by Liza Wieland
I wish we didn’t have to go back tomorrow, Elizabeth says.
Well, we do, Margaret says. But if we get up early, we can have most of the day here. I don’t mind driving in the dark.
You’ll have to go slow then. Remember, it’s not our car.
Everyone else will already be home by then, Margaret says. She shivers violently, and Elizabeth presses in closer.
Home, Margaret says. That’s a funny word for college.
Elizabeth sighs. It’s a funny word, period, she says.
The train from Great Village, Nova Scotia, to Halifax passes one hundred yards to the north of the psychiatric hospital in Dartmouth. Only it doesn’t pass. It stops. And then continues. All right. So far, so good. Exhale. But no, the stop must be acknowledged. Maybe three minutes. Completely excruciating. The hospital comes into view before the stop, so there is enough time to remember, to change your mind, close the book, stand, wrestle the luggage.
Enough time to ask for help, to hear the dark-suited businessman say, You must have come a long ways, miss.
Not really, not a long ways, Elizabeth thinks. Only about thirty miles, but there’s the bay in between, shadowed blue, full of invisible fish, water pinched between the thumb and forefinger of land. From a distance or without spectacles, the names of bayside towns run in the water like schools of fish: Scots Bay, Spencer’s Island, Parrsboro, Tennycape. Even a town called Economy, with its very own point.
I was on my way to college, Elizabeth says, but I thought I’d visit my mother.
Oh? Is she in Dartmouth now? (So proceeds the imaginary conversation.)
Yes. Now and forever. Fourteen years. Since I was five.
That’s a long time. She must love for you to stop in to see her.
Yes. She must.
There is no businessman. There is only the stopping, an eternity wedged into three minutes, the doors crashing open, station noise as real as passengers rushing in, then the real passengers themselves, boxes and bags, arctics and overcoats, hats and gloves, eyes searching for an empty seat.
And always this fear: that one of the women embarking from Dartmouth, journeying to Halifax, will be her mother. Elizabeth’s mother, Gertrude Bishop, on the train by accident, escaped, still in her slippers and hospital gown (small blue flowers on white cotton) peeping from beneath her coat. She’s stowing away to Halifax to see a specialist, or the tax man, or her imaginary accuser, or her husband, dead these eighteen years.
Or maybe she’s escaped with clear purpose. Maybe she’s come out of the brain fog long enough to understand that this is the time of year her only child, Elizabeth, would be leaving Great Village and traveling south to school. Late summer, the warmest days, all the hospital windows open, a bowl of ripening peaches like mottled suns on the table in the common room. The peaches send the message: Elizabeth is on the train. You can find her. See her. Talk to her. Take back that thing you said about wanting to kill her. Touch her round little face. Don’t be afraid. Gaze into those eyes that stare and stare and never miss a thing.
Margaret passes Elizabeth the bottle. Canadian whiskey, doubly smuggled (across Lake Ontario, out of Manhattan), sweet enough to drink like this, without ice, water, a glass.
Let’s run away, Margaret says.
Elizabeth thinks, I am away. And then the idea begins to interest her, the possibility of farther away. A long road that curves out of sight.
Not forever, Margaret says, as if she thinks Elizabeth might refuse to go. Just to get out of Poughkeepsie for a few days.
Elizabeth crosses to the wardrobe, conscious of her body making the motions of departure.
Let me get into my uniform, she says, laughing.
It’s how the girls at Vassar refer to Elizabeth’s navy peacoat. But it’s practically the only one on campus, so how can that be a uniform? There are a great many fur coats walking around the college, a troop of foxes, a sleuth of bears. Margaret’s is mink.
We’ll need money, Elizabeth says.
I’ve got a little, Margaret says, and you’ve got less.
Half inside their coats, they take up their handbags, rummage for bills and change. Almost eleven dollars.
This is January, the second term just beginning, but not yet fallen with its full weight. A girl can still rise up into her coat and drift out into the dark, float onto the bus, which carries her to the railway station, all of it quickly, nearly silently, like a perfect escape. Miraculous. Elizabeth is still not quite used to this freedom, the fact that you could walk out at night without an older person running after you, puzzled or fearful or angry.
The last train south is about to leave, and so they hurry aboard without tickets. Margaret says they can buy them from the conductor. Going where? Elizabeth wants to know, but Margaret doesn’t answer. They slide into seats. The train gathers its wits and seems to lean forward, pulling itself slowly into the winter darkness. The electric lights flicker, dim, darken, and the train stalls. Elizabeth feels a suffocating disappointment and then rising fear that Miss Pierce or Miss Lockwood will rush aboard the train, drag them away by their collars.
Margaret swears quietly, a whisper. After all that, she says.
Inside the car, in the pitch black, time seems to stall, too. Complete stillness, like a spell broken. Elizabeth wonders if this is what death feels like, this disenchantment.
Then it’s over. The lights flash on, and the whole train hums, jolts to life. Margaret and Elizabeth watch their own faces in the train windows, the night mirror. Bridgeport, Margaret says, looking into her own eyes.
You have a plan, I take it, Elizabeth says.
Yes, I do. My mother has a house on Jennings Beach. She hardly ever goes there. It’s closed for the winter, but I know where the key is. There’s a huge fireplace and lots of wood. Or we could turn on the radiators.
The conductor appears beside their seats, calling for tickets. When Margaret asks to buy them, he seems so completely flustered and put out that Elizabeth believes he might let them ride for free. He leaves them to find a ticket book. The name on his coat is Balfour. Elizabeth wants to ask if it’s his first or last name, but then he’s gone, disappeared into the darkened end of the car. Margaret’s face shines with a kind of grim delight, like the moon. This is how people look when they are contemplating a problem they know will get worse instead of better.
Here’s the thing, Margaret says. We have to change trains at Harlem. I’m fairly sure there won’t be a train out until morning.
We’ll have to call your mother then, Elizabeth says. Or we could hitchhike.
You’re out of your mind.
I know.
Do you think this is a crazy thing we’re doing? Margaret says. Or dangerous?
I’d like to do more dangerous things than this.
You think you would.
No, really.
Like what?
I don’t know yet.
The conductor lurches seat to seat announcing that the club car will close in fifteen minutes. How about coffee? Margaret says. Elizabeth nods; Margaret stands and moves up the aisle. She glances back once and winks, but Elizabeth isn’t sure what this is supposed to mean.
When Margaret has grappled her way forward and disappeared, Elizabeth wonders if she might be alone in the car. No sounds drift up from the other seats, no shifting, breathing, turning pages. She contemplates the possibility that Margaret might not come back, for whatever reason. Alone on a train, at night, with no money, not a single penny. Maybe the conductor will let her stay on, ride back to Poughkeepsie. Or she can call Miss Swain, the English professor who seems to understand her. Miss Swain will arrange the passage back or drive down to Bridgeport. She will burst into the train station and laugh in that fierce, defiant way she has. On the ride back, in her car, she will speak calmly, quietly. She will even find a way to praise this folly. I think you might be doomed to be a poet, Miss Swain said once, last term. Doomed. What a word. But Elizabeth likes the sound, the emptiness of those twin o’s
, like the wail of a ghost.
The door at the far end of the car crashes open, and Margaret strides forward carrying two paper cups of coffee. She moves as if speed and balance are the same, or as if she is trying to outrun someone. Her smile is electric, almost vicious. She eases into the seat, hands Elizabeth one of the paper cups.
Taste it, she whispers.
Elizabeth recognizes the scent even before she brings the cup to her lips.
A man in the club car, Margaret says. He paid. He said it was an investment. But he’s getting off before Harlem. I think it’s brandy.
They sip the coffee, waiting for the man from the club car to come for the return on his investment. But no one passes through except for the conductor, who smiles at them as if they are a terrific force he has subdued.
By Irvington, snow has begun to fall.
Let’s get off here and take a taxi, Margaret says.
Elizabeth and Margaret leave the train at Irvington, but there are no taxis. They follow signs to Route 9, where Margaret believes there will be traffic headed toward New York. Wind swirls them into near blindness. The snow comes harder, angling at them, into their faces. Trucks zoom past. Elizabeth’s coat is soaked through. She feels entombed in ice, numb.
It’s two in the morning, she yells into the wind. Who’s going to be out at this hour?
We must look pretty bad if even trucks won’t take us, Margaret says.
Like drowned rats. No one would stop in this weather anyway.
Then, for a long stretch, fifteen or twenty minutes, no vehicles pass. They trudge on, southeast. We’ll meet daylight, Elizabeth thinks, and then someone will take pity on us. They hear a vehicle slow behind them.
Hello, girls, the driver calls. We’ve been looking for you.
Oh no, Margaret whispers as the car slides into view beside them. Elizabeth wants to laugh. Policemen, but also a roaring heater. Warm air blasts out the window, along with the scents of coffee and doughnuts. Margaret opens the rear door, climbs in. Elizabeth follows.
Who called you? Margaret says. My mother? The college?
The two officers glance at each other. The college? the driver says. That’s a good one. We’ll just go down to the station now and have a chat about that jacket.
At first they don’t understand, Margaret and Elizabeth, why Elizabeth’s pea jacket is so interesting, or why it’s so funny when they say they’ve come from Vassar on the train, that they’ve been riding all night, that Margaret’s mother might be telephoned, or that, far more simple, someone might find them transportation to a locked house in Jennings Beach. It seems like a riotous game, around and around, and they keep playing, now with two more policemen because the station is warm, the coffee is hot, and outside is a raging snowstorm. Elizabeth begins to feel she might be dreaming: the train with its windows like dark mirrors, the brandy supplied by a sinister gentleman, the arrival in snow, the post road whitely obscured, these four men so profoundly entertained by her jacket, their inevitable questions.
What you got in the pockets, miss?
The coat pockets? Elizabeth says.
For a moment she thinks the men might try to find out for themselves, stick their hands in on top of hers, which are now nervously fingering scraps of paper. What’s written on them? She can’t remember, and so she draws them out, turns them over under the light.
Of course. Her notes from Greek class. Also a little magazine, Breezy Stories, a volume called The Imitation of Christ.
What’s all this? the police sergeant wants to know. He passes the Greek notes to the others. Can you read this? I think it’s Italian. Are you nuns?
At that big convent over in Poughkeepsie, Margaret says.
Aw for pity’s sake! the sergeant says. Let’s call your mother then!
Margaret tells him the number, and he dials. After Margaret’s mother answers and he explains, he has to hold the receiver away from his ear. Mrs. Miller does not sound the least bit sleepy when she tells the sergeant that yes, they are college students and she will be there as soon as possible to fetch them.
The police lead them out into the station lobby. The first two pull on their coats and disappear into the night. The others drift away, down the hall. Elizabeth hears music from a radio.
Opera, Margaret says. Not what you’d guess around here.
I wish I had some of that coffee from the train, Elizabeth says.
Mrs. Miller appears a half hour later, imperious, impeccably groomed. She looks quickly at Margaret and Elizabeth, then strides into the sergeant’s office without knocking.
How could you, gentlemen? Mrs. Miller says. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
We got a call, ma’am. Two women up from the City, out looking for . . . You know. A good time.
These are girls, Mrs. Miller says. Obviously.
I can see that now.
Take your eyes out of the gutter then.
Yes ma’am. Sorry for the trouble.
Mrs. Miller herds them out of the police station and to her car. Margaret, she says, you sit up here with me and tell me where you were going. Elizabeth, you may want to stretch out in the back there, get a little sleep.
She drives them on to Jennings Beach, worrying all the way to the coast that the radiators in the house won’t work fast enough and Margaret will catch a cold.
Elizabeth, she says, finally, gently. We will get you a new coat, a nice one. That jacket does look like you got it off a sailor. You don’t want to be mistaken for something you’re not, do you?
No.
That happens all the time, though, Margaret says.
To Elizabeth? her mother asks.
To everyone.
Elizabeth wants to leap into the front seat and hug Margaret.
The sky seems to be pulsing and streaked with chartreuse. How is it that the sky’s tuned green? Elizabeth says, but Margaret and Mrs. Miller can’t see it.
You’re bleary-eyed, Mrs. Miller says.
It’s an apology. She isn’t angry, not even slightly put out. Elizabeth marvels at this, a mother who will do anything, travel in the dark of night—in a blizzard!—to rescue a whimsical daughter. Inside the house, Mrs. Miller pulls sheets and blankets out of the tops of closets, then makes up beds for the three of them. The house is enormous, four stories. They will be sleeping on different floors, in the warmest rooms, which are stacked on top of one another, next to the hot water pipe, Mrs. Miller tells them, as she’s handing out toothbrushes and towels.
Now sleep as long as you like, she says to Elizabeth. Rest from your adventure.
Elizabeth’s is the middle room of the three. Margaret is above. She hears Mrs. Miller climb the stairs and close the door. She does not come down before Elizabeth falls asleep. Elizabeth hears whispering, tears, and endearments, which weave indistinctly into her dreams.
Elizabeth and her own mother are on a train. Hooded figures move up and down the aisle, vague, foreboding. Something or someone has been forgotten, left behind. Elizabeth and her mother are trying to get over this loss, past it, move on, look ahead. They choose forward-facing seats for this very reason. But Elizabeth is afraid her mother will recall the forgotten object or person and become agitated. She has only just succeeded in calming her mother after some previous disturbance. The train moves along an unfamiliar coastline. She wishes her mother would listen to the roar and retreat of the ocean. Can you hear it? she asks her mother. Just try to listen. Try to make the waves like your breathing, in and out.
When Elizabeth wakes, the bedroom has darkened. The window is a navy blue square the color of her peacoat. She swims toward consciousness sideways, feeling like a boat being hauled from water that is cold, dark, deep, flowing, and flown. These are the words in her head, not exactly words, more like sensations, or—oddly—knowledge. Information. The house is perfectly still, and her body is held inside it, cocooned. The ocean breakers make the sound of the word: in. for. MA. tion. She would like to stay here forever, buried inside these quilts an
d blankets, paint, plaster, wood. She can pretend to be asleep for some time longer in this empty space, this perfection of nowhere. Here, the indignities of college life are kept at bay. The whole landscape of college is scaffolds and pillories, stocks and bonds, glass houses, and stones lying around everywhere. These notions, like wolves, drift in from the darkened edges of her mind. The music classes. What is it about musical composition that she can’t seem to master? The mathematics of it, probably. She is an orderly person. Everyone says so. Or maybe it’s because she can’t see the notes, the dynamics, the harmonics, the way you can see a bird or a fish or a boat or a star. But you can hear it. So why isn’t hearing as good as seeing?
Slowly, daylight brightens the window. Footsteps above: Margaret must be getting out of bed, preparing for whatever will come next. She might ask her mother to drive them back to school. But Mrs. Miller has probably already offered. She’s planned her day around the end of this adventure, the smiling delivery in Poughkeepsie: Look who I found! I rescued them and brought them back to you. She’ll whisper to her friend the Vassar president, Henry Noble MacCracken, Don’t be so careless, Hank. I pay you to keep an eye on them.
My girls, she says when Margaret and Elizabeth appear in the kitchen.
My girls! What a lovely pair of words!
That was quite the night, you two! Now let’s have something to eat, and then I’ll take you back to the convent.
Margaret is right. She is not writing poems. They are not anything except impractical. One must have a job, a title (even assistant is enough), an office to go to every day. She discovers a shelf of medical textbooks in the library and cultivates a special fondness for Gray’s Anatomy, the body inside out. When she mentions this prospective future to Margaret, the disbelief is both oceanic and, for nearly a half hour, strangely mute. Then Margaret struggles for language. Sputter is what she’s doing. Scrabble.
Why? Margaret asks finally.
Her first impulse is to say, Why not? Outside the window, the green perfection of Vassar is a taunt. Orderly, narrow walkways, blooming hedges, maples and sycamores in exuberant leaf, all by design, perfectly timed.
