up against the wall to accommodate the wheelchair. While these unfortunate passengers were scrambling to see if there were still any empty seats in this rush hour frenzy, the bus driver maneuvered the wheelchair into that space, and was now required to bend down and strap first the back and then the front of the wheelchair so it would not roll around once the bus began to move. Having settled the old lady in place, the bus driver now went back to his seat, the would-be passengers still waiting outside patiently. He lowered the flap, then raised the lift and slid it back into its original position. During all this activity, the strident warning of the beep-beep continued its unwelcome symphony.
    At that point, the people, waiting outside in various states of panic and anxiety about being late to work, were now allowed to board the bus.
    Since the old lady left the bus the stop before Simon did, he had to relive the whole process once again. Simon could not help it—he loathed, detested, and despised the woman from that day forward.
    Simon owned a store of exotic plants from all over the world—a store that was the only one of its kind. He had learned, patiently, how to adjust water, light, heat and soil to each individual exotic specimen. except for one—the vermosa alynata. It was as if his very existence on earth would be justified, if he could only grow that one plant. But no matter how he tried, no matter how much it cost him to have the alynata sent to him from the far ends of the earth, it would wither away mercilessly.
    Today, he was thinking about Dr. Anna Mapes—the only person in the whole country—in the whole western hemisphere—who could successfully grow the vermosa alynata—in fact, make it thrive to the point where it propagated and produced little alynatas. Dr. Mapes’ fame was legendary. She had written volumes on horticulture that were assigned in every horticultural college in the country and in most of Europe. Her articles were so numerous that you could not open a horticultural magazine without one. He had tried time and again to contact her but to no avail. He would give every penny he had if she would tell him her secret. His secret fantasy was that she would be youngish and good-looking and they would start a romance—they certainly had the same interests.
    Turning away from his fantasy, Simon noticed Don Mills entering the bus and smiling as he rushed to sit next to Simon. Don had a small garden upstate and was eternally grateful to Simon for gardening hints since he, himself, had been born totally without a green thumb despite his love of plants. He had bought plants from Simon for years, all of which, despite Simon’s thorough, patient instructions, had preferred to commit suicide rather than live anywhere near him. Still, Don loved to talk to Simon about plants and listened rapturously as Simon began to tell him about his fruitless efforts to grow the alynata.
    Just as Simon was explaining about his last hopeless attempt to contact Dr. Mapes, the old witch in the wheelchair near them, said “Excuse me, I couldn’t help hearing—” Simon stopped breathing for a second. There was no way she was going to make a friend of him or whatever she wanted at that moment. He growled as calmly as he could, “Madam we are deep in a very important conversation”. Then, he couldn’t help it. He finally let out all his fury at her, “See your doctor. You obviously need some stronger medication”, and turned away to talk to Don. She said nothing, just subsided back into her wheelchair quietly. As he watched her subside, a dark cloud of suspicion wafted its way through his head. Oh no, he thought, she couldn’t be, never, never.
    When it was time for her to get off the bus, always the stop before Simon had to, the whole agonizing rigmarole started all over again. The driver stopped the bus, let the passengers outside wait in the heat and humidity today, unbuckled the straps on the wheelchair and proceeded with the time-consuming operation of helping her exit the bus. Simon felt good. It was the first time he had ever shown fury to a woman, or anyone for that matter, and it was exciting, and, he felt, righteously, a very justifiable experience.
    The next day, as he waited in line for the bus—there she was, she never skipped a day, but again that tiny worm of suspicion raised its ugly head, and sure enough—she wheeled over to him and, handing him an envelope, said, “I am Dr. Anna Mapes. I heard you discussing the vermosa alynata yesterday and in this envelope is its seed and the instructions you will need to grow it, and, I am sure, you will, of course, follow them precisely.”
    He took the small package, but stood there stunned, not knowing what to believe. Dr. Mapes continued, “There is one secret ingredient you must never forget to include. You are aware, I am sure, that plants like to be talked to. Some say this is because we exude carbon dioxide when we breathe and plants need it to survive. How true this is, I do not know. But I know the alynata is extremely sensitive to the human voice. And you must speak to it kindly and lovingly every day for a few minutes, or it will shrivel up and die immediately. I don’t know why it has such sensitivity to the human voice—I have researched it for years, but cannot find the answer. Your voice is the most essential ingredient in fostering its growth. Good luck with it—I have included my card in the envelope; call me if you should have any problems.”
    With that she turned away and went to the head of the line in order to board the bus which had just come up, and to start the whole torturous process once again.
    Simon just stood there in disbelief, not knowing what to make of the whole thing. As it happened, he never saw her again. The next day she became violently ill, and died a few days later.
    Despite his doubts, Simon followed her instructions assiduously, and the plant began to grow. And each day for a few minutes, in a kind of therapy session, he would tell the plant about his activities of the day before. He continued doing this day after day, and, as he did so, he found that he started to talk to other people in the same way he spoke to the plant, and as they began responding, he discovered that for the first time in his life, he now had a group of friends, and even, as time went on, a relationship with a woman, with whom he was talking of marriage.
    This continued for ten years, and then one day something terrible happened. Burglars had tried to break into the store. They had been unable to take anything, but had completely destroyed the custom-made brass knob and fixture on the door, which had been made for him in Italy, and was the only one of its kind. “Why did they have to destroy it?” he asked himself in anger, and he began to scowl and mutter, and wish all kinds of evil on the heads of the burglars. Then he panicked as he realized he was standing right by the alynata, and it had heard every word.
    He waited, not daring to breathe, for the plant to shrivel up and die. But nothing happened. It continued blooming as merrily as ever. The next day, he again waited to see what would happen, but the plant thrived happily and even produced a new bloom.
    Simon began to feel a bit suspicious, and the next day, he decided to try an experiment. He shouted and screamed, and used all the swear words he knew, both of them, but nothing happened. The alynata continued in perfect health.
    And then for the first time in his life, he was engulfed by a murderous rage he had never known before—for ten years, he had been the victim of a scam by a bag of bones in a wheelchair, and feelings of humiliation and shame, came over him.
    After that, Simon did nothing but go to his store, take care of the plants, and come home, never leaving the house for anything.
    After a while, friends began calling him, they missed him, and wondered if anything was wrong. His fiancée called to see if there was something she could do for him. For the first time in his life, Simon realized there were people who really cared about him, and, amazingly, people whom he cared about.
    Simon got out of bed and left the house to go for a walk around the block. He realized that on that day ten years ago, the alynata was not the only seed that Dr. Anna Mapes, world-renowned horticulturist, had planted. At that moment, there appeared an object in Simon’s eye that in any other human being would have been recognized immediately as a tear.

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