Subway Love

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  “Mr. Spock. Dr. Spock is the baby doctor.”

  “Fine, let’s call. The phone is in my mom’s bedroom.”

  “We can’t. That library from the movie was in New York City, remember? You can’t make a long-distance call in the middle of the week,” Laura said.

  They ended up calling the Woodstock Public Library reference desk. Laura waited on the phone for ten minutes before she heard the librarian return and pick the phone up again. She sounded out of breath.

  “From Moby-Dick?”

  “From what?” Laura asked into the phone.

  “Starbuck. From Moby-Dick.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think it has something to do with coffee. In New York City.”

  “Let me check again.”

  It was quiet on the other end, and then the librarian came back on the line.

  “I’m afraid I can’t find any reference to anything called Starbucks in New York City. Are you sure you have the spelling right?”

  “Yes,” Laura said, although of course she wasn’t.

  “The only thing I can find is a small coffee-bean company in Seattle, Washington, on 2000 Western Avenue. Does that help at all?”

  “No, but thanks,” Laura said, and she hung up the phone.

  SOMEHOW Jonas wasn’t that surprised when Laura vanished as soon as they stepped off the train. It wasn’t as if he was expecting it, but it didn’t feel that out of the ordinary anymore. There was something so unordinary about being on that subway, the way it looked, the way people were dressed — kind of grungy, old-fashioned maybe. Of course, he wasn’t really paying attention to his surroundings. Mostly to Laura. The doors had closed behind him, the crowd dispersed, and she was gone.

  Jonas slumped down on a bench facing the tracks and just sat. It was a few minutes before he noticed someone was sitting beside him, a minute or two more before he recognized the guy from the museum. Yeah, it was probably, almost definitely — it was the same guy from the Met. Wasn’t it?

  “What are you looking at?”

  Jonas startled. “Uh, nothing.” The boy was Hispanic and had a kind of ghetto look, but then again not really. He was wearing really high-waisted pants and a plasticky jacket. He had a ghetto vibe but an almost nerdy look.

  “I mean, sorry,” Jonas added. “I just thought I saw you at the . . . somewhere before.”

  “Seriously?” the boy asked. “I doubt it.” He looked Jonas up and down.

  “Yeah. There was an exhibit at the museum, I think.”

  The station was empty. You were supposed to be careful in New York, especially down in the subways, but Jonas didn’t feel like being careful. He felt like finding out what had happened to Laura. Why she had run away. Why she had disappeared. And this guy seemed connected somehow.

  “Oh, I thought maybe you were an artist,” Jonas went on. “You know, a painter or something. The way you were studying that painting.”

  The Hispanic kid, the teenager, sat up straighter. “I am.” He made a motion in the air with his hand, his finger bent. “A writer. I write.”

  “A writer?”

  “You know. A writer.”

  “Oh,” Jonas said out loud. The bent finger, the hand. He was holding a can, an imaginary can. “Oh, spray paint. A graffiti —”

  The boy looked around. “Whoa there, man. Watch it.”

  Jonas lowered his voice. “So, what are you doing here?”

  “Waiting,” he said. “Watching. My train should be coming any minute. Unless they got to it early.”

  “Your train?” But as soon as he said it, Jonas figured it out. The Pink Panther, the train Laura had been on. “Oh, right. Cool. When did you do it?”

  “Last night. I wanted to see it first thing this morning on the Jerome Ave. El when it first came out of the layup, but the cops were all over it. They don’t expect us up here. You write?”

  “Me? No.”

  “ ’Cause I see you here, like you’re benching.”

  “Benching?” Jonas was sitting on a bench, but benching? “No, seriously. I’m not.”

  “And the camera. I thought maybe you were somebody.”

  Jonas looked down at the bag strapped across his body. Not many people knew what it was. “Oh, well, yeah. I take pictures.”

  The boy reached inside his jacket and pulled out his camera. It was a film camera, an old Nikon FM series.

  “Nice,” Jonas said. “You shoot old school.”

  The kid smiled. “Old school? Man, who are you kidding? This is state of the art —” And the sound of the nearing train vibrated the station. “Whoa, brother. Get ready — here comes my train. You’re going to read about me one day.”

  It wasn’t the same subway car or the same artwork that he had seen the other day, but the style was consistent; the flare was the same. Like when you see a Monet and you know it’s a Monet. No Pink Panther this time; it was a Christmas scene, snow and pine trees, a smiling Santa, and the name SPIKE — this boy’s name, Jonas assumed — was written across the side of the car just below the windows in wild-style 3-D neon colors, and when the doors flew open, Laura was inside.

  NOW. There. Here. It was Laura. Her clothes were different. She was wearing only a sweater when, before, though he wouldn’t swear to it, wasn’t she wearing a jacket, a coat or something? Her hair was pulled back, not hanging loose like it was before, but it was definitely her.

  When she saw him, she stood up immediately, holding on to the bar, greeting him as he entered the car. “Where did you go?” she demanded.

  “Where did you go?” Jonas asked. The door shut and the train lurched into motion.

  “I didn’t go anywhere,” Laura answered. “I didn’t even know where I was. I had to call my dad.”

  Jonas tipped his head down. “I’m so sorry. Right. You’re not from the city.”

  “And my dad wasn’t home,” Laura went on. “I had to wait three hours until I could reach him, and he wasn’t very happy.”

  Jonas laughed. “Three hours? What are you talking about?” The subway traveled on its route. It stopped and started again. Neither one of them got up to leave.

  She was so pretty, even agitated and talking fast, her forehead crinkled up, and her hands moving around. Maybe more so. Prettier.

  “I got in big trouble, you know. My dad was worried, and he got so mad. I mean, I don’t think he was that worried, but he acted like he was. He even called my mom to see if I had gone back home, but my mom was at work and Bruce had to —”

  Jonas was shaking his head. “Wait,” he said. “Stop. What are you talking about? I just saw you, I don’t know, twenty minutes ago. Tops.”

  Laura got very quiet.

  “And weren’t you wearing a different coat just before?” Jonas asked her, but he wasn’t really asking a question, and slowly he stopped talking.

  It took him a moment to breathe and settle into his seat. He had nowhere to go. The train would travel forward and then it would travel back, same car, same line, same station, as long as Laura was beside him. His heart wasn’t thumping anymore. It was expanding. They sat on the subway, side by side, looking across at the empty seats. Jonas let his hand drop to his side. He felt for Laura’s fingers and she didn’t pull away. He felt something move through her hand into his, from his skin onto hers. He couldn’t say what it was exactly, but it definitely didn’t “suck.”

  THE love letters began to dwindle, and eventually, by around Christmas — well, Christmas for SongCatcher@gmail.com, according to the e-mails; Hanukkah for the Goldman family — the communications stopped altogether. By the time they ended, Jonas had collected 256 e-mails, sometimes sixteen a day just from his dad. Some with only a line or two:

  Go outside and look at the moon. It’s amazing tonight.

  And then less than a minute later:

  We may not be together but we gaze upon the same moon wherever we are. I think of you without rest.

  God, please. Seriously?

  Jonas became immune, as
if they were written by other people, as if his mom were not in the kitchen making dinner, or out at her belly dancing class, or in the den giving Hebrew lessons, and his dad were not working late again, or getting in a cab on his way to the airport for another business trip.

  He didn’t read anything in the letters that told a story, anything that might explain why the number of e-mails tapered off and then ended for good. No, the letters were more like bad poetry, or soft-core porn, little innuendos and references to meetings they must have had together. Whatever terminated the relationship happened offscreen, out of Jonas’s sight. It wasn’t recorded on the Internet. Not for his eyes.

  What was clear was the change in his father’s behavior at home when it was all over. It was as if his parents were teenagers again. Even Lily noticed.

  “Mommy and Daddy are kissing again,” she said, and giggled.

  Jonas looked up from his computer at his sister. She didn’t know anything.

  “So what,” he snapped at her.

  “They’re in love,” Lily sang. She stood at the doorway to Jonas’s bedroom. “Like in the movies.”

  Yeah, just like that.

  Lily was eight years old. She had long blondish hair that hung in delicate, still-baby-fine banana curls, their mother’s unabashed pride. Lily stood smiling widely, just under forty inches tall, about face level with the third drawer of Jonas’s desk, where old underwear, too-small T-shirts, assorted single socks, and a stack of 256 e-mails that never should have been there lay patiently waiting.

  They’re not in love, Lily, he wanted to tell his little sister. It’s not going to last. Nothing does. It’s not real.

  “Just like in the movies,” he told his sister. “I know.”

  He watched her face brighten. She had felt it too, even if she didn’t know what it was — the tension, the fighting, the distance between their parents. Now it was better. So, why not?

  And if you had asked Jonas what he thought of love then, he probably would have laughed, or made a joke, or pointed out the naïveté of his little sister, who had her heart broken when their parents split for good only a month after that and SongCatcher reappeared on the scene as Lorraine, the girlfriend.

  MAX’S parents met in traffic court on Fordham Road in the Bronx. The courtroom was packed with people waiting their turns, sitting quietly on the benches as cases were called up one by one.

  “No talking, please.” The bailiff was constantly pointing to people and telling them to be quiet.

  “Want a book?”

  David had turned toward the whisper. The girl was smiling and holding out a small paperback. He wanted to look down at the cover, to see the title, but this girl’s face was so beautiful. She was clearly Spanish, dark eyes so dark he couldn’t see the pupils, with long black lashes. Her hair was straight and it shone, even under the horrible fluorescent lights of the courtroom. Her front teeth were adorably crooked.

  “Well, do you?”

  It wasn’t until she repeated her question that David realized he was staring.

  “Thanks.” He took the book she slid across the wooden bench. He wanted to ask her name. He wanted to marry her.

  “Lowenbein.” The bailiff called out the next case. He said it again, louder.

  “Is that you?” the girl asked. “That must be you. No one else is getting up.”

  It was. By the time he was done, given a twenty-five-dollar fine and three hours of driving school, she was gone. David waited three weeks to finally open — but never did read — the book that was marked with a name and address: Idalia Rosario, 255 East 229th Street, New York, New York.

  David knew where that was. She lived in the Edenwald Projects, right around the corner from where he grew up in Eastchester. And that’s where he would find her, woo her, and despite his parents’ concerns that she wasn’t Jewish, marry her.

  A year and a half later, August 14, 1957, Max Eduardo Lowenbein was born.

  “I know this is going to sound really strange,” Jonas began.

  He seemed to hesitate. Laura squeezed his hand in comfort. She would have had no explanation for why she did that, for why she had let him hold her hand in the first place. In a world in which so little felt right, where visiting her dad, or being home with her mom and Bruce, just living every day, was something akin to traversing a field of land mines, this boy felt safe.

  “Go on,” Laura said.

  The hum and shaking of the train were soothing. There were only a couple of other people in the car, and neither seemed to notice anything was strange or out of place. The placidity of these strangers felt calming.

  “Have you ever heard of that word beshert?” Jonas asked her.

  Laura shook her head.

  Jonas inhaled and went on. “Well, it’s a Jewish word. It means ‘fate,’ more or less. ‘Meant to be,’ but there’s a lot more to it than that.”

  “I’m listening,” Laura said.

  Light suddenly flooded the car. How long had they been on the subway? The train was outside now, out of the darkness of the tunnels. It was traveling aboveground, above the city streets, on an elevated track. Laura turned to look out the window.

  “Where are we?”

  “Way uptown, the Bronx. We’re on the El, almost the end of the line.”

  “What happens then?” Laura asked. She could look down and see — even through the layers of dirt and deep scratches in the glass — the streets, the buildings, people walking through their lives.

  “It stops and then goes back the other way.”

  “Really?”

  Jonas leaned closer. He was looking out the window too. His face right beside hers. Laura thought he might kiss her. She would have to decide whether to let him or not. But he didn’t try.

  “Really,” he answered her, and he smiled like he thought her naïveté was cute. She hoped it was.

  “They don’t run as often late at night,” he told her.

  Laura shifted back onto the bench. It wasn’t comfortable. It was a hard plastic. She could see garbage, wrappers, cigarettes, and gum tossed under the seat in front of them, but she wanted to stay. Now, here. She could breathe. Here on this grimy New York subway she felt whole. There was nowhere else she wanted to be.

  “So, what more is there?” she asked him. Let the wholeness last. She wanted it to last.

  “To what?”

  “That word you said.”

  “Beshert.”

  Laura echoed. “Beshert.”

  They would stay in the car for another round-trip, from the Bronx to Brooklyn, from Pelham Bay Park to South Ferry. No one seemed to notice them, not the crowds getting on, clearing out, and filling again. Surely they didn’t notice anyone else.

  “It’s not like I’m religious or anything,” Jonas told her. “ ’Cause I’m not. It’s just kind of a neat story.”

  Did he really just use the word neat?

  “So, what is it?” Laura asked. “The story. What is it?”

  “Well, it’s more like a myth.”

  “OK, what is the myth?”

  Jonas knew the story from Hebrew school, a place he had dreaded going to, skipped as often as possible, and quit as soon as he was allowed. It was run by Chabad on the West Side, and while the students were as far from Orthodox as you could get, the female teachers all wore long-sleeved shirts, covered their heads with scarves or wigs, and were the most amazing storytellers Jonas had ever heard.

  It went something like this:

  Before you come into this world, while your body is floating safely inside the mother womb waiting to be born, your soul is introduced to its mate, your soul mate. This is your beshert. Before you are born, all knowledge of the universe is yours, so that when you meet this person on earth, you will be able to recognize him or her. However, for most people, the trauma of birth is so great, it causes nearly all that understanding to be forgotten immediately, and babies come into the world knowing nothing, completely helpless, and totally dependent. It takes a lifeti
me to regain all this knowledge, and most people never do. However, you will, again, cross paths with your soul mate on earth, and if you are lucky, a tiny glimmer of your memory will be triggered, and you will feel that you’ve known this person your whole life, even though you’ve only just met. The difference in your ages or where you lived or where you were born won’t matter. You met your beshert outside of time and space as we understand it. You met your beshert in heaven, and though it is destiny that you meet again on earth, it will be your choice to stay and listen to your heart.

  But that is not what he told Laura.

  “I’m not sure,” Jonas said. “I think it’s Yiddish, actually. It means destined, like fate, you know?”

  “So, that explains why you disappeared from the subway three weeks ago and now you’re here?”

  “I don’t know, but something’s going on,” Jonas said. “I know I’d like to be able to see you again.”

  He could see Laura blushing, her face spotted with red at the top of both her cheekbones. He wanted to touch her skin. It looked so soft. He was sure it would be. He wanted to lean in and press his lips against hers.

  “So, we can see each other again, can’t we?” Laura said. She tilted her face down. He saw the part in her hair. “But I better get to my dad’s now. What time is it, do you know?”

  Jonas reached into his pocket for his cell phone. “That’s weird.” It was on, but the time wasn’t showing up: 00:00.

  He had no bars. He never did down in the subway, but it always showed the time. Laura leaned over.

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you serious?” But he knew she was.

  “Laura,” he started.

  “What is that? A radio?”

  Jonas looked up. There were a few people in the car with them at this point, and the next stop was Laura’s, assuming she wanted to get to her father’s. There was an African-American woman in a long, furry sweater and lots of blue eye shadow. There were two kind of nerdy-looking white men in stupid-looking suits and ties — nothing unusual there. And an old woman sat at the other end of the car, sleeping. Again, nothing unusual, except maybe that no one else was looking at a cell phone or BlackBerry or iPod. No one had earbuds or headphones on. Nothing unusual because everything about this was amazing.