Today Joe’s destination was the deepest and most deserted level of all, carved out to hold an enormous secret room known only as M42. Located ten stories belowground, M42 appeared on no blueprint and was drawn on no map. Even some of the old-timers didn’t know how to get there, but in both power and sound, it provided Grand Central’s heartbeat. The room was as large as the concourse itself, and it housed the roaring rotary converters that changed the city’s alternating current—which powered the terminal’s lights and loudspeakers, fans and clocks—into direct current, which powered the tracks up and down the whole East Coast.
Outside this room were catwalks, metal staircases, and one long stretch of rock, barely lit, the rock from which the space for the whole terminal had been blasted, carved, and cut. A band of stray cats—Joe imagined the Colosseum had nothing on Grand Central—had grown surprisingly fat on the scraps that probably ten different guys were feeding them. Other than the cats, and some legendarily enormous rats, the place had no life.
Today Joe hadn’t come with scraps, but that didn’t stop the cats from converging on him, slinking up to his pant legs, mewing in the dim light. He had named only one of them: Dillinger—after the gangster—for the balls-out way he always got to Joe before the others, then stole away at any hint of trouble. Sitting in the darkness—a hole cut into the earth that smelled of rotting food and cat piss—Joe used his thumb to rub the spot between Dillinger’s shoulders, feeling the reassurance of the animal’s warmth. A few moments passed, and Joe realized he was rubbing the cat’s chest in time to the rhythm of the converters. He replayed what had just happened in the concourse, how he had lunged like an idiot into the light beam and how everything had seemed all right until the clouds covered the sun.
“The fucking clouds,” he whispered fiercely to Dillinger.
Dillinger must have felt something change in Joe, because now the cat butted his head into him as if he were trying to stroke Joe’s chest. Joe sat up straighter.
It was the clouds. The clouds had blocked the sunrise. Today was Manhattanhenge sunrise. Nora must have died in this special sunlight of the winter solstice, and somehow, every December 5, the sunlight tried to bring her back.
No matter what your means of transportation, Joe thought—car, train, or sunbeam—if something blocks its path, you’re not going to get where you want to go. Forget the looks, the love, the fear, and the faith. If the weather hadn’t been clear last year, Nora would not have come through. There would have been no purse or coat or kiss. And Joe would never have learned since then—from Artie, the papers, from Nora herself—where and when to expect her appearance this morning. The desolation Joe felt at missing her was almost matched by the grim pride of believing he had figured out something that no else knew. Yes, he thought. It wasn’t God or magic that brought Nora back to life. Or rather, if it was magic, then it was magic with a pattern, magic with rules, a calendar, some calculation that Joe just might be able to make.
He stood up, practically throwing Dillinger off his lap. Hurriedly, he climbed back up to the track level and, removing his cap, hustled into the train on Track 13 just in time to hear Ralston Young intone, “Let us say a prayer on that.”
Joe stood panting in the doorway as members of the prayer group lifted their bowed heads expectantly. He must have looked as if he were about to announce that the Savior had returned. The hope on their faces reflected the excitement on his, yet he instantly regretted that he’d come here. He believed he had just found the answer to a question, but he remembered that it was a question no one else was asking.
“I’m sorry,” Joe managed to say. Then he raced along the platform, barely nodding at the gateman and the conductor on the next train over, both of whom he knew.
He hadn’t eaten since before his shift the previous day. He still wasn’t hungry, but he needed a cup of coffee. He was on his way back from Bond’s Bakery when Ralston caught up with him on the lower level. Ralston was wearing his porter’s hat, which meant he was heading back to work, but he stopped Joe anyway.
“You came to tell us something,” Ralston said.
“Well, yes, but I realized it was the wrong moment.”
“Is this the right moment?” Ralston asked.
“I don’t think so,” Joe said.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you could use some sleep.”
“I could,” Joe admitted.
“Proverbs 3:24.”
“Excuse me?”
“ ‘When you lie down, you will not be afraid; yes, when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.’ ”
The rain had stopped by the time Joe left the terminal. Exhausted, he walked north to the Y under skies that were now maddeningly clear, the sun over his shoulder like a kid’s balloon.
He could tell Artie what he’d figured out, but what good would that do? Joe knew that the person he needed to tell—the only one who might want the answer as much as he did—was Nora’s mother. Back at the Y, he retrieved her friend’s phone number from his desk drawer and used the phone in the downstairs study to make the call. But it was a call that led to the day’s second empty embrace. In a tight, clipped voice, with almost no emotion, Ruth Ingram told Joe that Nora’s mother had died three years before.
11
WAITING FOR THE
SUN TO SET
1941
Joe had never noticed how much time the guys at the Y spent talking about women. Whether it was over a round of pool or a round of drinks, there was constant chatter about who was pairing up. There were the elegant, prized Century Girls, the chatty waitresses from Alva’s, the grateful laundresses from one of the subfloors, and the kitchen workers from the Oyster Bar, who never quite shook the shellfish smell.
In the first months after Nora flickered through his arms, even though Joe had spent a few nights with some of these women, the last thing he wanted to do was sit around and talk about them. He went more often than usual to the newsreel theater under Grand Central’s east balcony, where the plush seats beneath the low ceiling had always made a comfortable nest, a place to take a break or a nap. These days the cartoons and human-interest stories were still going strong, but everything was being overshadowed by news of the war in Europe. In the almost empty theater, tucked into one of the back rows, Joe watched footage showing America’s preparations, and everything revolved around tanks, guns, airplanes, and training. Soldiers drilled, assembly-line workers built, and planes took off, group after group, in perfect formation.
The war made a constant noise, even when that noise was a mere whisper. The threat—the question and worry about whether the United States should get involved—was always there, just like the rumble in the terminal that, even at its quietest, pulsed with potential force.
* * *
—
In some ways, the war noise was loudest in Queens, where conversations held on the church steps were now more often about when than if. The isolationists who called themselves America Firsters were given cold shoulders or icy glares, especially by Damian, who these days rarely talked about anything but war. He didn’t understand why the United States was waiting.
“The damn Huns,” he said after lunch one cold Sunday in March. “The damn Huns should know their place.” Alice and Mike, Faye and Finn, and Damian and Joe were gathered in the living room, sipping hot cider from mismatched mugs. Like a lot of his friends who’d seen action in the Great War, Damian thought that taking on Germany was the only way to justify all the awful things they’d seen and the great things they’d lost: time and innocence, comrades and limbs.
“You can step on a cockroach and think it’s dead,” Damian said, “but it can show up an hour later and you’ll have to step on it again.” He stamped his real leg, hard, on the floor.
“There’s a cockroach?” an alarmed nine-year-old Alice asked, tucking her feet beneath her on the couch.
Mike wiggled his fingers in her face.
“Germany!” Damian shouted. “I’m talking about goddamned Germany!”
The kids froze, eyes wide, united in their surprise. At fourteen, Mike certainly understood what his grandfather was talking about, but even so, the volume of Damian’s voice was a shock.
He turned to his sons and bellowed, “And when are you two signing up?” This was hardly the first time he’d asked the question. Damian frequently mentioned Faye’s brother, Ron Jr., who had joined the navy in the fall of 1939. Junie had grown up as the skinny kid in the neighborhood, the one who was always tagging along with the older, braver boys. Most people thought Junie had joined up only to get away from the other kids’ teasing, but that didn’t stop Damian from holding him up as the perfect young patriot.
“We’ll sign up as soon as they need us, Pa,” Finn said.
Finn’s answer was not new either. It was the one both he and Joe had been giving Damian since the war in Europe started. The answer was an evasion. Joe and the other levermen had already been told that if it came to war, they would be classified as “essential personnel” and not allowed to enlist—“Even if the Nazis land in New York Harbor,” the stationmaster had said. The New York Central Line would never risk losing anyone it had trained to stand at a Piano, especially when the trains would be overloaded with soldiers and supplies. Finn, likewise, had been informed that if America actually got into the war, the city would need more cops to protect it.
Still, Joe and Finn heard the drumbeat, and not only from Damian. Just this morning, Father Gregory had slipped some Bible verses about battle and bravery into his sermon, though his ever-shrinking body was a reminder that physical strength had its limits.
“If I had two good legs, I’d lose one again, to get at those bastards,” Damian said now.
Faye said, “Pa! Language,” and she motioned Finn into the kitchen.
The minute the door swished shut, Mike’s questions spilled out: What was it like in battle? Had Damian ever killed anyone? How many? Had any of his friends been killed? Had he used a bayonet? Had he carried a hand grenade? Had he been afraid it would go off? Did he still have his uniform?
“Joseph,” Damian said, “go up to the attic. Find my helmet and bring it down. I want Mike to see it.”
“Don’t you think we should check with Finn and Faye?” Joe asked.
“I’m the boy’s grandfather,” Damian growled, which was not an answer but served the same purpose.
Reluctantly, Joe climbed upstairs, passing the master bedroom—where Damian still slept—and the bedrooms that had once been his and Joe’s and were now crowded by the kids in one and by Finn and Faye in the other. In the hallway, Joe tugged on the thick, frayed rope and pulled down the attic stairs. The earthy smell of mold and trapped moisture hit him as soon as he started up. Boxes and old furniture, a sewing machine and broken lamps, were all coated in a layer of dust.
Joe had intended only to find Damian’s helmet—and perhaps the Purple Heart he’d been awarded but always said would make him seem to be boasting if he displayed it. In a box marked “1918,” however—a box just like the ones Nora had sifted through at the Lost and Found—Joe uncovered a small bundle of sepia photographs and a stack of letters in faded blue envelopes addressed to Katherine in Damian’s handwriting. There were French stamps in the upper right-hand corners and, in the lower left, round purple marks that read PASSED AS CENSORED. Gently, Joe slid the top letter from its envelope. “My darling Pretty Kitty,” it began. “How I miss your sweet smile and your soft warm—” That was all Joe read. Swiftly, he put the letter back, as if closing a door on a conversation he knew he shouldn’t be hearing.
He thought about how his mother and father had been kept apart by the war. Sure, that must have been rough, he thought. But Damian had made it through. The romantic soldier had come home to become the husband who bickered, teased, and bitched. True, he’d come home in a wheelchair, but he’d been gone only a year. Maybe it had been a year in hell, but Damian had known where Katherine was, and Katherine had known what Damian was doing. Joe would gladly have sacrificed a limb and some fingers for the chance to write a letter to Nora that he could be certain she’d read.
“What’s taking you so damn long?” Damian shouted from downstairs, and after a quick search of two more boxes, Joe found his father’s turtle-shaped steel helmet and climbed back down the ladder.
“What took you so long?” Damian asked again as Mike jumped up to look at his grandfather’s gear.
“There’s a lot of junk up there,” Joe said.
“That’s what attics are for,” Damian said.
“Don’t you think we should clean it out someday?”
“Your mother’s things are up there,” Damian said gruffly. “You can clean it out when I die.”
Without warning, that happened just four months later.
* * *
—
Unlike the man himself, Damian’s death was neither noisy nor demanding. On the first Wednesday in a hot July, with the kids already away at 4H summer camp, Faye dropped Damian at his usual VFW meeting. A poll was being taken that night about America’s entry into the war. Most of the veterans, like Damian, were firmly in favor of joining the fight. So when the votes were tallied and turned out to be strongly against entry, there was a squall of confusion and complaints. It soon became clear that a group of America Firsters had infiltrated the meeting. When the VFW members found out that these isolationists were not even veterans, a brawl broke out.
Damian’s heart attack pitched him out of his wheelchair. Later, his buddy Elbert said he’d gotten to him just in time to hear Damian’s last words.
“Tell them I died—”
Elbert was sure Damian had meant to say, “Tell them I died fighting.”
“Was he fighting?” Joe asked Elbert.
Elbert hesitated. “I know he was wanting to,” he said.
* * *
—
Father Gregory came to the house on the eve of Damian’s burial to lead the vigil and help welcome guests. There were several dozen: a few neighbors, some cops from Finn’s precinct, some people from the church and the VFW. Many of them talked about heaven as if it were some neighborhood restaurant they went to often. Joe wished he could believe it was a real place like that. But even with the little he had learned about Nora, Joe was sure of only one thing: Neither death nor life could possibly be that simple.
At the funeral home Joe had slipped the stack of war letters into Damian’s coffin, trying to convince himself that Damian and Katherine might—as so many of the guests kept saying—be reunited. As he lifted Damian’s head to place the letters beneath it, Joe felt the rubbery coldness of his father’s neck—a coldness that made his heart ache. Though he couldn’t yet explain it all, Joe knew that Nora’s afterlife had something to do with where and how she had died; it was something specific to her, to Manhattanhenge, perhaps to the terminal itself. Touching his father for the last time, Joe didn’t think it possible that Damian could ever be alive again, in any place or form.
On the morning of July 8, a Tuesday, they buried Damian next to Katherine in the ancient Calvary Cemetery, not far from home. Graves were festooned with fresh wreaths and small American flags, the evidence of recent July Fourth visits to other veterans’ graves. Katherine’s red granite headstone, which Joe remembered had cost Damian two months’ pay, was despite that fact as simple as any in sight. Engraved capital letters spelled out her name and the dates of her birth and death; a small cross carved at the top was the only decoration. Like the rest of the graves in this and most cemeteries, Katherine’s faced east. When they’d buried her years before, Damian had told Joe and Finn that graves faced east so that when Christ returned and the dead rose, they would already be facing him. Facing the east, Joe thought today, would also mean facing the power of the
rising sun.
* * *
—
Both Joe and Finn had shifts that afternoon. Faye went back home to write to the children at camp and to begin the task of sorting through Damian’s things.
On the subway, returning to Manhattan, Joe closed his eyes and considered his father’s life. It hadn’t been an easy one. Damian had struggled and been all but broken by the war. But Joe found himself once again envying the normality of what Damian had experienced. Damian had believed in God, America, Ireland, the pope, and heaven, in roughly that order, and nothing had ever happened to him to challenge any of those beliefs.
The last time Joe had prayed—had actually put his head down and his hands together and tried to talk to God—it had been when his mother was dying. That had been in 1919, and he, Finn, and Damian had taken turns sitting beside her as her fever soared, her energy waned, and the Spanish flu ran its swift, terrifying course. When she died—her mouth grotesquely open, and her sheets soiled, even down to the bottom of the mattress—the fourteen-year-old Joe had stopped believing that God was listening.
Standing by Damian’s open casket last night, Joe had not prayed. Watching the coffin being lowered into the ground today, he had not prayed. But as it happened, today fell just a few days after a summer Manhattanhenge. Back in the city, waiting for the sun to set—it wouldn’t be that far off-center—Joe tried to talk to God. Outside the terminal, he stared west at the sun as it passed between the buildings on Forty-third Street, and he prayed that the winter solstice would bring equally clear skies. He prayed for a sunrise to let in the light that would carry Nora back to him.
Time After Time Page 14
