Commuters (2 page)

“And now, it gives me great, great pleasure to introduce to you the bride and groom—” But the bandleader was drowned out by the room’s sudden outburst of warm applause, and even a few hooting cheers, before he could finish with the phrase Rachel had been most curious to hear aloud: “—Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Trevis.” She stood to the side of the Waugatuck Tennis Club’s main dining room and watched her mother gaily cross the dance floor on Jerry’s arm, a green disco spotlight swirling around them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, their first dance.” A respectful hush fell across the crowd as the Moonlight Express Band swung easily into “Night and Day,” and Winnie put her hand lightly on Jerry’s upper arm, where the fabric of his suit was all bunched up.

Rachel Brigham was having trouble experiencing this moment, in which her nearly eighty-year-old mother danced with her new husband on their wedding day; all she could sense was the pressure of expectation from friends and neighbors throughout their small town, even those not invited. Was she supposed to cry? Smile? Both? Everyone Rachel had talked to, in the weeks leading up to
this event, from the caterer’s assistant to customers at the store to Lisa, her dental hygienist, had wanted to know
How does it feel?
With an airlock-tight gaze fixed on her, they would ask: What was it like for Rachel to see her mom fall in love again this late in life? Wasn’t it unbelievably sweet and hopeful? Wasn’t it a testament to the power of…something?

Maybe what they wanted was a little dirt. To have her express a fraction of dismay, some sense of loss about her father—dead now twelve years—or even for her to slip quickly into a knowing ridicule. After all, there
was
plenty that was ridiculous about all of this: the band, the arranged flowers, the cake, all produced for a couple whose combined age spanned a century and a half. More than once, Rachel had suffered pangs of embarrassment on her mother’s behalf, while helping to plan this wedding that everyone in town had been talking about. Why couldn’t Winnie have a small ceremony with Judge Greenberg, and then a lunch at La Finestra, for twenty, maybe thirty people? But one of her mother’s best, and most infuriating, qualities was a blithe disregard for what other people would think. Most of the time, Rachel found this admirable, or wanted to.

She watched Winnie step tremulously, lightly, back and forth to the syrupy music, Jerry’s big arms held stiffly around her.

Why were the most important things the hardest to say? The friends who wanted a glimpse at Rachel’s emotions said nothing—asked nothing—about what had really changed for her. Nothing about the obvious fact of Jerry’s money, and the sudden, immense difference between what her mother now had and what she herself did not. How could they, when Winnie and Rachel themselves had addressed it only through the most fleeting, joking comments. For example, what they imagined Jerry’s high-powered daughter An
nette must think of Hartfield’s one hair salon, where men’s cuts were still fourteen dollars, and women crowned with tinfoil took amiable turns under the chipped pink metal hood of the one ancient dryer.

Did they want her to admit that it had been a long, long time since a man had held her the way Jerry was holding her mother, out there on the dance floor? Well, she could do that. She’d be the first to do that, say how long it had been. As she stood there watching, Winnie tipped her head down slowly and knocked her forehead ever-so-softly against Jerry’s chest; he reached under her chin and lifted her face, all while they kept dancing, so that when their eyes met again, he could say something to her without words:
Yes, I’m here. Yes, this is really happening.
Rachel held herself very, very still.

It had been such a long time.

One person, at least, wasn’t struck dumb by the display of love out there on the dance floor. Her husband, Bob, was still talking over the music, straining to be heard by the rest of their table, where Danny, Rachel’s brother, and his wife, Yi-Lun, were also seated. Bob’s voice, ever since the accident, was louder than he seemed able to recognize without a nudge from Rachel. It was as calm and unflappable as ever, only
louder
.

“The eventual goal would be a book deal, of course, but my writing teacher seems to think that if I place the first chapter as a stand-alone piece in a magazine—”

Her mother laughed at something a friend called out from a nearby table. Rachel willed herself to be in the moment. Like in a yoga class.

“Right, and now I’m bringing in various other angles, like this whole industry of self-help experts that’s sprung up in the past few years.”

Isn’t this writing itself basically a part of that?
Rachel thought. Bob had started taking writing classes just after he was out of the hospital. The first one had been designed to reintegrate people into their lives after medical trauma—if Rachel remembered correctly, it had been called something like Writing to Heal. (There was one woman in the class who, week after week, practiced typing her name using the toes of one bare foot.) Rachel and Bob used to joke about some of these programs, like the one that had him solemnly repeat out loud statements like, “I accept that I am different. I accept that things have changed.” But Bob had taken to writing with a fervor that surprised Rachel, and now he had joined a long-term workshop, at the local college, called Write Your Life.

“It won’t just be about me,” Bob went on, speaking to Danny and Yi-Lun. “I mean, the first part is—that’s the hook, my experience, what it was like to wake up in the hospital three weeks after it happened.”

“I’m holding out for René Russo,” Rachel interrupted, with her back still to the table. “You know that actress? She can play me in the movie version.”

There was a blessed pause, and a polite murmured response from someone. Rachel could see both her daughters standing on the other side of the room, near one of the Trevis family tables. Melissa, as usual, was chattering intently to Lila, who steadily watched her grandmother. Rachel wished that Winnie had said something, anything, to Lila about having to miss her last diving meet of the year—well, it wasn’t a meet, she knew, but an end-of-season celebratory “showcase” in which several teams would display all those twists, flips, and half-turns without pressure of official competition. Lila had simply shrugged when Rachel, apologetically, told her what
the date of the wedding would be. And of course you couldn’t expect Winnie to rearrange everything based on the Brighton Water League’s Saturday schedule. Still, it would have been nice if Winnie had remembered, and said something. It was so unlike her.

Even though the silence behind her continued, Rachel was sure that her husband hadn’t finished yet. Shouldn’t she interrupt now? Turn and lay a hand on his arm, direct his attention to the way Winnie was twirling carefully to Cole Porter? The bride wasn’t even fighting to look demure—no, she grinned up at Jerry with all the subtlety of a moony fifteen-year-old.

“The interesting thing is how the Internet factors in, how it can connect all the different groups, disseminate some of the cutting-edge research so much faster—in fact, I’m guest-blogging this week on this site called Skullcrack dot com—”

“Bob. We’re up, I think.” Rachel tapped him a little desperately on the arm. “Danny, go cut in and get Mom. Their song’s almost over.”

“That’s great,” Danny said, standing up. “Listen, an old buddy of mine from college is doing something at Random House—or maybe it’s the other one. Let me know if you want me to shoot him an e-mail, put you two together.”

Rachel shot a look at Danny and managed to pull Bob out onto the dance floor.

“All
right
, Ray,” Bob said. “I’m coming.” They watched Danny smoothly take over from Jerry, who stepped back and stood awkwardly alone on the dance floor. At once, Rachel realized her mistake and dropped Bob’s hands.

And then Winnie stopped dancing too. “Oh, why not one more with my new husband,” she said lightly, but with a frown at both of her children.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Rachel said. “Jerry, how clumsy of me. May I have this dance?” The five of them were now standing in an uncertain huddle in the middle of the room. And now someone would have to go sit down again—with everyone watching. Where on earth was Annette, Jerry’s daughter? Rachel scanned the tables in vain, as the lead singer built to a croon.

“Bob, you should probably—” But he had already left and was crossing the floor alone, and that slight drag of his left foot, a split-second hitch she rarely noticed anymore, was suddenly much more apparent. Rachel thought he might leave the room altogether—he was heading in the opposite direction from their table—but then she saw him stop in front of their girls, confer for a moment, and lead Lila by the hand onto the dance floor. When they began a father-daughter waltz, Rachel heard murmurs as the room warmed with approval.

“No rest for the weary,” Jerry said. “You might have taken pity on an old man.” Despite this, he swung her around firmly and precisely, in the style of someone who has put in considerable time at dances. Jerry was not, Rachel realized, one to let a woman lead.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” she said, trying to keep up. She and Bob would have been merely swaying back and forth.

“I want you to know that your mother will be very well taken care of,” Jerry said.

“Oh,” Rachel said, surprised and touched at this stiff and formal speech. “I’m so happy for you both. It’s wonderful how much you care for her—I mean,” Rachel quickly corrected herself, “How much you love her.”
For God’s sake,
she told herself.
Quit being so prim.

“Yes,” Jerry said, as if this was beside the point. “The mutual funds are a little flat this year; I’ll be making some changes there.
But I’ve set up two accounts for her at a decent rate. And then this business with the trust—well, I’ll be meeting with Jack Moynihan next week, so it all should—”

“That’s all fine, Jerry. Really.” Rachel glanced around. “Maybe Danny would be the better person to—”

“I’ve already spoken to your brother. But he lives in San Francisco. You’re here.”

“That’s true,” Rachel said. “How does Annette…” She trailed off. “I’ll handle Annette,” Jerry said. “She’ll come around—I know she will. She’s just had a tough time at work recently. She and the board—never mind. You just leave that to me, all right?”

“All right,” Rachel said, oddly relieved in the face of Jerry’s brusque, all-business manner. Sometimes she forgot he
had
been all business, for many years, as the founder of two separate Chicago companies—what were they, something to do with manufacturing—both built from scratch and sold at incredible profit. Now he technically presided over a corporation that had tripled those earlier efforts—TrevisCorp. Annette was apparently CEO—or CFO. Or COO? Rachel had seen but not read the copies of the industry magazines Winnie proudly displayed, where Jerry or his Midwestern empire had been lavishly profiled, accompanied by photos of a glowering, younger Jerry Trevis. But in the three months since he had met and now married her mother—shocking, that three months—her own interactions with this gruff man had consisted of a couple of exhausting meals where everyone tried very hard to make small talk. Now she got a glimpse of how he must have been during those boom years, when he had been her age.

Still, she strained to find Annette, to try to gauge her expres
sion during this interminable song. Wouldn’t she like to cut in to dance with her father? There was the head Trevis table, full of relatives she had met yesterday but couldn’t keep straight, and no Annette in sight. She couldn’t still be at the bar, where Rachel had glimpsed her last. However, there was Annette’s son, Avery, sitting right next to Melissa, and he seemed to be nodding politely enough while Mel pointed something or somebody out. Rachel pushed back at Jerry, who was attempting to turn her around. She wanted to keep an eye on this kid Avery, especially with what she’d heard about him from Winnie. Hardly a kid—a young man, tall and wiry and slouching in an expensive-looking jacket and tie. He had that artfully spiky hair all these guys wore, and it was the pure blond color that Annette’s must have been before she began all that expensive tinting and frosting. Those sharp good looks—and that calm air of solitude. That was it: Avery didn’t seem fidgety or bored or sarcastic—any of those usual, familiar teenage poses. Instead he looked perfectly at ease sitting by himself, scanning the crowd. Trouble. Rachel felt a surge of motherly sympathy for Annette.

“There’s something else,” Jerry said, and he was so intent on speaking that he continued to steer Rachel through the end of the song and right into the next one. “It’s not my place to say, but that’s never stopped me before. And I say it’s a damn shame what you’ve been through, with—” Here Jerry tilted his head toward the place where Bob had been dancing.

“Yes, it’s been a rough few years.” Her standard reply. “But we’re lucky, of course.”

“No, I wouldn’t say so. And I’m not talking about his accident. I’m talking about his job.”

Rachel sucked in her breath. “Well. The pace at the firm…it got to be too much, afterward. The strain…”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“It’s supposed to help, all the writing. It’s good for him, I guess. For now, at least, while he’s on leave.” Rachel was jostled by a couple dancing nearby. The floor was crowded now, though her mother and brother had left.

“He’s writing his autobiography? At his age?”

“Well, it’s more like…a kind of therapy.” She petered out, suddenly exhausted. “It’s supposed to help him deal with the whole—you know—memory thing.”

“In my opinion, a man attends to his family’s needs and not to his own literary”—here Jerry waggled his big head back and forth—“whims.”

Rachel sighed. She knew she should feel offended, but Jerry’s blunt assessment of the situation soothed her. Their own friends mostly danced around the subject.

Jerry went on. “And I think now that he’s back on his feet, things should change. When are you moving home?”

“Technically,” Rachel said, “we are home.”

Jerry snorted. “You know what I mean.”