Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

by Rachel Simon

  Mommy is away at her library job. The babysitter who has too much of a tan and a different hair color every time she's here is in the kitchen, copying the words to "I Am the Walrus" off our album. Ringo has been following Beth and me around all night, and today we're afraid of him all over again. First, because he's a dog with all those teeth. Second, because we've been teasing him with a sock and jumping around and now he's too excited and he's after us.

  Since we know he can run up stairs and not down, we dart down the steps to the landing by the front door. Ringo flops to a halt at the top of the stairs and hangs his head down at us.

  Beth and I hold onto each other, giggling with fear. "He gonna get us!" she says.

  "No he won't," I say, but I'm worried he will.

  We stare up at him, and he stares down at us, and we're squealing with fear till the babysitter comes out. "What's this?" she says.

  "We're scared," Beth says.

  "He's just a puppy," she says, pulling him back from the edge of the stairs. "I've got him. Come back upstairs."

  "She's right," I tell Beth, even though I'm still nervous.

  We're grabbing onto each other when we go up the stairs—one. step. at. a. time. Ringo wags his tail as we come closer, and we relax. By the time we get to the top I realize two things: that Beth knows she's safe holding on to me, and that I kind of like that feeling.

  Dear Mr. Simon,

  You don't know me, but I know what's best for you. I understand you have 4 great children. Your wife loves you, too. You could say it is not my bizness but I know that you will be happier if you go back to them all now.

  I sit at Mommy's sewing table in her bedroom, trying to bang out this letter. She put her Underwood typewriter on the same table where she keeps her Singer sewing machine because we've just moved to a city apartment with no room for a desk. I'm nine, and we came back to New Jersey so Mommy could live closer to Grandma, because Grandma's her best friend. We live one block from the border with Newark, where Mommy and Dad grew up. Dad runs a mail correspondence school there now, but he lives in Greenwich Village with the lady professor, who wants to buy a farmhouse in upstate New York so she can turn it into a commune.

  If you go back you will make everyone happy again. The dog, Ringo, will like you too.

  Mommy taught me how to press down on the keys. Every day I write letters and stories: a girl stows away on Columbus's ship, a girl obtains the knowledge that could stop Booth from killing Lincoln. I write fake newspapers. Beth still can't read more than the alphabet, so I write plays too, and then Laura and I put on a show for everyone, wearing costumes and using accents.

  Now I'm working on this letter, which I am planning to sign "A friend."

  So far you are only sepereted. You don't have to get divorced. Everything will be better if you give up that idea.

  "Dad's here," Max calls out from the front of the apartment.

  Quickly, I whip the letter out of the machine and hide it under a book. Then I run down the hall, past Laura's room, my room, the back door, the bathroom, and old Mrs. Vogel, the sitter with skin as white as her hair, drinking prune juice in the kitchen. I come into the living room, which is also where Beth and Max sleep. Laura's already in her coat. Beth and Max are kneeling beside their beds, showing Dad the Hot Wheels tracks. This is where I hang out mostly. We run the cars on the loop and play the Top Ten on 77 WABC and dress Ringo up in T-shirts.

  We pile into Dad's blue car. We drive up past South Orange, past the hill where he used to take us sleigh riding when we were together, beyond the ice skating rink. It's nicer here than in the city where we live. Rats swim in the creek at the end of our block. The landlord downstairs cooks stinky food. Mrs. Vogel sucks on her dentures and serves us canned ravioli.

  "So what have you guys been up to?" Dad asks.

  Laura says, "I've been reading Nancy Drew."

  Max says, "I've been watching this old show called Winky Dink and You, and, man, did TV used to be dumb."

  Beth says, "I can sing 'Sugar, Sugar.'"

  I'm trying to figure out how to ask Dad his work address so I can mail the letter, but then he sees a park he knows. "Shoot some hoops?" he says. We get on the court and dribble. Dad nails it, Laura bounces it off the rim, Dad sinks it, I graze the net, Dad shoots it backward over his shoulder and makes a bull's-eye, Max hits the pole. Dad says, "Let's have a few lessons here." Beth sits at a picnic table on the side.

  At some point, after Dad explains what to do and says, "Verstehst?" and Laura and Max practice, and Dad and I are waiting at midcourt, he says, "And what's up with you?"

  I say, "Well, I finally figured out the Big Dipper from the Little Dipper, and Laura and I read Betty and Veronica together, and Beth and I can sing 'Yellow Submarine' when the radio's on, and oh wow you know what I saw in the paper? John Lennon is leaving Cynthia for this other lady named Yoko."

  I didn't mean to say anything like that, but it just pops out. Dad gets a surprised look and then turns his eyes back to Max and Laura on the court, and with this quiet voice he says, "Well, maybe John and Cynthia just weren't the right fit. You know, sometimes a marriage gets so empty that people feel dead inside, and then one of them meets someone who makes them feel alive and ... well, maybe that's what happened..."

  Later, when he takes us home and Ringo leaps around and they click the leash on to walk him, I say, "I'm staying in." Then I go to the sewing table and lift my book. The letter's still hiding underneath. I go out the back door and down the two flights to the trash cans. I don't want anyone to find that letter in the apartment, to see how stupid I've been.

  "Why?" we ask, sitting on Mommy's bed.

  "Because," she says, putting on her lipstick as she looks in her closet door mirror, "I want to meet someone."

  "But you don't have to go on a date. You can meet us when we go to see You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in New York next week."

  She combs her dark hair. "That's not the kind of date I'm talking about."

  "But what about Dad—"

  "This fellow seems like a very nice man. I met him in the library."

  "We don't want you to date. We want you to stay home and watch TV with us."

  She pulls at her paisley minidress so all the creases she got leaning in toward the mirror go away. "I'm sorry. I need to go out once in a while."

  BREEK. The buzzer downstairs goes off.

  "No!" we say, but she hurries through the apartment and down the stairs to the front door. We make our way into the living room and huddle by the beds, Ringo at our feet. Mrs. Vogel calls out from the kitchen, "Now you be good, don't give her any trouble." We hear talking downstairs, and then two sets of feet coming up, and then she walks in with a man.

  He looks like Clark Kent, hat and all. She introduces us, and he shakes all our hands. We usually never shut up, but suddenly we don't know what to say.

  Then they're out the door. We run to the front window and look down to the street. He's opening a car door for her, and she's getting in-side. "She look nice," Beth says.

  Max says, "I wish I had a water balloon so we could drop it on his dopey car."

  A little before the holidays, Laura and I run into a sixth-grader named Chip. He's famous in the neighborhood because when the kids on our block play softball, using parked cars for bases, he always steals home. One day, we're in front of our house: I'm holding one end of a jump rope, and the other end is tied to the railing on our steps. Laura jumps while I sing: "Cinderella dressed in yellow, went uptown to meet her fellow. How many kisses did he give her? One—two—" But when Chip shuffles over and pulls a handful of candy cigarettes from his jacket, we stop and each take one. Then, while we're sucking in the fruity flavors, he says in this low voice, "I'll let you in on a secret. I've got ways to keep getting all the stuff I want for myself, and you could too. Want to learn how?"

  "Uh, sure," Laura and I say. Because, after all, Mommy says that even with the child support and her salary, we don't really have much for Hanukk
ah, which she doesn't care about anymore anyway, but since we'd like some kind of holiday, she'll come up with something. Laura and I want to do our part, even if our allowance is too small.

  "Follow me," Chip says, and he leads us over the rat creek, down to Madison Avenue.

  Then he heads into Angelo's candy store, where we usually buy jawbreakers and Bazooka gum on our way back from school. He strolls around, taking his sweet time. We're pretending to examine the pinball machine, but really we're watching. Bald Angelo is on a stool on the other side of the candy bars, a pencil behind his ear. The phone rings, and when Angelo picks it up, Chip snaps up a Baby Ruth and slips it under his shirt. Then he walks out.

  We follow, and out on the street he rips off the wrapper.

  "Aren't you scared?" we say.

  "Naw," he says, chewing hard. "You just use what you got, and what kids've got is 'innocence.' If you play it right, no one will ever suspect you. It's a good scam."

  "I'm too scared to steal," Laura says as we walk home.

  "Yeah. But we need to get presents for Hanukkah."

  "Stealing from Angelo's isn't even a good scam," she says. "Mommy wouldn't want candy anyway."

  We walk along, trying to figure it out. Then we come up with a scam that uses what we've got.

  The next night, Laura, Max, and I dress up a Tupperware container with construction paper wreaths and tell Mrs. Vogel we're going to walk Ringo. Then, with Ringo in a red T-shirt but without Beth, we go to Lenox Avenue and ring a bell.

  An old couple answers the door, and the smell of meatballs comes at us. "Yes?" the old lady says.

  "Collecting for charity," we three say together.

  "Oh, how nice," the lady says.

  "What charity?" her husband asks.

  Laura says, "It's for retarded people."

  I make my face look pitiful and say, "Our sister is retarded."

  "Oh, we're so sorry," the lady says, and she goes and gets a big glass jar filled with money, and pulls out a dollar bill. She says, "How nice you are," and we try to look sad for our afflicted sister. Then they shut the door and we run back to the sidewalk, trying not to scream.

  House to house we go. First night out, we get $26.45. Second night, $23.60.

  I'm zipping up to go out for the third night and stick my head into Laura's bedroom. She's sitting in her pajamas.

  "I don't think we should keep doing this," she says.

  I walk to the living room and slump on Max's bed, my coat still on. I could ask him to come with me, but I just don't feel like it. I move down to the floor, where Max is building a Tinkertoy house and Beth is putting together a big puzzle. "Need some help?" I ask her.

  "'Kay," she says.

  I pick up some pieces and wonder what I'll get her with the loot.

  All four of us are sitting on Mommy's bed, caught up in Green Acres. She's supposed to be reading Agatha Christie, but when Arnold the pig appears I glance over and see her checking herself out in the closet mirror. Only it's not the kind of checking out she did last night, when she was getting ready for a date with a guy we called Jimmy Stewart. He's just like Clark Kent and the others. They all wear hats and shake our hands and then we never see them again.

  This time, she's got her hand on her face, running her fingers over her cheeks and lips, reading her skin like a blind man I once saw reading Braille. It's as if she's tracing the new lines pulling her mouth tight, trying to smooth them out.

  She notices me looking and lowers her hand.

  "I don't like it here," I say.

  One night I'm up late in Mommy's bedroom, watching TV with her. Everyone else is asleep, and suddenly I see Beth in the hall. She never wakes up like this, so I think she needs the bathroom. Only she passes right by the bathroom and reaches for the back door.

  "Beth? What are you doing?" I say.

  She steps onto the back stairs and closes the door behind her.

  Mommy and I hurl ourselves over to the staircase. "Beth!" we call, tearing down the steps. "Beth!"

  Near the bottom we catch her, opening the door to the street. She is looking at us, but her eyes don't see. "Beth! Wake up, wake up!" we say.

  She does wake then, all agitated. We walk her upstairs and tuck her back into bed. I go to my room so relieved that we'd been awake, but afraid she'll sleepwalk again. Was she chasing after something in a dream, I wonder, as I lie awake in a worry. Or was she just doing what the rest of us secretly want: trying to run away?

  April

  The Dreamer

  9:30 A.M. In the warm breeze of this Easter season, the purple whirlwind of my sister sweeps down the sidewalk of tulips and cradle-shaped baby leaves, picks up speed around a corner, and, at the waiting doorway, leaps onto Rodolpho's bus and hunkers down in a state of rapture. Having shed my black coat for a lighter jacket, I follow in close formation, and propel myself up the steps to join her at her usual cruising altitude. Actually, I think, with Rodolpho in the cockpit, Beth is above the clouds. As she's made repeatedly clear to me: "Rodolpho's nice. He's neat. He's hot!"

  Beneath his pencil-thin mustache, Rodolpho acknowledges us with a quarter smile. This greeting is notable, I soon discover, as he doles out smiles only when they've been earned. Then, with a quick hello, he pivots his gaze back to the sunny path before us. About thirty, small, lithe, and tieless, he has a shaved head and almond-shaped, osprey-brown eyes. Beth has informed me that his eyes are derived from his Arabic grandfather, his fine Mediterranean skin from his Italian grandmother, and, I see, he has the kind of symmetrically balanced face that would make a fetching GQ spread. Indeed, Rodolpho is exotically handsome, but it is perhaps because his features are combined with a reflective, reserved manner that Beth ranks him as number one on her Top Ten Driver Hit Parade.

  Beth trains her gaze on him, holding her breath until he hovers at a red light. "What do you do while you wait for him to talk?" I say to Beth over the oceanic roar of the bus engine. "Do you look out the window?

  "I don't know.

  "Are you just kind of drifting along in your own thoughts? "I don't kno-oh.

  "Or are you not thinking about anything at all?"

  "I don't know.

  An eavesdropping young couple across from us gives me arched eyebrows, but I've now become sufficiently schooled in Beth-speak to translate this exchange for myself. "I don't know, with no stress on any word, means, oddly enough, that she actually does not know. "I don't kno-oh" with its combination stress-and-broken-syllable, means she does indeed have a genuine answer buried inside her, but she'll be damned if she's going to share it. Then, of course, there is the most mysterious "I don't know. In this variation, she might or might not know, but, for reasons you will never fathom, she is annoyed that you expect her to know if she knows, or, if she does know, to tell you what she knows, and would instead just like you to shut up.

  So Beth fixes on Rodolpho, lost to me, and maybe to herself, in the labyrinth of her own mind.

  I sit back and follow my own thoughts. So far, it hasn't been so difficult to attend to the good-sister obligation on these visits, simply putting off other obligations till tomorrow. But you must admit, the dark voice says, it is wasted time, just spacing out here on a bus. I snap back, But since meeting Tim, I have taken note of countless tiny details I'd missed before: the shadows of branches that lie like lace across the windshield, the wing-shaped triangle of Rodolpho's pale blue shirt where he would otherwise be wearing his tie. And since meeting Jacob, I have measured my actions against a new standard, asking myself which impulses are generous or selfish. No, this time hasn't been wasted at all. Oh yeah? the voice hisses back.

  "Are you cold? Beth asks.

  "What? I say.

  "You're shaking like you're cold. I'm not cold. I'm warm.

  "I'm fine," I say, hugging my shoulders.

  Out the window I notice seagulls circling, and then I realize we're crossing a river. I peer down. Waves flicker like silvery pennants in the midmorning sun, as if hailing o
ur arrival. Signs point toward an airport, and as my shoulders warm up, Rodolpho noses our bus onto that road.

  "So how did you first meet Beth?" I say when we brake for an intersection, eager to re-immerse myself in my—in Beth's—journey.

  Rodolpho glances at Beth with a should-I-tell? look. I detect a slight apprehension in her face, then a hey-the-truth-won't-hurt response in his.

  "We met six years ago, on the Niteline," he says, as we sit at the red light. "That's the only bus that runs after seven P.M., and it makes all the major stops in the city. She didn't usually ride it—"

  "And I don't now, either," she interjects.

  "But then there she was, day after day, and she started talking to me. Always, the passenger starts talking to me. When I'm driving, I'm a stone-cold person. I take my job seriously, because I have a lot of lives in my hands, so I don't start anything up. That's why I didn't say much back, but I heard it all: stuff about Jesse, your family, her everyday life. Then I just let her ride my bus all the time. It just evolved that way."

  He is quiet as he accelerates through the crosswalk, and I can tell, as the houses begin to grow sparse outside our windows, that six years ago Rodolpho hadn't realized what a crush Beth had on him, nor how minutely she had learned to read his emotions in the sliver of profile she could observe from her seat, in the smallest shifts in the nape of his neck. He certainly hadn't understood that in her letters to us, he was the only subject she wrote about, and, indeed, the only reason she was on the Niteline at all, and that his advice, which he offered casually at stop signs and which sometimes contradicted ours, might as well have been hand-delivered by a god.

  Instead, as I learn at the next intersection, "She just kept riding and riding. And riding. So I put her on a schedule. And she stuck by those limits."