Field Notes on Love

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “This isn’t really my style,” he says with a frown. “I prefer to think things through.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “You know what might help?”

  “What?”

  “Pizza,” he says, and when she rolls her eyes, he laughs. “Only joking. I meant coffee.”

  They decide to skip the more formal breakfast in the dining car. Instead they buy a box of doughnuts in the lounge car and then find an open table to themselves. Behind them, a couple of the assistant conductors are sorting through tickets, and there’s an old man playing solitaire with a deck of Chicago Cubs cards. Otherwise it’s mostly quiet at this hour.

  “So why love?” Hugo asks as he opens the box of doughnuts.

  “It might be a little too early for big philosophical questions,” Mae says, raising her cup of coffee.

  “No, it’s just…I understand the train part, obviously. But why love stories?”

  “Because,” she says, her eyes flashing, “what could be more personal than that?” Hugo is still trying to figure this one out when she goes on. “Also, I’ve never had a chance like this before. All my films have been really small because my life has been really small. I think that was part of the problem. I mean, I once made a short about a squirrel that got stuck in our heating vents, and honestly, that squirrel was only a marginally worse actor than the drama club kids I usually put in my films. Most of them were set at the grocery store or the high school or the gas station, because there was really nowhere else. And now here I am on a train full of all these different people from all these different places, and they must have a million stories to tell.”

  He considers this a moment. “So you’re taking field notes.”

  “I mean, it’s not super scientific or anything, but…yeah.” She licks some powdered sugar off her finger. “I guess I am.”

  “Field notes on love,” Hugo says, glancing out the window, where the world is moving by too fast.

  Mae nods. “And trains.”

  “Do you remember that video you did for me?” he asks, turning back to face her, and she raises her eyebrows. “Sorry. Not for me. For this trip.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, it didn’t feel small to me at all. In fact, the moment I saw it, I knew—”

  She cracks a smile. “That you wanted to invite an eighty-four-year-old instead?”

  He shakes his head, eager to be understood. “No. I knew there was something interesting about you. Something that made me want to meet you. And all that happened in just a couple of minutes. It was short. But you managed to say so much.”

  “You asked good questions.”

  “Maybe. But your answers—they meant something.” He feels his face grow warm. “Or maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. But it certainly felt that way.”

  Out the window, there’s a blur of houses and trees and highways. For a while, Mae stares at the telephone lines as they zip past. Finally she turns back to him with an unreadable expression. “You’re right.”

  “About what?”

  “Those questions, my answers…they did mean something. They meant a lot, actually.” She smiles at him, and it’s the kind of smile that feels like a beginning—though the beginning of what, he isn’t entirely sure. “I think we should see if it might be the same for anyone else.”

  They start with Ida, who tears up at the very first question.

  “My biggest dream?” she says. “I know this will sound awfully old-fashioned to you, but my dream was always to marry Roy. We met when we were twelve. He bought me an ice cream and was the only boy who didn’t laugh when I spilled it on my dress. It sounds small. But there was such kindness in that. I knew right then. I’ve always known.”

  Mae tries to imagine what it would be like to be that sure of someone. She’s spent the last six years watching Priyanka and Alex write love notes and hold hands and make impossible promises, and to Mae it’s always felt like witnessing some unfamiliar custom. But listening to Ida now is like fast-forwarding to the end of this particular movie. And to Mae’s surprise, it doesn’t seem like such a bad one.

  At the bar, Ashwin—the head dining attendant, who agreed to let them use one of the tables—is restocking cans of soda. But Mae can tell by the way his head is tilted in their direction that he’s listening too. Same with Roy, who insisted on waiting a couple of tables away. “For privacy,” he said, but his ears have gone bright red at Ida’s answer.

  Hugo is sitting next to Mae in the booth. She put him in charge of the external microphone and warned him not to talk. But they’re one question in, and already he can’t help himself. “That’s so lovely,” he says to Ida, and Mae leans back from the camera to give him a sharp look. He holds up his hands. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “It’s okay. We can edit you out.”

  “If only it were always that easy to get rid of me,” he jokes.

  “And what’s your biggest fear?” Mae asks Ida, who looks completely at ease in front of the camera. Even more than that, she looks happy. Mae gets the impression that for as much talking as she does, there aren’t always many listeners.

  “Oh,” she says. “I don’t…um…well, I don’t really like snakes, but that’s probably not exactly what you’re looking for, is it?”

  Mae gives her a reassuring smile. “We’re just looking for honesty.”

  “Honesty. Well.” Ida turns to the window. “I suppose my biggest fear is never seeing my son again. You don’t know what happiness is—what it really means—until it’s taken away from you. Then you realize the world will never be as bright as it was.”

  Across the room, Roy puts his head in his hands. Mae leans away from the camera and stares at his broad back, stricken. Then she takes a deep breath and returns to the shot.

  Ida dabs at her eyes. “But my greatest hope is just the opposite,” she says. “That somehow I’ll see him again one day.”

  Hugo reaches across the table and takes her hand, and the gesture is so thoughtful, so sweet, that Mae can’t bring herself to scold him for ruining her shot. The truth is, she wants to do the same. But instead she just says, “I’m sure you will.”

  “I hope so,” Ida says, then lets out a laugh as Mae pans in closer. “Probably won’t have to wait too long either. Right, Roy?”

  Roy half turns; his eyes are rimmed with red, but he’s grinning. “I don’t know, hon. Every year we say it’ll be our last train ride. But we’re still rolling along somehow.”

  “We sure are,” she says, and they smile at each other from across the tables.

  Mae glances down at her notebook. Those first two questions had been Hugo’s, pulled straight from the email that had started all of this. But these last two—these are Mae’s.

  “What do you love most about the world?”

  Ida smiles. “I love that every generation thinks they’ve invented it. They think they’re the first ones to fall in love and get their hearts broken, to feel loss and passion and pain. And in a way, they are. We’ve been there before, of course. But for young people, that doesn’t matter. Everything is new. Which I love, because it means everything is always beginning again. It’s hopeful, I think. At least to me.”

  When Mae leans back from the camera, she sees that Hugo’s eyes are shiny, and she’s surprised by how much she wants to ask him the same question. But she doesn’t. Instead she turns back to Ida. “Last one,” she says. “If you had to describe love in one word, what would it be?”

  Ida blinks at her. “Oh. Well. I guess I’d probably say peace.”

  The word snags at something inside Mae, small and thorny as a burr. Peace. To her, it seems like an awful lot to ask of love. But still she finds herself jotting it down in the margin of her notebook, eager to capture it.

  “That’s a fair bit better than pizza, anyway,” Hugo says, but Mae ignores
this, switching off the camera and turning back to Ida.

  “Thank you,” she says. “That was beautiful. All of it.”

  “Thank you,” Ida says as she reaches for her purse. “Now I’m going to go freshen up before lunch. You can keep Roy, though, if you want.”

  Roy twists around in his seat. “I’m all yours,” he says. “And I was barely listening, so it doesn’t count as cheating or anything.”

  This interview is shorter. Roy insists on opening with a joke (“Why was the train engine humming? Because it didn’t know the words!”), then spends most of the rest of the time talking about fishing, which—incidentally—is the word he’d choose to describe love.

  “But if Ida asks,” he says with a wink, “tell her I said it was her.”

  Afterward, Ashwin is overcome by curiosity too. He sits across from them in his uniform, hands folded as he talks about visiting his grandmother in Mumbai when he was a kid and learning to make samosas. One day he hopes to open a restaurant where he can use her recipe.

  “That’s love,” he says. “An old woman making something for one person, and then years later, even after she’s gone, feeding all these different people on the other side of the world.”

  It’s more than one word, but Mae doesn’t mind.

  Not long after that, Ida returns with a middle-aged Asian couple in tow. “These are our neighbors,” she says, introducing them to Mae and Hugo. “Not in real life. Just on the train. I told them about your project.”

  And so they interview the Chens, and then Marcus, their waiter from last night, and then a family of four from Iowa who stop to ask what they’re doing. By the time lunch starts and Ashwin needs the booth, Mae feels dizzy from all these stories, all the different lives she’s been allowed to glimpse, and she has a list of words to describe love that ranges from togetherness to joy to a 1962 Mustang convertible.

  She and Hugo are halfway back to their cabin when they run into Ludovic.

  “I heard a rumor that you’re making a movie,” he says, looking at them expectantly, and so they duck into the open area near the doors, and Ludovic puts on his cap and straightens his tie, and Hugo holds the microphone close so they can hear over the rattling of metal on metal.

  Later, after they’ve done several more interviews and had lunch and returned to their compartment, Hugo sinks down into his seat with a happy sigh. “So is it my turn now?”

  Mae is busy fidgeting with the settings on the camera. “For what?”

  “For an interview.”

  “I don’t need to interview you. I already know you.” It takes her a second to realize exactly what she said. She lifts her eyes to see that he’s looking at her with amusement. She doesn’t know him; of course she doesn’t. She only meant that he isn’t a stranger, and even that is only marginally true. She gives her head a little shake. “The point is to interview strangers.”

  “I thought the point was to interview people on trains,” he says with a good-natured smile. He spreads his arms wide. “And here I am. On a train.”

  Mae gives him a long look, her heartbeat quickening at the thought of sitting him down for an interview, listening closely as he tells her about his dreams and his fears, about what love means to him. She wants to know what he would say. All morning as he’s sat beside her, she’s wanted to know. But something is holding her back. A week ago, she was with Garrett, and Hugo had a girlfriend so serious that they were planning to take this trip together. A week from now, she’ll be in Los Angeles and he’ll be back in England, almost six thousand miles apart.

  “Maybe after Chicago,” she says, putting her camera away.

  Before long the city of Chicago rushes up to meet them. Hugo peers out the rain-speckled window at the skyline, the tops of the buildings lost in the clouds. It’s so different from home, where everything is built low to the ground, where you can look up without losing your balance.

  As they get closer, dozens of rails converge all around them, littered with rusty freight cars that sit ghostlike in the mist. Then the light disappears, and Hugo feels a jolt of excitement as they sweep into the tunnels underneath the sprawling city.

  He looks over at Mae, who is still collecting her things, which are scattered everywhere: a tube of lip gloss, a crumpled copy of their tickets, a pair of socks. Hugo can only imagine what her bedroom must look like.

  “Got everything?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.

  She gives him a look as she tosses a stray cord into her bag. “You know there have been studies that prove the most creative people are the most disorganized?”

  “Were you one of the featured subjects?”

  As the train slows, they both stand up, but the space between the seats is too narrow and he almost falls backward trying not to bump into her. She reaches out an arm to steady him, her nose practically touching his shirt, and they both laugh. But underneath that, his heart is thumping wildly at the sudden proximity.

  The train jerks to a stop, and this time he’s the one to catch her. They stare at each other for a second, both flustered, and then she reaches for her rucksack, which is wedged onto a small shelf, and steps out of the compartment.

  Across the hall, the cowboy walks out at the same time. He gives them both a nod, then adjusts the brim of his hat before heading off. Mae turns around with a slightly bemused look. “Didn’t expect him to be getting off here.”

  “What, there are no cowboys in Chicago?”

  “Maybe he came to wrangle some pizza.”

  “Is that a code word for love?” Hugo asks, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

  Mae laughs. “No, I meant actual Chicago-style pizza. It’s a thing.”

  “Then maybe I’ll have to wrangle some myself,” he says, and when she gives him an exasperated look, he puts a hand over his chest, trying to keep a straight face. “Pizza. Not love.”

  Ludovic gives them a hand as they step off the train, and Hugo feels strangely nostalgic as they say goodbye. It’s been only twenty-four hours, but somehow it seems like much more. As they make their way down the platform, his mobile begins to ding. He reaches for it and sees the texts stacking up one after another.

  Poppy: So how’s Margaret Campbell, the sequel?

  Alfie: Yeah, are you two in loooooooove yet?

  Isla: You are a five-year-old.

  Alfie: I know you are, but what am I?

  Oscar: Bloody hell.

  George: Seriously, though. How’s it going?

  Alfie: Yeah, are you in loooooooove yet?

  Isla: Don’t be silly.

  Poppy: He only just split up with Margaret Campbell, the first.

  Alfie: Doesn’t mean he’s not in loooooooove.

  Poppy: Doesn’t mean he is.

  Hugo: Do I need to be here for this?

  Alfie: I’m going to take that as a yes.

  Hugo: You can take it however you want.

  Oscar: Sounds like a yes to me too.

  Alfie: The real question is…what are the sleeping arrangements??

  Hugo looks up as Mae climbs onto the escalator ahead of him. He follows her, standing a few steps below, deep in thought. Halfway up, he clears his throat. “So.” When she twists around, he lifts his eyes to meet hers. “I was thinking I’d just…”

  “What?”

  “Well, we sort of agreed that…” She turns away as they reach the top, emerging into a cavernous marble building, which is noisy and echoing with footsteps. Hugo digs in the pocket of his jeans for a scrap of paper. “I wrote down the name of a hostel that’s not too far from your hotel.”

  “Oh,” Mae says, finally understanding. He expected her to be relieved, but instead she looks uncertain. She takes the paper from him and examines it. “I should go with you. I mean, not to stay. Just to make sure you get in and everything.”

  A few
days ago, he would’ve guessed he’d be claustrophobic by now, eager for some space after being stuck overnight in a shoebox with someone he hardly knows. He figured at least one of them would try to scarper off the moment they arrived. But to his surprise, he finds he’s not looking forward to parting ways just yet. And neither, it seems, is she.

  “We can drop off your stuff,” she says, “and then…”

  She trails off, and he finds himself smiling at the open-endedness of it all. “Brilliant.”

  As they walk toward the exit, he wonders what it means that he’s spent his whole life longing to be alone, only to cling to the very first person he meets when he finally gets the chance for some solitude. Maybe he’s not cut out for this after all. Maybe if you’re born a pack animal, it’s simply not possible to become a lone wolf. Even for a week.

  But right now he’s not all that bothered by it.

  Outside, the clouds are a deep gunmetal gray, and the sky is starting to spit at them. Mae looks up at him expectantly.

  “What?” Hugo asks.

  “Do you have an umbrella?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Why, do you?”

  “No,” she says. “But you’re English.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought you’d have one.”

  “Nope. No brolly.” He pretends to reach into his rucksack. “But I think maybe I’ve got my chimney sweep in here somewhere….”

  She rolls her eyes at him. “I’m pretty sure a chimney sweep is a person, not a tool.”

  “Well,” he says, laughing, “sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have any of the above.”

  They begin to walk faster, blinking away the rain. It’s not like back home, where the rain is sideways and pelting; here, it comes straight down like someone has dropped a bucket over the city, and it’s not long before they’re both completely drenched. As they wait to cross at a stoplight, Mae holds a hand over her head.

  “I’m not sure that’s really helping,” Hugo says over the roar of the rain, which is coming down so hard that it’s splashing up all around them.