Trying to fend off his despair, he had a drink that evening with a girl from the Rexall drugstore. Her name was Felicia. Her hair was perfectly coiffed. She was wearing orange lipstick, a bright-yellow blouse, and a checked jacket, but despite all that color, her eyes had no sparkle. She was funny, though: She bitched about her boss and gossiped about a new co-worker. Joe and she had a few too many, but there was nothing between them. He walked her out to Vanderbilt Avenue, waved a hand at a cabbie, held the door for her, and gave her money for the fare. He had never felt so desolate. Listening to her had only magnified what Joe had been fighting since the newsreel: a kind of anguish even deeper than loneliness.
As he watched Felicia’s cab pull away from the curb, a phrase kept coming into his head: empty as a kettle. It was what his father had sometimes said when he came home from work. Damian would say, “My stomach is empty as a kettle,” and then Katherine would say, “Well, don’t blow your lid.” Joe barely smiled at the memory. His emptiness wasn’t hunger for food but for something bigger: for the feeling of being alive that he had known most completely with Nora. What would he do if she didn’t return? Would he wait another year? Would he have it in him to leave?
A little bit tipsy, he wandered back into the terminal and up the elevator to the art school, one of the few places in Grand Central he didn’t really know. He had been there only once, to arrange for Nora’s classes; he’d never been in any of the studios. The first one, on his right, was labeled PAINTING in the same black letters used for the terminal’s passageways. Opening the door, Joe certainly didn’t expect to find people at this hour, but he was startled to see that the room was either being reorganized or dismantled. More than a dozen easels were stacked on top of one another. All the furniture—desks, chairs, benches, even a rolling chalkboard—had been moved to one side. There was still art on the walls, though: all four walls, in fact. Landscapes, portraits, and pictures of fruit were all mixed together, arranged by the sizes of the unframed canvases, which hung in tidy rows. Studying them, Joe quickly found a canvas he would have recognized as Nora’s even without the “NL” in the lower right-hand corner. It was a painting of a Manhattanhenge sunset, small but surprisingly vivid. Staring at the bright white path of the sun she had painted, Joe felt drawn into the image, much as Nora had been drawn toward the sun. Taking a step forward, he let his fingertips run gently down the right side of the canvas, which he then straightened just slightly.
He took the stairs down past the commuter level, the maintenance level, the carpentry shops, and finally to M42. Even before he had sat down on a wood crate by the carved-out rock, dozens of the cats appeared, mewing by his side. Dillinger was nowhere to be seen; he had disappeared months before. Somewhere in the depths of this hollowed-out place, Dillinger had died, and rotted, and turned to bone.
A small black cat with one green eye and one gray eye sat, curled its tail around its forelegs, and seemed to stare at Joe expectantly. Joe didn’t pick it up.
Trains and people had come and gone, and all Joe had ever done was smooth the way for other people’s adventures. He felt the grave emptiness—like a missed breath or a missed heartbeat. It was the same thing he’d felt watching Finn’s train disappear into darkness, or when he’d found Nora’s letter and boxes on the day she left. He had lost so much, so many. He kept thinking that there was something he was supposed to do—say a prayer, eat a meal, have a dozen drinks—that would make these feelings stop. But as long as he stayed in Grand Central, he knew the only thing that could do that would be having Nora back with him.
5
SOME WELCOME HOME
1946
After three years, one month, and twenty-six days, Manhattanhenge sunrise filled the east window with light and brought Nora back to Joe. She flickered onto the floor. She opened her eyes, and it took her only a moment to rise, brush the ashes from her dress, and turn around. “A child of the Earth and the Everlasting.” That was how Ralston Young defined a miracle. And there she was: the miracle that time or God or fate had granted.
She started crying the minute she saw him.
It was hardly the first time she’d broken through the in-between to come back to life on the marble floor. It wasn’t the first time Joe had seen it. But now it seemed more amazing than ever. And now, after all they had been through, each of them knew what was at stake.
“Nora,” he said, as he took off his coat and put it around her shoulders.
Her tears fell insistently. She shook her head.
“You were waiting for me,” she said.
“Of course.”
“But Joe—”
“What the hell else was I going to do?” He sounded frustrated, fierce.
They held each other tightly, just standing in the concourse, the fit of their bodies at once so fresh and so familiar. All other feelings—confusion, anger, doubt, relief—were momentarily welded into this one embrace.
“Come with me,” Joe told her, taking her hand, which was as warm and electric as ever.
He walked her to an unmarked brass door a few steps up from the south balcony. Furtively, he unlocked it and led her into a vast private office.
He looked so much older, she thought. His hair was still black and full, his mouth still lovably cartoon-crooked. But his skin appeared thin and gray now, his cheekbones so pronounced that they seemed shockingly like the scaffold for an old man’s face.
“How long have I been gone?” she asked him.
“More than three years,” he told her.
It didn’t make sense, given how old he looked. “That’s all?” she asked.
“That’s all?” he said. “It’s been more than three years.”
Nora tried to gauge his feelings, even as her mind raced.
“Is the war over?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did we win?”
“Yes.”
“And Faye? And the kids?”
“They’re fine,” Joe said.
“And you’re still mad at me?”
Their eyes locked.
“Yes,” he said.
Breaking away from his stare, Nora looked around for the first time, noticing the room they were in, which like so many of Grand Central’s wonders managed to hide in plain sight. Around them were stained-glass windows, velvet chairs, divans, palm plants, a huge black safe, and a loft with heavy railings and a fancy painted ceiling.
“Where are we?” she asked, stalling, not sure she could face the anger in Joe’s eyes or discover what time had done to him.
He stared back, impatient. She had never seen this look on his face. He had waited for her all this time. But why, if he felt this way?
“We’re in John Campbell’s office,” Joe said softly.
Nora didn’t bother to ask who John Campbell was. “Joe, I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “You know I didn’t. I wrote you that. I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“I lost you and Finn at the same time.”
“Would it have been better if I’d stayed?”
“It would have been better if Finn hadn’t died.”
Nora sighed. “Wasn’t it simpler when I left?” she asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“The point is you didn’t ask me.”
“You would have said no.”
“Maybe not.”
“But Faye—”
“Yes, Faye. I know,” Joe said bitterly. “She told me she came to see you and that she told you to leave. I thought I’d go crazy when I found that out.”
Nora thought of the look on Faye’s face: the need, the pleading, the brittle pride.
“Did you forgive Faye?” Nora asked.
He nodded, his face softening just a bit.
“Then you’re going to
have to forgive me too.”
He was leaning back against a huge oak desk, his workman’s clothes nearly as out of place as Nora’s flapper dress.
She took a breath and asked him the question she had just asked herself: “If you’re so mad at me, Joe, then tell me: What did you wait around for?”
He looked up from the desk. “For this,” he said, and pulled Nora close.
First there was that embrace, their faces pressed against each other’s necks. Then she kissed him, and time skittered away into the corners of the room. They were immersed in the homecoming of each other’s arms.
She held the back of his head with one hand and circled the nape of his neck with the other. They broke off for a moment, then kissed again. For Nora, virtually no time had passed since the day she had last seen Joe. But for Joe, it was as if he’d spent three years in complete silence and now, at last, he could use his real voice.
Then she asked: “How long would you have waited if I hadn’t come this year?”
He said: “How long would you have wanted me to?”
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to wait at all,” she said. “Not if you’d found someone else.”
Joe looked uncomfortable, but before he could say anything, Nora said, “No, wait. Did you? Do you have someone else? Are you with someone else? Is it Faye? Is it—”
“No,” Joe said quickly. “I’m not with anyone. I’m with you.”
Nora beamed. “Then I guess I’ll stay awhile.”
“No fooling,” Joe said sternly. “If you ever leave like that again—”
“I won’t, Joe. I promise,” Nora said. “I’ll never leave again without telling you.”
“No matter what,” he said, overwhelmed.
“No matter what,” she repeated.
* * *
—
They held each other for a long time.
“So that’s settled,” Nora said. “But now what?”
“We’ll get a Floating Key. But maybe—” He glanced up at the little loft.
“What’s up there?” Nora asked.
“Oh,” he said, his face finally relaxed. “There’s a pipe organ and some couches. Mr. Campbell gets the musicians to play there when he gives one of his parties.”
“And what else?” Nora asked, smiling, stroking the side of Joe’s face.
“Well,” Joe said, “all sorts of things can happen up there.”
He picked her up in one motion and threw her—fireman’s carry–style—over his shoulder to head up the steps.
He had done this before: The night Nora flickered out at the Cascades, he had carried her over his shoulder, down all those flights of stairs. Levermen had to be strong, and Joe was. But now, even as he took the first few steps up to Mr. Campbell’s loft, he could feel a muscle in his back stretch, tighten, and grip. He let out a cry and managed, just barely, to climb the last few steps before he dropped Nora onto one of the couches and fell like a statue onto the beautifully carpeted floor.
It wasn’t funny. They both knew it wasn’t funny, because in less than a minute it was clear that Joe was in real pain. But the contrast was so ridiculous that the first thing they had to do was laugh. Eventually, though, Nora led a somewhat hobbled Joe out of the Campbell office and down to the men’s lounge off the waiting room. He was in no condition to find a Floating Key, so he gave Nora his coat and waited while she arranged a Biltmore room the old-fashioned way: with a reservation in her own name at the hotel’s front desk.
Twenty minutes later Joe was settling once again into a hotel room with Nora, yet for the moment his only comfortable position seemed to be with his back on the floor and his calves on the seat of an armchair.
“Some welcome home,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“It could have happened to anyone,” she said, at the same time trying to banish the thought that it might not have happened quite as easily to someone younger. “But you’re going to need some things,” she added.
“And you’re going to need some money.”
She knelt beside him. “Right pocket or left?” she asked.
“Right.”
“Roll a little, please,” she told him.
He did, with some difficulty, and Nora grabbed his wallet.
In the bathroom, greeting her unchanged young self, she washed her hands and used a bit of the lather to sweep her hair up into something that might pass as a forties-style wave. She was twenty-three. He was forty-two. “I can’t think about that now,” Scarlett O’Hara would have said. And what mattered most, Nora thought, was that she had left because of him, and now he was here because of her.
* * *
—
She had buttoned Joe’s coat over her flapper dress, though its hem still showed. But apart from the concern that her appearance would attract attention, Nora was eager to be heading back to the terminal. As always, her time away had been like a play’s intermission, when the next act might take place in any time frame that the playwright chose. In this case the curtain had come up with the action set “more than three years later.” Nora needed to catch up, to reclaim her place in time.
Walking around, she looked for changes. Bill Keogh was no longer wielding the yellow chalk at the arrival and departures board. She saw only a few men in uniform. No one was playing the organ in the north balcony. The lounge was gone, as were Paige and the other volunteers. But the ceiling was still its spectacular shade of blue-green. The floor was still that pale pink-orange marble. The sense of space, grand and warm, was every bit as marvelous as it had always been. Alva was still at the coffee shop cash register. And at Bond’s, where Nora went to buy the pastries and coffee, Big Sal was still holding court, dispensing comments and questions along with the baked goods. She was larger than ever, the folds of her stomach now nearly keeping her from reaching the counter. She did a double take when she recognized Nora.
“And where have you been?” Sal asked accusingly.
“Wisconsin.”
“Why Wisconsin?”
“Family.”
Nora handed Sal a dollar.
“Does Joe Reynolds know you’re back?” Sal barked.
“Of course. He’s why I came back. This Danish is for him.”
Sal’s droopy eyes narrowed to slits. She paused, Nora’s change in her hand.
“You two finally getting hitched?” Sal asked.
“We’ll let you know,” Nora said.
“And what the hell are you wearing?” Sal called after her.
Nora hurried on to pick up the rest of the things Joe needed, happy to feel—even if it was by way of the terminal’s chief curmudgeon—that some things were exactly as she had left them.
By the time she got back to the room, she was carrying the pastries, the coffee, ice, aspirin, sandwiches, and two morning papers. Joe was in exactly the same spot where she’d left him: lying on the rug with his calves on the seat of the chair.
Nora stood above him, smiling down. “You know,” she said, “I’ve heard that armchairs are for sitting, Joe.”
He spent the rest of the morning on his back, with breaks only to eat and drink whatever he could while leaning on one elbow. Nora suggested he go to the terminal’s doctor, but that was the last thing he wanted to do. “Maybe the pharmacist could at least give you some painkillers,” she said. She shook the bottle of aspirin she’d brought him. “Something stronger than this.”
“A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures,” Joe said.
“I’m guessing that’s something Damian used to say?”
“My ma, actually. Would you mind going out again and bringing me back a good laugh?”
“And by ‘a good laugh’ I’m guessing you mean some Old Crow?”
“You still know me so well.”
“ ‘Still’? Don’t forget,
Joe,” Nora said. “Your three years have been something like three hours for me, tops. I haven’t had time to forget.”
He smiled. “Any bourbon will do,” he said.
* * *
—
With Sal’s reaction to her clothes fresh in her mind, Nora didn’t want to face whatever Mr. B. might make of her current outfit—even assuming he was still at the Lost and Found. She headed instead for a shop she had passed on her way to the drugstore. Babette’s seemed a casual dress shop, just right for the moment’s needs. But it had a BE RIGHT BACK AT sign on the door, with a cardboard clock that had only one hand.
Still wrapped in Joe’s overcoat, Nora went to wait in the Biltmore lobby. It was noon now, but already the red leather banquettes were starting to fill with college-age kids, apparently on vacation and waiting for their lunch dates. Even back in the twenties, when Nora was still at Barnard, kids used to say “Meet me under the clock,” and everyone knew where and what that meant—it was one level down and several leaps of romance away from the more practical “Meet me at the gold clock.” The girls were now wearing flesh-colored stockings and high heels, chattering, giggling, and checking the clock every few minutes. Perfume and snippets of conversation floated above them.
“Do you think he’s bringing Peter?”
“Where’d you buy that purse?”
“Is that clock always right?”
“How’s my lipstick?”
They were so silly, Nora thought, but, eyes widening, she realized that though she had been coming and going from the terminal now for more than two decades, she was only a few years older than most of them. And Joe, at forty-two, was only five years younger than her father had been when he died.
Several of the girls gave Nora a once-over worthy of Elsie’s most savage assessments. In return, Nora stood, trying to make herself look every bit as regal as Elsie, as if wearing a man’s overcoat and slicked-up hair was all the rage, and they just hadn’t figured it out yet.
Maintaining that posture, she hurried back to the dress shop, now open, where the saleswoman at the counter fortunately seemed much more concerned with her own appearance than with Nora’s—or anything else. Even as Nora quickly scanned the racks for a simple, all-purpose outfit, the saleswoman peered into a countertop mirror, practicing different facial expressions, holding up different pairs of earrings, draping a scarf in different ways.
Time After Time Page 30
