The Bus of Dreams

by Mary Morris

  I waited him out. I played hard to get, then gave him ultimatums. I would refuse to see him; then I would give in. For four years he begged me to be patient with him. He would see me during the week and then see Sarah on the weekend. He told me each week that he was going to make a decision soon. One week he did. He married Sarah right after graduation. He wrote once to say they were happy and were about to have a child. When the child was born, they sent me an announcement. It had a little bird on it, sitting in a nest. I never wrote him back.

  It took me years to get back on the track. I moved to another city. I dated other men, but none struck me the way Benjamin had. It was around this time that my parents separated. I’d known it was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. She called me shortly after I got the baby announcement from Benjamin and sobbed that her life was over, that she didn’t know what to do. I flew to the midwest and helped her settle into an apartment. Then I got on with my own life.

  I relinquished my interest in natural history and became an identifier and cataloguer of primitive art. At times I traveled to faraway places and examined important discoveries to determine their worth, to situate them in time. I was very good at cooking utensils, weapons, and sacred idols. It was on such an expedition that I accidently met the man who was to become my husband.

  I was on a flight to Brazil, and a man sat next to me. He was a large, middle-aged man, and his feet had trouble fitting into the seat. He kept crossing and uncrossing his knees and finally said to me, “I travel so much, you’d think I’d remember to get an aisle.” His name was Martin Garnet. He was a doctor who traveled to isolated places to set up medical clinics. He wore Old Spice, and I was quick to pick up the scent.

  He called me when we both got back to the States and we began seeing each other. He was just getting over a bad marriage. I was still getting over Benjamin, though I’d begun to be interested in men again. We both traveled a lot, and when we could, we saw one another. He brought me gifts from duty-free shops all over the world, which I placed on a special shelf. Carved fish, shark’s-teeth necklaces, miniature paintings on wood. He came back with fabulous stories about childbirth made painless by acupuncture, surgery done by hand, chronic illness cured by visits to the local oracle. I listened for hours to his tales of India, the jungles of Peru, and slowly, though I hadn’t intended to, I began to care for him.

  Martin defied classification. When I told him I’d never met anyone like him before, he replied, “There is no one like me.” And he was correct. In the early stage of our courtship I should have had a sense of what life with Martin would be like. Once he was on a trip to the West Coast and had a day stopover before flying to Europe. He called to say he didn’t think he could see me between trips because he needed to go to Brooklyn to get a pair of dress pants. “Pants?” I said over the phone. “Don’t they have pants in Portland?” But he said he was on a tight schedule and didn’t think he had time to buy pants. I told him to get his pants and keep walking in them.

  But he didn’t. He stayed. Then he went. He traveled to Pakistan, then came back for two days before leaving for L.A. Whenever he came back, he told me wonderful stories about what he’d seen and done. Then he’d leave again. I found myself traveling less, wanting to be with him more, and I found Martin, once he felt secure with me, traveling all the time. While he was in Brazil, I wrote him a letter. I said I was a fighting fish on a strong line and I was trying to get away. I didn’t mail the letter. Instead, I tucked it into my appointment calendar.

  One night Martin and I quarreled, because as soon as he got back from Brazil he had to leave for Nigeria. I left his place in a huff, got into a cab, and forgot my appointment calendar in the taxi. When I got home, I turned off my phone and took a long, hot bath. When I emerged, the light to my answering machine blinked. I knew it was Martin, calling to patch things up, saying he wasn’t going to Nigeria after all.

  Instead, the message said, “Hello, Monica Alberts. For a successful curator, you should put your name in your appointment calendar. I now know that your mother’s name is Rochelle, that your parents have separated and your mother lives in Madison, that you are supposed to go to Peru in June, and that you had drinks with Betsy this afternoon. I’m afraid I woke Betsy up when I called, so you should apologize for me. Forgive me, but I also read your letter to Martin in an attempt to track you down. It’s obvious that guy is driving you crazy, and my advice is don’t marry him. I don’t mean to pry, but that’s my opinion. My name is Arnold Schnackler and I work in a lunar-receiving laboratory.” He gave me the name of his university and phone numbers where he could be reached.

  Arnold Schnackler’s office wall was decorated with a map of the universe. His bedroom ceiling was filled with DayGlo stars, and he’d teach me the names of the various constellations before we fell asleep. His work was studying objects coming from the moon that struck the earth, and he was devoted to finding life in outer space. He was also devoted to finding life on earth, and for a few weeks we had a good time.

  Then Martin called from Nigeria one night when I wasn’t home and left a grief-stricken message. He cut his trip short and came home. Arnold told me I was making the mistake of my life, but I said, “What can you do when love hits you over the head.” When Martin came home, he said he wasn’t going to travel much anymore. He wanted to be with me. And one night he proved it by handing me, over dinner, a large diamond. “Here,” he said. “Add this to your collection of rocks.”

  Martin’s heart was in the right place. But it wasn’t with me. I thought, from what he’d promised, that love would make him want to travel less. Instead, it seemed to make him want to travel more. He traveled all over the world, dropping off his laundry between flights, and delivered papers on how to set up rural hospitals. He received super bonuses from all the airlines’ advantage travel programs, and when he got these bonuses, he took me along if I could go.

  When I told him I wanted a child, he agreed and traveled more. I thought of my father, building endless chairs and tables we didn’t need, and how my mother was more alone with him than without him, how she begged him to stop. I understood now that some men couldn’t stop.

  Sometimes when Martin was away, I’d stand on the balcony of our building in Brooklyn and look at the stars. I wondered which ones were shining over him and what presents he’d bring me when he returned. But then I would feel lonely; once I tried to call Arnold Schnackler, the man from the lunar-receiving laboratory, to ask him if he’d discovered life in outer space and to tell him I could still name the constellations.

  I found something happening to me. I found myself becoming a little cold inside, a little hard. It was as if a lump were in the middle of my chest, some solid thing I couldn’t name. I called my mother once when I felt this way. I said to her, “I don’t know myself anymore.” And there was nothing she could say.

  When Martin was back from one of his trips but about to leave again, I planned a romantic evening. I served dinner by candlelight and we drank champagne. Then I said, “How about if we go upstairs and get in bed?” and Martin said that was fine, but he was expecting two international calls, and if I didn’t mind, he’d like to take them when they come in.

  I stood up to clear the table and began rinsing and stacking the dishes. Martin said, “Darling, you shopped and cooked. I’ll do the dishes.”

  I raised my fist high above the sink and brought it down flat on the dishes, smashing them to bits. “Then do them,” I said, and I walked away.

  We went to a marriage counselor to get back on a good track. The counselor suggested, since it was difficult for us to find time together, that we plan nice things to do that would be special, and that way we would have things to look forward to. She said that I needed to be more relaxed about time and Martin needed to be more attentive. It seemed simple enough. So when we stopped seeing the marriage counselor, Martin said, “Your birthday is coming up in three months. Let’s plan something nice.” I suggested a picnic in the country,
a climb on Bear Mountain. A quiet evening at home.

  Six weeks before my birthday Martin told me he was excited because he’d been invited to the Soviet Union for a four-day conference on international health. I was very excited for him. Then he told me the dates and I reminded him that he was going to the Soviet Union over my birthday. He promised he’d be back in time to celebrate.

  A few days before my birthday and his departure for the Soviet Union we went to dinner in a Chinese restaurant and I said, “Let’s plan my birthday now.” And he said he’d be back at seven in the morning and would come right home for a champagne toast. Then he said he just had two little things he had to do that day. He had to have breakfast with a health counselor from Martinique at eight-thirty and then lunch with some people from Saudi Arabia. “But the rest of the day I’m yours.”

  I spent my birthday alone, climbing Bear Mountain, and when I got off the mountain, I decided to give him one more chance. When I met him in the evening, I said, “I’ve never been bored with you, but I’ve never been so alone.” Martin understood. He wanted to make it up to me. We planned our anniversary. We decided we’d spend a weekend in Vermont. It was September when Martin told me he had been invited to Afghanistan and I reminded him that he was going to Afghanistan over our anniversary. He said, “Maybe they can get somebody else.”

  And I said, “Maybe I can.”

  When I decided to move out, I called my mother to ask if she’d help me, and my father answered the phone. I said, “What’re you doing there, Dad?” and he hesitated, then cleared his throat. He said he was living with my mother again. I said, “That’s not possible.”

  And he replied, “Anything can happen in this world.”

  My mother came to help me move, the way I had helped her. She organized my closets and helped me pick out sheets and towels. She seemed to me vague and distant, and when I asked about my father, she told me, “It was easier this way.” When she kissed me good-bye, she imparted her final wisdom. “There are some things,” she said, “you have to find out for yourself.”

  I dug my way into a deep hole, from which I did not emerge for months. I went into a cave in which I found myself regressing in time, growing wild, primitive. I subscribed to Natural History and learned things I’d never known. Trees grow only if there is space between them, but if there are no other trees around, they’ll burn out in the sun. Baby monkeys will choose a mother that cuddles over one that feeds. And sharks are missing the enzyme that produces anxiety. They go through the deep without depression or fear. I wanted to become a shark.

  In the spring I emerged and released myself back into the world. I was learning the fine art of being alone, and I had almost mastered it when, while walking through the park one day, I heard someone calling my name. I turned to see a stranger, jumping up and down, shouting “Monica, is that you?” I saw a middle-aged man, rather stout and gray, his hairline receding. Yet he knew me, so I approached tentatively. “Benjamin,” he said. “Benjamin Eiseman. You remember, the blackout, 1965.”

  I was shocked to think I had not recognized him. We hugged, and his arms felt flaccid; I was aware of his belly against mine.

  Over coffee he told me that Sarah kicked him out about two years ago. “She hooked up with some guy who sells software in a computer store.” Benjamin shook his head in disbelief. He told me that he’d never finished medical school because their baby died of heart failure, and that he taught biology in a high school in the town where he grew up. “Not what we expected, is it?”

  I told him about the demise of my marriage and agreed with him. “Nobody told us it would be like this.” I found I had little to say to him. As we paid the bill, he said, “So, do you still think about me?”

  To my surprise, I realized that I hadn’t thought of him in years. I hadn’t thought of him at all since I’d been with Martin. “I’ve become obsessed with other things,” I said.

  I headed home, stunned by my encounter with Benjamin, thrown off course again, and wondering if I should move ahead with my divorce or try to work things out with Martin, as he wanted. I knew the answer would never again be a simple yes or no. Rather, it would be a slow unwinding, like a battery running down, decision by attrition.

  I passed the Museum of Natural History. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment right away, so I wandered in. I moved aimlessly through the museum, like a person trying to find something she’s lost but can’t quite remember what it is. I went into the Hall of the Dinosaurs, but they didn’t seem so big anymore and I felt uneasy with their bones. I wandered downstairs. Through the Hall of Mammals, Primitive Man, Arctic Animals. I visited the ancestors’ exhibit, but it didn’t move me, either.

  Then I saw the sign for the Hall of the Meteorites, and I went in. I watched a brief film that told how meteorites are the Rosetta stones of outer space, how they enable us to grasp the wonder of the world. I saw pictures of the wilderness of Siberia, where in Tunguska a giant fireball struck the earth and caused brushfires to burn for two decades. I walked around the small meteorites that lined the room, and they all had names: Gibeon, Guffy, Knowles, Diable.

  And then in the middle of the room I paused in front of the greatest meteorite of them all, Ahnighito, which struck Greenland ten thousand years earlier and which the Eskimos believed had been hurled to the earth by the gods. Weighing thirty-one tons, Ahnighito is solid iron and parts have been polished where you can touch it.

  Above the meteorites is a mirror, and I saw where coins had been tossed for good luck. Ahnighito means the Tent, and there are two other meteorites that were once part of Ahnighito. They are the Woman and the Dog. The tent, the woman, the dog—the simple needs of domesticity, all that is required for the happy life.

  I reached up to rub the shiny part of the meteorites and thought of my hand, when I was a child, rubbing the knees of dinosaurs. I thought of my mother, giving my father another chance in the midwest; I tossed a penny on top of the Tent and saw in the mirror where it landed. Suddenly I realized that I was the same age as my mother when she first had brought me to the museum and taught me what she could of the world.

  When I left, the sky had turned gray. I looked up and knew I’d never look at it in the same way again. That now I knew anything can strike us at any time. I contemplated the simple things and felt as I walked how easy it is for a heart to turn to stone.

  Losing Your Cool

  SALLY MITCHELL believed in fate. She had been literally looking the other way when she met Pete, so she believed it was meant to be. Now she believed she was being tested. Lately things hadn’t been going Sally’s way. They hadn’t exactly been going against it, either. There were simply “complications,” as Pete told her the other night when he suggested they forget about their plan of living together for the summer.

  Sally had spent summers in the city ever since her father had driven her across the Queensboro Bridge three years ago, helped her move into the small L-shaped studio, and said, “Well, kid, you’re on your own now.” She’d worked as a waitress for a while and served coffee on roller skates. She’d learned word processing and did weekend jobs for large law firms. She’d wanted to be an actress on a soap opera, but so far nothing had happened.

  She had been looking forward to spending the summer with Pete in Jersey, but a few nights before he’d come over and said he thought they should wait on their summer plans. She was used to him changing their plans. She’d grown to anticipate it. Pete shared custody of Jaspar, his six-year-old son, and now his wife wanted him to take Jaspar for all of July and August, and he said he thought it would be best if they just saw each other on weekends.

  Pete lived in Jersey and drove a Coca-Cola truck. In the evenings he went to school to learn to be a CPA. When Pete didn’t have school and didn’t have Jaspar with him, he saw Sally. Sally had thought that by this summer Jaspar would want to meet her, but he still said no. So Sally was stuck in the city.

  Sally was upset when she called her father, but he just said, “
Count your blessings.” She counted them. She had a little apartment that looked out on an airshaft, but she’d made it as nice as she could. She had a boyfriend who picked her up in a red and white striped Coca-Cola shirt that made people stop in restaurants and say, “Where can I get a shirt like that?” And Pete would reply, “Join the Teamsters.” She had a small plastic card that gave her money from the bank when she had it, and she had a cat she’d found in a tree, named Katmandu.

  What she didn’t have was an air conditioner. Actually, she had one but it had blown out a while ago. It belonged to her crazy landlord, Antonio Petrocelli, and he’d offered it as a luxury he was including with the apartment. The first summer it was all right, but then she had to start the fan by giving it a turn with her hand. She’d open the thing up and take out the filter and give the fan a twirl and eventually it would pick up speed. But it got slower and slower, making a noise like a meat grinder, and one day it died.

  It had died at the end of summer last year, and Sally planned to replace it. But then one night in Jersey Pete had said, when things were going well, “Hey, why don’t you sublet that place of yours and come live with me next summer?” Sally had gotten out of bed and looked out the window. Outside stood the Coca-Cola truck, parked in the driveway, all red and white, looking cool and serene, with its empties stacked in neat cases inside. Sally had taken a deep breath, like a diver preparing for the plunge.