Commuters (20 page)

It was Monday, January 2. It was a new week of a new year, and Winnie was busy telling everyone that today was the day. That tree in her yard was coming down later in the afternoon, so everyone would just have to find something else to be upset about. In town for errands that morning, she even stopped by Hand Me Down to tell Moira, the other saleswoman (Rachel was in San Francisco with the girls until the end of the week). “By three thirty at the latest,” she said. “I’m going to document the whole thing. Maybe I’ll put it on YouTube!” At the bank, she ran into Don Martin. “That tree had a nice, long tree life,” she said. “But when your number’s up, it’s up.” She told the young woman behind the deli counter at Fresh Market, who asked what a sycamore was, and she told the young man who bagged up her groceries and set them in her cart. (Winnie remembered when they used to bring them out to your car.) “By dinnertime that old tree will be
zzzvvvippp
,” she said, making the appropriate throat-slitting sound to accompany the gesture.

As it turned out, Gil from Lawn Care—the only tree company who would do the job—was anxious to avoid any more media
attention, and had obsessed, in Winnie’s view, about finding the right date and time for the cutting and removal process. For a long time, Gil wanted to keep the schedule a secret. And then he had even suggested that they purposely leak a wrong date, in order to throw people off the scent. This struck Winnie as overkill, and then she realized that he must be worried that any bad press would be bad for business. But when she mentioned this, Gil agreed only vaguely.
True, we don’t need to be on any front page,
he’d said. And then, uneasily:
Plus, there are a lot of freaks out there.

But Winnie was less scared of the “freaks”—for this, she substituted “prank callers”—than she was of what it would do to her if she had to give up on this.
This:
holding on to an idea, an ideal, about herself and Jerry; everything she’d been promised by falling in love. And if she could dimly recognize that her own need for the pool had somehow taken priority, above even Jerry’s back pain, the thought was brief and shaming, and then quickly buried in plans, phone calls, the undertaking itself.

In deference to Gil, she’d kept today’s date a secret, but now that the day was here, she couldn’t see the harm in spreading the news, nor could she help it. Most people in town received this news with a polite tolerance or perhaps a slight trace of alarm, possibly from the vehement cheer of its delivery. Winnie didn’t imagine that she’d happen to run into one of the prank phone callers and dog-waste throwers, whoever they were, but she almost hoped she would. She was spoiling for a fight. One woman, that second daughter of Becca Kingsley’s, balancing a crying toddler on one hip, had earnestly tried to engage her in a discussion about the reasons for such a drastic act. Hadn’t Winnie even explored any other options? Building an above-ground pool, for example?
Building an addition onto the house for an infinity pool? And they were doing wonders now with acupuncture. Winnie brushed it all off, remembering now why she could never remember this disagreeable woman’s name.
Really,
she said to herself,
does she think I’m made of money?
“Nope,” she said. “This afternoon I’m going to settle into my front-row seat and watch the big guy come crashing down. I may make popcorn!” She had to admit it was enjoyable, shocking Becca Kingsley’s daughter in this way.

Also, announcing the tree’s execution later today with such relish helped to block out all the other things Winnie was trying to avoid. “How’s Rachel?” Moira had asked. “Getting tan, I bet.” “Oh, fine, fine,” Winnie had muttered, hurrying back out the door. How could she say anything about the truth, which was that she and Rachel hadn’t spoken before they’d left for California, other than a quick Christmas phone call? How could she say anything about how things had been since Thanksgiving? Her daughter was fixated on 50 Greenham—
my
home, Winnie thought—on the money it represented, on what it would all do for
her
, Rachel, and she didn’t give a single thought to what it meant to her mother, or to the fact that some things had nothing to do with money. Yes, Rachel and Bob were having hard times. Well, what family didn’t, at one time or another? And everything Winnie had done for them, over the years…

No. That was not the way to think. Better to focus on the tree—the pool, and the tree, and what Jerry’s face would look like as he eased himself into the water, on the first warm day of the summer. Did they still shout, “
Tim-ber!
” she wondered. She would find out soon enough.

“Where’s that handsome new grandson of yours?” Eliza McVeer called out, putting money in her meter. “
He’s
a corker.”

“Busy,” Winnie said, scuttling away toward Rudy’s to pick up a pair of resoled shoes. “Too busy for us old folks.” She could laugh with Eliza, but a pang struck deep. Jerry had stopped mentioning Avery, and she had stopped phoning him.

Last stop was the library, a redbrick Georgian (Winnie remembered her father fretting that the design clashed entirely with his station, three blocks to the east) where she picked up three books on hold: that new biography of John Adams that everyone was talking about; plus a book about garbage in America, which looked particularly disgusting and interesting; and the newest Sue Grafton mystery novel. The same placid, pasty-faced clerk who had worked the circulation desk for years had to slowly sort through all the titles on the shelf behind him, even as Winnie pointed to the right ones. Then she realized he was muttering, “McClelland, McClelland,” as he flipped through the paper slips stuck in the books.

“Trevis,” she corrected firmly. And the chance to do so, the very word itself, brought such a swell of delight that Winnie found herself magnanimous, benevolent, able to forgive this slow dolt of a clerk. She chatted with him about the weather—no snow yet, but surely by week’s end…and then of course launched into a full description of the tree and the pool and the sycamore’s last few hours. He didn’t have much to say, this sour man, just went about scanning her books with the occasional grunt. Well, no matter, Winnie thought. She waved him a jaunty good-bye.

There was a table set up near the library entrance that featured recent books on military history. She paused here, looking over one on the Korean War. Jerry occasionally liked to read these—he’d even been interviewed and quoted once, by a Chicago his
torian. Had he already seen this one? She turned it over in her hands, recognizing neither author nor title, but that didn’t mean anything. And then, one of the disloyal thoughts. One of the scary ones, the ones she was getting very good at squelching. This one ran along the lines of,
Just get it, if you like—you know he won’t remember if he’s read it or not.

She flipped open the front cover, reading hastily: “Our Forgotten War, it is sometimes called. On June 25, 1950, a firestorm from North Korean…” Winnie paused. June 25. Their wedding day, last year. How strange that Jerry had never mentioned the coincidence of dates.

And then, it came again, one of those memories that veered toward her in waves, another bombing sortie from which she needed to duck and cover. Weeks ago, gathering up the mail from its scattered pile inside the front door, she had been surprised by the sight of a dozen recognizable green envelopes, Christmas cards, ones she knew Jerry had mailed out a few days ago to old friends and colleagues. She gathered them up; each was stamped return to sender next to the unfriendly image of a pointing forefinger. Her first thought:
Had he forgotten the stamps?
But then she saw what he had done, and her stomach tilted sharply. All the addresses were wrong—not wrong in information, but placed awry, all over the envelopes. On one, he’d put the recipient’s name and street to the very top right, where a stamp hid most of it. On another, he’d put his own name, and 50 Greenham, right in the front middle, and the rest of it on the backside, circled helplessly. They were all like this, she found, rapidly flipping through—names and addresses set down haphazardly, in Jerry’s unmistakable hand, no two the same, sideways, backward, as if according to an entirely different postal scheme.

Winnie hadn’t said anything to anyone; she’d thrown away the envelopes and mailed the cards again, in new ones. But that was just the first instance—the first discovery. One little thing gone topsy-turvy.

Now in the library, Winnie pulled out her cell phone. This book looked fascinating, and Jerry might well enjoy it. He was probably on his way back from physical therapy now—she might catch him in the car. new voicemail message, the screen read. She put the book down on the table, on top of her own stack, and moved into the chilly small foyer to listen. A male voice, vaguely familiar:

“Yeah, uh—Mrs. Trevis, this is Gil from Lawn Care. We’re going to need to be out at your place earlier today, because of another job. And because—you know. Keep ’em off balance. I think the guys should be there by ten or so. Okay? Just letting you know. Thanksandhaveagoodday.”

Ten? Ten o’clock today, meaning this morning? Winnie clicked through the phone features, her mind awhirl. 11:42, the display read. But—but—that meant…

She fled. She forgot her checked-out books. Someone called to her, in the parking lot, but Winnie didn’t even look over. She dropped her keys on the cold pavement, and scraped her knuckles snatching them back up. And in the car, her heart pounding, she didn’t notice that she was speaking aloud. “No,” she whispered, gripping the steering wheel. “Move, damn it. Move!” A large white delivery truck was backing out of a driveway, blocking Seminole completely. So Winnie swung onto Alden Lane, even though it was clearly marked no through traffic and she knew Bella Guidry might see and recognize her car. Winnie drove fast, much faster than she was accustomed to, and let out a stifled yelp when
she sideswiped a wheeled garbage can—left much too far out into the street—when she veered onto Franklin. There was a wordless panic inside her. Winnie accelerated up the short hill as she came onto her own street, and bumped hard over the curb and back down, before she could control the car.

And then she was home, though for a confused moment it didn’t seem so. Something was awry. Something about the corner of Franklin and Greenham Avenue itself. Winnie pulled to a stop in her own driveway, and she had to look again to make sure where she was. It wasn’t the half dozen men milling around in the front yard, or the two nondescript trucks—one parked on the street, one in the driveway—or the strange orange tractor-like machine that was lodged on the grass. She got out of the car, leaving the door open—setting off an endless digital beeping—and the keys forgotten in the ignition.

What was different was the quality of the sky, January-white and full of clouds. It loomed low over the house and the lawn, over the crumbled stone fence at the lawn’s border, and the crossway of Franklin and Greenham, once secluded, now bathed in openness and light. The sky came down so far it seemed to press everything—house, lawn, street—far, far down, flat against the ground, a hopeless ridge of growth that was mocked in contrast to the pale, windy immensity of the sky.

The tree was down.

Winnie walked slowly across the trampled grass. No one had turned out for a protest. There were no hordes of tree huggers, no chanting or singing or angry shouts from strangers. The only spectators were neighbors at their windows, or in their own front yards, watching her in silence—and Winnie didn’t notice them;
she didn’t see Vi Greenberg there across the street, standing cold and still, hands jammed into her coat pockets. Winnie stumbled toward the center of her unfamiliar lawn, to the pile of sawed-off trunk sections, collapsed together piece upon piece, a giant-child’s heap of toy blocks. The pile rose high above her like a bonfire, ready to be set ablaze. She moved close enough to put the flat of her hand against the woody inside of one piece, and found, with a heartsick
zing
, that it was still warm there. Tiny black ants streamed down in rivulets, streamed down and out, across those bright concentric rings, too many to count, across Winnie’s own hand. Escaping.

A man wearing blue headphones and a helmet appeared, shouting something at her, guiding her away from the heavy pieces of tree, the unsteady pile. All sounds were drowned out by the orange machine, which whirred and crunched and splintered, spraying out a fine mist from one end. Winnie allowed herself to be led away. She averted her eyes as she passed, glimpsing a branch fed into the machine’s wide opening, and the gurgling crunch of the blades, setting to work.

Back on the safe pavement of the driveway, Winnie tried, for a moment, to see where the trunk was. The remaining trunk, that is—the sheared-off piece, still rooted in the ground, where the sycamore had once stood. She stood there, bare and exposed in the newfound expanse of sky. She faced it head-on, this thing she had done—she forced herself to do that, at least. And yet, when she discovered that the cut-off trunk was temporarily hidden from view by the rising pile, by all the bags and men and the machine on the grass, by the blurring of her own eyes, she granted herself a small measure of reprieve. With no right to be, Winnie was grateful; she wasn’t sure, at that moment, she could have borne it.

It was Thursday, January 5. Holiday travel and a burgeoning snowstorm along the East Coast combined to thwart all prior plans for Rachel and the girls to return home. Their flight out of Oakland was delayed almost an hour, so although the three of them ran for it, purses and backpacks bouncing, they missed their connection out of O’Hare by about twenty minutes. Nobody at the gate could redirect them, so they’d had to hike all the way out to the main terminal and stand in a United customer service overflow line to be rebooked, on a flight to Rochester that wouldn’t leave for another six hours, at 10:30 pm. There was a slight chance of going standby on the 6:30, so they trudged back to the gate. Lila and Melissa were camped out along a row of hard-edged plastic seats, and Rachel waited in line at the Wolfgang Puck Eatery, juggling two panini sandwiches, a melon-and-grapes fruit salad, and three bottles of black-raspberry fizzy water.

Their week in San Francisco with Danny and Yi-Lun—Matthew had gone skiing in Utah with a friend from college—had been a great respite from everything at home. Well, at least until
the night before last, Rachel thought. It had been mild enough to walk around, so they went to Pier 39 to watch all the sea lions flopping lazily around the docks, and they went to Coit Tower and partway across the Golden Gate Bridge (though that had been a little too cold); they took a day trip to Palo Alto, and they ate burritos in the Mission. Danny had been his usual energetic self, always moving on to the next thing, while Yi-Lun’s somewhat spacey calm balanced him out. The two of them liked to take long bike rides together every morning, bundled up in high-tech all-weather gear. Rachel sensed Danny didn’t want much more than surface answers to his quick, breezy questions about Mom and Jerry—and she hardly knew what to say, either—so, for the most part, they hardly spoke about it. About Bob, Danny had dispatched the usual questions—how’s he feeling, how’s the writing—and then carefully avoided any further discussion, about anything related to money, Bob’s job at the firm, or the subletting of their house on Locust. Danny had paid for every meal and covered every expense of their trip, brushing off any thanks or acknowledgment, and once, late at night, studiously avoiding eye contact, her brother had offered Rachel a loan. Or rather he had started to, before jumping up to clear away some dishes and dropping the subject entirely. It was clearly awkward for him, speaking this way to his older sister, to whom he was cheerful but not close, and so Rachel—a bit startled herself—hadn’t even thanked him.

In line at Wolfgang Puck’s, she shifted the slippery-sided sandwich boxes, thinking that Jerry’s last loan (or was it a gift?) had been over a month ago, now long gone, the last of it spent on these plane tickets. The problem was, even if Rachel wanted to
take Danny up on it—and she might have to, sometime soon—the sum her brother had in mind might not at all be what she needed. And the unclear offer of an unknown amount—had he been thinking hundreds of dollars? A thousand or two, maybe?—had as its most potentially embarrassing result that moment when both of their expectations would be laid bare. It would be a delicate conversation, that time she might call Danny and say, “Remember that time you…?” Would she first name a figure? Would he? Would the two be anywhere close to equivalent, and if not, how would that be managed? “Oh,” she could imagine her brother saying, if she asked for more than he’d bargained on lending, that one syllable wrapped in shades of surprise, embarrassment, and recalculation.

It would have to be a nice big check, Rachel thought, craning her neck to see how many people were still ahead of her in line, to make that moment worthwhile, bearable.

And then there had been the scene with Melissa, two nights ago, which had cracked the comfort with which Rachel assumed that the girls had been mostly spared the social tensions and agonies that she herself suffered, in and out of Hartfield, over the past year. Mel hadn’t come to dinner, and had locked herself into the guest bedroom she shared with Lila—Rachel could hear her sobbing but couldn’t coax her out. Lila eventually told Rachel that Mel had just gotten dumped by a boy she’d had a crush on. “Just dumped how?” Rachel demanded. “He’s here in San Francisco?” “He IMed her,” Lila had to patiently explain—and that she blamed this on Rachel.

“You never gave me any money for the Holiday Party!” Melissa flung at Rachel, bewildered, when Rachel and Lila had eventually
talked their way into the guest room and were sitting together on the bed with Mel, her face a patchy, swollen red. “It was ten dollars to get in, but you forgot to give it to me, and then when I didn’t have it at the door, Ben White said he would pay for me, and then all the sodas and cookies were extra—”

“But—that’s nice that he paid for you!” Rachel protested. “It means he really likes you. Doesn’t it?” Both girls stared at her pityingly, so clueless about the ways of the world.

“Mom,” Lila said. “Nobody does that.”

“Everyone’s been bugging him ever since then!” Melissa yelled. “They’re all like, oh, Ben White really
likes her
. He has to pay for
everything
.” She hiccuped herself into another crying fit. “And then he—he—”

“He broke up with her,” Lila said gently, to spare her sister from having to say it.

“Ten dollars!” Melissa said. “How could you let me go to the Holiday Party without it? Everyone
saw
! They felt
sorry
for me!”

“I didn’t know you needed it,” Rachel spluttered. “It didn’t say on the sheet—”

“If we’re so poor now that I can’t even have ten dollars, then how come we flew all the way to San Francisco?” Melissa said. “How come—”

“Mel,” Rachel said, stifling a sympathetic smile. “We’re not poor! It wasn’t that we didn’t
have
ten dollars, it was that I didn’t know you had to pay to get in. Lila didn’t have to pay when it was her year, did you?” Lila shrugged—this was clearly beside the point. “I don’t see why they charge, anyway,” Rachel argued. “It’s a school event, it should be—Anyway, we most definitely have ten dollars. Next time, I’ll double-check the sheet. But the main
thing is, you don’t have to worry about that.” Poor thing, Rachel thought.
Ten dollars.
She was glad to be able to reassure them both, truthfully, on such a small matter.

“
God
,” Melissa cried. “I’m not worried about it. It doesn’t matter whether I
could
have had ten dollars to go, it was that I
didn’t
. And everyone was, like, coming up to me all night and being fake nice. They were all like, It’s a good thing Ben White really likes you. And they were all talking about me behind my back, saying, Well, you know she doesn’t even live in her own
house.
”

Rachel was stunned.

“Fake nice,” Lila had explained, agreeing. “Like how everyone was when Dad was in the hospital.”

They had made it better, eventually, Rachel reminded herself. She was almost at the front of the line. Melissa’s anger and tears had subsided, little by little. Rachel had stopped trying to reassure her and had just listened. And then she hugged her daughter tight and didn’t try to tell her that everything was going to be fine. They had re-emerged from the guest room a tired threesome, to where Yi-Lun—who had probably overheard the whole thing, Rachel realized, but who was tactfully silent—had brownies in the oven and
The Wedding Planner
on rental from Blockbuster.

“There’s a problem with your card,” the skinny, Latino guy said, when she finally reached the cash register.

Rachel nearly blew a gasket. “No way,” she said, suppressing a laugh. “Not with that one, there isn’t.” She’d given him the American Express.

He shrugged and swiped it again. “See? Card declined. You want to give me another one?”

“NO, I do not want to give you another one. And I couldn’t even if I—Listen. That card is fine. It happens to be all paid up—it has to be, you can’t carry over the balance—” The guy shifted his eyes to look around, as Rachel’s voice grew louder. “As you may or may not know, about this particular card. Which I do. Which is why I gave it to you, instead of the other four in my wallet. Now please try it again.” She stacked the paninis, in their clear plastic boxes, on the counter, and ignored the thrum of impatience behind her in the growing line.

“Lady, I tried it, all right? The machine’s working fine. Can you give me another card, or cash, or what?”

Rachel’s cheeks burned, but she wasn’t letting anyone—including herself—off that easily. “Could I speak to the manager, please?” From behind her, an audible
oh-come
-ON-
already
.

“He’s—uh—he’s over there, I don’t…Hang on.” The checkout guy left his station and returned, an agonizing minute and a half later, with a harried, portly man wearing a “Service With a Smile” button. He wasn’t smiling.

“Problem?”

“Yes,” Rachel said hastily. “But with your machine, not my card. I know that for a fact because—”

While she was speaking, the man took the green card and ran it through. “Declined,” he said, blank-faced. “You can pay cash or use another card.” He tapped a sticker listing the logos of the other cards, ones Rachel
knew
would be declined. There was a negative balance in the joint account—last night, on the phone, Bob had received this news all too calmly—and they hadn’t paid the others in months.

“But that can’t be true,” Rachel argued. “I mean, I’m not trying
to bullshit you on this. I
know
about cards declined. I have been there. But this one’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to work!” The manager just stared at her, without an ounce of interest.

“Excuse me,” the man behind her in line said, but to the manager, not Rachel. “Can I pay for—”

“Just a fucking minute!” Rachel shrieked wildly, and then tried to laugh, as if that would help. The man in line pulled back, repulsed. “Can you call American Express?” she said to the manager. “Maybe it’s trouble on their end.”

“Nope,” he said. “Sort it out with them on your own time. Next in line!”

“No!” Rachel said. “Wait, please, just—” She had a brainstorm. “Were you going to pay with AmEx?” she demanded, of the man she’d yelled at. He ignored her. “Were you?” She pointed at the two gaping teenage boys behind him. They shook their heads no. “Was anyone planning to use an American Express card here?” Rachel asked, lifting her voice loud enough that people down the hall turned to see what was going on.

“All right,” the manager said. “Move aside, or we’re going to have security.”

“I was,” said a tall woman in a flowery dress. She had a structured haircut, a Southern accent, and a bemused smile. “I was going to use my AmEx. Why?”

Rachel seized on her friendly smile. “Could you take my place in line?” she said to the new ally. “Come on, here you go,” she urged the woman, helping her up to the counter. “She can go ahead of me.”

“That’s not fair,” the man behind her piped up.

“I’m getting out of line, all right?” Rachel growled. “Look,”
she said to the manager. “If hers doesn’t work, then it’s got to be a problem with the machine, right?”

The manager looked from Rachel to the man to the Southern lady. And something about the latter’s normality convinced him, or the idea that this would be the most direct route to getting rid of Rachel, so he took the woman’s Caesar salad, rang it up, and then swiped her green card. Rachel held her breath. The man squinted at the screen.

“Declined,” he said finally. Rachel let out a whoop. The manager scrutinized the credit card. “Must be something wrong with this vendor.”

“Oh well,” the woman in the flowery dress said. “Cash it is. But do you—” She gestured at Rachel’s abandoned panini boxes.

“No,” Rachel said, weak with relief. “I told you,” she said shakily to the manager, who regarded her blankly. “I told you it wasn’t me!” She backed away from the counter, all the covert, disapproving gazes from those in line now palpable. They were veiled, silent, these strangers, but she could see what they saw: a middle-aged woman who looked, at first glance—with her jeans and T-shirt, her clogs and auburn-rinsed hair—like one of them, but who had revealed herself to be “off.”

Well, so what? She thought giddily, staring them down.
Maybe I am.
Maybe she was growing into the kind of person who
didn’t give a shit
. After all, none of these strangers knew where she was from; probably none of them had ever heard of Hartfield. It was a fleeting sensation, though, this taste of power, and even as she noticed it, Rachel could feel it begin to fade away.

“Thank you,” she called, faintly, to the woman with the Caesar salad, who had already turned aside, preoccupied.

There was no line for the ATM it took her three trips around the rotunda to find, where Rachel withdrew twenty dollars (for a $3.75 fee) from the savings account. She quickly crumpled the unwanted receipt, which read
$80 remaining
, and stuffed it in an overflowing garbage can. A similar receipt rested on a corner of the can’s sticky lid:
$7,420 remaining.
Rachel swept that in too.

At the newsstand, three bottles of water, two packs of cheese crackers, a bag of trail mix, copies of
Us Weekly
and
Glamour
, and two huge chocolate bars came to eighteen and change. She paid it, handing over the twenty-dollar bill she’d had less than a minute. It was so stupid, all of it, the magazines and the candy and the way that twenty came and went just like everything else—but it was freeing, too. There was something of a tiny, fierce victory in the exchange that came as a bonus to the plastic bag of mindless, glossy sweets she carried back to the girls. Or was that, Rachel wondered, just one way of making herself feel better? What she should have done, of course, was to pack sandwiches for them back at Danny’s house.

Back at their gate, Rachel dumped the loot onto the empty seat between Melissa and Lila. Mel was plugged into her music player, curled up, shoes off and asleep.

“They call our name?” Rachel said.

“They said the flight was full, no standbys,” Lila said, digging through the plastic bag. “Yick,” she said at its contents. Lila hated junk food.