As soon as she saw him, she waved her purse. “Look!” she said triumphantly.
The purse barely resembled the one that Nora had described. He would never have guessed that this brownish-black fabric had ever been blue satin; the gem in the clasp was obviously long gone; and the rest of the frame was so bent and twisted that it looked as if it had been banged with a hammer.
“Is that it?” Joe asked.
Nora nodded. “But I can’t get it open.”
“We can fix that,” Joe said. “And what about the bracelet?”
Nora held up her left arm triumphantly, letting the gold charms jangle against her wrist.
“It was in a special sealed envelope,” she said. “But Mr. B. let me open it.”
Mr. B., Joe thought. Clearly, she had charmed him.
“Well, while we’re at it, let’s get you a coat,” Joe said. “Mr. Brennan? Would you show us the merchandise? Miss Lansing here needs a coat.”
“What happened to your coat?” Mr. Brennan asked gruffly.
“Oh, I left it in the ladies’ lounge, and one of those biddies must have walked off with it,” Nora said. Joe smiled, delighted by how quickly she’d come up with a story.
Mr. Brennan obliged them by rolling out the rack holding the women’s coats.
Unless you counted the summer dresses she had occasionally borrowed from Margaret in Paris, Nora had never worn a secondhand item of clothing in her life. But gamely, she chose the first wool coat that looked as if it would fit her, and she was still thanking “Mr. B.” as Joe took her by the elbow. “Come with me,” he said.
He led her up one ramp to the upper level and straight down another to the empty train on Track 13 where Ralston held his prayer meetings. They settled together into one of the double seats. This was not a luxurious train car—not like the 20th Century Limited, with those deep, crimson armchairs and swanky lighting fixtures, the train Joe had so often imagined hopping for a ride. But it was clean, and the seats were comfortable enough. Sitting there in the semidarkness of a train that had traveled thousands of miles, Nora held her own purse in her hands—the proof that she’d been stuck in one place for fourteen years.
Inside the train, the air had the papery smell of cigarettes and newsprint. The only light came from the platform lamps, so Joe and Nora had to lean slightly toward the window in order to see her purse. Using both his hands and his strongest grip, Joe bent the metal of the purse’s frame straight enough for it to open.
“I feel like Superman,” he said.
“Like who?”
This was the first of countless times Joe would be reminded how many things Nora had missed. Superman. FDR. Father Coughlin. Amelia Earhart. Talking pictures. Radios you could lift in one hand.
“Doesn’t matter,” Joe said, and he handed back her open purse. If Joe had had any lingering doubts about her story, this was where they ended.
She took out her passport first. It had a red cover—the old kind, like his father’s, instead of the olive-green covers that were issued now. Nora handed it to Joe, and he opened it. The photograph showed her wearing a shirt with a high, stiff white collar. Her hair was swept up in a bun, and her expression was one of distraction, almost annoyance. The photograph wasn’t black and white, but brown and beige—the colors of tea and cream.
“Look at you,” Joe said, marveling.
“Oh, I hated that picture,” she said. “I got it before my hair was bobbed.”
Next she took out a small sketchpad and eagerly flipped through the pages, showing Joe street scenes, landscapes, sketches of people, buildings, fruit.
“An artist in Paris,” Joe said, wonderingly. “Just like you told me.”
“Here,” Nora said as she tried to trade the sketchpad for the passport.
“No, wait,” Joe said. He focused on her date of birth: January 7, 1902. Joe’s father had been born in 1879, Joe in 1905. He stared at the faint typed letters. “Nora,” he said, “you were born three years before me.”
“I’ve never been courted by a younger man,” she said.
“But I’m thirty-four and you’re, what—”
“Twenty-three, pal.”
They were both speechless for a moment.
“Always twenty-three,” she added softly.
Next she pulled out a large stack of traveler’s checks and some French money. After that came a small rectangular silver box—about the size of her thumb—with an intricate pattern etched on its sides. Nora pulled on one of the ends, extracting a raspberry-red lipstick and freeing a lid to pop up and reveal a tiny mirror.
“Presto,” she said, and, squinting into the mirror, used the lipstick to make an X in the center of her already red lips. Her whole face brightened, though whether it was from the excitement or the cosmetics Joe couldn’t tell.
“I hope this stuff doesn’t grow mold or something,” she said.
“Why, what if it did?” Joe asked, and they were both suddenly confounded by all they didn’t know. “Could you get a rash? Or get sick in some way?”
“I never have,” Nora said.
“If someone hit you, would you bruise?”
“Let’s not find out.”
“I mean it, though. If you’re dead, can you die?”
“Apparently not,” Nora said. “Or get older, I think. Every time I come back, I always look exactly the same.”
“But what’s the longest you’ve stayed?”
“A couple of days.”
“So it’s not like you disappear after twenty-four hours.”
“I’m not Cinderella’s pumpkin,” she said.
“So do you think you’d get older if you stayed any longer?” he asked.
“Joe,” Nora said, “I just don’t know.”
He stood and paced the entire length of the train car, as if distance from Nora could give him some better understanding.
“Can you see me?” he asked.
“You’re right in front of me, Joe.”
“No, I mean can you see me when I can’t see you?”
“No. I told you. When I’m not here I don’t see anything.”
“How many times have you come back?”
“Five, I think. Maybe four.”
“So it hasn’t been every year.”
“No,” she said. “Definitely not.”
Joe stopped at the seat opposite hers, putting his arms around the backrest.
“Can you do anything?” he asked her.
“What do you mean, like work?” she asked.
Joe released the backrest and started to pace again. “No. I mean like…walk through things. Or get invisible. Or fly. I don’t know.”
“Oh, you mean like ghost things.”
“Yeah.”
She grinned. “What, you don’t think I’m amazing enough?”
Joe shook his head.
“I think you are amazing in every possible way.”
* * *
—
He was tempted to kiss her again, but two tracks over, the lights in another train were being turned on, and Joe could see one of the gatemen reaching for his keys.
“We’ve got to go,” Joe said.
“Why?”
“Against the rules for us to be here.”
Nora closed her purse and stood up.
“Where can we go?” she asked. “I’ve already tried to get to Turtle Bay, and even if I could, there’s some rude man living there now.”
“I know. His name is Artie Fox. He’s the one who first told me you were—”
“Pretty much dead,” Nora said.
She stepped out of the train car. She was so beautiful, a sliver of energy amid all the shadows.
“We could try to get to my place,” he said.
“In Queens?”
“The YMCA?” she said.
“Yes.”
“The Young Men’s Christian Association?” She emphasized every word, smiling.
“Sure.”
“Joe, I’m young, and I’m Christian, but I am not a man.”
“Of this,” Joe said, “I am well aware.”
“So what would I be doing there? Do I wear a disguise?”
She looked almost hopeful that he’d say yes.
“Guys smuggle girls in all the time.”
“You would do that?”
“I would,” Joe said.
“It’s your face, isn’t it?” Nora asked.
“What about my face?”
“It’s just that kind of face,” Nora said. “People trust you.” She touched his cheek.
He walked her across the platform toward the ramp that led back up to the commuter level and the brightness, noise, and bustle of real people doing real things that they were able to take completely for granted.
They headed for the Forty-second Street exit, just as they had the year before, although they both now felt they had more to lose.
Nora put on the Lost and Found coat.
“How many blocks?” she asked.
“Forty-seventh between Third and Second,” he said.
“That’s closer than Turtle Bay! That’s great!”
Joe put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m not worried about getting you into the Y, but I can’t let you disappear again.”
“Hold on to me this time. Maybe that’ll keep me—”
“Grounded,” Joe said. “Like grounding a wire. When you ground an electric current, you tie it to the earth.”
“Right! Like I’m an electrical current!” Nora said, and laughing that deep laugh of hers, she added, “I’m a live wire!”
Joe pushed the heavy glass door open with his shoulder. They reached for each other simultaneously, their arms turning their bodies into one M-shaped entity. Together they stepped outside into the cold air.
“You should have gotten a hat too,” Joe said.
“I’m not cold,” she declared, and in fact the warmth of her hand was barely diminished. “Just don’t let go,” she said. “Hold on to me.”
“You hold on to me too.”
“And have a little faith,” Nora said.
“My ma always said you can either have a lot of faith or no faith at all.”
Neither of them could speak as they started the walk down Forty-second Street—the same way they’d walked the year before.
“So far, so good,” Joe said.
They reached the corner of Lexington and crossed the street, heading toward Third.
“So, what’s this Y place like?” Nora asked, but Joe could tell she was nervous, and he didn’t have it in him to pretend he wasn’t.
“Joe?” she said.
“You’ll see when we get there,” he murmured.
They had nearly reached Third Avenue. “Joe, you’re hurting my hand!” Nora said.
He loosened his grip, but just a little. “Remember, I’m your ground,” he said.
Her ground, Nora thought. Down to earth in every way. Solid. Firm. Joe.
But just a few steps farther, Joe felt the warmth draining from Nora’s hand. He held tighter, but the loss was unmistakable.
“Joe!” Nora shouted.
“Don’t let go!” they both said.
Joe desperately tried to pull her toward him, but he couldn’t hold on.
“December fifth!” she shouted, her face yearning and helpless. Then her whole body flickered, exactly like a lightbulb just before it burns out: a few quick shimmers of heat and light, then darkness.
Alone, bereft, and angry, Joe bent to pick up Nora’s clutch, coat, and bracelet—the things she hadn’t had with her when she died; the things she apparently couldn’t keep with her when she left—and he hugged the coat to his chest until every last trace of its warmth was gone.
9
TIME
1940
In the first month of the new decade, Joe Reynolds, like every other employee of the New York Central, was handed the debut issue of a four-page newsletter called the Central Headlight. At Alva’s on a Tuesday morning, he sat across from Mitchell, his neighbor from the Y, drinking coffee and scanning the pages. There were items about traffic, profits, employees’ resignations, marriages, and new babies. There were updates on the bowling league and the camera club. But front and center was the news that one of the chief New York Central big wheels, the general passenger traffic manager, was retiring after more than a half-century of service.
“Fifty-three years,” Mitchell said. “Do me a favor. If I’m still working here in fifty-three years, just tie me to the third rail, okay?”
Joe didn’t answer. He was studying the drawing at the top of the first page. It was a sketch of the streamlined 20th Century Limited, with its famous bullet nose and its headlamp casting a cone of light around the newsletter’s title. “Hey,” Mitchell said to him. “I’m talking to you. Third rail. Promise.”
Joe looked up. “What makes you think I’m going to be here?” he asked.
Mitchell shrugged. “You’ll probably be running the place.”
Joe laughed as he tried to picture wearing a suit every day, working at a desk, making the guys in shirtsleeves feel as uncomfortable as Mr. Walters from Ralston Young’s prayer group made him feel. The article in the newsletter said that Louis Landsman had been born on a farm and started as a night telegrapher in Indiana when he was eighteen. He had made his way to Chicago, then New York, where he’d climbed the ranks and married and had two children who were now grown. Unlike Joe, Landsman had gotten to see at least a bit of the country. But since settling here, had Louis Landsman ever traveled the vast, sprawling routes of the system he’d overseen? Had Louis Landsman, Joe wondered, ever been to another country? Was the man only now, at seventy, free to begin his adventures?
Joe did a quick calculation. He would be sixty-nine, one year away from his own mandatory retirement, if he ended up working for the Central as long as Louis Landsman had. Joe shook his head, putting the newsletter down. It would be 1975, a year impossible to imagine, especially because of Nora. It was hard enough these days to imagine getting to the next December 5.
The new girlie calendar in the shower room at Tower A was already puckered by steam, and January boasted a voluptuous brunette clothed only in the sheerest dressing gown. Joe had basically grown into manhood staring at such pictures, and like the other guys in the place, he had always looked forward to the first of each month, when a mock ceremony was conducted by whoever happened to be around to unveil the next month’s girl. That was practically meaningless to Joe now; the only thing that mattered was the speed with which those months could pass.
“God makes time. Only man makes haste” was one of Damian’s favorite sayings.
As far as Joe was concerned, man could be doing a better job.
* * *
—
On a June day off, Joe set out for Turtle Bay Gardens. For months, not knowing how Nora would feel about it, he had resisted the impulse to try to find her mother. But gradually he had convinced himself that finding Elsie Lansing was his best, if not his only, way of staying connected to Nora.
Rain had brought out the competing smells of a New York afternoon in early summer: the sour garbage in the alleys and the too-sweet hyacinths at the flower stand, the steam vapor rising from an open manhole, the tarry pavement along Third Avenue. Turtle Bay Gardens in summer, though, was fragrant. Red, orange, and purple flowers—bright as kids’ crayons—smelled as if they’d just been planted in the painted green boxes that underlined most of the windows. The streets were tidy and quie
t, and sunlight zigzagged across the shiny black hoods of the cars parked along the way.
“So. You’re back?” Artie asked. He stood in the doorway, wearing a plaid short-sleeved shirt and a pair of rumpled black pants. He looked at his watch, comically. “It’s June, for Christ’s sake. Where’ve you been all year?”
Joe smiled, relieved that Artie was still here and that he didn’t seem annoyed by another visit. But from behind the ritzy entryway came the sounds of men working and the smell of plaster and paint.
“I’d ask you in,” Artie said, “but I’m finally having the place done over. Enough with the chintz and silk, you know?”
Joe nodded. He didn’t know what chintz was.
Confidentially—though with the noise behind him there was no chance he’d be heard—Artie asked, “So, did you see her again? First week of December?”
Joe nodded.
“And she disappeared again?”
“Right in front of me.”
* * *
—
Artie didn’t have Nora’s mother’s address. The occasional piece of mail he had previously forwarded to Connecticut was now being bounced back with the words RETURNED TO WRITER UNCLAIMED and the red stamp of a hand pointing to his address.
“You gotta realize,” Artie said. “Elsie was spooked as hell. Thought she was going crazy. Not sure I blame her.”
“Is Elsie even alive?” Joe asked, realizing that his definition of the word was no longer as fixed as it had once been.
“No idea,” Artie said.
Joe groaned inwardly, imagining himself back at the library, looking for Elsie’s death notice.
But Artie said he did have the phone number of one of Elsie’s friends. “Ruth something,” he told Joe. “I met her the same year this other woman showed up with a couple of kids, looking for a handout, saying Nora gave her this address. But Ruth, that was someone who knew her. She saw Nora in Grand Central too. Scared her senseless. She told me to call her if I ever got this figured out. Not much chance of that, I don’t think.”
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