How to Save a Life

by Sara Zarr

  I have to remember what I’ve told Robin, so that I don’t get tense and mess it up when we meet. For example that I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, when the facts are different. Not that different. Close enough, I think. There a few other pieces of information that are more wishes than facts, plus one I don’t know myself.

  The man next to me stirs. “Did you say something?” he murmurs.

  “No.” At least I probably didn’t. Sometimes things come out and I don’t notice.

  “Oh. Dreaming, I guess.” He sits up straight; I smile and rub my belly, which is something I’ve learned calms people. They like to see a healthy pregnant young woman, and it doesn’t hurt if she’s pretty.

  Glad to have someone to talk to and glad it’s him, I ask where he’s going. This train started in Chicago and goes all the way to the California coast.

  “Salt Lake.” He pats at his hair, smoothing out the sleep ruffles. “My sister’s getting married. I don’t fly.”

  “Me neither.” And I only mean I’ve never been on a plane. “I’m getting off in Denver. Two more stops.”

  We talk softly so we don’t bother sleeping passengers.

  He should ask, “Business or pleasure?” and I would say, “Neither,” and I’d run my hand over my belly again, once, and then maybe with a look of concern he’d ask, “Where’s the father?” I’d glance away. Then I’d reply, “Afghanistan. He’s a soldier.” Because another thing I’ve learned is that’s one of the best answers you can give. People look at you like you’re a hero yourself.

  He doesn’t ask, though. Only shifts in his seat and opens up a magazine.

  So I ask him, “Are you married?”

  It’s a question to make conversation is all, but after I ask it, I know I should have thought of another type of a question. My mother says I have no social sense. She says I make people uncomfortable. And I want to say, Well, you make me uncomfortable when you tell me things like that, so maybe I got it from you. Actually, I never think of what to say to her until a few days later; by then it’s better to not bring it up.

  The man pauses the uncomfortable pause I’m used to before he says, “Yes.”

  “You’re not wearing a ring.”

  He holds out his hand, looks at it. “No. I never have. My wife doesn’t, either.”

  “Why not?” If I were married to someone like him, I would wear the ring.

  “We just don’t.” He shrugs and goes back to his magazine. When he flips the page, a sharp, spicy smell comes up from a cologne sample. “Whoa. Maybe I should rub some of this stuff on. Another eighteen hours to my next shower.”

  “I like the way men smell just naturally.” When he pretends not to hear, I realize that’s another thing that should stay in my head and not come out of my mouth. “What’s your name?” I ask. “I’m Mandy Madison.” Madison is actually my middle name, but I like the way the two names sound together without Kalinowski on the end.

  “Oh. Alex.”

  “Alex what?”

  He lifts his magazine. “I’m sorry, I really need to—”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I was only wondering if you were Indian. Like in Nebraska, we have Comanche, Arapaho, Pawnee….”

  “No. I’m a plain old Mexican American. Third generation.”

  I don’t know why he won’t just say his last name. “Really my last name is Kalinowski,” I offer. “It’s Polish. I don’t know what generation.”

  When he doesn’t reply, I tell him, “I’m going to try to sleep now. Enjoy your article.”

  I close my eyes and imagine him watching me, wondering about me, thinking how pretty I am while I sleep. My mother says men like to see you like that. In sleep you look vulnerable, and it makes them want to take care of you.

  When I wake up, Alex has his tray down, and there are two Styrofoam cups on it. Above them, steam is making curls in the air. “I got you some tea. Herbal.”

  No one’s ever brought me anything before without my even asking. I take the cup. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know if you heard the announcement—we’re running behind schedule. We might be an hour late getting in to Denver.” He’s put away his magazine, and other passengers are up and stretching and getting coffee and tea. The train seems to be barely moving. “I have a phone if you need to make any calls or anything.”

  “Friends are meeting me.”

  “Um, hey.” He shifts his body so that he’s sitting on his side, facing me and leaning close. “It’s Peña, by the way. My last name. And I’m…” He laughs. Lines appear around the corners of his eyes, and there’s tea on his breath and stubble on his chin. “This is stupid. I’m not really married. I just said that because I thought you were trying to hit on me or something, and it seemed kind of weird because… well, then I thought obviously picking up some stranger is the last thing on your mind right now. And you’re probably half my age, and most likely you have someone, anyway, given…” He gestures to my belly. “That.”

  This. This rolls inside me, stretches a limb. I touch where it moved and wonder if it can feel my hand there.

  “I’m nineteen.” Almost.

  “There you go. That’s exactly half. I’m thirty-eight.” He sips from his cup. “So, how long before you’re a mother?”

  I smile. I’ll never be a mother. “About a month, I think.”

  Alex scratches at his stubble. “Most women I know can tell you to the minute.”

  “I’m different.” Being so specific with dates is silly. No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure it in years and by the things that happen to you, and when this life is a whole year, I won’t be in it.

  “Well, good luck with everything. There’s something about being a young parent that’s so great. Too late for me, but my brother had all his kids in his twenties, and now they’re like pals, you know, listening to a lot of the same music and stuff like that.”

  I like his voice. It’s energetic. “It’s not too late for you.”

  “Maybe not. Just gotta find the right girl.”

  “I don’t think nineteen and thirty-eight are so far apart. My grandpa was twenty-eight years older than my grandma.” I picture us at Alex’s sister’s wedding in Salt Lake, him telling everyone I’m his date and how we met on the train. It’s not disloyal to Christopher to think this, because Christopher is like a dream, and I need to think about my real and actual future. Alex’s sister’s wedding would be colorful and festive with dancing, a perfect place for romance. “Are there going to be Mexican wedding cookies?”

  “What?”

  “Those cookies rolled in powdered sugar? One of my mother’s boyfriends made those once. They’re good.” His face is blank. “At your sister’s wedding?”

  “Oh. I don’t know.” He pulls out his magazine again, turns away.

  “I thought since they were called that, they’d be served at a Mexican wedding.”

  “It’s more like a Mormon wedding.”

  “I see.” I look out the window. The winter sun has come up, flat, gray dawn creeping over the landscape. When we pass dark clumps of trees, so slowly, I can see my reflection. I’m still pretty, even after being on a train all night. Alex’s reflection is behind mine. I imagine our reflections bending toward each other, his smiling at mine so I can see those lines around his eyes again. To the window, I say, “I just don’t think nineteen years is that big of a gap.”

  He quietly flips his pages.

  Jill

  The train is a little behind schedule. “A little” is the way the station agent describes it at first, but when I press for details, he admits there’s trouble at one of the switches and it could be another hour. We sit on a bench while we wait; Mom pulls her bag into her lap and digs through it until she’s recovered a well-worn envelope—pictures of Mandy that she stares at every day. “Look at her, Jill,” she says, holding the snapshots out to me.

  “I’ve looked at her, Mom.”

  Giving the photos an insistent little shake
, she says, “Why are you here today if you aren’t going to participate? I’d rather do this alone than have you here being so… I don’t know, Jill. So sulky, so hard.”

  “So me, you mean?”

  “This is not you, Jill.” She retracts the pictures, but I lean over and grab them from her hand before she can put them away.

  They’re the same pictures I’ve seen a couple of times—snapshots Mom printed from e-mails. Mandy and her big belly at the park. Mandy and her big belly on some bridge. On a couch. Standing in a bare hallway. In all of the pictures, she’s wearing the same outfit, and her big belly is the exact same bigness, as though they all were taken on the same day. And in all of the pictures, Mandy and her big belly are alone. I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of this girl, what I’m supposed to feel.

  “She has good hair,” I say, an offering, the best I can do. Her hair is palest blonde, thick and glossy and halfway to her waist.

  “Prenatal vitamins will do that.”

  When I hand the pictures back to Mom, she shuffles through them yet again, staring hard, as if she’s seeing the face of a long-lost relative or searching for the answer to some private, momentous question that, for whatever reason, can’t be answered by me.

  She looks at her watch. “Let’s walk over to Common Grounds for some blueberry coffee cake. It might be my last for a while,” she says, standing. “I don’t want the baby to develop a sugar habit so early, the way you did.”

  “I turned out okay.”

  “Mmm.” It’s a noncommittal sound, like maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.

  When we get back to the station, Mom convinces the security guy to let us wait on the platform. Maybe she told him our whole sob story; maybe she dropped her buddy the mayor’s name—I don’t know. But when I come out of the bathroom, she hustles me through the waiting area and toward the TO TRAINS sign. Security Guy searches Mom’s purse and pats down my pockets before we can climb the ramp. We emerge outside to see the train crawling toward the station at what seems like two miles an hour.

  We wait forever for it to go a hundred yards, Mom perched at the very edge of the yellow strip you’re not supposed to cross if you don’t want to fall onto the tracks and wind up with a severed limb. She’s maximally nervous. I know this because she hasn’t said one word in the last fifteen minutes, since we walked back from the coffee shop. The sun is fully out now, sky blue, LoDo looking its best and ready to make a good impression on Mandy.

  I will try to do the same.

  I move a little closer to Mom and hope she knows I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.

  Finally the train rolls to a stop; within moments people emerge from the silver cars. A lot of them light up cigarettes immediately and cluster in groups without their luggage—you can tell these are the ones who have the good fortune to not have Denver as their final destination. Not that I don’t like it here. It’s a good city. But when I’m free to leave, I’m going to.

  The passengers with luggage are slower to come out.

  Mom glances back at me. “Be nice to her, Jill. Welcoming. Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine what she’s going through. Set aside your opinions about this and try to think—”

  “Mom. Calm down. I’m not a monster.”

  Of course you’re not, Jill, she could say. I don’t think that.

  “I’m going to check the front cars.” She walks purposefully toward one end of the platform, her low boots clop-clop-clopping away, and I go to the other, pulling my hood up to keep my ears warm, and there she is. Mandy. I recognize the hair.

  She’s standing on the platform not looking around the way you’d expect someone in her situation would. Instead, she’s staring into the train car, until a man comes out with a big duffel bag in one hand and a smaller shoulder bag in the other. I walk toward them, slowly, watching. Now that she’s around other people, I can see how petite she is; shorter than me—and I’m no giant—and all-round tiny. Elfin would be the word, except for her disproportionately voluminous hair and, of course, her belly, and even the belly doesn’t seem that big for someone due in three weeks. Maybe it’s the dress—a pastel flowered thing the likes of which I’ve neither worn nor seen since fourth grade. Totally wrong for winter. No decent coat, either, just a light jacket.

  The man with the bags says something to her. She touches his arm and finally takes a gander at who else might be on the platform—the people there to meet her, house her, and raise her child, for instance.

  I wave.

  When I check over my shoulder for Mom, I see she’s still at the other end of the platform, talking to one of the stewards, showing him a picture. Of Mandy, I presume. I don’t call out to her. I want to get an up-close view myself, first. “Mandy?” I walk the ten or so feet between us, narrowly escaping being rammed by a stroller.

  I have got to get out of this town before the strollering of Mandy’s baby happens. Attempting to be supportive of Mom, yes. Pushing a stroller? No.

  Mandy nods, smiling. Before I can introduce myself and make her feel welcome and put myself in her shoes, she touches the guy’s arm again and says, “This is my friend, Alex Peña.” Her voice, like her body, is small.

  “Hi. I’m Jill.” Does Mom know Mandy brought a friend? Is this the baby’s father, or what?

  Alex appears no less confused than I feel. He sets the bags down. “Take care, then.”

  He starts to turn away; Mandy stops him. “Maybe you can take the bags to their car?”

  “I have to get back on the train.”

  Alex clearly wants to get away, and I’m highly doubting he’s the father, seeing as he’s got some gray hair and a few wrinkles. He catches my eye with a pleading look.

  “I got it,” I say, and turn to look down the platform. Mom has spotted us and is hurrying over.

  Mandy smiles at me and touches her belly. “Thanks.” Her eyes are ice blue, light and clear, the kind of eyes you see on certain sheepdogs. Her smile makes me uncomfortable. Then there’s this fully awkward moment in which Alex puts down the bags and Mandy hugs him. Or tries to, up on her toes, though everything in his body language says Get away.

  “Good luck,” he says, more to me than to her.

  Exit Alex. Enter Mom. Who starts crying.

  They hug. Mom continues to cry. Mandy smiles and remains dry-eyed while even I tear up. As I said, I am not a monster, and it moves me to see my mom happy after a long, dry spell of sorrow.

  “You’re so small,” Mom finally says, getting her tears under control.

  “I don’t feel small.”

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your hair…”

  “Thank you.” Mandy puts her hand to her stomach and says, “He’s kicking. He’s excited to meet you.”

  “Really? Can I feel?” She palms the sides of Mandy’s belly while people mill around us. This look crosses Mom’s face, this look that is simultaneously ecstatic and petrified. I brush my one tear away while they’re not looking.

  Mandy says to me, “Do you want to feel?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Jill.” Mom drops her hands.

  “It’s okay,” Mandy says. “I think he stopped, anyway.”

  Mom puts her arm around Mandy’s shoulders. “Let’s get out of here. You must be starving. We have lots of options at home and can be there in fifteen minutes. Or would you like to go out?”

  I’m full of coffee cake and more than ready to get back into bed, but of course Mandy wants to go out, and today is all about Mandy—as are the next three weeks, and who knows how long after that? Every time I ask Mom for specifics about the after-plan, she tells me not to worry and changes the subject.

  They start down the ramp and, after several steps, remember my existence. Mom turns back and says, “Jill? Grab Mandy’s bags, will you?”

  Sure.

  We wind up at Pancake Universe because that’s where Mandy wanted to go—never mind that we have a dozen great din
ers that serve killer huevos and kick-ass pancakes. “It’s just that I’ve seen the commercials my whole life,” Mandy said, “but I’ve never been there and I thought—”

  “You’re not missing anything,” I said, but Mom caught my eye in the rearview and said if that’s where Mandy wanted to go, that’s where we’d go, and got me to use the GPS to find the closest one.

  For someone who’s never been to Pancake Universe, Mandy makes her decision pretty fast, barely looking at the menu before closing it and setting it down. Everything sounds gross to me, and the table is sticky. PU doesn’t have the kind of hash browns I like. I like chunks of real potatoes, and these are the shredded crap that comes out of the freezer. “They look and taste like shoelaces, but at least shoelaces have a purpose,” Dad says. Said. We were on the exact same page when it came to hash browns, among other things.

  I order a side of sausage and a tomato juice. Mom orders a two-egg breakfast. Then comes Mandy:

  “Double strawberry pancakes with extra whipped cream, and can I get that butterscotch sauce on the side?” She glances at me. “I saw it on the commercial.”

  So much for Mom’s sugar-free baby.

  “Don’t you want some protein, honey?” Mom asks. Already Mandy is “honey”? Traditionally, I am “honey.” “Some eggs? Or ham?”

  “No.”

  Mom lets it go and smiles hopefully. “How have you been feeling?”

  “Good.”

  She waits for more details, but Mandy isn’t giving up anything other than that unsettling smile.

  “So,” Mom says, “we want to welcome you.” I catch a tremble in her voice, very slight. Only I would notice, given that I’ve been hearing her talk for seventeen years. She’s still as nervous as she was at the station, maybe more. I could reach my hand right over to her leg and give it a squeeze under the booth to let her know that it’s going to be okay. Dad would do that. Except I’m not Dad, and I don’t know if it’s going to be okay, so I leave my hand where it is.