City of Boys (11 page)

—Okay, he says. —Another day. He walks to the window, then to the door, and paces alertly around the room, tapping his hands against his thighs as he walks, waiting for Alice and her mother, but when they are finally dressed and ready for breakfast, he is in the chair, watching them dully.

The family that sat across from them at dinner is gone, replaced by an old couple who eat steadily and do not talk. They take bites of food almost simultaneously, and chew as they look around the room, then wearily bring their forks to their mouths again. Alice is torn between
French toast and poached eggs, but when her mother chooses French toast, she decides on eggs, curious to see the effect of the motion of the train on the trembling skin of the egg. When the eggs come, they are overcooked, and when she breaks the center of one with her fork, only a disappointing dribble of yolk bleeds out over her toast. Mr. Gregg enters the car and sits at a table across the room from them. He watches them eat, and when Alice meets his gaze, he nods at her in a businesslike way. She smiles, then looks away, and her father turns to see whom she is smiling at. He watches Mr. Gregg open his newspaper and prop it up in front of his face, then turns back to Alice.

—Looks like you have a friend, he says. Alice mashes her egg down into her toast.

—Alice, her mother says, —don’t play with your food. You’ll be hungry later if you don’t eat now.

—It’s overcooked, her father says. —Can’t you see it’s overcooked? He smiles at Alice. —Who’s your friend? he asks.

—Will you leave her alone? her mother says. —Will you just leave her alone and let her eat her eggs?

They are all quiet a moment and Alice’s mother scrapes her fork across the top of her French toast, then pushes her plate away.

—I’m already sick of the food on this train, she says. —I’m sick of the food and I’m sick of the room and I’m sick of the goddamn scenery. I’m going to smoke.

Mr. Gregg does not turn as she passes him on her way out of the car, but when she is gone, he looks around to see the door close behind her.

Alice’s father pulls her plate of French toast toward him.

—I’m afraid, he says, —that your mother is not a very happy woman. He pours syrup over the French toast. —No, he says. —Not a very happy woman at all.

He cuts the French toast into quarters, then into smaller pieces, and does not once look behind him as he begins to eat.

Back in the cabin Alice’s father kneels over the paper he has most recently bought, looking for stories about the suicide, but, he tells Alice, they must be too far from Kansas City to get any coverage.

—Wait, he says. —Here’s something. It says here that he was a family man. Everyone was very surprised. They didn’t even know where he was going. He gazes out at the floor over the newspaper.

—I can understand that, he says. —I really can. When he looks up, he seems startled to see her.

—Hey, he says, —you should be having fun. You should be
doing
something. What would you be doing at home right now?

—I don’t know. Reading. Watching TV, Alice says, but what she would in fact do after breakfast is go to her room and sit on her bed and run her hands up and down her legs from her ankles to her knees, pushing the nerves one way, then the other, until her parents called her for lunch or dinner.

—Well, he says, —you can do a lot more than that here, and he sits back on his heels and waits for her to leave.

Through the window of the smoker, Alice watches her mother, who is sitting at a table by herself. She lights her cigarette and smokes it without looking around, but her shoulders stiffen each time the door opens at either end of the car. She is waiting, but not for Alice, so Alice goes to her seat by the window in the coach car. Outside, dogs and cows and pigs are clumped against the gray dirt, or sit under
dry trees. As the train slows through a crossing, Alice looks out at a blue car waiting for them to pass; a woman is at the wheel, and a boy beside her; in the flash of passing, Alice is sure the boy has looked up and met her eyes. She imagines herself in the car. The boy and his mother might be going to swimming practice, or skating, perhaps, or to a store to pick out a new outfit, but sooner or later they will drive past these same trees and go home again. They know nothing of what it is to be on this train.

Soon the train pulls into another stop, and Alice watches the platform outside for her father; he appears just outside her window, but does not see her inside. He stretches, and stands still for a moment, looking out away from the train, then bends and pushes coins into a newspaper box.

When Alice wakes, it is late afternoon. The sun hangs at the edge of a field, and she watches for signs to see where they are. After several slow miles, she sees a sign for an Oklahoma bank, and she stands to go to the cabin. She is dizzy from her nap, and her brain buzzes nervously as she walks to the room, where her father is kneeling over a newspaper and her mother sits in a chair, reading Alice’s book.

—Well, her mother says, —you were certainly out cold when I came to get you for lunch. Did you have a good nap?

—Yes, Alice says, —I guess so.

—Well, her mother says, —you didn’t miss much. I think we’re taking the long route. She snaps the book closed.

—You might have missed a pig or two.

Alice’s father looks up. —Are you trying to say something? he says.

—No, she says. —I was just commenting on the scenery.

—Oh, he says. —I see. He lays the newspaper down on his lap. —I think it’s time for dinner.

Alice’s mother nods, but does not rise from her chair. —It’s just, she says. —It’s just that this is an awfully long trip for Alice.

Alice’s father looks at Alice. —Don’t you worry about Alice, he says. —Alice can take care of herself.

—I know that, her mother says. —But you know, it’s just that there are lots of other things we might have done on this vacation besides go to the wedding of someone we don’t know.

He looks down at the paper a moment, as if he might be reading.

—Okay, he says. —Next year you can decide what we do. And the year after that. And the year after that, too, and every year after that until we die. His voice is even and contained, but Alice can see that his hands are trembling a bit as he presses his palms into his knees.

—I’m just saying, says Alice’s mother, —that this is a long trip.

He folds the paper and runs his fingers carefully along each sharp crease, then stands. —Jesus Christ, he says. —Jesus Christ Almighty.

Alice looks down at her sneakers. They are new, bought just for this trip. She tries to think of someplace on the train she might go, someplace she hasn’t been yet, but she knows already that it’s just car after car of the same. Her mother sighs heavily and stands.

—I’m going to smoke, she says. —If anyone wants me.

After she is gone, Alice’s father lays his newspaper down gently and goes to the window. —I could get out right here, he says. —I could just get out right here in Arkansas.

—It’s Oklahoma, Alice says. —We’re in Oklahoma now. I saw a sign.

He does not turn from the window. —Arkansas, he says.
—Oklahoma. What’s the difference? It’s all the same. And it goes on forever and ever.

Outside, evening is creeping across the fields. Already, behind them in the east, night has fallen, but ahead it is still light, and it seems to Alice that if they continue to follow the sun west they will keep riding into day, and night will never come, but even as they rush ahead, the cabin grows dim and they travel in the chilly half-glow of evening until the train comes into a station.

—Well, Alice’s father says, —I guess I’ll stretch my legs. He closes the cabin door softly behind him, and Alice picks up his map. Little blue circles are drawn around all the cities in Oklahoma that fall along the blue line her father has drawn to trace the train’s route south. She looks at each city and tries to remember which is the capital of Oklahoma as she waits for the train to pull out. When they have built back up to speed and her father has not returned, she goes to her bed and opens her book, willing herself not to look out the window until they are completely out of the town, but she looks too soon, and in one quick glance she sees a bank, a hotel, a grocery store; out of each building walk tall, gray, unhappy-looking men who look just like her father.

My father now lives in Oklahoma, she thinks, and she practices saying it out loud. —My father lives in Oklahoma, she will say to her friends at school, to her teachers, to the boyfriends she will have before too long. —He does very well for himself there.

When they have left the town behind, she puts her book down and leaves the cabin, closing the door quietly. As she walks up the aisle, she lets her hands drift across the tops of seats, hardly touching them at all. At this moment, her father is sitting down to coffee in a restaurant, being served by a middle-aged waitress with frosted hair, and when she
smiles at him, he will explain to her that he is not a happy man, that he has never been a happy man, despite his many opportunities. It’s his wife, he will tell the waitress, and his daughter, and she will nod; she has an unhappy man at home just like Alice’s father. Alice imagines him taking bites of his sandwich and smiling, wondering which hotel to stay in, what kind of car to buy, if he will have dessert. In her mind he is just about to pay the bill when she sees him, swaying in the breezeway just ahead of her. She is close enough to see the muscles in his jaw work as he looks out and watches his new life pass before him, and she turns and walks the other way. In the next car, or the car after that, her mother sits and smokes, waiting for someone to talk to, but before Alice can reach her, she feels a hand on her shoulder and turns to face Mr. Gregg.

—Well, he says, —imagine finding you here. I was just on my way to meet your mother.

He waits politely for a response, but Alice says nothing. Behind her is the door to a bathroom and she leans against it.

—You know, Mr. Gregg says, —your mother is a very remarkable woman. He smiles in a way that has nothing to do with Alice.

—She’s not my mother, Alice says, and turns to enter the tiny bathroom, smaller even than the one in their cabin. It has a stainless-steel sink and toilet, both clogged with soggy lumps of paper, and a thin stream of water leaks from the faucet.

Alice looks at herself in the mirror. It is too soon, really, to tell what she will look like as an adult, whom she will most resemble, and if she will be beautiful, and although she knows she will care about that later, right now it does not matter. Right now she longs only to be done with all of it, to be old at last, and to creep about with a cane and sit in the
sun, caring for nothing, all that she once loved tucked safely away from the sorrows of life. It is before her like a dream–to be an old woman, her skin gone dry and spotted, her hair a fragile cloud about her skull, just a frail relic in the middle of a field with nothing to do but let her eyes fill with sand. Right now it is all she wants to be, that old woman, but between them crouches the enormous responsibility of her own life. The train shudders over a warp in the track and Alice steadies herself against the sink and looks into the mirror, but there is no one there; she is already gone, disappeared into the bright frozen world that waits ahead.

—Honey, my mother calls, and her voice echoes over the wooden floor into the kitchen, where I am spreading peanut butter on my toast. I lift my head and wait for her to call again.

—Honey, she says, louder. —Come in and meet your Uncle, and she pauses a moment, then says, —Carl.

I come into the room, where she is standing next to a tall, bored-looking man who fingers the change in his pockets and glances at me without interest.

—Hi, I say.

—Hi, he says in my general direction. —Are you ready? he asks my mother. —The show starts soon.

—We’re going to the movies, my mother says to me as she wraps a long blue scarf around her neck. —You’ll be okay alone?

She turns to the man with a radiant smile. —Let’s go, baby, she says.

When she bends to pick up her purse, his eyes travel slowly down her body; then he glances quickly at me, then at the floor and around the room, but he does not look at my mother again. As he turns away, jingling, my mother holds her coat out to him, but he is already at the door and she puts it on herself.

—Don’t wait up, baby, she says, blowing me a kiss, her eyes already on the man’s back as he walks out of our apartment. I lock the door behind them and listen to my mother’s heels tap down the hallway.

—Cute kid, the man says, his voice slightly muffled as they walk away.

—She’s not a kid, my mother says. —She’s sixteen. She pauses a moment. —Seventeen, she says.

The heavy glass outer door bites off the rest of their conversation, and I go to the window to watch them pass. Our apartment is at street level, and I can see them only from the knees down–my mother’s long thin legs and ankles, and behind them the man’s beige slacks and flat brown shoes. They kick up leaves as they go by, and I can tell by the tilt
of my mother’s heels that she is leaning against the man. Above me I hear Mr. Rosenberg wheel to his window. Because he is higher up, he has a better view—he can see if they talk or kiss as they walk. I can only imagine them at the street corner, my mother’s arm draped loosely around the man’s shoulder as he looks up and down the street, lights a cigarette, pulls his coat tightly about him. Mr. Rosenberg can watch them for two or three blocks, but all I can see is the street, the wheels of cars, and the featureless walls of the buildings across from me. There is really nothing else to see from this window, but my mother spends most of her time here, looking out through the iron bars. —You can tell a lot from people’s shoes, she tells me, —and the way they walk, but when I ask her to tell me then what a pair of red sneakers says to her, or some penny loafers, she looks off through the dusty glass. —Well, she says, —they’re really going by too fast to tell much.

Even though we have lived here for years, I still find myself expecting the view to change, but as every season passes, it is always the same: in the winter, feet kick dirty snow against our window, and the rest of the time they scuffle through stiff leaves or trash. Sometimes a scrap of paper catches in the window bars and flaps in the wind until someone pulls it out or it blows away.