MANHATTAN ISLAND

By Brenda Wooley

As a child I was fascinated with my Uncle Noel, Papa’s oldest brother. Slim, with black hair and the brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen, Uncle Noel had a magnetic personality. Papa and his other brother, Uncle Robert, were quiet, dignified men, but Uncle Noel talked fast, made quips and seemed to be happy all the time.

Unlike Papa and Uncle Robert, who were farmers and had lived in rural Alabama all their lives with no desire to live anywhere else, Uncle Noel was different. He had always hated farming, and as soon as he graduated from high school in 1922, he went to New York City and never returned, except for his yearly summer visits. Papa said he vowed to get out of Alabama and make some big money.

As I got older, I learned that Uncle Noel lived an exciting life in the city, going to night clubs, drinking scotch and dancing the night away with various women, and, at least one time, a famous woman.

He was in a night club in Manhattan and saw a beautiful woman “standing there acting like she wanted to dance,” as he told Papa. While they were dancing, he told her he was a native of Alabama, and she told him her name was Kate, she hailed from Connecticut and her father was a doctor. He thanked her for the dance and went back to his table. His friends asked him if he knew who he was dancing with and he said no.

“That was the actress, Katherine Hepburn!” they said, laughing.

It was a big occasion when Uncle Noel came back home to Alabama each summer to visit Grandmother. There were big family dinners and picnics, with all of the adults ending the hot, muggy evenings on the front porch as we children played hide and seek around the cars. Uncle Noel’s Cadillac was the nicest. When I hid behind it I could smell the newness and something else I could not define, somehow foreign, like the big city in which he lived so far away.

On Grandmother’s porch, the adults talked, their voices muffled, and every now and then I could hear Uncle Noel's deep voice and his laughter. He talked fast, unlike the soft, thick drawl of the voices I had heard all my life. He was familiar, yet somehow alien, like the handsome, quick-talking actors in the movies at the Strand.

Uncle Noel always made an effort to talk to me and my brother and sisters, and he joked a lot. He wasn't the type of uncle who picked us up or even patted our heads, as Papa did, but he always made us feel special. Just a smile and a look with those flashing eyes were enough for me.

“How’ re you doing, Sarah,” he would say, smiling, “You sure are pretty!”

A shy child, I blushed and said nothing.

Another thing that set Uncle Noel apart from the men in our part of the country was the way he dressed. Papa wore bib overalls most of the time. Dress-up was a pair of dark pants with a casual shirt. Uncle Noel wore pleated gabardine trousers and white shirts; sometimes a sport coat with shiny gold buttons. His shoes were always shined to a high gloss, and during the summer he wore a white-brimmed hat. He also smoked cigarettes, and sometimes he blew smoke rings. I was enthralled.

Uncle Noel’s wife, Victoria, always accompanied him on his visits to Alabama, but my memories of her are in black and white; faded and vague. I cannot remember her face, but I do remember a dark silky dress and high heels and a kind and loving voice. Her hands were soft and white as she lightly patted me on the cheek.

“Say hello to Aunt Victoria, Sarah,” Grandmother said.

Uncle Noel and Aunt Victoria had gotten married in 1935. Grandmother had a photo album of the event, and my sister, Libby, and I spent many hours on the front porch gazing at their wedding pictures. Aunt Victoria wore a lovely fitted satin gown with a long veil and train, which circled around the tip of her dress on the floor, reminding me of a swirling cream-colored puddle around her feet. Her bouquet was the largest I had ever seen. Uncle Noel wore tails, striped trousers and a top hat. They lived in Manhattan, or “Manhattan Island,” as Uncle Noel called the city. He also talked about the Bronx, Brooklyn, “Jersey,” and other far-away places.

At Christmastime, Uncle Noel always sent a big box full of gifts for us. There were all kinds of toys…a basketball for Johnny, a doll with magic skin for me, blocks for Libby; another year our gifts included a train set, a scooter, a dollhouse. He sent Momma and Papa a big box of fruit each year, sweet and tangy oranges, crunchy apples, and grapefruits with red juicy centers.

I was five years old when Uncle Noel phoned with the news that Aunt Victoria had died. Papa and Uncle Robert took Grandmother to the train, and she was gone a long time. After her return, she and Momma talked in sad, hushed tones. Years later, I learned she was pregnant with their first baby when she was stricken with cancer.

After a while, Uncle Noel began coming to Alabama in the summers again, but his blue eyes didn't flash as before and he didn't laugh nearly as much. He was still kind to us kids and always paid special attention to us, but something was missing.

Uncle Noel, a master carpenter, now had his own construction company. He had bought property in Manhattan and on Long Island and was building homes.

“We're going big on Manhattan Island,” he told Papa and Uncle Robert.

“He’s drinking an awful lot,” Grandmother told Momma, “He called long distance last night and he was intoxicated.”

Momma shook her head.

“Noel is killing himself for money,” Uncle Robert told Papa.

Uncle Noel’s business flourished even though he was drinking all the time and, as Grandmother said, carousing. He met a woman 20 years younger and married her. The marriage lasted five years. In 1958, he married again. He called late one night, drunk, to tell Papa.

“He said he woke up this morning married,” Momma told me one weekend when I was home from college.

Uncle Noel’s third wife, Benita, was a loud woman who cursed. She wore low-necked, tight sheath dresses with bright colored scarves wound around her neck and thrown casually over one shoulder. When she walked, her hips swayed from side to side, causing all of the men, especially Uncle Robert, to stare at her. After they left, Aunt Flora chewed him out for staring at “that strumpet.”

During those years, Uncle Noel changed. He hardly ever joked, and he didn't have much to say.

When Grandmother died in 1970, Aunt Flora took it upon herself to throw away Uncle Noel and Aunt Victoria’s wedding album, much to mine and Libby’s disdain. “She had no right!” I cried to Momma, “All those beautiful pictures…gone!”

In the early seventies, Uncle Noel retired, and Benita moved to Alabama and bought a house in the seediest section of Tuscaloosa.

“Noel won't even let go of his money to buy a decent house,” Papa said to Momma.

“Why on earth wouldn't he spend some of his money to have a nice house and a good life?” Momma said.

In 1987, Papa had not heard from Uncle Noel in quite a while so, since the office where I worked was a short distance away from their house, he asked me to check on him. When I got to the little house, which was between two rusty mobile homes, Benita would not let me in.

“Get out,” she said, “the will has already been made!”

Behind her, Uncle Noel sat in a chair. Obviously very ill, his body was emaciated, his pale blue eyes sad and dead looking.

“I'm sorry, Sarah,” he whispered.

Uncle Noel died in May of 1987. He was 83 years old.

Although he had not told any of the family, Uncle Noel had made a will, naming Papa as administrator. He left half of his estate to us, his only nieces and nephews. The other half went to Benita. She, however, presented another will which she claimed he had made after the one he gave Papa, and he had left everything to her. She walked away with a little over three million dollars. When she died, she left Uncle Noel’s fortune to her nieces and nephews. Everything Uncle Noel worked for all of his life went to people he didn't even know.

A few years later, after Uncle Robert’s death, Papa inherited Grandmother’s house. In the attic, was a box labeled, “Noel’s Pictures.” Momma gave them to me.

The box of pictures told the story of Uncle Noel’s life, the life in which he was happy, when he and Aunt Victoria were dating and the early days of their marriage. In the background of some of the pictures are huge houses; many times they are standing in a group in front of shiny roadsters, reminding me of The Great Gatsby or Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. In one picture there is a group of people standing in front of a huge brick house set on a manicured lawn. "Lily, Jack, Mary, Noel and me, Great Neck, NY, 1934"; Victoria wrote. In another, they stand with a group of people on a long pier, the crashing waves of the ocean behind them, "Montauk Island, NY, 1937."

My favorite is the one of just the two of them in front of a brownstone. Uncle Noel is dressed in a dark suit and top coat; Victoria wears an evening dress, a fur coat thrown over her shoulders. Uncle Noel's eyes sparkle, and the smile on his face is the one I remember. They have their arms around each other and they look so in love and glad to be alive. This caption was in Uncle Noel's handwriting, “Me and Vic, New Year's Eve, 1937, Manhattan Island, NY.”

Brenda:  I am a retired social worker and office manager and now devote all of my free time to writing. I grew up on a farm in Kentucky in a family of avid storytellers and colorful friends and neighbors whose beliefs were steeped in tradition and religion. In an effort to make sense out of chaos, I began putting pen to paper at a young age. Much of my writing is drawn from those characters, hoping to capture and preserve the unique dialogue, eccentricities and contradictions of the people I know best.

I have had one story published at southernhum.com, and my story, "Murder at the P. O."  was named one of the top three novellas for April on the Zoetrope writing workshop.  Contact Brenda.