Field Notes on Love

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “Trust me,” Trish says, “we get it. We just spent a week watching soap operas and learning to crochet. Home can be overrated.”

  “It’s just that I’ve never really been anywhere else,” he says. “And it’s nice to be on my own for a bit. But it’s only been a few days. I’m sure I’ll start missing them all soon.”

  “You have brothers or sisters?”

  Hugo glances sideways at Mae, then says, “Both. There are six of us.”

  “Older or younger?”

  He hesitates, as he always does at this point in the conversation. “The same age, actually. We’re sextuplets.”

  They both stare at him blankly.

  “Multiples,” he says. “We were all—”

  “Yeah, darlin’, we know what sextuplets are,” Trish says, shaking her head. “It’s just…wow. There are really six of you? All the same age?”

  He nods.

  “Are you identical?”

  “Some of us,” he says. “But I’m the handsome one.”

  When Mae laughs at this, he feels a rush of pleasure. Behind them, a bald man with a handlebar mustache turns around in his seat. “Did you say you’re a sextuplet?”

  Hugo nods, realizing how many people are staring at him. The booths are small and pressed close together, a whole dining room shoved into a train car.

  “My cousin has triplets,” the man says, “and I thought that was a lot of work.”

  A woman a couple of tables over cranes her neck to look at Hugo. “I’m a twin,” she says in a low voice, sounding shy about it.

  Hugo realizes that half the people on the train are staring at him now. He’s used to this sort of thing back home, where the six of them are fairly well known—though even there, it’s rare for someone to recognize him when he’s not with his siblings. Once when he was in London with Margaret, a group of young girls stopped to ask if he was one of the Surrey Six. They fell into giggles when he said he was, and asked him to autograph two receipts, a phone case, and even someone’s forearm. But usually it takes the whole gaggle of them to elicit any sort of attention.

  Here in America, it’s different. The books aren’t published on this side of the ocean, and there aren’t many readers of the blog in this country either. Americans have their own sets of famous multiples. So he’s chalked up most of the stares he’s gotten to the color of his skin or the fact that he’s traveling with a white girl. Or maybe, if he’s being generous, to his height.

  But now, once again, he’s no longer just Hugo. He’s one-sixth of something bigger.

  And even amid the general merriment of this train car—the curious questions and eager faces—this feels like a kind of loss.

  Their waiter arrives, shaking his head as he sets down their plates. “Man, I’ve got five brothers and sisters, too, but I can’t imagine dealing with all of us at the same time. Your mom is a damn hero.”

  “How many sextuplets are there in the world?” asks Karen as she begins to slice up her chicken. “There can’t be that many.”

  “I’m not really sure,” Hugo says around a forkful of lettuce. “I haven’t met any others.”

  “Are you famous, then?”

  He shrugs, not wanting to get into it. “Mostly just in our town.”

  “Is it hard to remember all their names?” Trish wants to know.

  “I’ve got them pretty well down at this stage.”

  “Do you all get along?” asks the man behind them. “Did you guys fight a lot?”

  “Never,” Hugo says, and around him, there’s a ripple of laughter. “Not once.”

  “Do you have a favorite?”

  “Yeah. Me.”

  “Do your parents have a favorite?”

  “Yeah. Me.”

  “Are you all going off to college together?” asks Trish, and Hugo feels the air around him deflate again. He blinks, trying to come up with an answer, then takes a bite of his steak and chews it slowly.

  Mae watches him for a second, then puts a hand on his knee, which he didn’t even realize was bobbing underneath the table. “I think it’s still to be decided,” she says, and Hugo looks over at her in surprise. It’s like she’s managed to look straight into his head, and he wonders if maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s not so decided after all.

  Across the table, Trish takes a swig of wine, and Karen’s attention moves to the window, and the man behind them turns around again. Slowly the dining car returns to its usual noises as the world outside slips into darkness.

  Trish tilts her head at Mae. “So if you live here,” she says, her eyes tracking over to Hugo, “and he lives there, how does this work?”

  Hugo doesn’t even have a chance to revel in the fact that she assumes he and Mae are a couple. The question hits him square in the chest, knocking the breath right out of him.

  “Yeah,” Karen says, “what happens when you two get off the train?”

  For a second, they’re both quiet. Then Mae looks at Hugo, and he looks back at her. Beneath the table, her hand slips off his knee.

  “That,” she says, “is a very good question.”

  Mae wakes to stillness. The low rumble of the engine has disappeared, the train no longer moving. There’s a faint red light in the hallway, but otherwise the room is so dark that it takes her a few tries to find the curtain. She pushes it back, but all she can see is her own dim reflection.

  Above her, Hugo is snoring, and she listens to the sound of it, steady and reassuring. The first night, Mae had tried to stay awake as long as she could, anxious about her own snoring, which Priyanka once compared to the sound of a dying warthog. But somewhere along the way, she drifted off. When she woke a few hours later, she heard the uneven whistle of Hugo’s snores above and realized she wasn’t the only one.

  After that, she stopped worrying so much.

  Now she sits up, bent low so she doesn’t hit her head, and slips on her shoes. In the hall, she pauses to look at her phone. It’s after three, the deepest part of the night. The curtains are drawn on all the other compartments, doors shut tight and locked. Mae closes theirs gently behind her, then walks toward the bathrooms, where she’s surprised to see Duncan standing against one of the main doors. His face is pressed to the window, and he’s twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. When he turns around, he looks startled to see her.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asks, leaning a shoulder against the heavy doors. “It’s hard to get used to those beds.”

  “Where are we?”

  He sweeps a hand toward the window, the vast blackness beyond it. “Heaven,” he says, and when she looks at him blankly, he laughs. “Just kidding. This happened in Iowa a few weeks ago, and the joke worked a lot better there.” He raises an eyebrow. “Field of Dreams? No? Never mind. We’re in Nebraska.”

  “This isn’t a station.”

  He glances out at the darkness. “No.”

  “Then why are we stopped?”

  “Mechanical issue.”

  “Is it serious?”

  Duncan shrugs. “Don’t know yet.”

  “Can we go outside?”

  “Not now. But if it looks like we’re gonna be here for a while, they’ll probably let us get some air later. We once got stuck for eleven hours, and we ordered pizza right to the tracks. It was awesome.”

  Mae glances around. It’s not exactly that she’s claustrophobic. When she was eleven, she saw a story about a director who filmed an entire movie while crouched in the backseat of a car. After that, she took to finding hiding spots, scaring the life out of her dads, who kept discovering her in closets and hampers and wardrobes. She has no problem with small spaces.

  This is something different, a slight sense of unreality. Here in the middle of nowhere, stuck on the tracks in this deepest of nights, she can’t help feeling unmoored. It’s like more
than just the train has paused, like time itself has stopped for the moment.

  In the fluorescent light of the train, she can see the dark circles under Duncan’s eyes, and he puts a hand over his mouth to hide a yawn. She looks at him closely, realizing he can’t be much older than she is. “How long are your shifts?”

  “Not too bad. I got to sleep a little earlier.”

  “Are you always on this route?”

  “Yup. Chicago to Emeryville. I get off, smell the bay, turn around, and come straight back. Then I sleep for three days and do it all over again.”

  “You must know it well. This part of the country.”

  “Only what I can see out the window,” he says with a shrug. He gives her a smile that’s meant to be charming. “So where’s your boyfriend?”

  Mae doesn’t bother to correct him. She likes the sound of it: boyfriend. “He’s asleep.”

  “How long have you been together?”

  She doesn’t answer him. Instead, she walks to the other set of doors, across the car. Through the grimy window, the sky is thick with stars. There’s the sound of clanking outside, metal on metal, and Mae looks over at Duncan.

  “That’s either a good sign,” he says, “or a bad one.”

  She glances down at her phone, thinking suddenly of home. Her dads are early risers; they’re probably at the kitchen table right now, arguing about how many cups of coffee is too many. She starts to thumb over to her list of favorites, when she realizes there’s no service.

  “This whole route is pretty patchy,” Duncan says. “We’re in a dead zone now.”

  “You make it sound like the start of a horror movie.”

  He laughs at this. “I can never watch those things.”

  “Me neither.” She looks again at the stars out the window. “What happens if we’re stuck here for a while?”

  “Then we’re stuck here for a while. Me and this guy in the dining car, Raymond, we always make bets on delays. The over-under on this one is six hours.”

  “Are you over or under?”

  “Over,” he says. “We’re already an hour in, and it doesn’t seem like we’re going anywhere soon.”

  “Hey, Duncan, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s your biggest dream?” She doesn’t have her camera with her, but she finds she wants to know anyway.

  He doesn’t hesitate, not even for a second. It’s as if he gets asked this question every single day. “A cabin on a lake. Maybe up in Wisconsin. I’d go ice fishing in the winters and take a boat out in the summers. Maybe get a dog to sit with me on the porch. No work. No schedules. No passengers.” He cracks a grin. “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “Just those stars,” he says, jabbing a thumb at the window. “But without the glass.”

  Mae nods. “That sounds nice.”

  “Sure does.”

  She doesn’t ask his word for love. He’s still looking up at the stars with a thoughtful expression, and that feels to Mae like answer enough.

  “Good night, Duncan,” she says with a smile, and he gives her a little wave.

  “Good night, Margaret Campbell, room twenty-four.”

  Mae flinches at this, the reminder that’s trailed her halfway across the country. She’s not Hugo’s girlfriend. She doesn’t know what she is, but it’s not that.

  Just enjoy it, Priyanka said, which has never been a problem for Mae. In fact, it’s what these types of things have always been: fun and breezy and uncomplicated. There’s no reason why this should be any different.

  It’s not that she doesn’t believe in love. But seeing other people’s stories unfold always feels like watching a movie she would never have picked out for herself. Somewhere there must be a version that’s more like the films in her head, bright and colorful and unique.

  “You’re a tough nut to crack,” Nana once told her, and Priyanka’s warning that she’s too careful with her heart is still ringing in her ears.

  But they’re both wrong. Her heart isn’t the problem.

  It’s that she’s never met someone she actually hopes will break through.

  When she reaches the door to their compartment, she pauses for a moment. Beneath her feet, there’s a faint vibration, almost like the purring of cat, but nothing else. After a few seconds, it disappears again, and they’re no longer even idling. They’re just stuck.

  Trains are meant to be in motion. People too. They should be on their way somewhere, slicing through the dark rather than huddling here beneath it.

  She slides open the door. Hugo is still asleep, his face mashed into the pillow, his arm hanging over the edge of the bunk. She steps up to the bed and studies him for a second, then—unable to resist—stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the nose.

  His eyelids flutter, and when they open, he looks sleepy and unfocused.

  “Hugo?” she whispers.

  “Yeah?”

  “Doesn’t it sort of feel like this is a dream?”

  “Yeah,” he says, then closes his eyes again. Mae is about to crawl into her own bunk when she hears his voice again. “A good one?”

  “Yes,” she says, and he shifts over, leaving room for her to climb into the bunk beside him. It’s not graceful; she scrabbles to find the step, then bumps her head on the ceiling, and when she tries to shimmy in beside him, her foot gets caught in the safety net. But eventually she burrows her way into the small space, and he slips his arms around her so that she can feel the thud of his heart against her back as she falls asleep.

  Sometime just before dawn, Hugo wakes with a start. The light behind the curtains is dull, the train jostling beneath them. One arm is draped over Mae’s shoulder, his nose buried in her hair. He doesn’t remember her climbing into bed with him, but it somehow also feels like she’s always been here, curled beside him in this tiniest of spaces.

  She’s breathing softly, whistling a little each time she inhales, and he disentangles himself carefully, reaching for his mobile, which he tucked beneath his pillow. The glow of the screen brightens the room, and he turns on his side to keep from waking Mae. It’s just before five a.m., which means it’s late morning back home. He finds a text from his dad with a picture of the breakfast table. In it, there are seven plates piled with bacon and eggs and toast, and one empty one in the middle. Come home soon, it says. We miss you.

  Hugo lowers his mobile, filled with a clawing despair.

  A quote flashes into his head from a Samuel Beckett play he read in his literature class this year: I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

  The words had chimed at something in him even then, but now they feel like a drumbeat, and he opens his mobile again to write to Alfie, a test balloon that sets his heart beating wildly.

  Hugo: What if I didn’t come back?

  Alfie: Ever??

  Hugo: No, I was thinking more like a gap year.

  Alfie: I can’t tell if you’re taking the piss.

  Hugo: I’m not.

  Alfie: Wow. That would be like the complete opposite of pulling a Hugo.

  Hugo: Do you think Mum and Dad would kill me?

  Alfie: Yes.

  Hugo: But after that, they’d be okay with it?

  Alfie: As long as you get your arse to uni at some point.

  Hugo: George would never forgive me.

  Alfie: You know how he is. He just likes to keep the flock together. But I’m sure he’d come around eventually.

  Hugo: Maybe.

  Alfie: Yeah, maybe.

  Hugo: It’s a bit mad, isn’t it?

  Alfie: I don’t know. It kind of makes sense. Your heart was never in it.

  Hugo: It’s in this.

  Alfie: So you’d give up the scholarship?

  Hugo: Hopefully just de
fer it for a year.

  Alfie: Better check to make sure we’re not a package deal. Five out of six isn’t bad, but you know they might not see it that way.

  Hugo: I wouldn’t go ahead if it messed up anything up for the rest of you.

  Alfie: But you really want it?

  Hugo: I really, really want it.

  Alfie: Then I hope they say yes.

  Hugo rests the phone on his chest, watching it rise and fall in the gray light. He feels caught somewhere between asleep and awake. Before he can think better of it, he’s searching his contacts for a name: Nigel Griffith-Jones, Chair of Council, the University of Surrey.

  When Hugo’s finished with the email, he thinks of the text from his dad again, the empty plate among all those fuller ones. Then he takes a deep breath and hits Send.

  Hours later, when Mae begins to stir, Hugo is still awake. He’s staring at the ceiling, feeling slightly frozen, paralyzed by what he’s done. She twists to face him, her hair tangled but still smelling like lavender from the hotel shampoo, and rests her hand so casually on his chest that he relaxes again.

  “Did I snore?” she asks, yawning.

  “Only…a lot.”

  She laughs. “You’re not so quiet yourself. How long have you been up?”

  “A while,” he says, and there must be something odd in his voice, because she lifts her head to look at him. The edges of the curtains are laced with light, and her eyes still look sleepy and unfocused.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Some planning. Some worrying. Some thinking.”

  “About?”

  He wonders if she can feel his heart pounding underneath her hand. “About possibly taking a gap year.”

  She stares at him. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” he says, allowing himself a small smile. “I emailed someone on the university council to see if it’s possible to defer the scholarship. I want to be sure before I get my hopes too high.”

  “Your hopes are already high,” she says, looking at him fondly. “Have you told your family yet?”

  “Just Alfie. George will hate it. And my parents will think that I can’t manage on my own or that I’ll just be skiving off. But this wouldn’t be a lark. I’d obviously love to see some of the world. But it’s so much more than that.”