That’s what the signs say—“Take the Train to Maine.” They’re ads for the Downeaster, Amtrak’s service from Boston to Brunswick. There’s a picture of a train skimming a coastline, a couple seagulls, a lighthouse in the distance.
Mom grins at me, and in that moment, smiling at me across the car, her eyes asking for trouble, she doesn’t even look sick.
Which is how we find ourselves at North Station twenty minutes later, stashing the car in an overpriced, all-day parking lot and buying two round-trip tickets on the next train to Portland, which departs at eleven thirty-five.
The Amtrak agent situates us at one end of the car, where there’s extra space to accommodate Mom’s chair. But she doesn’t actually want to sit in the wheelchair—“looking like a damn invalid”—so after the agent secures the chair to the wall and disappears with a sympathetic, uncomfortable smile, she gets out and crosses to the empty blue seat beside me.
“Should we tell Dad now, or later?” I ask as the train pulls slowly out of the station. No turning back now—we’re on our way.
Mom laughs. “Later. Definitely. Later.”
* * *
The Downeaster travels north out of Boston, through the ugly backsides of industrial Massachusetts mill towns. The non-pine trees—the deciduous ones, I think, the word coming back to me from eighth grade—are bare still except for a few early buds. Thirty minutes or so go by with not much to see. I was expecting the train to run along the coast all the way, but we’re going through the woods most of the time. Every now and then there’s a break in the trees as we pass through a little trailer park.
I glance over at Mom. Her eyes are closed, but I can tell she’s not sleeping. She has a little smile on her face, uneven because her muscle control is better on the right than the left.
“What are you smiling about?” I ask. She opens her eyes.
“Foamers.”
“Huh?”
“Foamers. I remembered. That’s what they call them.”
“Who calls who? What are you talking about?” I wonder for a moment if she’s confused, thinking of something else, or if maybe I actually did wake her from a dream and she’s not sure where she is.
“Rail folk. Foamers. Train fans who fffoam.” She gestures to her mouth.
“Like foam at the mouth?”
Mom nods.
“That’s what they’re called? That’s gross.”
She smiles and puts a hand over mine, gripping it as forcefully as I think she’s capable of.
“Well, I don’t get where the water is. I thought this was supposed to be a coastal ride. Scenic,” I say.
Mom points awkwardly out the window, toward a rusty smokestack. “That’s scenic.”
“Yeah. Lovely, Mom.”
“Child.” She always used to call me “child,” just like she used to call Dad “husband.” She hasn’t done either in a while. “Trains are about ssseeing things ddddifferently. It’s not all pretty.”
“I know, I know. It’s about the journey.” I roll my eyes—she’s like a broken record, figuratively and kind of literally now, too, so focused on the same things. But then I think of those empty crossroads in the middle of Colorado, with their worn-out motels with half-lit cable TV signs and dust rolling by in the shadow of the mountains, and all the people between here and there and the other side. And I know she’s right.
Mom smiles. “See? You learned ssssomething from your old mother.”
We sit in silence for a while, watching the North Shore become southern New Hampshire. More pines, more unpleasant scenery. This isn’t the Zephyr, that’s for sure. But it is a train, and Mom’s on it, and I feel like we’ve done well.
Outside Durham, I lean into Mom’s shoulder, like I used to when I was little. I can’t distinguish between the movement of the train and the movement of Huntington’s rippling through her.
“Hey, Mom? Can I tell you something?”
“You can tell me anything,” she says.
“I did something without telling you and Dad.” It’s like Russian roulette, telling my mother this. If she’s angry, she’ll tell Dad. If she isn’t, she won’t. Who knows which way the day will go.
“Mmm-hmm,” she says.
“I took the test for the Huntington’s gene.”
She twists her body as much as she can to look at me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Dad and I had a fight about it, a while ago. I didn’t want to repeat that, with him or you. So I just did it. I wanted to know my status before I make any decisions about next year. About school, and dance. And just in general, for my life. I wanted to know.”
“You could have told me. You think I’m not sssstill your mother?”
She’s still my mother, but not in the talk-through-your-problems, make-you-feel-better kind of way. Not in the protect-you-from-the-ills-of-the-world kind of way. I think I’ve learned pretty well that no one, not even my mother, has that power.
“I’m telling you now. Will you not tell Dad? Please? I just want to tell him myself.”
She stares at me, kind of sad, searching. She must take this personally—how can she not? I’m basically saying, I want to know if I’m going to end up like you before I decide how to live my life. In not so many words.
But then she doesn’t say anything else, and after a few minutes I hear a halting snore come from her, and I see that she’s fallen asleep. I stare out the window at the depressing views, waiting for the water to show up. Finally, when we’re practically to Portland—Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where we used to come in the summers to play miniature golf—I catch a glimpse of the ocean through the pastel motels, not yet open for the season.
“Mom, look,” I say, nudging her gently. “Finally, some ocean!”
I can see the kitschy boardwalk, too, where I used to beg my parents to let me play arcade games and eat cotton candy. Mom and I would do skeeball tournaments until I’d have enough of those little tickets to turn in for some stuffed animal that crinkled when you hugged it, like it was filled with newspaper. And there was the Ferris wheel, which rose up so high that all you could see around you was water and sky.
“Mom, you’re missing the view.” I nudge her again. Then I feel her jerk awake, next to me.
“What the hhhell?” she grunts, way too loud.
“Shhh,” I say calmly, trying to bring her back down. I shouldn’t have let her fall asleep. Sometimes she gets disoriented when she wakes up.
“Where the hell are we?” she shouts. She slurs less when she’s shouting.
The passengers nearby are looking at us with those sort of combined sorry-for-us-but-also-annoyed-but-also-fascinated kind of looks. They’re pretending to be concerned, when really they’re just enjoying the show of the crazy woman and her poor sucker of a daughter.
“Mom, we’re on a train,” I say in a low voice. “You love trains. You and I are on the train to Maine. For fun!” I force a smile. “See? Look.” I point out the window. As if on cue, a gull comes by, flying low, close to the tracks.
“Why the hell would we do that? Leave me alone! What the fffuck is wrong with you?” She pulls her arm away from mine and pushes herself abruptly out of the seat. Just then, the train shudders to the left, and she stumbles across the aisle, whacking her head or her face—I can’t really tell—on the arm rest of the seat across from us. And then she’s lying there, in a quivering, jerking pile.
“Dammit,” I say, jumping up. “Mom, are you okay? Look at me, Mom.” I turn her gently toward me. She has a pretty nasty gash on the side of her face, but she’s conscious.
“I’m ffffine. Leave me alone.” But she’s quieter now, subdued. A man from two rows behind us has jumped up and is hovering over us.
“Is she all right?” I glance up and see that everyone else is peering into the aisle and over the seats in front of them now, watching the excitement.
“You can ask her,” I say. The man looks horrified. He turns bright red and trips over his words.
&n
bsp; “Sorry, of course—I mean—ma’am, are you okay?”
“Fine, I’m fffine,” Mom mutters.
An Amtrak agent comes hustling down the aisle. He has a first aid kit and a walkie-talkie in hand, and he fusses over Mom like all he can think about is the looming lawsuit that happened on his watch.
The train slows to a halt, and I hear passengers murmuring to each other, no doubt griping that they’re going to be late getting to the outlets at Freeport or wherever they’re going. I can feel their eyes on us, wondering why I’m alone with this obviously sick, insane person. Wondering why we chose their train to get on, their trip to ruin.
The Amtrak agent buzzes around us nervously. Mom’s sitting up now, a deep bruise already rising from the corner of her eye all the way down her cheekbone. She’ll look like a victim of domestic abuse tomorrow, for sure. I help her back up into her seat and hold a piece of gauze to the gash on her face. The blood seeps through it pretty quickly, much to the Amtrak agent’s obvious horror. He has a look on his face like he’s never seen blood before. Or maybe it’s everything else about Mom that horrifies him, it’s hard to tell.
What the fuck is wrong with you? I repeat in my head. The disease’s words, not Mom’s. But still, what is wrong with me, thinking we could take this trip like we were normal?
We’re waiting on the tracks for what feels like an hour. They’ve called an ambulance to come meet us, and the whole car feels like it’s getting more and more restless, agitated. My foot’s falling asleep under me, and when I stand up to stretch, I see three or four passengers look away quickly.
“Mom, I’m going to get you some water, okay?” She doesn’t respond—she’s pretty out of it still—but the Amtrak guy gives me a nod, so I make my way down the car.
As I pull a paper cone cup from the dispenser, a woman brushes past, then stops and stares at me. Even though I keep my eyes focused on the water, she doesn’t move. Then she leans in close to me, like she knows something I don’t.
“That woman shouldn’t be out in public like this,” she says. “She should be in a home.” She shakes her head. “She’s a danger to herself and others.”
My ears and cheeks prickle with heat. “That woman is my mother. Mind your own damn business.” She looks shocked, like how dare I question her on this matter about which she knows nothing at all. She starts to open her mouth to say something else, but I walk away.
* * *
Mom has three stitches in the side of her face by the time Dad comes charging through the double doors of the emergency room at Maine Medical Center in Portland. He gives her a quick kiss on the forehead and inspects her face, the bandage, the swelling.
“You okay, babe?”
She nods. “Fine. Just ssstupid.”
“You’re not stupid. It was an accident. It could happen to anyone on a train.” Then he looks from her to me. “What the hell were you thinking, Rose?”
“I don’t know—I just…” The words get caught around each other in my mouth and nothing real comes out. Tears stream down my cheeks.
“Goddammit, Rose! You didn’t think to tell me where you were off to on your little holiday jaunt? What about your mother’s physio? She needs her physio.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks. “Oh yeah, she really needs it, Dad. It’s clearly having a marked impact on her quality of life.”
I storm past my father and out the doors into the parking lot. The air smells like salt. It reminds me that we’re in Maine—formerly the site of so many happy moments for our family, until that summer I was twelve, with the stupid ticking stripe. Now Maine seems to be a harbinger of doom. I should remember not to come back here.
I stomp back and forth for a few minutes, trying to regain my balance. Finally, Dad comes outside, pushing Mom in her chair. Without saying anything, he takes me in his arms and kisses the top of my head.
Inexplicably, I burst into tears all over again, out of relief this time.
“Hey, hey,” Dad says. “It’s all right. I just got freaked out on the drive up here. So your little mother-daughter adventure went awry. Everyone’s okay.” I sniffle into Dad’s coat.
“You should sssee the other guy,” Mom adds. Dad and I both turn to her, dumbfounded. I don’t think either of us has heard her make a joke in ages.
“All right, then,” Dad says. Then he leans over and kisses her on the lips. I can’t remember the last time I saw him do that. “Do you ladies mind if we take an automobile home rather than a locomotive?”
Mom sleeps, knocked out with painkillers and stretched across the backseat, all the way back to Boston, and I stare out the window at 95 South as it rushes by.
“Sorry, Dad,” I say, after we’ve listened to a whole segment of talk radio in silence.
“You wanted to do something nice with your mother. I get it.”
“It was stupid, though. We could’ve just gone to the movies or something.”
“She could’ve tripped in a movie theater.”
“She took a nap,” I explain. “And when she woke up she didn’t know where she was. That’s why she freaked out and tried to run down the aisle.”
Dad doesn’t say anything for a minute. Then he nods, slowly. “Yup. Well, that’s where she’s at now. It is what it is.”
And it’s only going to get worse.
* * *
When we’re almost back in Cambridge, Dad calls Dr. Howard and asks if he can see Mom quickly this afternoon. Mom grumbles in protest, but I can tell Dad wants Dr. Howard’s reassurance that she’s okay. When he drops me off at home on their way to the doctor, Gram comes rushing out of the house, looking frantic.
“She’s fine, she’s fine,” I say.
“And you? All right?” Gram says, grabbing my hand. I shake my head. Am I fine? I don’t even know. She pulls me in close. Her breath smells like old tea, but it’s somehow comforting.
“Go have a rest, then,” Gram says. “I’ll go with them to see Dr. H.”
Inside, the house is breezy with the first few warm drafts of spring, and it has the fresh smell of the weather warming up. I text Caleb, giving him only the briefest of explanations of the day, leave the front door unlocked behind me, and go upstairs to my bed. It’s still light out but I could sleep for days.
Fifteen minutes later, maybe twenty—I’ve already dozed off—I hear the door.
“HD?” Caleb calls.
“Upstairs!”
Without saying anything, he slips into the bed next to me. I crawl into the nook between his arm and his chest, and he holds me tight in there, no questions asked. Then I roll over onto his chest, and kiss him.
I was half-asleep a minute ago but now I’m fully awake, a rush of adrenaline beating rapid-fire through my whole body. I know immediately that we’re going somewhere we haven’t been before—and I don’t stop to think about it anymore. I tug my shirt over my head quickly and he does the same, then pulls me into his warm, smooth chest and kisses the back of my neck, pushing my hair out of the way. He unhooks my bra.
I don’t want to think about loving him or not loving him in this moment. All I want is to disappear into him, to fall into his eyes and mouth and forget the day behind me. We can’t possibly get any physically closer than we are right now, but I want more. I wrap my arms and legs around his, until we’re as close as we can to becoming one being with eight limbs and two brains, and two hearts beating really, really fast on top of each other. The feeling I’ve been afraid of all this time, of losing myself in someone else—right now it’s all I want.
We’ve never been completely naked in front of each other, and as we peel off clothing, our eyes and hands roam over each other, figuring things out. I find another scar, a Harry Potter–like lightning bolt, smack in the middle of Caleb’s chest. “Stepped on with a soccer cleat, fifth grade,” he says when I run my finger over it.
“Are you sure about this?” he asks, pulling my hair out of my face and twisting it around his fingers. “What I said the other day … I di
dn’t say it so you’d have sex with me.”
I take his glasses off carefully and shake my head. I already know that. And I’m not doing this to make up for not saying it back. Or maybe I am, just a little. I don’t care. In this moment, I’m sure.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
He nods, then kisses me again.
The actual sex part isn’t as easy as I expect it to be. He has a condom, but it turns out that they’re easier to unfurl over bananas in “growth ed” class than they are in real life, and we both fumble with it. The sexiness of the moments before disappears into awkwardness. But then we lock eyes again and I don’t care if it’s awkward. Right here in my bed, with the April sun peeking in like it’s keeping our secret, we’re safe.
Twenty-six
It feels like too much happened in the last twenty-four hours to be held in one day—the train to Maine with Mom, the accident that landed us in the Portland hospital, Dad freaking out, Caleb coming over. Caleb coming over.
I text him from the bus on my way to school. “Hey. How’s you?” But he doesn’t respond.
By the end of the day, I’m starting to get genuinely worried. I text him again, then a third time, and I hear nothing. He always has a chance to text me at lunch or during a study hall. My overanxious brain goes into hyperdrive. Car accident on the way home last night? Maybe he was distracted. Or maybe he’s regretting the whole thing and wishing it never happened—wishing we had never happened, and he’s trying to figure out how to tell me.
It’s the first really warm spring day of the year, so I tell Lena to meet me on the playing field after school. We lie on the grass in the late afternoon sun.
“Okay, so what’s this update?” She pushes her hugely oversize, tortoise-shell sunglasses higher on her nose and rests her head on her bag. “Did you hear from PCCA already?”
When I tell her, she goes from lying down to sitting up straight so fast I barely register her moving.
“I cannot believe you didn’t call me immediately. This is a big, big deal.”
I wish she’d make a little less of a big deal of it, actually. I expected this response from her, of course, but I’ve been busy trying to downplay the whole thing in my head all day.
Rules for 50/50 Chances Page 22