The Invention of Everything Else (3 page)

"It's getting cold," I tell her.

"Yes."

"Perhaps you should come back to the hotel. I can make you your own box on the sill. It will be warmer there. It's New Year's Eve."

She stops to consider this. She doesn't usually like the other birds that hang around my windowsill.

"Please. I worry."

"Hmm." She considers it.

"Come back to the hotel with me."

"Excuse me?" a deep male voice answers. Not hers.

I look up. Before me is a beat cop. His head is nearly as large as Goethe's bronze one. His shoulders are as broad as three of me. He carries a nightstick, and seeing no other humans around, he seems to imagine that I am addressing him. The thought makes me laugh.

Any human passing by would think that I am sitting alone in the park at night, talking to myself. This is precisely my problem with so many humans. Their hearing, their sight, all their senses, have been dulled to receive information on such limited frequencies. I muster a bit of courage. "Do we not look into each other's eyes and all in you is surging, to your head and heart, and weaves in timeless mystery, unseeable, yet seen, around you?"

"What in God's name are you talking about?" the policeman asks.

"Goethe," I say, motioning to the statue behind him.

"Well, Goethe yourself on home now, old man. It's late and it's cold. You'll catch your death here."

She is still perched on one corner of the bust's pedestal.
Old man.
Karl Fischer cast the head in 1832; then the Goethe Club here in New York took it for a bit until they sent it off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum didn't have much use for it, so they "donated" it to Bryant Park a few years ago. Goethe's head has been shuffled off nearly as many times as I have.

"I know how you feel," I tell the head.

Goethe stays quiet.

"Come on, old-timer," the policeman says, reaching down to grab my forearm. It seems I am to be escorted from the park.

"This clown's got no idea who I am," I say to her. "He thinks I'm a vagrant."

She looks at me as if taking a measure. She alone cuts through the layers of years and what they've done. She is proud of me. "Why don't you just tell him?" she asks. "You invented radio and alternating current."

Goethe finally speaks up. "Oh, yes," he says. "I'm
sure
he'd believe you."

The policeman can't hear either of them. Even if he could, Goethe is right—this officer would never believe a word of it. "You're the King of England, I suppose," the cop says. "We get about ten King of Englands in here every week."

The cop has his bear paws latched around my forearm and is steering me straight out of the park. Resistance, I have a strong feeling, would prove ineffective.

"Are you coming?" I ask her, but when I look back at the pedestal, she is gone. The solidity of the police officer's grip is the one certainty. She has flown away, taking all of what I know with her—the Hotel New Yorker, Smiljan, the pigeons, my life as a famous inventor.

***

You already asked me that question.

Yes, but we are just trying to be sure. Now, you have said that you have no memory of your activities on January 4th, and yet you have also said that you are certain you did not visit with Mr. Nicola Tesla, who was at that time a guest in your hotel. What we wonder is, how can you be certain you did not visit with him when you say you can't remember what you did?

I see.

Why don't you just tell us what you remember.

Mr. Tesla didn't do anything wrong.

Why don't you just tell us what you remember.

God said, "Let Tesla be," and all was light.

—B. A. Behrend

"—
LLO? HELLO?
"

Deep in the wilds of Bohemia, where the forest's depths —
CREAK
— remain uncharted, the river's waters —
SWOOSH
— untasted, and all signs of human habitation have succumbed to the growth —
SLITHER
— of green, is where this week's episode begins! It is here that the foolhardy Frank Travis has taken his new bride! Will the honeymoon set too soon? Ha! Ha! But wait. What's that I hear?
CHOPCHOP. CHOPCHOP
. A sound escapes from deep within a forest so thick that even the secrets told there never make it out alive. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
CHOPCHOPCHOP
.

"Hello? Frank?" The high strains of Delphine Davis's voice cut through the dark air of the trees, coming from on top of the mossy knoll where she and Frank had picnicked earlier. Delphine had fallen asleep, but now, awake, she cannot see Frank anywhere. In the sky, the sun is nearing the horizon line. "I'd better find Frank before the sun sets. Frank?" Delphine does her best to holler. "Frank!"

"Delphine!" An answer comes back. The voice is distant, but it gives her something to follow. Taking a deep breath —
HSHHH
— she steps into the wood and stands still for a moment. "My, it is dark in here. Why, I can hardly see a thing!"
WOOOOO
. The trunks of the trees are black and their canopy of strange and sprawling leaves blocks out nearly all the remaining daylight. As she starts off she trips immediately. "Aye!" Almost as if someone were trying to tell her,
Oh! Don't
go into the forest alone, Delphine.
Ha! Ha! She catches her fall, leaning against the massive trunk of a tree. "Well, that's strange," Delphine says. "This bark is warm." She pulls her hand away, startled by the strange feel of this tree. "Things here in Bohemia sure are different from Cincinnati."

"Delphine." The voice comes again, this time with an added muffled message. "Huhhhd!" was what it sounded like.

"Why 'huhhhd'? Whatever does that mean?"

Delphine walks on, all the while considering.

"Why on earth did we have to honeymoon in the wilds of Bohemia? All the other girls I know got cruises to Nassau or a week in Paris. But Frank Davis, well, he is a different sort of man, and I suppose that's why I love him. Plus, in some strange way I do find this forest to be charming, if a bit dark. I am certain I will remember it forever. Forever," Delphine says again and sighs, for that was the inscription they'd had wrought on the inside of their wedding bands. Forever! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Delphine walks on until she too hears the sound —
CHOPCHOP. CHOPCHOP.
"Why, that must be Frank!"
SQUISH. SQUISH. SQUISH.
The forest floor grabs at her feet as if trying to hold her. Brave and foolish, Delphine approaches the sound.

"C'mon, boys! Work quickly!"

"No, meesdur. We work for you
no
more. The men, they are scared. Too many ... too many..." And with that a large Slavic man begins to tremble. Delphine observes from behind the cover of one large tree. The Slav's great shoulders heave so that the ax he holds in his hand falls to the forest floor. As he bends to retrieve it the foreman raises a hairy whip up over his head — "
GASP
," Delphine gasps and quickly clamps a hand over her mouth.
CRACK
! The whip comes down across the giant's back.
AHHHGGGHG
!

"Back to work with you! And I don't want to hear any more hokum about man-eating trees that come alive at night. Hogwash! Phooey! These trees are gold! Gold, I tell you! Now get chopping!"

Delphine stands transfixed. "Man-eating trees!" She steps back, away from one trunk; she bumps into another. She spins quickly, and as she does, something catches her eye. A glint, a glimmer on the forest floor. She seizes upon it. There is something familiar in its shape— "Frank!" It's Frank's wedding band. The one she gave him only a few days ago. She checks inside. "Forever." Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

CRASH
! Delphine jumps up and begins to run wildly, thrashing through the trees. Branches grab her hair —
CREAK
— and garments. The rough trees yank her —
WHOOMP
— and seemingly move to block her way and—
Oh, why, Delphine?
—she loses her footing. Delphine falls to the forest floor just as the sun dips beneath the land and, "Aaaaahhhhhee!" she scre—

Louisa shuts the radio off, dousing the shrieks and the narrator's creepy laugh. She stands frozen for a moment, her fingers on the dial, looking over her shoulder. The skin of her back rises like a tiny bayoneted army marching up her spine. Prickles. Louisa tries to blend in with the furniture. She is scared to move in case a hungry oak tree has sneaked up behind her in the living room.

The click of the dial leaves behind a nice, thick silence. Still, Louisa imagines what is happening inside the radio. The roots of the trees are trying to pull Delphine under, and soon the miserly foreman will be dragged below ground, swallowed alive by the trees in punishment for his greed. Delphine will watch as the black dirt fills his screaming pink mouth. Delphine will probably live and Frank might also—it all depends on what kind of job he has. If he survives, then he will come rescue Delphine just as the man-eating trees have her in their hungry clutches, tearing the fabric of her bodice.

Louisa always knows how the story is going to end. And yet she makes the mistake of listening for too long rather frequently. Lost in the narrative, she'll quite suddenly, foolishly find herself paralyzed by fear. She won't dare get up from the couch to shut the radio off, as that would expose her back to the spider boy who wants to weave her into his web or the visitors who have arrived here aboard a spaceship in order to kidnap fertile young women to reproduce their horrid species or the mad butcher whose business is failing and so he is hiding behind the door with a cleaver, anxious to turn Louisa into ribs, a roast, and a London broil. Curled up on the couch, she'll pull a pillow over her head and sing a breathy version of
Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun
in order to muffle all the shrieks, sudden organ pipes, and creaking doors coming magically, terrifically, and terrifyingly from inside the small speaker box of her radio. She waits, frozen, until the
Magna Motors Music Hour
starts up, until she hears the first happy strains of Al Washburn's "Egyptian Ella" before standing again to make sure that the living room is clear of all villains.

It is absurd, and Louisa is smart enough to know that. At twenty-four she considers herself quite sophisticated in all other matters. A sharp city girl, frank, skeptical, and wise, with a desperate weakness for corny radio tales. Creaking doors, she knows, are not creaking doors but rather some sound man doing his best with a cotton clothesline wrapped tightly around a rosined dowel. And yet, each night, she's frightened just the same. There are the goose pimples. There are the shivers. And there goes Louisa's good sense, out the window and down the street, lost somewhere in the traffic and lights of New York City.

This fear is an unfortunate side effect of Louisa's love for the radio. It started out simply. As a young girl she had asked her father, Walter, how so many people, so many voices, could fit inside such a small box.

"I think we need to talk," he'd said and led her into the kitchen, the room for the most serious family business. There at the table he explained and Louisa listened, her mouth agape because Walter's explanation, rather than dispel any mystery, created an even larger one. Miniature actors squeezed inside each radio was silly, yes, but understandable. Magical waves of hidden sound, secret messages traveling around the globe just waiting to be decoded in Louisa's living room? That was a true mystery.

And so Louisa spent hours of her childhood tuning the dial, studying the air around her, trying to catch a glimpse of these sneaky waves. She never saw anything, though her hours of listening did blossom into something: an addiction to radio dramas. Horror, romance, adventure serials, it didn't matter. Louisa loved them all.

Walter used to tease her. "My daughter of dreck," he'd say, not because he didn't love a good story—he did. He just preferred to get his stories from books or from his own memory. That is, until October 30, 1938, the night when Walter himself fell under the sway of the radio.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.

Walter put his book down. The Martians, it seemed, were heading for New York.

"We could probably make it to the train station," Louisa said. "And from there we could escape to the north."

Walter turned to size his daughter up. "Escape?"

"Yes?" she asked as a question. It seemed he had other plans.

"And miss out on seeing perhaps the most wondrous thing that will ever happen in our lifetime? Lou, it's visitors from outer space."

"But" she continued, "it says that they are throwing flames at innocent bystanders, Dad."

"Honey," he said, his voice disappointed, "maybe throwing flames is just their way of saying hello. I'm surprised by you." He raised one brow before laying out his plan. "Grab your warmest coat. We're sleeping on the roof tonight" Walter had a terrific talent in convincing people, particularly his daughter, using just his eyes. They sparkled damply when he was excited, the way a child's might or certain sentimental portraits of Jesus.

So up they went.

Louisa and Walter made themselves a nest of blankets and coats to lie in. Walter sat staring up at the sky while Louisa found a comfortable spot for her head in his lap. Above them their birds, their beautiful pigeons—Walter kept a coop on the roof—circled and danced in flight.

And then not much happened. To Louisa's surprise the following morning, Walter was not disappointed after learning that the invasion was a fiction. It had been an adventure. It didn't matter to Walter if it wasn't true right then, because someday, he told Louisa, it would be true, maybe even someday very soon.

With the radio shut off, Delphine's screams silenced, Louisa takes a moment to look around the living room, securing the perimeter. Neither she nor Walter has much talent in the domestic arts. There is a disaster in the living room. In one corner, bored a few months ago, Louisa started to build a house of cards that rose so high she is now scared to even get near it for fear it will topple. So it sits there, a mess of unused and rejected cards pooling on the floor around it. At the foot of the sofa there is an unruly stack of her father's Sunday papers dating back to 1940.
USS GREER STRUCK BY GERMAN SUBMARINE
, one says, filing itself away with the long list of war casualties that pile up in the papers daily. The aging newspapers shift gradually from tan to ivory depending on their age. Lining the walls of the living room
there's a slapdash assortment of bookshelves filled to bursting. Walter grew up in a house where the only book was a secret manual for married couples,
The Rhythm Method,
so now he is a book fiend, collecting everything from biographies to French novels, Russian dictionaries to Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks. The books spill out into piles on the floor, raising the banks of a moat about the room. The furniture stands like mini-citadels in the sea of books and bric-a-brac. On top of the piano there is a graveyard of once-used teacups and saucers whose in-sides are a developing experiment—some teas form a mold across the surface of the unfinished liquid while some others have simply dried into brown cracked deserts, miniature Saharas where Louisa imagines a miniature Sheik of Araby moving at night from harem tent to harem tent, teacup to teacup. There are two caramel-colored couches stuffed with horsehair that smell vaguely farmy when it rains. They face one another before a bay window that looks down onto Fifty-third Street. A number of pairs of disembodied shoes defend the sofas, sentries left standing where Louisa and her father removed them after work and have left them ever since. The radio, with its golden glowing eye, watches over the mess from its place on top of a secretary that once belonged to Melvil Dewey himself, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, or so claimed the man they got it from, a war buddy of Walter's, who used the desk as payment to squirrel out of a loan Walter had given him.