I spend more time than I should probably admit thinking about alternate universes.
I imagine anyone in a situation like mine, anyone who had a single, monumental event dramatically reshape their life, probably wonders what else the universe might have intended for them. Of course, everyone has experienced some decision or event that proved a dramatic inflection point, but the degree to which it changed things varies.
The more I’ve tried to imagine what my life would look like had my dad lived, the more I realize it’s an exercise not unlike staring at an opaque box of indeterminate size and trying to guess what’s inside: A wedding ring? Three zebras? The world’s entire supply of cheddar cheese? Over time, I accepted that I can never know the answer by flipping the question on its head—if my dad had lived, would I ever have imagined this?
While I long ago wrestled those thoughts into submission, here in Morristown, they’re once more struggling to get free. I hear them screaming from the void in the back of my mind where I banished them, pleading for me to reconsider by shouting six otherwise innocuous words.
What if we had stayed here?
That’s why I’m avoiding my family friends while I’m here.
I call them family friends, by which I mean they are friends of my family, of my mom and dad, of a unit that has not existed in more than 20 years. My mom keeps in touch, but I don’t, and when I have seen them, maybe twice in the past decade, they assumed a level of familiarity that made me uncomfortable.
To them, I remain the petulant four-year-old who hated of being addressed as Scottie, and told them that I was “Scott without the ie” so many times that they called me that instead. To me, they serve as glimpses through the looking glass, human reminders of thoughts my mind fights daily.
In the heart of Morristown, steps from my hotel, the town’s commercial district surrounds a square-ish park. As I remember it from visits past, the family-owned businesses packed the area, such as the camera store where my Mom worked for the couple of months between my parents’ arrival in town and my birth, a fixture of this area for years.
My last visit, in late 2004, I was shocked to see large-scale changes. Behemoths had replaced those mom-and-pop establishments: A department store took up a huge chunk of one block, my sister’s childhood best friend worked at a Starbucks, and I vaguely remember spotting a Gap as well. Still, the camera store remained, and a family friend’s teenage son worked there. A record store called Scotti’s, another long-lived local business (albeit part of an area chain) sat a block from the square, and a block or two beyond that, a Baskin-Robbins which we always stopped at when we visited town.
This is how I remember the town as I walk through the area. This is what I expect to see, with varying results.
At some point in the last four and a half years, the town transformed yet again. Where there were once family businesses, and then national chain retailers, now financial operations dominate the scene: Bank of America, Chase, and Scottrade all operate on the same block.
I stroll around the edge of the town square, noticing of the out-of-scale condo building on the west edge of the area, with a banner on the scaffolding boasting that the building is “Over 50% sold!” In this economy, I suppose that’s an accomplishment, but it still feels strange to see condos for sale in Morristown. I long ago idealized this town as the picture of suburbia, all four-bedroom houses with two-car garages, the kind of place where we walked to synagogue or school. Maybe it was. Maybe it even still is, and this particular area is the exception that reproves the rule, but if I had to bet, I’d guess that optimism is misplaced.
Morristown changed.
I wander the area, listening to the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album—which leaked a few weeks ago—while stopping into Scotti’s to buy the same on CD. Wandering might be understating my intent here, though: I’m actually looking for that Baskin-Robbins, but after several blocks of searching, and no hits on Google Maps, I concede defeat. It’s probably a Wells Fargo now.
When I accept defeat, another memory comes to me, of a patisserie my mom loved, which I remember as having fantastic croissants. It should be near here. Should be, but isn’t.
Morristown, you are failing me.
Soon after I give up and double back on my route, the music emanating from my headphones abruptly switches from the synth-punk of It’s Blitz! to “The Sound of Settling,” and I respond by pressing the remote dangling from my headphone wire. My insurance company is on the other end.
Last night, I reported the accident to them, and earlier today, I received a phone call from the car dealership, who gave me an estimate of about $2600 to fix my car. Fortunately, my deductible is only $500. Unfortunately, my insurance doesn’t cover the cost of a rental.
By the time the insurance conversation concludes, I’m outside the restaurant where I ate dinner last night, and decide to stop in again for lunch. As I grab a seat at the bar, I’m a little shocked by how many of the bar stools are occupied at 3:00 in the afternoon, until I notice what’s on TV. Forty miles away, the Yankees are celebrating the debut of the new Yankee Stadium, a $1.5 billion monument to all that is wrong in baseball, if not the world. Fortunately, the Indians have refused to let the Evil Empire inaugurate the stadium the way the team had hoped—in the top of the eighth inning, Cleveland leads 10-2.
For a moment, my world feels right again.
Not long after I finish my lunch, the Indians finish off the Yankees, and I skirt the edge of the town square once more on my way back to my hotel. As I walk, I remember another visit here, years ago.
One person who expressed interest in speaking to me for this project was a woman named Suse Lowenstein. Mrs. Lowenstein’s elder son, Alexander, was one of the Syracuse students onboard Pan Am 103, and she wanted to share her story with me, but unfortunately, the scheduling didn’t work out—she and her husband are out of the country until June.
While I’m doing my best to respect the privacy of people who didn’t opt in to speaking with me, Mrs. Lowenstein tried, at least, and Kirsty mentioned her work a couple days ago in Syracuse. As such, I feel like Mrs. Lowenstein’s story deserves paraphrasing.
Everyone who lost somebody on Pan Am 103 dealt with it in their own personal way. Some sought therapy, some sought solace in their friends, and at least one woman moved her family down to Memphis over the vocal objections of her son. As a sculptor, Suse Lowenstein channeled her grief into her art.
She began with a sculpture of herself at the moment she heard the horrible news, a project which became the first in a series portraying the various emotions she went through over time. Then, it grew, attracting other mothers and widows who posed for Lowenstein, each portraying their own grief. Many of the resulting sculptures contained some possession of the deceased inside.
During a visit to Morristown in the summer of 1993, we discovered these sculptures on display in the town square, and my mom mentioned that she had considered posing for one of them. She never did, but enough women have for the collection to grow to 76 pieces. For now, the Lowensteins are storing the art at their home, but the couple hopes to find a more permanent location—Syracuse, perhaps—and possibly bronze the art so that it can live on long after all of us.
At my hotel, I field a phone call from my mom, who wants to know the status of my car before she leaves tomorrow for what will be a 10-day cruise to London. I assure her that everything will be fine, that there’s nothing she can do, and that she should have a good time at sea. After we finish talking, I send out a flurry of emails, trying to get all of my appointments tomorrow confirmed and lined up properly, and then change into my gym clothes and head downstairs to the fitness center in the same complex as my hotel.
I hop on an elliptical machine and start exercising, tuning the built-in TV screen to tonight’s episode of The Office instead of listening to yet another podcast. About two minutes into what ultimately turns into a 45-minute workout, a cute brunette hops on the machine next to me and gets to work.
Suddenly, my self-consciousness meter rockets to 11.
I try to steal glances of her in the mirrored wall in front of us while making it appear that this is part of my natural motion, but with my natural motion already a mess, this fails spectacularly. While I make a fool of myself by splitting my attention between fictional denizens of Scranton and the girl beside me, my mind goes to that place I know it shouldn’t, and I wonder if, under different circumstances, I would know her already.
Exhausted, embarrassed, and thoroughly in my own head about it all, I slink back to my hotel room and shower before heading out again to grab a late meal at a diner a couple of blocks away. The food proves unspectacular, and the atmosphere worse. I’m always uncomfortable occupying a restaurant booth by myself, and the group of four twenty-somethings a booth over chatting each others’ ears off sullies my mood further as I stare at my iPhone.
Next door to the diner, there’s a bar which I passed on my way in and thought nothing of at the time. But now, leaving, fumbling to plug my headphones into my phone so I can listen to a song and a half on the walk back to my hotel, the bar and its patrons grab my attention. Inside the window, a DJ works turntables, and beyond him, the bar looks more than half-full with people my own age dancing and talking and generally having a good time.
I never enjoy walking past a visibly good time, though my resentment of such things varies depending on the circumstances. Obviously, some good times are better than others, and a few seconds of observation can usually determine whether such a time is my type or not. Here, though, I can’t know.
I can’t know because I don’t know these people, sure. But the bigger factor is that here, in this town, I don’t know myself. Or, rather, I know myself, but I don’t know my Morristown self—I know who I am, but not who I should have been, and, without knowing who I should have been, I can’t know what my interaction with these people should have been either.
Perhaps they would have been nobodies to me. Perhaps my father would have applied for that transfer to Montana that my mom says he joked about whenever she complained about Morristown’s frigid winters. Still, there’s a chance—a significant one—that I would know these people. Maybe they would have been friends, or merely classmates, or even enemies. Maybe one of those guys would have shoved me into my locker every day of high school, or maybe (and this, given my size and build, is substantially less likely), I would have done that to them. Maybe, in a different life, I would be inside that very bar, dancing with one of those very girls, or maybe I would be avoiding it as I am now, only for different reasons. Maybe that bar contains a would-have-been love or a would-have-been heartbreak.
Or maybe, just maybe, I would be walking past that bar right now, not going in because I have to get up tomorrow morning to take the train into the city for work.
If that were the case, then that hypothetical life and this one aren’t so different.
Tomorrow, Manhattan awaits.