Commuters (8 page)

Downstairs, Winnie—she insisted, laughing, that he call her that when Avery visibly hesitated over her name—seemed perplexed when he turned down an offer to drive him to the train station. Standing in the kitchen doorway, Avery had fumbled through his wallet—Grandad’s check stuffed in there now—looking for that little train brochure; he was sure he’d grabbed one in Grand Central. But Winnie knew the Sunday train schedule off the top of her head, and recited it to him, arms crossed, smiling
a little at something Avery couldn’t guess. Strange, but whatever. She probably didn’t have a lot else going on. No, he didn’t want a ride, thanks. Yes, another soda would be great. Avery had to get out of there.

He had to get out of there, but Jesus-fucking-Christ, this kitchen. Six-burner stove, immaculate. Two pristine convection ovens. A soundless freezer the size of his closet. And the island—a prep area set off from the counters, four square feet of two-inch maple butcher block. It had its own tiny fucking faucet and sink. Perfect. He had the heft of an imaginary knife in his hand, and he was aching to dice an onion on that butcher block.

Winnie caught him looking around. “Or how about a snack? You have time. Let me see—” She started opening drawers and cabinets, and Avery saw the bags of salt-free pretzels, the rice cakes, and boxes and boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes.

“No, really. I’m fine. But…can I ask you something?”

Something in his voice made Winnie stop completely and turn to him.

“Have you heard of Garbo? I mean, is that a kind of makeup brand, or just the name of a lipstick, or what?”

“Garbo?” Winnie looked so helplessly lost that Avery just said forget it. He was embarrassed.

And soon he was running, lame soccer sneakers slapping against the pavement, swooping in a glorious burst of awkward, breath-heaving movement down a long, winding hill, past all sorts of suburban folk doing their Sunday suburbs thing. They glanced at Avery, but he didn’t have time to say much since he was
running
. Literally running, with no hurry and no point, a pointless gorgeous action it seemed he hadn’t enjoyed in years, and why was
that? Maybe he’d buy some running gear. Maybe he’d join one of those groups and run around Central Park every morning. It felt like laughing, this pell-mell formless pounding; it felt like being a little kid. Avery could smell himself, rank and unwashed, but that heat rising up from his chest and armpits just merged with the way his feet gripped the sidewalk and the swish-sound of cars whipping by. He’d be early at the station. He’d probably have to wait a while for that next train back to the city, back to Brooklyn. To Nona. That didn’t matter, though, not one bit, and Avery ran on and on down the hill into town.

It may have been the first week of October, but Jerry still refused to put on an overcoat. He’d looked at Winnie like she was crazy when she suggested it, and began a litany of winters in Chicago. Now
that
was where you learned to dress warmly, et cetera, et cetera.

The high school was lit up on this evening, and their group joined a modest stream of people on the paved path to the auditorium entrance. Bob was at his writing class, although he said he would leave early in order to catch at least some of Winnie’s big night. When she’d protested this—no need, her part was so small—he had said he wouldn’t miss it. Rachel had said nothing. And now, although Rachel was hurrying ahead with the girls, Winnie slowed, matching her steps to Jerry’s labored ones.

The opening reception for “Hartfield Station Stop: A Photographic History” was being held in the Girls’ Gym—the photos themselves were installed along the corridor walls just outside, where two dozen people milled and peered closely at the black-and-white images, plastic drink cups in hand. This left the gym it
self strangely empty, its two refreshment tables, podium, and rows of folding chairs all stiffly arranged on the waxed, putty-colored floor.

“It’s not really the Girls’ Gym anymore,” Rachel was saying to Jerry, in the crowded foyer. “What do they call it now, Lila?”

“Everyone still says Girls’ Gym,” Lila said. Unlike Melissa, who had hurried down the hall to a friend, Winnie’s older granddaughter stuck close to her mother.

“Really? What about all the drama, with the name change? What ever happened to that?”

“What’s wrong with Girls’ Gym?” Jerry asked.

“Well, this is the smaller of the school’s two gyms,” Rachel said. “So you can see why people got upset.” Winnie wasn’t at all sure Jerry would see, but he merely took in the information.

“Mom, we’re not going to have to stand up or anything, right?” Lila whispered urgently. “Because of Nana?”

“Definitely not,” Rachel said. “Nana’s going to hog all the spotlight.”

Winnie said, “Honey, what about when you do all those somersaults in the air? Everyone’s watching you then, and you’re always such a cool cucumber.”

“That’s different.”

Winnie knew Lila’s shyness was real and painful, and yet she thought it a complete mystery, especially for such a beautiful girl. Good lord, if she herself had had that hair and that figure back in her own school days!

Rachel and Lila wandered into the gym, to lay their coats along a row of seats—“not in the front!” Winnie could hear Lila hissing—and so she stayed in the hallway, smiling now and again at
acquaintances, while Jerry strolled ahead, looking closely at the pictures and reading their captions. He wore a suit and tie, though hardly any other man there did. Earlier this afternoon, they had planned carefully for there to be time for Jerry to take a rest before bathing and dressing. When he had appeared in the upstairs hallway, pink faced, in his sharply creased dark blue suit, Winnie had cried out in dismay.

“But you—you’re so—” She had motioned at her own slacks and turtleneck sweater, now unforgivably casual.

“And I thank you kindly,” Jerry had said. “Now go get shipshape, lady. I’m squiring you, after all.” She had rushed back to her closet, heart full.

It was one of their first public appearances, and though Winnie knew it was a little silly to think that way, she couldn’t help it. Nor could she help touching her pearls every once in a while or patting at the hips of her wine-colored long skirt, which had a matching silk shawl she was thinking about discarding. It was growing warm in here, with more people filling up the hallway. The only thing that she wished different was the faint discoloration along her jawline. Dr. Reynolds had said that it was merely a shift in pigment, not uncommon at her age, and certainly nothing to worry about—or even treat. But Winnie did worry. She hated the darker area that shadowed her left cheek and shaded down to the side of her neck. She hated that she noticed Rachel’s glance skating quickly toward it, and away. She hated thinking that Jerry might find it unattractive, might find any part of her unattractive. It was so unfair. For years and years she had been all alone, with a perfect complexion, and now this. And she was hardly vain at all! Nothing about the rapidly multiplying folds of her skin or her knobby knuckles or
even the strange new puffiness around her knees bothered Winnie. But this darkening patch of skin—oh, she hated it. In her worst moments recently, Winnie thought that she would easily trade a higher cholesterol reading, or even a return of the horrible vertigo, if her cheek would just go back to the way it used to look.

Meanwhile, she had lost sight of Jerry, so she moved through the crowded hallway, weaving around clumps of people, touching some lightly on the back as she maneuvered her way.

Most of the photographs were older, black-and-white, although she passed one blown-up blurry image from the 1970s. That was when the station building had been refurbished, with money from local businesses and a group of overly dedicated volunteers who combed the town for donors. Winnie glanced at the picture without stopping: a few dozen long-haired jubilant residents crowded onto the south-side platform, holding up a drooping banner:
We Are All Commuters!

There he was, toward the end of the exhibit, where the photographs stopped and the regular high-school bulletin boards and trophy cases began. Notices for cafeteria times, cross-country meet results, and a large poster warning against drug use had been hastily untacked and dropped in a pile on the floor to make room for the exhibit. Jerry had unknowingly planted a foot right on top of the papers, while he studied one of the last photographs. When she approached, he began talking right away, just as if they’d never parted, a habit Winnie had come to adore.

“There he is,” Jerry said. “Looks like he had a hard time of it, your father.” He pointed at the image, a grainy black-and-white photograph that had been blown up and mounted against a white cardboard backing. Winnie had to put on her little silver reading
glasses. The caption to this one read, “Early winter storm delays Hartfield Station completion by another three months. Harold Easton, foreground.” And the photograph showed a front view of the half-formed building, no more than an abandoned skeleton, no roof, girders exposed, and an immense pile of construction materials buried under a thick gray blanket of snow. In the far upper corner of the photograph, behind her father, a few bundled-up men were standing around awkwardly and shyly, as people did for photos back then, when it took forever for the image to be processed. Or maybe they were just cold? One had his arm raised, as if to gesture at all the snow.

“My brothers always said they remembered that snowstorm. It must have brought a somber mood into our house, that’s for sure. Sad-looking old thing, isn’t it.”

Jerry studied the photograph some more. “There’s more development in town than I’d thought there’d be. See, there’s the bank building.”

“Yes. It took forever to get the charter. Do you think they have the punch set up yet?”

“And they’d started paving the crossing right there. Any later and he wouldn’t have had the room,” Jerry exclaimed, jabbing a thick finger at the photo.

“Well, I think—”

“They’d already reneged on a promise for a bigger lot.”

“Who had?”

“The township. Says so, on one of those other plaques. They kept offering leases to storeowners, and when the rail men complained, they were told that shops were the way to build the economy, not a station stop.”

“Now that’s ridiculous,” Winnie said.

Jerry bobbed his head from side to side, indicating that there were points to be made on both sides. “In any case, your father had his work cut out for him.”

Winnie laughed. “He was that kind of man,” she said. “He relished it, I think.”

“I would have liked to have known him,” Jerry said.

For a confused moment, Winnie found herself thinking,
well, but you must!
She forgot, in a tumbled way, how and why it wasn’t possible for her husband to meet her father, and that she wouldn’t ever have the simple, complicated pleasure of observing these two men clasping hands. She was overcome by the sensation that she’d somehow
forgotten
to make such an introduction happen and felt a panicky urge to rectify the oversight immediately. Though which of her fathers should Jerry—now at least ten years older than Harold Easton at his death—meet? Her childhood father, the over-coated man spied in one or two photographs lining the hallways of Hartfield High School; the man who presided at Sunday dinner, chiding Winnie’s brothers for their unwashed hands, carving the roast into precise, even slices. He must have had so much on his mind then, but he was always gentle at home, always low-voiced and kind to her mother. Winnie could breathe it, right now, the pomade in his hair, the packet of cigarettes in his breast pocket. But if anything, the man Jerry would have met, if at all (which was not at all, of course), would have been late-stage Harold, Harold in his last years, ill-tempered and lonely, uninterested in the newspaper or the meals she and George brought over weekly. They had never had much to say to each other, her father and George, other than the polite usual. Winnie couldn’t help imagining that
Jerry’s presence then, while her father lived out his long year of dying, would have brought more…what? More discussion, more understanding, more
substance
to all those pointless afternoons in the hospital.

Men needed that, she thought now, watching Jerry study the blurry photo of her father. They didn’t admit it, but they needed the company of other like-minded men. Especially as they got older.

“Do you wish Daniel had flown in?” Jerry said now.

“What? Just for this, you mean? No, of course not.”

“Still, it’s nice,” Jerry said, looking around at the crowd, the carefully mounted photographs. (Pestered by the committee, Winnie had provided a number of them, peeled out of her albums in boxes now stacked along one wall in the basement of 50 Greenham.) “The way it’s all preserved here. All these men, their work.”

Down at the end of the hall, Winnie saw Rachel’s head emerge from the gym, and then one of the organizers behind her, Erica Stein, who waved with energy. The presentation would be starting any minute, but Winnie turned her back on them.

“You know, I think it’s a grand idea, meeting with Avery. We’ll just have to keep after him. And having him write down some things, about you. A boy like that shouldn’t be at odds and ends.”

“What? Oh. Avery. Yes, I’ve got a plan for that one.” Though Jerry’s gaze trailed along the photographs, Winnie knew he wasn’t really seeing them.

“Annette will come to her senses,” she said quietly. “This can’t go on forever.”

Jerry snorted. “Annette doesn’t give a fig about what it takes to build something. She only wants to turn a buck.”

“That’s not true.”

“Nothing wrong with it, either! But there will be no ‘TrevisCorp: A Photographic History’ anytime soon.”

“Maybe we should just go to Chicago,” Winnie said. “Go out for a nice, civilized dinner. In person, all of this could be sorted out. With the lawyers in the middle of everything, and all this back and forth—it’s impossible to settle things like a family needs to!”

“That point passed quite a while ago. I filed countersuit on Tuesday, and the board has moved to freeze all company assets while this thing plays itself out.”

“Countersuit against…Annette? Oh, Jerry.” Winnie could hear Rachel’s voice, coming closer. Now she understood all the phone calls of last week, the long hours in his office with the lawyers. Still, he’d never until now mentioned a thing.

“Don’t ‘oh Jerry’
me
. She wants to play this game, we’ll play it.”

“I still don’t understand how it came to this.” He had sued
Annette
? Winnie was unnerved; why hadn’t he told her earlier? And why would he tell her now, she couldn’t help thinking—just as she was about to go onstage?

“How what came to what?” Rachel had appeared. “Okay, Mom, the natives are getting restless.”

“Showtime,” Winnie said, and struck a little pose. She tried to smile. Maybe Jerry’s being so casual was a good sign. Maybe it was just how things were done, in families with all that money.

“Full house in there,” Rachel called over her shoulder. She and Jerry had already started down the hall.

Winnie followed, taking the opportunity to touch the fine-grained bumpy spot near her jaw—yes, still there—while looking over the outfit her daughter had chosen for the evening: those battered clogs she wore everywhere, a baggy sweater and
jeans
(well, they weren’t exactly jeans, but corduroy slacks that for all intents and purposes looked just like a pair of jeans). This unhappiness of her daughter’s, it was a hard thing to face. And tricky too, to know what to do or say. Rachel never spoke directly about her feelings for Bob, and Winnie—who knew something about the ups and downs of a long marriage—was careful not to suggest anything was wrong. A person’s marriage was her own private business, after all. And so Winnie did what she could, as much as she could, as she always had, even after Bob recovered: she kept the girls’ school schedules on her own refrigerator; she attended recitals and took Rachel’s turn at carpool duty. She brought salads to share at Rachel’s lunch break; she lent her car and her time and her tips for easing a child’s fever. Still, at times Winnie felt it anew, that same sorrow she’d had when Danny and Rachel were children and tripped or bruised or cut themselves; even as she’d rocked, and bandaged, and soothed, she’d mourned with a queasy guiltiness a mother’s knowledge that they would know pain, her babies, over and over again, in the life she had brought them into.

Now Jerry was escorting Rachel—or was it the other way around?—down the hall and into the gym. They were arm in arm, talking about the exhibit. She could see Jerry pointing out different photographs, and Rachel leaning down a little, to listen. A sudden peal of her daughter’s raucous laughter surprised Winnie, as did the comfortable way Rachel pushed at Jerry in a mock shove.