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In the vestibule after she left, there was the lingering scent of her perfume, a whiff of mothballs from her fur, and something else-the good wool of her skirt warmed by her hour on the upholstered dining-room chair? A
Her mother, in the kitchen with the dishes, understood that the question that made her stand stock-still, the water ru
Had they wrested from that stranger, the other Jacob, a blessing for their son, or was it all sentimentality and superstition on her husband’s part-that blood-borne fascination with the dead-that had made him tell her on that first day of her life as a mother, It’s just something I’d like to do? Did the fates howl with laughter at the irony of it all or had some good fortune been secured?
She took Pauline’s empty glass from the counter beside her and dipped it in the soapy water and resolved to think instead (it was how she would get through Jacob’s time in Vietnam) of what could possibly have been better, given all the occasions of her life, than that morning in the hospital with little Jacob in her arms. Our baby grand. The thrill and disbelief of finding herself a mother. Even recalling it now, she could vaguely smell the ether in the air, the particular sweet odor of a newborn’s scalp. And then Michael and A
But one moment nudges the other out of the way. It was something to regret. It was something to be grateful for. She rinsed the glass and placed it with the others in the dish drainer. On the win-dowsill above the sink was the small replica of the Pieta in its clear plastic dome-A
There were seven people on the bus, all sitting separately, most of them leaning against windows, a few clasping, straight-armed, the back of the seat in front, none of them white. The light inside was a stale and ugly light, too bright, given how dark it was outside. Pauline knew it wasn’t kind to her face, this light, that it lit the fine hairs on her cheek and chin and the powder that clung to them. Turning to the black window, she saw her own reflection more clearly than the neon signs and streetlights they were passing by. She looked older than she believed herself to be.
But how Clare’s skin glowed, and how pleased she had been with the gifts Pauline had brought her today. Even A
Beyond the black glass of the window beside her, Pauline saw the blurred strips of neon signs, the dulled nightlights of shuttered storefronts, many of them with black grates across their windows and doors. Nighttime had a different color now, on this familiar route from Nassau to Queens, different from what it had had years ago when streetlights burned a soft yellow, and you could-hadn’t they said it at di
When she changed at Jamaica, the second bus was empty, its door left open, its engine idling. She sat on it alone for ten minutes, chilled, headachy from the diesel fuel, before she got off to ask the dispatcher if the driver was going to come. “He’s coming,” the man said, waving her away. When she returned to the bus, there were two people sitting in the front and she said to them, with great dignity, “I’ve already waited here twenty minutes and there’s no sign of a driver.” They looked at her impassively-a black woman and a young black man-and then looked over her shoulder to the driver, also black, who was swinging up the stairs. He ducked into his seat and as she turned to hand him her transfer he took his time stowing his things, adjusting his mirrors, taking off his gloves, and then he sat for a second more with both hands on his thighs, staring straight ahead. She had to say, “Here,” and thrust the paper at him. He took it disdainfully, not turning to meet her eye. The other two passengers got up to hand him theirs and he said thank you to both of them. They passed her, going back to their seats, the boy smirking, like good students turning up their noses at the one who had just gotten the reprimand. She was alone here. Middle-aged, aging, a woman alone, making her way between her few safe havens-the Keanes’ house, her office, her own apartment-through the ugly, amber-colored night.
She sat down at the far end of the first long seat, her back to the window, her gloved hand on the silver pole. The air of the bus was still chilled from the door being left open so long. Because the door had been left open for so long, the air inside smelled strongly of diesel fuel. She sat forward, on the edge of the molded plastic and leaned down as he made a wide turn out of the terminal. And then another. Although she knew this route as well as any, she suddenly found herself disoriented and she looked out the far window and then over her shoulder and then heard herself say, shouting at him over the wheeze of the bus, “Don’t you go down Jamaica Avenue?”