by Glenda Adams
Solomon reached out and touched the bracelet on her wrist, fiddling absently with the polished little pebbles. “Ah, yes. That, too. Amanda wants lots of children. She can paint while she has babies.” Solomon brought Lark’s hand closer to him so that he could turn the bracelet and examine each stone. “These are from home, aren’t they?”
Lark nodded.
“It is beautiful.” Solomon kept holding Lark’s hand.
“I’m glad you’re so happy,” said Lark. “So happily married.” With the sound of the children smashing into the water behind them they could have been beside an ocean. The sleet on the fiberglass dome could have been the sea gulls picking at bits and pieces of oysters and periwinkles on the rock shelf. For a moment Lark let herself lean against Solomon. “It almost sounds like home, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s go and walk beside the lake for just a little while. I want to tell you something.” Solomon pulled Lark to her feet. “It’ll be like going around the rocks. Then we’ll have a wonderful dinner. I’ve made a reservation, overlooking the lake. You’ll love it.”
They drove to the waterfront, then trudged across the park, stumbling in the snow. The wind came in brief gusts, striking the snow in different spots and sending it swirling into the air, the way bombs falling from an airplane into an ocean send up spray as they hit. Solomon held Lark close to him, and they hunched over as they walked. When they reached the waterfront, Solomon unbuttoned his coat. He slipped his left arm out of its sleeve and held the coat open. “Come in beside me,” he said. Without hesitation Lark nestled against him. “Put your right arm around my waist,” Solomon instructed, “and your left arm into the sleeve of the coat. Now, come in close, kind of sideways.” He placed his left arm around her, under the coat. “There.” And using Lark’s left hand and Solomon’s right hand, they managed to button the coat up again. “I don’t think we belong in this climate, actually.”
Lark was pressed against Solomon’s side, her head against his shoulder. She felt like his Siamese twin, and she was certainly warmer, although to move forward with him she had to walk in a kind of sidestep. They careened forward, the wind blowing them along, like runners in a three-legged race at a Sunday school picnic, each trying to get used to the other’s rhythm and step.
“Let’s just pretend it’s a beach,” said Solomon, “in summer. And we’re taking a romantic walk around the rocks.”
“With no Mrs. Baker passing by to declare how hot it is and checking up on us. Oops.” Lark slipped in the snow that had hardened to ice at the edge of the shore. Because she was so firmly attached to Solomon, buttoned into his coat, she was saved from falling.
“Mrs. Baker?” Solomon asked.
And Lark explained. He remembered nothing about rubbing suntan oil on Lark’s back and Mrs. Baker’s walking by, saying that it was as hot as a furnace that day on the beach before finals several years before, and he remembered nothing about throwing his keys on the pages of L’Etranger.
“At home the other night, after you telephoned, we sat in the breakfast nook and took out my old slides.”
“You don’t actually have a breakfast nook, do you?” Lark did not like hearing Solomon mention “breakfast nook” and “home” or use the pronoun “we,” which so clearly excluded her. It was very lucky that she had fallen in love with Tom Brown. “I wanted to show Amanda who you were. There’s one of you and me on a picnic in the Blue Mountains. You’re trying out my crutches.”
“Crutches?” Lark remembered nothing about Solomon’s breaking his leg and nothing of going on a picnic and trying out his crutches. “Are you sure?” She shivered. “Perhaps it was someone else who was with you?”
“And there’s one of me playing your pianola and you singing.”
“But I don’t sing,” said Lark.
Solomon Blank drew them to a stop. “Behold, my Pacific,” he announced, sweeping his right arm across in front of them, taking in the entire lake, which stretched white before them, merging with the white of the sky. “I don’t think we fit in here,” he said into Lark’s hair. “I don’t think we love each other,” he whispered.
Lark at first thought he was referring to her and him, but then, on contemplation, realized that Solomon was still talking about Amanda. Then she realized that the ground they stood on was moving, floating. Lark looked around as best she could, over the collar of the sheepskin coat.
“We’ve wandered onto the ice,” she said.
“Oh, my God,” said Solomon, trying to look around and take some action, hampered though they were by encasement in the same overcoat. “When I say three, we’ll jump. One, two, three.”
They threw themselves off the ice onto the snowy shore a couple of feet away. Lark struggled out of the coat, hoisted herself to her feet and began to run back to the road, toward the city, where the lights in the tall office buildings along the lake glittered in the dull winter daylight.
“Wait for me,” Solomon cried and loped after her.
“Just take me back to the motel,” gasped Lark. “I don’t want any more nature, ever, ever again.”
“Here, get in my coat again. It’s too cold for you like that.”
Lark stepped away from Solomon as he approached, opening his coat toward her. “I’m okay on my own,” she said. “I’m okay, okay?”
“You’re so cute like that,” Solomon said, stumbling after her. “So angry. Like a cross little boy.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Blank?” the manager of the restaurant greeted them that evening and sat them at a corner table, next to a large family group of several adults and many teen-aged children.
“She doesn’t love me, anymore, I’m sure of it,” Solomon said.
“You said you were happy. You have a breakfast nook and empty bedrooms waiting to be filled with children.”
“She would be glad for me to go, I’m sure of it.”
The lights in the restaurant suddenly dimmed, and a train of waiters and waitresses emerged from the kitchen bearing a birthday cake with flaming candles. The group at the next table burst into song. “Happy birthday...” they sang, and the whole restaurant joined in.
“But you’ve only been married a little while.” Lark had to shout to be heard.
Solomon nodded gloomily.
The lights came back on. A young woman in a black dress and white apron was standing beside them, as if a lamp had been rubbed to produce her. “I’m Amanda,” she said. “Mandy. I’m your waitress this evening and I recommend the flounder.”
Solomon looked quickly at Lark before picking up his menu. Lark saw that he was blushing, as if a waitress called Amanda was capable of detecting his identity. But the name had made them awkward. They ordered and ate quickly without saying much.
Back in the motel room, with the Children of the American Revolution still diving and swimming and shouting, Solomon asked Lark if she wanted to see a picture of Amanda. Lark took the photo. She was a fairly blond, fairly attractive young woman, as tall as Solomon, and as sad as Solomon had looked through the train window. At least no one would ever call her cute or mistake her for a schoolboy.
“She doesn’t need me, anymore,” said Solomon. He turned toward Lark and held his arms wide. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Together?” Lark replied, in something of a squeak, and almost flew into his arms.
“I don’t mean to play on your sympathies, of course,” said Solomon.
“I’m going to New York,” Lark said. “And you are going to Champaign-Urbana.”
Solomon nodded glumly, then looked at his watch. “I suppose I should be getting back.” But he sat down beside Lark on the bed. “I needed to get away for a few hours. I suppose I ought to be getting back home, then. Still, this has been the happiest day of my life.”
“We could both be dead,” Lark said, “if we’d been carried into the lake on the ice floe.”
Solomon sighed. “But I don’t mean to play on your sympathies. It’s just that sometimes I feel that we, you and I, should h
ave stayed at home. Together.”
“But you Blanks were always off. You can afford to recommend staying put. Anyway, it’s too late now.”
Solomon stayed sitting and talking, taking Lark’s hand. Lark thought of changing her mind and asking him to stay with her.
“Amanda will be worried,” Solomon said, not moving. “What I mean is, sometimes I think even if I didn’t marry you, I should have married an Englishwoman. England and the English are more compatible with us.”
Lark stood up.
“I could stay,” Solomon said. “Amanda wouldn’t mind. She’s very broad-minded.”
“I’ll walk you to the lobby.” She did not want to hear any more about his domestic situation and his unhappiness. She wanted to be free of it, free to be in love with Tom Brown now.
“Wait,” said Solomon. “I have to take home something. Some kind of present, to prevent unnecessary strife.” He took Lark with him into the souvenir shop in the hotel lobby. He fingered the scarves and the necklaces. “She’s tall,” he said to the saleswoman.
“Like me?” the saleswoman asked, coming out from behind the counter and exhibiting her height.
“Taller,” said Solomon.
“Then she can take a bold design,” said the saleswoman and pointed to a scarf with ugly red and blue marks on it.
“Would you like one, too?” he asked Lark.
She shook her head, and waited while the scarf was paid for and wrapped.
“I’m sorry,” said Solomon as they walked back into the lobby. “But she’d be furious if I didn’t bring something back.”
Lark shrugged. “She’s your wife.”
Solomon put his arms around her. “I have become a pathetic provincial, a nobody,” he said, “while you, Lark, are about to begin a magical life in the greatest city in the world. At least, I deserve a kiss, don’t I?” And he kissed her in the lobby of the hotel, a real kiss, and Lark responded, remembering how much she had loved him, how much she had wanted to follow him to America, to be with him forever. Then she watched him drive off into the white city.
Lark awoke to find the round face of a little boy in a swimsuit pressed against her window, staring at her. The splashing and shouting in the pool had started up again. It was as if those children had never gone to bed at all. The boy ducked away and ran across the tiles and into the water.
The light under the fiberglass dome was gray and dull. Six inches of snow had fallen during the night, coating the dome and blocking the morning light. Lark poured out the unfinished champagne, then packed her bag and checked out.
“Plane would be faster, and bus would be cheaper than train,” the desk clerk told Lark.
“But I’m not in a hurry.”
The clerk made a face. “Nothing to see between Chicago and New York, believe me.” But he telephoned to get the times of the trains to Detroit and on to New York. “You know you can go direct to New York. You don’t have to go through Detroit.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” said Lark.
The clerk looked Lark up and down. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
At Union Station a man and a woman, each hauling suitcases with wheels and tethers like little dogs, bumped into Lark as she sat on her suitcase, hunched over against the cold.
“Is this the train for Detroit?” the woman asked.
“I asked a woman at the front of the line,” Lark replied. “She said it was the train to Detroit.”
“Oh, you AHsked, did you?” The man was imitating Lark. “Are you English or just affected?”
“Henry!” said his wife, admonishing, then cajoling, “So where are you from?” Lark hesitated. “Mmmm?” the woman persisted.
Lark looked around, as if the information might precipitate some kind of trouble. She mumbled her answer.
“That’s the same as English,” said Henry.
“No, it’s not,” said his wife.
“We had an exchange student from South Africa staying with us when our son was in high school,” said Henry.
“South Africa is nowhere near Australia,” said the woman. “New Zealand is.”
“We’re going to Ann Arbor, we’re from Chicago,” said Henry. “Our son is picking us up. He goes to school there. Architecture.”
“It’s a very good school,” said the wife. “One of the ten best. Henry, my husband,” she nodded at him, “Mr. Parker, is an architect. Our son takes after him.”
The line started to move, and Henry and his wife pushed ahead of Lark and were swept away.
The guard helped Lark up the steps into the car. On his lapel was a badge bearing his name: P. R. Przylucki.
A mother with three girls pushed past Lark. “Where is she?” the mother shouted. She was tall, authoritative, self-absorbed. She had long, blond hair and wore a pink coat, and was frowning as if she were in charge of the whole world.
Through the loudspeaker came a voice. “This is equipment number three fifty, about to depart for Detroit, Michigan, stopping at,” and Lark sat quickly on the arm of a seat with her pen poised over the first page of a little notebook, “Hammond-Whiting, Michigan City, Niles, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Detroit.”
“Excuse me,” the mother said, bumping Lark aside. “We’re trying to get to our seats. I have three children here, and I have to get them to their seats.”
Large families, thought Lark. She feared she would have to hear this voice all the way to Detroit. Then miraculously the mother called out good-bye to the three girls. “Good-bye, darlings, sweeties. Have a wonderful time with Daddy.” She blew kisses all over the car. “I’ll call you tonight. Love you.” She went to stand on the platform, where she blew kisses continuously at her girls, who sat looking down at her through the tinted glass and blowing kisses in return.
“Please have your tickets ready, and I hope you have a pleasant trip,” concluded the voice over the loudspeaker. “All aboard.” And the train slid away from the kissing woman in the pink coat.
Lark wrote in her notebook: Parker, architect; Przylucki, guard.
A young woman, older than Lark, threw herself into the seat beside Lark. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “I almost didn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for my R.A. I would have missed the train. I have a bad back and I can’t lift my own suitcases. But my R.A. did it all for me.”
“R.A.?’’ Lark asked.
“Research assistant,” said the young woman. “I couldn’t live without one.”
Mr. P. R. Przylucki was moving through the car. “Three for Detroit, one for Dearborn here on the aisle, two for Ann Arbor on the window, Kalamazoo here on the aisle. Have your tickets ready.” And behind him came the conductor writing numbers on the back of the passengers’ seat tickets and sticking them in the luggage racks. When the conductor bent over her, Lark saw that his name was Dash, P. Dash. And when he had moved on, she wrote down his name: Dash, conductor.
The young woman next to her was still collapsed in her seat, fanning her face with her hand and gasping.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came a new voice over the loudspeaker. Lark picked up her pen. “May I have your attention. My name is William Washington, and I am your bar café car attendant for the duration of your journey. The bar car is open and has cocktails, food, coffee. I hope we can satisfy you, or come near to it.” Lark was listening in wonder. “I would name everything we have, but it would take up too much of your day. The food car is located toward the front of the train—that’s the direction in which you are traveling.”
“I think a beer will be in order for me,” said Lark’s neighbor.
Lark wrote down: Washington, dining car waiter.
“We would like to take this opportunity to inform you that we will be stopping in Hammond-Whiting in approximately four and a half minutes to pick up passengers.”
“I’m Pinky Boucher,” said the young woman next to Lark.
“I’m a chemist at Northwestern, and I’m going to visit my sister and her husband, who
is a tenured professor at Wayne State.” She leant back and closed her eyes.
Lark wrote down: Boucher, chemist.
“Why don’t we stop at South Bend?” Lark asked.
Pinky Boucher shrugged. “It’s not on the route, I suppose.”
A lanky man sitting in the seat in front yawned loudly and stretched, his left arm reaching so far back that it nearly hit Lark in the face. He struck up a conversation with a young woman student sitting across the aisle from him.
“I was supposed to go deer hunting this morning,” he said, “but it is too wet and windy, and I already shot a deer, anyway. I’m an attorney.”
“My brother’s an attorney,” said the student. “In Detroit too. Maybe you know him? Marlon Larson.”
“Marlon? Sure I know Marlon. We went to college. I used to give him my statistics to do. I never analyzed my own statistics, I just got Marlon to run them through.”
“He’s my brother. I go to Notre Dame. I was supposed to be on a plane to Miami yesterday, but here I am going back north, heading into the cold instead. The Miami trip fell through. I’ll tell him I saw you.”
“Tell him you saw Bernie Herbert.”
Lark wrote: Herbert, attorney.
“Come with me and have a beer.” Pinky Boucher was addressing Lark. Lark, with her notebook in hand, followed her.
P. R. Przylucki was sitting in the bar car, drinking coffee from a Mickey Mouse mug. A jelly donut rested on a paper plate in front of him. “When I get home to Detroit...” he was saying to P. Dash, who sat in the booth opposite him.
“You have tomorrow off,” said P. Dash.
“I’m going to rest up,” said P. R. Przylucki. “You have the day after tomorrow off.”
“I’ve got to get down to South Bend to see my mother,” said P. Dash. “I won’t have time to rest up.”
“Two beers,” Pinky Boucher said to the café attendant, who wore his W. Washington name tag on his pocket.
“You from Chicago?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“Great city,” he said. “Great place to live. You, too?” he said to Lark. She shook her head. “Great place to visit, too.”