Mercy Train

by Rae Meadows

  She wanted her dad to come. Why was it so hard for her to admit?

  “I’ll call him.”

  “Sure you will,” Theo said.

  “What’d we put Mom in?”

  “What?”

  “Her ashes. What did we put them in?”

  “That’s so weird. I have no idea. I think the funeral home just took care of it. Something standard.”

  “We’re terrible,” she said.

  “Come on, it was an emotional time. It doesn’t matter really, does it?”

  Of course it matters, she thought. I should be making something in honor of my mother instead of dithering about, stalking prostitutes.

  “You have them, right?” she asked.

  “I think they’re in the downstairs closet.”

  “You think?”

  “I have them, Sam, relax. But we need to deal with them soon, okay?”

  With the watershed of Ella’s arrival, Sam had forgotten that they had not buried the ashes, and now here it was, a whole year later. Theo was right.

  She pulled out the next envelope in the box. Inside were some sixties-era photographs of people she didn’t know, a dinner party with an empty seat—Iris must have been holding the camera—couples holding piña coladas and cigarettes at a lake house, identities forever lost. There was a picture of Chicago in a blizzard. There were also some outtakes of her parents’ wedding not included in the official album—a candid of Iris standing alone, watching the reception, her hair poofed up behind a white satin bow, a shot of her being fed cake by Glenn, her eyes closed, a fleck of opaque pink lipstick on her tooth, Glenn laughing, showing his gums. Sam wondered if her mother had kept these because she couldn’t bear to throw them out, or if they’d held some secret meaning for her, something she’d wanted to remember of her wedding day that was not staged. And what would Sam do with them now? Stick them back in the box for Ella to discover in fifty years?

  She unfolded a yellowed plastic bag. Inside wrapped in tissue paper was a square coaster from someplace in Chicago called the Coq d’Or, with an image of a rooster on it, flecked with the remains of gold paint. The cardboard was deteriorating and furry around the edges. Really, Mom? A coaster from a bar?

  There was a book in the box, a small Bible, with a battered black cover bent in around the pages, the gold lettering rubbed away. Her staunchly atheist mother had kept a Bible. Sam cracked open the musty cover, but the nameplate was blank. Only the date was filled in: June 10, 1900. In the top corner, a black stamp:

  Children’s Aid Society

  105 East Twenty-Second Street

  New York City, New York

  Her grandmother’s, surely, given the date—she would have been about eleven then—but it was a strange notation. New York was a long way from Wisconsin. Maybe she picked it up at a church bazaar, Sam thought, and there was no more to it than that.

  Sticking out of the pages was a photograph of Sam’s grandparents on the sagging porch of their old southern Minnesota farmhouse, its white paint flaking off from the battering seasons, the snaking branches of the overgrown lilac trees obscuring the edge of the house. The Olsens were an impassive-looking pair, probably in their sixties here, she without makeup, her white hair pulled back in a low ponytail, without any attempt to pretty herself. She had been a farm wife, after all, not fancy or vain. In the photograph her grandfather sat straight on a rough-hewn wooden bench with the newspaper on his lap, his bifocals on the end of his nose. Sam’s grandmother, nestled in a frayed wingback chair, was knitting. Neither of them smiled, though they didn’t look unhappy either, just separate, as if they didn’t live with each other as much as next to each other, and they were ready to get back to what they were doing before the photographer had asked them to please look up.

  Her grandfather looked unmistakably Scandinavian, his hair, even in old age, blond and wispy, too soft-looking for his heavily creased face. He was quiet, Iris had said, though sometimes funny and often kind, a farmer who, later in life, became the manager of a feed mill. Iris’s mother was, she’d said, infinitely capable, a fixer and a coper.

  Sam didn’t even know where in Wisconsin her grandmother had grown up. Not asking her mother about her family in those final weeks seemed an egregious lapse. Iris had been an only child, and now there was no one left. But then again, it might have seemed to Iris a forced and sentimental exercise. Sam was, she realized, intimidated by her mother to the end.

  Although Iris had claimed she couldn’t get away from her rural, provincial background fast enough, she had at times, over the years, spoken lovingly of the south branch of the Root River, along whose banks she’d spent many childhood afternoons fishing for channel catfish, rock bass, and sunfish. In rare moments her mother had gotten wistful and spoken of the land near the farm, the limestone bluffs topped with oak and hickory, the egrets and wood ducks on the river’s edge, the otters and beavers. My mother! Sam thought now. The woman who’d gotten a manicure every two weeks and ironed the sheets and had pesticide sprayed on the lawn so it would be perfectly green. Sam had been in Madison for years and not driven the three hours to see the river. Why have I not gone there yet? she thought.

  Through the front window she could see that Ted was back from campus and was now raking his yard, even though the leaf drop had barely begun, his hair bouncing with each comb of the rake. He wore his seventies maroon leather jacket and a turtleneck underneath. She admired his vigor and optimism.

  The pound cake. She went to the kitchen and turned on the oven. Her mother used to make a pound cake on occasion, though a more delicate version than the original Sam was going for. “Always use vanilla, even if the recipe doesn’t call for it,” Iris had said. And what was that odd spice she’d used? Mace, Sam remembered. Who had ever used mace? On a whim she rummaged around her spice drawer and found a small, faded canister unopened, wedged into the back corner. She must have acquired it long before she met Jack—no doubt on advice from Iris on outfitting her kitchen—and it had accompanied her all the way here.

  Sam knifed open the seal. However old it was, it had the mellow nutmeggy smell she recalled from her childhood. She scooped a quarter teaspoon into a bowl and pulled down the vanilla.

  * * *

  “I never considered getting a divorce,” her mother had said, pushing away a plate of salmon she couldn’t eat. “Even when I would have preferred it. Now it seems so obvious. But then I thought I needed some kind of permission. I didn’t think I could do something so big.”

  Sam had never heard her mother talk like this, and she wanted both more and less of it. It was welcoming after all the years of her policing the fortress of her interior life, but she feared Iris would unveil a stranger and then up and die.

  “Did you know about Marie?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “That wasn’t anything really. It stung my ego, I guess. But your father and I…” She waved her hand and then closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair, too exhausted to go on.

  As Iris withered, she actually looked younger, the refined bone structure of her face pronounced and delicate, her dark bob wispy and girlish, her feet now too big for her body.

  “I genuinely hope Glenn is happy,” she said quietly, her eyes still closed, “in the RV.”

  They laughed together, and Sam was thankful for the warm and briny breeze through the open balcony doors, incongruously pleasant given Iris’s deterioration. The baby lodged her foot under Sam’s ribs. Iris could no longer walk unaided and it hurt her to sit for long. The multitudinous pills were becoming more difficult for her to get down by the day. Sam had been in Sanibel for two weeks, and although they’d talked about the practical matters of death—her will, her accounts, her wishes—they had not discussed the death itself. Iris had seemed to have no interest in talking about it, and Sam hadn’t had the guts to bring it up.

  “Let’s go see the birds,” Iris said.

  They drove to the “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge, less than a half mi
le from the condo. Iris had hoped she would have the energy to walk a little way to see the alligators and get close to the herons, but the day was warm and hazy, and she felt too sick to get out of the car.

  “Oh, well,” she said. “The mosquitoes are terrible anyway. And they find pregnant women particularly irresistible.”

  So Sam drove slowly, stopping at viewing platforms, signs, and observation towers, trying to coax her mother from the car.

  “Park up here,” Iris said.

  Sam stopped next to a phalanx of mangrove trees, their rust-red roots like tentacles holding fast to the swampland beneath.

  “Read me what that sign says,” Iris said.

  “Estuarine Ecosystem. The process of passing nutrients from one animal to another through feeding is called a food web.”

  “I thought it would talk about the birds. Ibises, egrets, dunlins, hawks. Where are all the birds? I’ve only seen two pelicans. It was right around here we used to see the spoonbills.”

  We? Sam opened her mouth but closed it again, unable to ask.

  “Have you ever seen a spoonbill?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “They look prehistoric with these weird rounded beaks. Like a forgotten species. I don’t think there are many left. Maybe there aren’t any left now.”

  Sam drove a little farther and pulled over again next to a ropy branched gumbo-limbo tree—she’d read about them in the brochure—its crazy orange bark cracked and peeling like dead skin.

  “We should have brought binoculars,” Sam said. “I’m sure the birds are just blending in.”

  “It’s okay, honey. I don’t feel the need to check anything off the list.”

  They’d come in the late afternoon at low tide—best to catch the wading birds—and as they rounded the fourth mile, the sun was lowering, its reflection painting the lagoon pink.

  “It’s time for me to go, Samantha.”

  “We’re at the exit.” Sam turned out onto Sanibel-Captiva Road, pointing at the hawk circling above.

  “There’s no point in dragging it out,” her mother said. “One’s body shutting down is no fun, believe me.”

  It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.

  “Mom. Stop it. Please.” She’d pushed thoughts of her mother’s death into the sand, and now she was unprepared for their barb and weight. She felt the baby kick her bladder, and she had to strain not to wet her pants.

  “It’s undignified. This rot. I’d rather have some say in it,” Iris said.

  “Why are you telling me this? I don’t want to know,” Sam said, her voice pinched and high.

  “Because I need your help.”

  “No. No. I’m not doing that. I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “What about Theo—”

  “Theo. No. You’re stronger than you think you are. Most women are. I should have done it earlier and spared you, I know. But I waited too long and got too weak.” Iris closed her eyes, scowling in pain. “When the baby comes you’ll forget all about it.”

  It’s not right, Sam screamed to herself. To ask this of a daughter. She wanted to yell in protest at the barbarous request, to get on the next plane back to Madison. She felt a lick of anger flare, its heat shooting up to her head before fizzling to a simmer.

  “You might have months,” Sam said weakly.

  “It’s merciful, Samantha. I have had enough.”

  Sam had eased her mother’s car into the garage below the condo and stared ahead at the neat shelves of household supplies in labeled plastic containers.

  “I was thinking on my birthday,” Iris had said. “There’s a pleasing symmetry to that, don’t you think?”

  * * *

  Sam retrieved the packet of her grandmother’s recipes from the pile on the table, just to see if there might be one for pound cake. The rubber band was dried out and cracked, and when she went to slide it off, it broke. A tissue-thin piece of lavender paper, folded in thirds, slipped out and fluttered into her lap. A letter. The ink was faded, the handwriting, shaky. Dated December 10, 1910.

  “Dear Mrs. Olsen,” it began. “It was with great expectation that I read your letter.”

  VIOLET

  The train was loud, the horsehair seat uncomfortable. Violet sat behind the nurse, Miss Bodean, barely older than some of the girls, who held an infant in her lap and was flanked by two toddler girls on one side, a boy on the other. One of the babies was invariably crying, but the sounds were covered by the clattering windows, the roaring engine, the scrape and scream of metal wheels against the rails. After the train had rocketed out of the city, the buildings became lower, sparser, and the landscape turned green and rolling.

  The company had the car to itself. A tiny German boy with straw-colored hair did cartwheels in the aisles for laughs until he was ordered to sit.

  “Save the performing for Indiana, Joseph,” Mrs. Comstock said.

  “What’s Indiana?” he said.

  “It’s where the parents are.”

  Violet sat next to a brother and sister with the same wide-set brown eyes, who held hands and looked straight ahead.

  “You want to sit by the window for a while?” Violet asked the boy.

  He shook his head.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Elmer.”

  “This your sister?” Violet said, pointing.

  “Yeah. I think she pooped her pants.”

  “Did not,” the girl said.

  “Shut up, Elsie,” he said.

  “I don’t smell nothing,” Violet said.

  Mrs. Comstock moved down the aisle, turning sideways to make her large bottom half fit, and addressed the group.

  “Remember, children, labor is elevating, and idleness is sinful. You are fortunate to get this opportunity, to be delivered from poverty and sin. Your new parents might want to give you a new name. Accept it with dignity.”

  Violet scowled. She didn’t want to be Sarah or Mary or Helen.

  “Is there a problem, Violet?” Mrs. Comstock asked, stopping next to her row.

  “No, ma’am,” she said, already having dismissed Mrs. Comstock as a potential ally.

  In the seat ahead, Miss Bodean stuck a bottle in the infant’s mouth and rocked him back and forth to coax him to sleep.

  “Those of you who were raised Catholic are now Protestant. Do not talk about rites and saints to your new families. And this goes for all of you; don’t talk about your old lives in the city. Try to forget. That is the past.” Mrs. Comstock took a deep breath and exhaled, as if, in solidarity, she were letting go of her past, too. “Riding an orphan train is not something you will want to discuss, either.”

  “Why not?” asked a consumptive-looking girl with thin, grayish skin.

  Mrs. Comstock paused. “Because it will be better for you if you don’t.”

  The girl blinked blank eyes, unsatisfied by the answer. “But whoever picks me will know where I came from.”

  “Of course, dear. But they will not want to be reminded of it,” Mrs. Comstock said.

  Soon Violet saw nothing but trees, a steady blur of trunks and bushy leaves. She daydreamed about having a room of her own, a brother to go fishing with, a mother who would teach her how to knit, a father who would sweep her up at the end of the day and swing her around. She dozed, Elmer’s head leaning against her arm.

  * * *

  Mrs. Comstock passed out mustard sandwiches and apples, the same as they had had for lunch, and small cups of condensed milk. Joseph, the cartwheeling German boy, knelt on his seat, facing back, pulling his ears wide and rolling his eyes for the little ones behind him. He yodeled.

  “Quite an entertainer,” Mrs. Comstock said, patting his head, but she did not make him face forward. As they had gotten farther from the city, she had relaxed some, even taking off her bonnet. Joseph smiled and hopped into her lap.

  Violet thought about Nino and tried to remember what he’d looked like when she’d first seen him kicking al
ong on Water Street, gangly limbs, a nose too big for his face. She had filched an orange in front of him to get his attention. He had corrected her technique.

  “Help me, please?” Miss Bodean said, turning around in her seat. “I need you to hold the baby. So I can change Frederick’s soiled nappy.”

  Violet had never held a baby and didn’t want to start now. “I never held one before.”

  “There’s nothing to it. Just sit there and don’t move.” The nurse placed the wrapped bundle across Violet’s lap. Elmer peered over.

  “What’s wrong with it?” he asked. “The face looks like a dried-up apple.”

  Violet felt a bolt of anger toward the infant, its needy, milk-wet mouth, its tiny useless fists, the ugly rash on its cheeks, bumpy and pink.

  * * *

  They received blankets to sleep in their seats. The car had no lights, so when darkness fell, they curled every which way to get comfortable. Some of the boys gave up and stretched out on the floor. The train jerked around a sharp curve and Violet felt Elmer go rigid beside her before he fell back to sleep, Elsie’s head in his lap. She leaned against the window frame, her head jostling, and tried to contain her fierce hope for a real family that would take her in. She imagined milking a cow in the peachy dawn, her cheek against the warm flank, the steaming cream thick at the top of the pail. She imagined her bed, reaching out her arms and legs under a pile of soft quilts. She tried not to think of her mother, alone in their old attic room. In the last of the sun, she marveled at the flat, flat world where the sky rolled on forever, until it was too dark to see, and her lids fell over her eyes.

  * * *

  Two days after they left New York City, they got off the train in Sheridan, Indiana. It was windy on the platform, the sun high, and the children in their wrinkled, dusty clothes, clutching their Bibles, blinked and bumped around one another like moles. The train pulled away in a rush of screeching metal and chugging steam and left them in a dazed huddle around Mrs. Comstock. The wind whipped against Violet’s ears, and she felt a stinging, unfamiliar loneliness. She had half expected a cheering crowd when the train arrived, parents waving, scooping up their new children. Streamers and music. Cakes and punch, even. But it was empty, save for a railroad worker stacking crates and a Mr. Drummond, the local coordinator.