Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

by Rachel Simon

  The mist frizzes my hair, and the chill makes him button his windbreaker. But neither of us seems in a hurry. We may not be at the ocean, but I feel I've gone into the deep, as our clothes grow damp in the cool, humid air.

  After the sun sets, we drive and talk. Then we eat and talk. We have Indian food, which this meat-and-potatoes guy tries because it's what I like, and he finds he likes it, too. He smiles all through the meal, and, with no hesitation, I smile back. Then we drive some more: "Here's a town I once lived in," he says. "And there's a garden I started years ago. Look how it's doing!" He points out the country bus stop where he used to pick up an elderly man who called himself a gypsy, and wore tattered clothes and lived in an unheated apartment, and rode the bus all winter long just to keep warm. "I'd talk with him. It's not hard to do that. If you don't want to, why drive a bus? You might as well be a truck driver." He nods toward a swinging lantern on the far side of a field, then slows down long enough for me to make out the farmer walking along toward his house. "That's probably an Amish family living at the end of some dirt road out there. Everyone calls them the plain folk. I think of them as dignified." I bring up the deceptively simple idea of self-determination, and we contemplate its intricacies. We then explore the intricacies of his own family, as he gestures toward the cemetery where he'll be buried beside his mother, who lives in a trailer near town. "Did you know bus drivers are deeply respected in Japan?" he says, steering us over the hills. He tells me how they dress in sharp uniforms, with white gloves, and are seen as true professionals, playing a role that's vital to the smooth workings of the community. "Isn't that something?" We talk about Thoreau, whom he's just begun to read. He makes little jokes now and then, and I laugh.

  Then, heedful of the time when he has to get up the next morning—when the fleet rolls out of the terminal before dawn, there are no allowances made for late risers—he drives me back toward the city, and before I know it, he pulls up to Beth's apartment. Standing beside his car, I reach into my raincoat pocket and discover that I can't find her magnetic door pass, which I thought I'd taken with me, and since it's already eleven o'clock, she's sure to be asleep.

  "I'll have to call her from my cell phone," I say, as her front buzzer is perpetually broken.

  He walks me into Beth's vestibule, and I dial. She picks up in a stupor.

  "I'm locked out," I say. "Can you come down and let me in?"

  She agrees, half-asleep, and when I turn around to tell Rick, he is no longer beside me. I look through the glass vestibule doors, and he's leaning against his car, waving good night, saving us both from the awkwardness of having to figure out whether to kiss.

  Then Beth comes downstairs, rubbing her eyes like a sleepy parent greeting her teenager after a late date. "Sorry about the pass," I say, as she opens the door, and behind me I hear Rick pull away.

  "Iz okay" she says, surprising me. There is no reproach in her voice.

  Upstairs, she climbs back into bed without asking questions. I unzip my dress and turn out the lights and lie on my sofa cushions on the floor.

  I don't know where it's going, but I have finally taken a step. For the first time in years, I sleep without waking once.

  Come Home, Little Girl

  I sit nervously before the therapist. I am a senior in college, and all the numbness and rage and ice inside me finally led me to confess my feelings to a friend who is a psychology major. "I think you're in a deep depression," she said, and gave me the name of this doctor.

  "So, what can I do for you?" the therapist asks.

  I take a deep breath. "I feel nothing," I say. "I'm one of the top students in the anthropology department, and I'm extremely conscientious with my office cleaning job, and I never forget a friend's birthday. Everyone thinks I'm totally together, a model student. But I can't ever really relax. I don't like myself. I'm scared of the world. I'm a wreck."

  The therapist hears me out as I then go into the story about my mother. He watches me squeeze the arms of my chair. He watches me force laughter, and cry.

  When I finish, he says, "I understand your feelings, but if you want to get better, if you truly want to get better, there is only one thing you can do."

  "Yes?"

  "You have to contact your mother."

  "What?" I want to slap him.

  "Just listen for a second," he says. "You know where she works. Look up the number in a phone book and carry it around with you. You might carry it for a month, ten years—but just hold on to it until you feel ready to use it."

  "No. I can't, I won't. I would never do that."

  "Okay, maybe not now. You've got your whole life to decide."

  "I never will. No one in my family will. Ever."

  I get up. For this crap I paid a week's worth of wages from my job. Thanks a lot.

  ***

  But a few nights before I graduate, I'm chatting with a friend in the college library, and we're standing near the phone books, and well, what's the harm. Discreetly, when no one's looking, I page through until I find the number. I write it down and slip it into my pocket.

  A few days later I put on my cap and gown and march down the aisle to get my degree. Dad, Laura, Max, and Beth wait outside the tent, and when I emerge newly graduated, I see them waving. The sun beats down as I make my way toward them, my diploma in my hand and the number in my pocket. A number that I decide, as I see Beth, not to mention. A number that means nothing to me.

  Two months after my college graduation, a wonderful thing happens: I am sitting at my cubicle in the big Philadelphia law firm where I have my new paralegal job, loathing the stack of documents I am working on, loathing my life and everything about it, when a lawyer passes by carrying the newspaper. I glance up and notice an ad on the page tucked under his arm:

  The Osmonds—Performing Live

  I bolt onto the express elevator and run out to a newsstand. The performance will take place on a stage near Dad's house, and I do a little jump as I race back in.

  I call Laura and Max. "I'm going to take Beth to this concert. Want to come?"

  One month later, we four walk through the turnstile to an outdoor arena. Beth is wearing an orange hat, which we bought her for the occasion. She is carrying an Osmond concert book, which we picked up at the front gate. It's her first concert, and her smile is as big as the stands.

  We sit, and then the Osmonds spring onto the stage and launch into their choreographed production. Dancing with their microphones, every word, gesture, and note chiseled to perfection, they do all the hits: "One Bad Apple," "Down by the Lazy River," "I'm Leaving It (All) Up to You," "Puppy Love." We're wildly impressed at how flawlessly they work together, each person necessary to the family show, each person a spark that keeps the energy moving.

  All through the concert, Beth sings along—"Go away, little girl, go away, little girl, I'm not supposed to eat alone with you"—and she's so thrilled that we just have to join in. But even though I'm singing, and even though they're great, I can't keep my eyes on the stage. There's a much better show sitting right here beside me.

  Ringo is old. For years, Max has been walking him, but now Max leaves for college, and since Laura has long been out in her own apartment, Beth and Ringo are the only ones at home. Dad asks the owner of the correspondence school if they can bring Ringo to work. The owner is understanding and says yes. Now, at work, Ringo sits in the back with the printer, too.

  But one day, when we four kids all happen to be home for the weekend and Dad is out, Ringo starts coughing and can't stop. Beth bends down to comfort him and then looks up at us with horrified eyes. "Iz blood," she says.

  I panic, we all panic, Ringo coughs and coughs around the living room, more blood spits out, and no one knows what to do. Finally someone realizes that we need to get to the vet, and Laura bundles him up and speeds him away. Later that night he dies.

  We sit in the living room the next day, silent. There should be a barking furry presence in here with us, one we've known since he
was so small he couldn't walk down the stairs. But there is only the sound of passing cars.

  As we bury Ringo and that autumn begins, I settle into my paralegal job. I hate it. I should never have taken this job, or any office job, just to have an income. I hate offices. The other paralegals seem so fearless about walking anywhere, doing anything, but I am frightened of life. I have not been able to write anything creative for six years now, and I do not have the energy to make myself start. I am not ready to have a career. I am not ready to be an adult.

  However, when the law firm assembles a team of paralegals to work on a trial in New York City, for some reason they include me. ("You're so reliable and efficient," a supervisor says one day, not realizing that I work late to avoid going home.) I'm relieved to get away from the office, but find that, as I am moved into a posh Manhattan hotel for the two-month duration, I am still prey to those same old depressive thoughts.

  And there is another thing I cannot stop thinking about: I keep having memories of my mother.

  Surprisingly, bizarrely, these are not the angry memories I've had since that sleeting February day six years ago. They are nicer thoughts, memories from the time before the divorce.

  I remember her sewing Halloween costumes every year and executing paint-by-numbers in the living room. I remember her using Bingo cards to help Beth learn to read.

  She taught me cursive writing when we moved before my second year of school ended and I missed those lessons. For years, my mother drove me weekly to the library to borrow books. She always kissed us good night, even when she was saddest, and if Ringo leapt up from our beds, she'd kiss him, too. She took us to planetariums and plays, to New York museums and the seashore. When I turned nine she bought me an astronomy book and then walked us all outside, even Ringo, and we stood in afield to look up at the stars.

  Maybe, I think, startled, I don't quite hate her anymore.

  Two weeks after the paralegal team arrives in New York, the case settles. One day we are racing around collating documents, and the next afternoon it's over. The lawyers inform us that we have a single night to celebrate. Then we are to pack our bags and go home.

  In a wash of relief and disappointment, my team decides to take a few hours to rest in our rooms and then go out on the town for dinner. I retreat to my room, and the second I close the draperies and hit the mattress, all those memories start flashing once more against the backs of my eyelids. It makes no sense; what does my mother have to do with a settled lawsuit? What does my mother have to do with me? I roll over and over, unable to sleep.

  Finally, I wrench myself up and find my hand reaching for the phone.

  Her number is still in my wallet. I uncrease the paper, as soft as cotton, and make out the figures in the dusky light.

  She won't be working at the library that evening, I tell myself as I dial. She must have quit by now, I think as I clear my throat. Or if she's there, maybe she'll hang up on me.

  The phone rings on the other end. Someone picks up.

  "Uh, reference desk, please?"

  I am put on hold. Hang up! No, wait till someone answers. Just get a voice, to tell Max and Laura.

  "Information services." It is a woman.

  "I'm looking for—" and I say her name.

  "This is she," she says.

  I pause, and I take a deep breath, and then I do what may be the hardest thing I will ever do in my life. I say, "This is your daughter Rachel."

  She gasps, and immediately begins to cry. "Thank God!" she whispers, and with a great rush I remember her voice and face. "Thank God!"

  I feel dizzy, as if I've been turned upside down. As the room grows dark, and as I tumble through constellations of emotions, I fill her in on what has happened to all of us and ask about her life. I am curious, and she is still crying. I do not get angry, and she does not hang up.

  "May I see you?" she asks at the end of the call.

  "Yes," I tell her, surprising myself. "Yes. Here's my number. Yes."

  I tell Laura. She feels betrayed.

  Over the next year, I see our mother several times. I discover that she is not the cold-hearted, mayhem-loving monster I'd imagined, but a deeply unhappy and lonely woman who somehow got caught up with a violent con man, an event that fills her with shame. Like other battered and abused women I'd read about over the intervening years, she'd fallen into a trance of numb obedience and self-loathing and couldn't get out. She'd even let him manipulate her own mother, who grew ill from the stress and died. After Beth had been sent away, he'd almost beaten my mother to death—and only then, finally, had she fled, with fifty-seven cents in her hand.

  I realize I need to learn forgiveness and compassion. Little by little, season after season, my days stop seeming so dark and my nights so scary.

  I tell Laura how much better I feel, that my depression is lifting; I can even write again. I tell her that it may be the hardest thing she ever does in her life, but that if she can face it, she can do anything. She relents as she listens, and one day she too picks up the phone.

  Laura and I tell Max. He is sickened.

  But during the next year, Laura and I visit Mom. We learn that, from the time she played with dolls, she had always thought little of herself and struggled with feelings I now recognize as depression. She made few friends, and although she showed promise as a singer, she so lacked confidence that she never pursued a career. She tried to be a self-assured partner to our father, but a weariness enveloped her, and motherhood overwhelmed her, and she was devastated when he left. Recklessly, she sought happiness through other men—and an impulsive second marriage. Then, guilty and self-flagellating and consumed by a sadness deeper than she'd ever imagined, she had dreaded our rejection if she got in touch with us during those years.

  As birthdays and holidays pass, we tell Max how much better we feel. Rediscovering our mother did not turn us into carefree Pollyannas, and it was hard to do, but it certainly has been worth it.

  He asks questions as he listens, and one day he too picks up the phone.

  At last we tell Beth. She is twenty-five now, still going to work with Dad, and we sit her down, all three of us, and tell her we got in touch with Mom.

  "She wants to see you."

  "Really? Where's the bad man?"

  "Gone."

  "No guns?"

  "No. You're safe now."

  We make a restaurant reservation for the reunion and drive there together. We hold Beth's hands as she walks in.

  Mom is sitting at the table, rising tearfully as she sees us approach. Beth lets go of our hands and, a decade after their goodbye, she tugs at the hem of her new purple dress and tentatively steps forward.

  November

  The Girlfriend

  6:15 P.M. "Ricky Martin," Beth says between giggles.

  "Oh, yeah" Melanie laughs back, pulling to a stop in the November night. "He's hot."

  "And Backstreet Boys."

  "Which one?"

  "All of them."

  "Definitely. They are hot. Hotter than summer."

  "Hotter than a stove" Beth laughs. "I want them to drive the bus."

  I feel as if we're in a carnival fun house, partially because the inside of the bus is lit with blue lights. "To cut down on the night glare through the windshield," Melanie explains. At thirty-seven, she's tall, has an ample figure and auburn hair, a creamy complexion and a bouncy personality, and as she gestures to the window I marvel at how changing just one thing inside—adding blue lights—can make such a difference when you look out at the world.

  But mostly our blue bus feels like a fun house because Melanie and Beth are cracking up. This is what they do privately, and what they're doing today, since, on this rarely used run, it's just them and me and a goofy stuffed turkey whose tummy plays "Over the River and Through the Woods" when you squeeze him. Melanie set him down on the dashboard as her hood ornament for the evening. When she grabs him at red lights, Beth breaks up all over again.

  Melanie may be
settled and married, with almost grown sons and a job that requires a level head. But when she's with Beth, they become teenage girlfriends.

  "Oh, oh, I have another one," Melanie says. "Will Smith."

  Beth squeals so hard she can barely get it out: "Oh, I'd like to have him here, all right, right here, and you know what I'd do, you know."

  "How about that song?" Melanie asks.

  "'Iz Raining Men,'" Beth roars.

  They laugh so hard at the thought of men falling from the sky that they almost tip out of their seats.

  I watch them as we pull onto a long, flat highway with almost no stops, mostly a straight forty-five minutes out to the remote country towns and back. They are having so much fun, and, sitting halfway back in the bus, at the far edge of their party—too distant to laugh along, yet close enough to wish I could—I remember how much I used to savor that feeling. It's a feeling I had almost forgotten until the night I went out with Rick.

  But now a longing wells up within me, and I remember the days when I felt it, too: when a friend practiced cartwheels with me in our yard, or cheered when I tossed my spinning baton as high as the roof and caught it, or lay on her stomach next to me on a dormitory bed to analyze pop lyrics, or wiggled into overpriced gowns with me in department stores, pretending to have money and somewhere to go, collapsing on the fitting room floor in giggles.

  Now, witnessing Beth and Melanie take such joy in making each other sparkle, mourning my own defection from such ready, easy pleasures, I appreciate anew how much having friends helped. Yes, work is a crucial part of life, but work alone cannot generate easy laughter, closeness, meandering conversation—and, best of all, the certainty that you belong right here, right now, because someone is special to you. I so took this feeling for granted, I never thought to name it. But now I think I would call it happiness.