Mercy Train (19 page)

“Do not feel dispirited,” Mrs. Comstock said, chin held high, not meeting their eyes. She wasn't a good bluffer. Even the younger ones looked at the floor, embarrassed by her poor acting and their dim chances. “There will be plenty of opportunities for you yet.”

One of the older boys elbowed his friend and nodded toward the ugly girl, Nettie, her face coarse and red, her eyes too far apart.

“Plenty of opportunities for you, mate,” he said.

“Fuck all, Patrick,” the friend said, ramming him with his shoulder. He got up and threw himself into a different seat.

Nettie shoved out her bottom lip and turned fully to face the window. Violet refused to feel sorry for her because she'd hogged the bedcovers the previous night and smelled like turnips. Mrs. Comstock stood with her lips apart as if waiting to answer a question.

“Dignity, children,” she said, finally, wagging her head. “You are in control of your dignity.”

A boy named Frank who sat alone started to cry. The sun glowed through his large translucent ears. Elmer's lip trembled at the sight of the other boy's tears.

“Hey, cut it out,” Violet said. She pinched Elmer's pudgy leg until he hit her hand away, angry, and the tears had passed.

“Ma'am?” A young boy in back of the car raised his hand. He had a spray of freckles across his nose that matched his chestnut hair.

Mrs. Comstock walked down the aisle toward him, her skirt swishing against the benches.

“Yes, Herbert.”

“Is it true we got to pick cotton like we's slaves?”

“Who told you that?”

“The boys have been saying.”

Mrs. Comstock flicked her gaze to each of the boys in the seats around his. They kept their eyes on their laps.

“Boys should not be talking of what they do not know,” she said, regaining some composure, a sternness returning to her voice. “You will have a chance to have a normal life. Remember you are in God's hands.”

Herbert smiled in relief, too young to know better. “Ma'am?”

“Yes, Herbert.”

“Can I come up and sit next to you?”

Mrs. Comstock's shoulders softened, and her mouth turned up in a dolorous smile.

“Yes, Herbert,” she said. “Bring your Bible and come along.”

The boy scampered up to the front, and Mrs. Comstock made her way behind him, jostled as the train lurched.

“Illinois is next,” she said to them. “Your new home.”

Violet turned back to face forward in her seat and balled her hands into fists. She closed her eyes and said to herself,
I am ready
.

 

IRIS

A palm frond tapped against the kitchen window. Iris knew she should take a walk. It would do her good to move around, to breathe in the fresh ocean air. But the phone rang, and she picked it up. Theo.

“Don't drive all the way to Fort Myers to pick up Samantha tomorrow. She can take a cab.”

Theo had always criticized his sister—a tree isn't blue, that's not how you throw a baseball, you can't major in anthropology—but becoming a lawyer had made it worse, solidified the tendency into habit.

“Yes, she can. But I insisted,” Iris said.

“Mom, you have cancer.”

“Ha,” Iris laughed. “Honey.” She knew it irritated him when she called him this, reminding him that she was his mother, that she knew him, was in essence saying, You came out of me. “It may shock you to learn that I am still of sound mind.”

For the first time Iris admitted to herself that her allegiance had shifted, that she favored Samantha now. Could she even say she loved her more? It was different from when they were children. As adults they were no longer blameless. Was it fair, then, to end her life with Samantha here? It was not fair, maybe, but she had not asked a lot of her children.

“I know, I know,” Theo said.

“At least that means you and Samantha have talked. That's something.”

That her children were not close wasn't surprising, given their ten-year age separation, but it was still a disappointment.

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I suppose.”

She decided she would indulge in a small glass of wine, and walk over to the beach as the sky turned colorful and dark, to mark her last night of solitude.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“I think your phone cut out for a second.”

“You better get back to work,” she said. “We'll talk tomorrow.”

“You need a cell phone.”

“I need a lot of things,” she said, and then added hurriedly, “I love you.”

The words came out more rushed than she would have liked, but they didn't sound strained, and for that she was pleased.

“You too,” he said quietly. “Okay, then. Bye.”

Iris closed her eyes, and breathed in as deeply as her damaged lungs would allow.

*   *   *

Samantha had sent her a card for her birthday years ago, just after the divorce, with a reproduction of a painting on the front:
The Bay
by Helen Frankenthaler, 1963. The picture had moved something in Iris, opened her up. Those saturated blues and watery violets, a top-heavy stain on a flat earth of sage. And that small wedge of orange. What was it doing there? It was so strange and compelling, a splinter that seemed to hold the whole thing in place. She immediately went to the library to learn more about the painter. Frankenthaler was an abstract expressionist, more precisely, a field painter, married to—and overshadowed by—Robert Motherwell. But the most striking thing was that she was the same age as Iris. In 1963, while Iris was dropping Theo off at kindergarten, getting the carpets cleaned, dusting the chandelier, Helen Frankenthaler was living her bohemian life, diluting her oil paint with turpentine and creating the fluid other world of
The Bay
. She hadn't been saddened by the comparison as much as impressed by the other woman's self-possession, which had taken Iris a lifetime to cobble together.

This is my sky, Iris thought, as she sat hugging her knees on the edge of the small dunes, with the tide high, the waves calm and even. It reminded her of the painting, how the gray-purple clouds seemed to have more heft than the water beneath. She supposed the chardonnay-and-painkiller mix might have something to do with it, but she didn't find it any less wondrous. It would be a relief to let go, she thought now. A handful of morphine pills. When the time was right.

The day's beach crowd had mostly cleared. An older couple—probably her age, she thought, abashed by this recognition—walked by her holding hands, he carrying a camera, she swinging a bucket of shells. A little girl in a pink bathing suit, her hair a fountain on her head, made a break for the water but was quickly scooped up by her father, who carried her over his sunburned shoulder. Iris was glad for all of this, or maybe she was grateful.

She and Henry had come to this beach only once together. It had been dusk then, too, but winter, blustery, the sky gunmetal gray. The sand was cold against her feet. Other than the sandpipers and seagulls, they were alone. His hand was warm around hers. They talked about aging (“I still haven't gotten used to the fact that I'm older than almost everyone in the world,” Henry said), about their kids pushing them to get e-mail (“What would I write that I couldn't say to them over the phone?” Iris said), about how the invasive Brazilian pepper and Australian pine were degrading the wildlife habitat at the refuge.

Iris had felt good then, her health issues—osteoporosis, high cholesterol, a back that gave her trouble—were commonplace and unthreatening. She no longer cared about who she was supposed to be. With Henry, she was more comfortable than she'd been her whole life. They had walked until darkness took hold and they could hear the waves but no longer see them.

And then he'd said, “She knows, my dear.”

Iris filled her hand with the warm white sand and funneled it over her feet. She knew she should get up while she still could muster the strength, but she was lulled by the warm breeze on the now dark, empty beach. If she stayed very still, she could pretend she wasn't sick, pretend she would be here for another spring, pretend she was fearless.

*   *   *

“Mother?”

“Yes, Iris.”

“Can you hear the bees?”

“Yes, Iris. I can hear them,” she'd said, sitting on the bed.

A crawling, humming mass of bees—all piled on the queen—had swathed a branch of the maple tree outside of Iris's window.

“It's almost as big as me,” she said, burrowing deeper into the bed and clutching her doll.

“They won't stay for long,” her mother said, pulling the sheet up over Iris's shoulders. “They're visitors. The colony is migrating. Father says they're getting ready to leave.”

“Where are they going?”

“Don't know.”

“Why'd they leave their house in the first place?”

“Maybe their hive got too small. Or it got damaged in the hailstorm last week. Remember how it sounded like rocks were hitting the hog-pen roof?”

Iris nodded.

“Or maybe the bees just felt like a change.” Her mother shrugged and smiled. “It's a mystery, isn't it?”

“Will they come back?”

“I don't think so.”

Iris wondered how they knew when to go, where to go, how they communicated, and how the ones in the middle could breathe, smothered by all those other bees, but she couldn't keep her thoughts straight as she neared sleep.

“I can still hear them.”

“Close your eyes, Iris…”

At dawn, her mother swooshed into her room. “Wake up, sleepyhead. The bees are moving.”

Iris groggily clambered to the window, her mother behind her. The colony looked to be in a frenzy, crawling and shaking, the bodies shiny in the rising sun. Some of the bees were flying off and orbiting the cluster. And then all at once, as if some giant hand had bounced the branch, the swarm was airborne, a black buzzing cloud, swirling, up and up and then away, west over the farm until she could no longer see it.

“Oh,” her mother said, a small plaintive sound, and Iris looked up to see that her eyes were full of tears.

“Mother?”

“I will miss them,” she had said. “Isn't that a funny thing?”

For days Iris had looked for the bees in the sky, hoping they would return for her mother. But they had gone for good.

*   *   *

Iris had read that fake smiling could make something more enjoyable, that facial movement could influence emotional experience. What if she could fake wellness? She could go through the motions as if it were any other day, and maybe it would make her feel better. So she passed on the peanut butter and jelly—sadly—and warmed up a bowl of carrot soup, and tossed a small salad of spinach, goat cheese, and walnuts. She even pulled a cloth napkin from the drawer and set out silverware, a glass of sparkling water.

But she kept thinking about the bees, and how she'd never seen anything like them for the rest of her life, the wild and magical beauty of them, and how her mother had cried, and how she thought she finally understood why her mother had cried when the bees had flown away.

Loud voices echoed on the landing, her neighbor Stephen and another man, in some kind of quarrel. Iris went to her door and strained to see through the peephole. Stephen was in a towel, his hair wet from a shower. The other man was barely more than a boy, skinny, his jeans low and tight. He stood with his arms crossed, his head cocked: petulant, Iris thought, hateful.

“I didn't take it!” he yelled. “Like I'd want your shitty watch.”

“Give it back, and that will be that.”

“Whatever,” he said.

“I'll call the cops,” Stephen said, one hand holding his towel.

The boy laughed, a mirthless
ha-ha-ha
.

Iris wondered if she should call the police, but something in Stephen's weak posture, his furtive glances, told her not to.

“Go on, big boy, call them. I'll be waiting right here.”

Stephen grabbed his arm, but the boy spun out of his grip and ran. Stephen slipped back into his apartment and slammed the door.

Poor Stephen, she thought. How unseemly, how embarrassing the encounter must have been for him. To be shamed so because someone sniffed out your weakness. Will he change? Does he want to? Maybe he doesn't aspire to settle down, she thought, or he feels he isn't worthy of someone who would choose him. Maybe the thrill of possibility each night brings gets him through the day of forced cheer at the hotel desk. Samantha had once accused her of imposing her feelings on others, and Iris decided she would try in the next three weeks to do less of that.

She sipped her soup, tasting the carrot and ginger and cream on her tongue, and felt nourished. She had made it through another day, and she felt satisfied by the very passing of day into night.

*   *   *

She'd still been single at twenty-eight, and Glenn had been the quiet new associate at the Chicago firm where she was a secretary. Eligible, all the girls said with hungry eyes. Iris decided that it was time. Her girlhood romanticism had gotten her nowhere, and it was time to pack it away. Glenn was not exciting to her, but he was a decent man—handsome, polite, and successful—who thought she was pretty and wanted her to be his wife. Waiting around for passion surely wouldn't afford her a life on the North Shore. After the engagement was announced, she promptly quit her job, knowing she would never work again. In those newlywed days she used to greet him at the door in full makeup, dressed up in heels and wasp-waist dresses, dinner on the table. She'd have spent hours preparing some dish she'd seen in a magazine: beef Wellington, tomato aspic, baked Alaska. It was, she had thought, her end of the bargain, and Glenn had been ever appreciative.

How different her life might have looked from here had she married a saxophone player instead of Glenn, or if she'd become a teacher instead of a secretary, or if she'd turned left instead of right on any given day. It was a futile, wistful game with infinite variations and outcomes, an ideal pastime for someone with regrets and the long view.