Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion

by Karen White

  “I second that,” I say with a smile. “Do you think you’ll ever find this Mr. Perfect?”

  “I’m certain I will,” she says.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I believe in pots of gold at the end of rainbows. And I’ve traveled a very long way in my life. I’ve weathered a lot of storms. And there will be a charming end. And I know he’s waiting.”

  I smile. “But you won’t marry him.”

  “I won’t marry him.” She grins. “But we’ll have a marvelous time together.”

  —

  It’s day five. My legs are stiff from sitting, and I’m eager to step out on land again. The station is near; I can feel the damp Seattle air all around me. Evergreens line the train track, and when they give way to the familiar Seattle skyline, my heart begins to race.

  Louis will be there soon. He’d written months ago to plan this day, our reunion. My mind and my heart are a jumble of emotion. What will I say? What will I do when I see him?

  I turn to Grace and give her a nervous smile. She squeezes my hand. “You already know your decision,” she says. “Trust in that.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do,” she says. “You may get sidetracked, but it will be clear to you.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I say as I open my compact and dab a dusting of powder on my nose, then line my lips with red lipstick.

  Grace smiles calmly. It’s as if she can read my mind. “When you see him, you’ll know what to say.”

  “And what about you?” I ask. “Where will you go from here?”

  “Well,” she says. “I will see my sister, and then I’m not sure. I’ve always wanted to go to Canada. Maybe I will.”

  “You should then,” I say. “Will you write me?”

  “Yes,” she says, pulling out a piece of paper from inside her purse and writing her address on it. “Send me a note when you’re settled, wherever you decide to settle, and I will write you there.”

  I nod and slip the paper into my purse.

  “Next stop, Seattle, Washington,” the conductor says from the front of the train car.

  It’s been a long journey. In some ways, it’s felt like a lifetime. I am not the same woman I was at Grand Central Terminal. I am in the possession of two men’s rings, and yet I have only one heart to give. King Street Station is ahead. I’ll step out onto the platform and Louis will be waiting. I smile to myself, thinking of the first night we met, the way his eyes searched my face. The way he’d gotten down on one knee and asked me the question that would forever change my life. I’d said yes, even though I had no idea the trajectory it would send me on. I don’t regret it anymore. Louis was meant to be a part of my life; I know that now.

  The train slows to a crawl, and then stops. “This is it,” I say to Grace.

  “Good luck, honey,” she says, embracing me. “Remember, whatever happens, you are in control of your own destiny. You, and no one else.”

  I’d like to believe her. I would. But my life feels out of control, like a runaway train. I don’t know where I’m heading, where I came from, what peril lies around the next corner.

  “Trust me,” Grace says. “We women are strong like that. We can face the worst and still carry on. When you learn how to tap into that kind of strength, well, you realize you can get through anything”—she winks at me—“even a tough decision.”

  I nod as she reaches for her suitcase and steps into the aisle. “I’ll look forward to hearing the next installment of your journey in your letter.”

  I smile. “Good-bye, Grace.”

  “Good-bye, Rose.”

  And then she is gone. And I am alone again. I look out the window to the King Street Station. Strangers bustle by. I scan the crowd, but don’t see Louis. Not yet.

  “Time to disembark, ma’am,” the conductor says.

  “Yes, uh, I was just leaving,” I say. But I want to tell him, “I’m not ready to leave. I’d like to stay on the train a bit longer. I’d like to hear nothing else but the clickety-clack of the wheels and my own thoughts churning in my head. I want to stay on this train until I know what to do.”

  But I may never know what to do, and that unsettling feeling haunts me as I step off the train onto the platform. It feels good to be on land again. I have to steady myself as I walk a few paces then set my suitcase down. I look right, then left. Louis must be here somewhere. Of course, he might be late. I’d find a bench and wait a while. He’d come, just like he’d written.

  I walk a few paces to a bench beside the ticket counter and sit down. A minute passes, then five, then ten. I watch the old clock tick by on the wall overhead. And then I hear an announcement on the loudspeaker, and my name. “Paging Miss Rose Wellington. Paging Miss Rose Wellington. Please come to the ticket counter for a message.”

  I leap to my feet. A message? For me? Surely it’s from Louis, explaining that he’s late, and would be here soon. He’d gotten stuck in traffic. Or maybe his car had broken down. I remember how handsome he is, those eyes. I could imagine a life with Louis. A good one. My heart begins to beat faster. I take a deep breath and walk to the counter.

  “I’m Rose Wellington,” I say to the man behind the glass. “You have a message for me?”

  The man eyes me through his spectacles and then nonchalantly passes a small envelope with my name typewritten on the front. “Telegram arrived for you earlier,” he says.

  I nod and take it into my hands. My heart races as I eye my name on the front of the envelope. Only two people knew I would be on this train, arriving in Seattle. Sam and Louis. I swallow hard and tear the flap open, which is when I hear my name. His voice.

  “Rose?”

  I turn around to face Louis. He looks handsomer than before, something I didn’t think could be possible. There’s a patch of gray forming at his temples. (I remember him telling me that the men in his family gray in their early twenties.) He looks distinguished, wiser than before.

  I run to him and wrap my arms around his neck. He quickly peels them away and looks at his feet.

  “Louis? What is it?” My heart beats faster now. His eyes dart around and then return to my face. They are distant, conflicted. And I know it then, to him, the love we shared is gone. The well has gone dry. I take a step back. “Oh, I see.”

  “I wanted to tell you,” he says. “I tried to tell you, so many times in letters, but I couldn’t get the courage up to say it. I didn’t want to break your heart.”

  I think of Sam. I think of how I’d carried on with him while Louis was at war, while he was presumably being true to me. Loving me. I don’t deserve to be angry. I don’t deserve to feel slighted. I brought this on myself. Perhaps he could feel it in my letters. Perhaps he knew I was only giving him half of my heart. And yet, now, as I stand here and see him before me, I want to give him everything I have, every piece of me, every fiber of my being. I want to try again. And yet, he no longer wants to accept it. He no longer wants me.

  I look ahead and see a familiar face in the crowd. “Rose!” Mary exclaims, rushing toward us. She’s smiling, and I smile back. In this moment of deep pain, it’s comforting to see a familiar face. She’s changed, too. Her former schoolgirl awkwardness has vanished. She’s blossomed into a stylish, beautiful woman. She wears makeup now, and her hair is short, curled chicly against her head. I imagine her mother must be satisfied. Mary gives me a hug, then looks at Louis tentatively. “Good, so you talked? You told her? I’m glad to have that behind us.”

  I look at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Mary,” Louis says, “I haven’t told her yet. Can you please give us some time?”

  “Oh,” she says. “Yes, of course. I . . .” She turns and walks deeper into the station, leaving us alone again.

  Louis rubs his forehead. “I didn’t mean for it to happen that way. I wanted t
o tell you earlier. Listen, Rose, I don’t even know how it happened. I mean, she was like a sister to me my whole life, and then I came home last month, and she, well, I realized it was something more. And it had been for a very long time, I was just too thickheaded to see it.”

  “Oh,” I say again. I feel like someone has just taken a bucket of icy water and dumped it over my head. I feel shocked and jittery. The warmth has been sucked out of me. “Of course. Well, I—”

  “Please don’t be angry with us,” he says. “It would break Mary’s heart. She’s been so worried about how you would take the news of our engagement.”

  “Your engagement,” I mutter. The words actually hurt as they cross my lips.

  “Well, I can’t expect you to forgive me, or us, right now,” he says. “But I hope you’ll find it in your heart to do so one day. That’s all I ask. That, and I’ll need you to sign these papers for the divorce.” He pulls a thin stack of folded papers from his jacket pocket and hands them to me.

  Divorce. The word pierces my heart in a way I could have never expected. “Oh, that’s right,” I say. “We’re married.”

  I reach for a pen in my purse and scrawl my signature on the last page. “Here,” I say, handing them back.

  “I guess this is good-bye, then,” Louis says.

  I nod and pick up my suitcase, then hand him the necklace with his class ring on it. “Good-bye, Louis.”

  “Don’t go like this,” he says.

  “There’s nothing more to say.” And I walk away, to the far corner of the station, where I find a seat and bury my head in my hands.

  I could have never seen this coming. Not in a thousand years. Now what? Do I try to make a life here? Return to New York? Do I try to salvage what I once had with Sam? Would it be fair to him? I think for a long while about the man I left behind in New York, the man who desperately loves me. I’d only spent one night with Louis. Ours had been a whirlwind courtship, furthered by letters and the angst of war. Had it even been real? What I had with Sam, on the other hand, was real. Solid. Lasting. How foolish that I didn’t see that. And now I sit in a train station alone.

  I walk outside and gaze up at the cloudy Seattle sky, then study the buildings that line the hilly streets that lead down to Puget Sound. Oh, Seattle, I shall always love you, but there is nothing here for me now, not anymore. Mama, yes. I’d write to her. I’d tell her about Sam; she’d love him, of course. We’d have her come visit New York after we were married. I’d take her to see the Statue of Liberty. Elsa would be sad to have missed me, but she’s busy with her husband and kids now, twin boys. I smile to myself. I’d go home to New York. I’d go home to Sam.

  My Sam.

  I run to the ticket counter. The next train to New York leaves in an hour. I buy a ticket.

  “Excuse me, miss,” the man behind the counter says. “Weren’t you just on the train coming from New York?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And you’re going back? So soon?”

  I nod and smile. “Apparently sometimes you have to travel across the country to come to your senses.”

  He shrugs and turns back to his work at the counter, which is when I remember the telegram. I’d been so distracted by seeing Louis that I’d forgotten about it entirely. I lift the envelope out of my purse and stare at it again. He’d probably tried to reach me to give me the news in New York, and they’d forwarded it to me in Seattle. Did I even want to read it? Did I even want to relive the pain of his rejection? I consider throwing it in the garbage can ahead, but I decide to lift the flap instead, and when I read the first few words, my mouth falls open:

  WESTERN UNION

  Dear Rose,

  I am Sam Gearhart’s sister, Jane. He told me about you before he proposed. He said he met a wonderful girl and that I would love you. Sadly, the night you left on the train, his cab was struck by a truck and Sam died. I am heartbroken, as I’m sure you are. I am so very sorry.

  “No!” I scream, before letting out a deep, guttural cry. “No, not Sam. Not Sam.” The telegram slips from my hands and I fall to my knees.

  One year later

  Mama pulls out her handkerchief and dabs it to her eyes. “Are you sure you’re ready to return to New York? I imagine it will be awfully emotional for you.” She doesn’t want to see me go. And I don’t really even want to go. All I know is that it’s time. Sam’s sister, Jane, has offered to give me some of Sam’s belongings, and I miss the energy of the city. Maybe I’ll even take night classes and pursue my dream of writing a novel.

  “Please, Mama,” I say. “Don’t cry. I’ll be fine. I’ll call you every Sunday. I’ll write.”

  She nods. “Yes,” she says. “I know you will be. You’re a grown woman now. No sense in me fretting about you.”

  “That’s right,” I say with a smile. I have to be strong for both of us. I kiss her cheek and step onto the train. I think of Grace and our long cross-country conversations as I head to the dining car and order a club sandwich and a Coca-Cola. I remember how confused I was, how uncertain. I pull out the stationery set in my purse and write her a letter.

  Dear Grace,

  I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write you. I hope you still remember me. I was in a terrible place then, and you listened. You encouraged me. In many ways, it was you who made me believe that I could handle whatever was coming. And there were storms coming. Louis fell in love with another woman, a friend of mine, in fact. And then, I received a telegram telling me that Sam was killed in a car accident. I didn’t think my heart could take the pain. It was so deep, so raw. But I thought of you a lot this past year. I thought of what you said about inner strength. And because of you, I’ve found mine. And you were right. Once I learned to tap into that strength, I knew I could weather any storm. And I got through this one. So thank you, Grace. Thank you for passing along that wisdom, for believing in me, and most of all, for being a friend to a stranger on a train, who so desperately needed to talk to someone.

  Please write soon. I’m on the train now, returning to New York for Chapter Two of my journey. Wish you were here sitting beside me.

  With love,

  Rose

  P.S. I hope you found your pot of gold.

  “Excuse me,” a man says just as I finish tucking the letter into an envelope.

  I look up, and a man with light brown hair stands beside my table. About my age, he wears a tan suit. His blue eyes are friendly, familiar somehow, and when they meet mine, my cheeks flush a little.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he says, “but do you mind if I share your table? There’s hardly a free seat on this train.”

  I smile. “Of course.”

  “I’m Graham,” he says, offering his hand.

  “Rose,” I say.

  We talk a little as we eat, and then Graham smiles. He pulls out a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and offers it to me. “You have a little ketchup on the corner of your mouth.”

  I smile, flushed, and look for a napkin, but the waiter has already taken mine. “Thank you,” I say, dabbing his handkerchief to my mouth. I fold it into a square and hand it back to him. I smile, remembering the way the old man at the market in Seattle gave his wife his handkerchief so lovingly.

  “My grandfather said a man should never leave home without a belt, a wallet, and a handkerchief.”

  “I think I would have liked your grandfather,” I say.

  “You would have,” he says. “He passed away last year. But before that, he and my grandmother would have lunch at the market every day. He called it a date.”

  “Pike Place Market?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I miss him. Grandma does, too. And I figure, if I can be one ounce of the man he was, I’ll be doing something right, you know?”

  I watch Graham tuck his handkerchief back into his pocket, and I think of Grace’s words. “The details of true
love are so faint that sometimes we fail to see them unless we stop and look more closely. They’re there; you just have to really want to see them.”

  I smile to myself.

  “What is it?” Graham asks.

  “I just realized something, that’s all,” I say. “Something I’ve been waiting a long time to figure out.”

  Graham looks at me quizzically. “I’ll Be Seeing You” begins playing through the speakers overhead. Bing Crosby’s voice grabs my heart, as it always does. I think of Louis. I think of Sam. I think of their roles in my journey, a journey that has brought me to this train, to this seat, to this moment. The ghosts of my past will always be with me, just as they are with all of us. We take a part of everything, everyone we encounter, with us on our path. Perhaps that’s what makes life so rich, so full. A map, starred and circled and drawn with the paths we’ve taken, for better or for worse.

  And now I am here, sitting across a table in the dining car of a train with a man who has just offered me his handkerchief.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” Graham says, rubbing the faint shadow of stubble on his chin, “but when this train arrives in New York, would you like to have dinner with me?”

  “I’d love to,” I say. My eyes meet his and I’m unable to look away. And something moves inside of me. And somehow I know.

  I’ll Walk Alone

  ERIKA ROBUCK

  For my grandmother, Marie Hernan

  I see myself everywhere. In the furtive glance, the anxious carriage, the downcast eyes, the flinching at the simplest human touch. The body cannot help but anticipate when it has suffered prior hurts.

  That young girl over there, handling the mop at the top of the ramp leading to the Lower Concourse of Grand Central Terminal, I don’t care for the way she won’t look into the eyes of the porter who whispers in her ear. He hisses at her while scanning the crowd, her thin arm pinched between his fingers. And I judge her and think: At least mine never does that in public.