by David Rowell
But now there was a baby. Adanya could have the baby, he figured, and eventually return to classes while her mother watched over the child. But they would have to be married for her parents to support them in any way, and in any case, they would have to live with Adanya’s family until graduation. He liked both her parents well enough, though they were much more traditional and conservative than his own, and their house was small; it was impossible to envision all five of them living there and his not feeling miserable. Or, Lionel wondered, would Adanya possibly consider putting the baby up for adoption? Maybe they could talk about all the options in some reasonable way.
On his break Lionel read her letter once more, the whiff of perfume still faintly on the page, despite how many times he had opened and closed it. He studied the little heart she made at the bottom, plump and radiating. Since they’d been dating, her hearts had improved measurably.
Lionel rejoined Big Brass, who was due his own break now.
“You think you’re ready to handle the bar for a little bit, rook?” Big Brass asked him. “I was going to take five.” As the trip had extended, more passengers were coming into the snack car, and a few had asked Big Brass for drinks Lionel had never heard of. There was a list of drinks and their ingredients under the bar, but it looked at least twenty years old, with the type badly faded, the paper worn so thin that it wouldn’t survive another folding.
“Yes, sir, take your time,” Lionel said, too confident to be convincing, but Big Brass moved behind him and clapped him on the shoulder. They were approaching a packed station platform, and the conductor slowed the train to a speed so halting, it felt like it was being pushed by crew members. From his window Lionel caught a glimpse of the crowd: most were so slick with perspiration that they looked as if they had just stepped out of a rain shower, but they were suddenly revived by the train’s arrival. As the train went past, the crowd surged all at once as several police officers shouted their gruff warnings about getting too close.
The snack car was filled with smoke, which had begun to irritate Lionel’s eyes, but maybe he would get used to this, too. The men with the press tags around their necks talked casually to men Big Brass had told him were senators and congressmen, but it was clear these were not conversations that would make their way into the next day’s paper. The reporters ordered the most drinks. The air conditioner had remained broken, and with each state the train passed through, the reporters’ ties became more open at the throat.
A man in a dark suit, with a face not much wider than the knot of his tie, entered the car and moved purposefully to the bar. “Mrs. Kennedy would like a Coke,” the man said brusquely. The request hit Lionel like an electric jolt. How much ice did she like? Should he send along what was left in the can? Lionel tried to steady himself and poured slowly. When he handed the man the drink, the man stuffed two dollar bills into the tip jar.
Lionel wondered if it was possible for him to go to the last car, before the coffin was unloaded at Union Station, and steal a glimpse—at least for his father. This was too risky, he knew, and he wasn’t going to ask, but until Big Brass was back from his break, it was nice to try to imagine how he could do it.
Washington
Inside Union Station they were all stretched along the platform of track 17. The man behind Maeve had his arm pressed against the middle of her back, and the woman next to her was pushed squarely against her shoulders. That woman was getting the occasional report from the man next to her and told Maeve that the train was even further off schedule. It was only puttering through Delaware now.
Sometimes there was a sudden, violent surge of movement, pushing Maeve and those around her almost off their feet. The air was as heavy as wet laundry, but if Maeve pushed her way through, back up to the main hall to quench her thirst, she knew she would never get her place back. As it was, her position in the crowd didn’t seem half bad. She was fifteen feet from the platform’s edge, toward the end.
“It’s so hard on the legs, and I’m used to being on my feet the whole day,” the woman next to Maeve said. Around her dull blond hair, she wore a kerchief which mostly matched the scarlet shade of her lipstick.
Maeve nodded vaguely. For the last couple of hours she had mostly avoided attempts at conversation, but it was occurring to her that this was probably only making the time go by that much more slowly.
“Are you here by yourself?” the woman asked.
Maeve said she was.
“My sister was supposed to come, but she decided to drive up to Maryland because she thought she would have a better view. She was smart.”
Maeve smiled.
“They’re just lining the tracks the whole way, the reports say,” the woman said. “Sometimes it’s miles at a time. It’s amazing. It’s a real tribute.”
“’Tis,” Maeve said.
“Where are you from, if I may ask?” said the woman.
“I live in Boston,” Maeve said. “But I’m originally from Ireland.”
The woman’s face brightened. “You drove all this way from Massachusetts? My, I’m impressed.” She tugged on her kerchief, trying to straighten it but only making it more lopsided.
“Actually, I was already here—on vacation, really.”
“I see. My husband and I honeymooned in Boston,” the woman said.
Maeve smiled once more.
“He was home on leave—this was during World War Two,” the woman went on, grateful for the occasion to talk. “He had two weeks, and we didn’t know each other very well at all. We had gone on a few dates the prior year, in 1942. And he was called up. We exchanged some letters, nothing—the way I saw it—too serious. I did send him a picture because he had asked for one, but it wasn’t anything glamorous. My mother had a picture of me out in the yard washing our dog. I sent it to him without thinking anything of it. He always said that picture was what sealed it. When he came home on leave—we lived in Rhode Island then—he had arranged to have dinner, and it was all candle lights and a nice booth. And wine. And before the check could come, he had gotten down on his knee and proposed. And that was that. He wanted to be married right away, before he went back, and that’s what we did. We eloped and drove the two hours to Boston for nearly a week—stayed at a little inn in Beacon Hill. And then he shipped off, just like that. Just like I knew he had to.”
Maeve looked into the woman’s eyes, then said, “That must have been hard, having to be apart so quickly like that.”
“Oh, I never saw him again,” the woman said. “No, he was killed in Normandy. About three months later.”
“My goodness!” Maeve said. “Oh. So tragic.”
“That it was,” the woman said, and she showed a smile that made clear there were no more tears for him. “But it was happening to so many young men. It was a long time ago. And yet.” The woman stopped and brought her husband back into her mind once more. His hair was dark, with a little cowlick in the front that she played with constantly that one week together. One of his teeth had been chipped in a fight when he was a teenager, and she followed along the uneven bottom of it with her finger, the sharp edge like a broken shell. One of his eyes was blue, the other green, and when they married she wondered if she ever would get used to that. It was as if he were two men in the same body. She remembered the way he looked leaning down for his duffel bag at the airport on their last day together. He sucked in his lip, like a child determined not to cry.
“Yes, a long time ago,” she said. “I’ve been in Washington for twenty years.” Ordinarily, she might have stopped there, but going back to being silent was too much for the woman to consider. “I work as a tour guide at the Capitol. Taking visitors through the House chamber and the Senate chamber, the interior galleries, through the rotunda. Narrating the history. I’ve been there for sixteen years now.”
The Capitol was a world away from holding babies and changing diapers and singing little nonsense songs to lull them into their naps, and suddenly Maeve felt a little foolish. “Did you
ever get to meet Senator Kennedy, then?” she asked.
“I did get to meet him once, yes,” the woman said. “Just about a year ago. Before he entered the race. He was standing by himself, just outside the Senate chamber. There was about to be a vote, and he was standing almost like a nervous schoolboy, almost like he had to work up the nerve to go inside. I was between tours, and I just walked over to him. I explained that I worked there, and he wanted to know all about what I did, how long I had been here, and he told me his favorite painting in the Capitol, which he said was Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, by Emanuel Leutze. Said he liked the sense of‘manifest destiny’ of it—I’ll always remember that. He was exceptionally charming. Talking to me like I was the only person in the world.”
“That’s wonderful,” Maeve said. Her legs felt rubbery, her shoulders pulled to the ground. She tried to bend her knees, and that was the last thing she remembered before everything went dark.
Maryland
Despite his deadline, Roy had stayed for the train because he was sure the scene in their backyard would give him some powerful image, some metaphor to work with: Jamie’s war injury seen against the body of the man who was likely to have been the next president, who might have ended the war. Jamie surrounded by family, the Kennedy family possibly gathered around the casket. Roy was trying to write the lead paragraph in his mind when the rumble of the train’s locomotive engine announced its arrival. Everyone on the Wests’ back lawn jumped to their feet and rushed to the edge of the tracks, except Ellie, who waited for Jamie to get his crutches under his arms. As he moved to join the others, she ran her hand over his back and said, “Well, here we go.” Next door, the two Wilkinson boys had mostly fallen apart waiting for the train, and their mother was inside putting them down to bed. But now she came running out, as if the train were returning her husband from Vietnam.
Miriam stood next to Roy and wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh God, oh God,” she whispered, and her eyes swelled with tears, though to Roy she seemed to be willing herself to cry. Mr. West took off his Baltimore Orioles cap and placed it over his heart. As the train crossed in front of them, Roy noticed that Sutton held his hand in a crisp and well-practiced salute. Next to him, Jamie put all his weight on one crutch and held the other one aloft—still, as if he were holding a flag. His chin jutted out, the way it did in his senior portrait in the Burton yearbook.
As the first cars rushed by them, Miriam suddenly dropped to her knees. Roy quickly bent down and put his arm around her shoulder, and he was surprised at how quickly she moved into him. He said, “It’s all right,” though she couldn’t hear him. He could feel Mrs. West turning her gaze toward them, but he could not take his eyes off the train. When the car bearing Robert Kennedy’s body sailed past them, Roy was surprised to feel a fierce desire to pull Miriam even closer against him, to kiss her damp cheeks. But he knew it was really just Claire he was thinking of.
Washington
There you are,” said a voice.
Maeve was lying down on a low-slung cot, next to a few others similarly spilling over the small frames. She felt dizzy and couldn’t be sure she wasn’t dreaming. The man’s voice wasn’t Irish, but it reminded her of her father, the surprise in it, the tenderness. “Where am I?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Well, first of all, you’re just fine,” said the man. He wore a white coat, and his hair was a nearly perfect match in color. “Fine now, that is. You’re in the station’s first aid room. You fainted. But lucky for you, you fell right into the arms of the woman next to you, so no head bump. But don’t feel bad. You’re hardly the only one to have fainted out there. The heat, the hours of standing, especially with the long delay. I wonder if you’ve eaten anything.”
“Just breakfast,” Maeve said, and she sat up, which made her even woozier.
“Easy now,” he said. “I’m Dr. Rayburn, by the way. I’m on loan, so to speak. I work over at Georgetown Hospital. How about we give you a little orange juice, just to get some sugar into you.”
Maeve nodded and took a paper cup from the nurse, whose starched white cap looked like it might topple off. “Thank you,” Maeve said, and took two long sips. “I’ve never fainted before.”
“It’s nothing to worry about,” the doctor said. “It’s your body’s way of just shutting down if it’s too weak or your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen. There can be a few factors, but I suspect it’s the heat and the lack of food. You’re not hypoglycemic, are you?”
Maeve didn’t know what that meant, but she shook her head no.
“It takes a little time to get your full energy back. And I want to see you standing up first and trying a little walking before I let you go.” He then attended to a man who had possibly broken his ankle.
“Did someone bring me over?” Maeve asked the nurse. “Is the woman I fell into still here?”
“You were brought through on a stretcher,” the woman said with the cheer of someone describing a shooting star.
“My goodness,” Maeve said.
“Your purse is right there,” the nurse pointed out.
Maeve put her feet on the ground and lifted them a couple of times to test her strength.
“How does that feel?” asked the nurse, who was as plump as a pumpkin.
“Fine enough, I guess,” Maeve said. “So has the train already come, then?”
“Still on its way,” the nurse said. “It won’t get here until dark at this point. Some people were killed in New Jersey along the way, and they’ve just really slowed it down.”
Maeve’s mind felt too cloudy to ask what she meant, or maybe she hadn’t heard correctly. But she shook her head in an appropriate recognition of such news. She then took a few steps away from the cot and circled around.
“You’re looking better—in the face,” the nurse said. “You’ve got some blood back in your cheeks.”
“Oh.”
“Well?” the doctor asked.
“Okay,” Maeve said. “A little weak.”
“You should eat something. There are places in the station, and the sooner the better. Take another few minutes, make sure you’re strong enough. And no fighting your way back into that crowd. Do you have someplace where you can go and rest? Are you anywhere close by?”
“The Churchill Hotel,” Maeve said.
The doctor shook his head to indicate that he didn’t know it, but the nurse let out a coo of satisfaction. “Would you believe my husband was the concierge there for a long time? Until about two years ago. It’s such a lovely hotel.”
“Your husband was the concierge?” Maeve asked.
The nurse put her hand to Maeve’s forehead. “Your skin is dry now, too. You were very clammy before. Yes, for nearly fifteen years. He loved it there. They have a colored man who took over for him. They say he’s very nice, but I haven’t been back in since Ralph died.”
“I’m sorry,” Maeve said.
“Thank you,” the nurse said. “Well, I’m sure they’ll take good care of you over there. Now do you have cab fare? You really shouldn’t be walking or even taking a bus. What you want to do is just climb into one of their comfortable beds and take it easy.”
Maeve agreed. She put her purse around her shoulder and turned to thank the doctor, who was still kneeling over the man’s ankle. “Take it slowly,” he called out to her.
“Yes. I will.”
The nurse walked alongside Maeve to the exit, her thick fingers on the small of Maeve’s back. “Yes, the Churchill was a big part of our lives. That’s so interesting that you’re staying there, of all the places in Washington.”
“The concierge there now is very good,” Maeve said. “I think your husband would have been pleased with how well he does.”
“Oh, that’s nice to hear,” the nurse said, and she could see her husband again putting on his blue blazer in front of their bedroom mirror, the Churchill insignia over his breast, the fringes of his hair still damp.
The nurs
e gave Maeve’s back a little pat. “I’m sure he would have,” she said.
Maryland
Ellie walked Roy out to his car. She had been quiet since the train had passed, and he wondered if she had disapproved of his attempt to comfort Miriam. Now, as he fished for his car keys, the sound of loose change in his pocket was startlingly loud.
“It’s been a real pleasure, Mrs. West,” he said. “I know it’s been a sobering day with the funeral train, and I want to thank you for letting me spend so much time with your family, and for being so generous.”
“Jamie has good days,” she said, “and sometimes he has days where I know he’s struggling. On days like that—like today—I really see his hurt so clearly. And as his mother, I will never be able to make that hurt go away. That’s what is so painful for me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” They stood there for a time, both swatting at gnats. Finally, Roy said, “I may well call you tonight, if that’s all right. If there’s anything I’m not sure that I have exactly right, I’ll call to verify it with you.”
“You know, Claire cast a spell on all of us. When they broke up, we all really missed her. Deeply. I suppose I really had come to think of her as my own daughter in some way, even though they were both so young, and I never really imagined they would stay together always. But when she was gone, I grieved for her in a way that I would have never let Jamie know about. Even Joe never really understood, I don’t think, what she had brought to us, our home. And your being here today has brought all of that back. How things used to be, how much simpler and innocent.”