After This

He may have said, “Yeah,” his arms moving in wide arcs over the big wheel. He might have said nothing at all. She waited, leaning down to see where they were. Once she recognized something, anything, she would sit back and say, pleasantly enough, “Oh, I’m all turned around,” and the black lady on the other side might say, “Happens to me all the time.” Or the driver might say, “I just made a wrong turn,” apologizing. “We’re back on track now.” But this was no longer the route she knew (they should have passed a Bohack’s by now) and when she asked him, somewhat alarmed, “Is this the Q54?” his answer was once again garbled. She looked to the woman across the aisle, who said, “Huhn huhn,” which she hoped meant yes but could have meant she didn’t know. “I don’t know what ‘huhn huhn’ means,” she said, out loud, but not, she was certain, loud enough for the woman to hear. She looked out again, over her shoulder, and then reached up for the buzzer over her head, fumbling for it with her glove. She stood. “He doesn’t know where he’s going,” she said. She was sick to her stomach from the time she had waited in the cold, and the diesel odor had made her dizzy. She reached for the pole by the door. “You’re not going the right way,” she told him, shouting to be heard over the engine, “I’m getting off.” There was another wide turn, she held on, leaning down now to look through the glass in the door. Where were they? “You’d better let me off,” she said. And in the same moment that she saw the familiar storefront of Green Point Savings go by (and perhaps, recognizing it, relaxed her grip a bit) the bus swung into the curb and the driver pulled the doors open and she felt herself thrown forward and her feet, moving to regain her balance, stepped instead into the well of the stairs. She cried out, lunged forward, missed the handrail and then felt herself collapse, giving in to the fall, the harsh bang of the rubber tread against her hip, against her thighs, her good coat and good skirt, surprised herself at all the noise she made, against the fiberglass and the steel and the oof of her heavy flesh, her arm and her shoulder and her face against the curb. Blind pain, and then there was the feel of the cold air against her stockings, against the bare flesh at the top of her thighs. She struggled to pull down her hem, to cover herself but her arm was pi

The Keanes were asleep when the phone rang, although A

She’d had a vision, once, of what would happen to her if her brother was killed in the war. She would not become one of those folk-singing peace-sign hippies, she knew, she would become instead something outrageous, something screaming, full of rage, burning things, tossing flaming bombs. How else would anyone get it, get what it would mean to lose Jacob? Now she saw that she would merely close the book in her hand, get out of bed, go into her parents’ bedroom. It would mean their small family made smaller still. Her father’s limp more pronounced from now on, her mother steely somehow (she thought of Susan’s eyes, in the abortion clinic, getting through this). Michael more disdainful, Clare too babyish for a little longer. Crying jags for her, when she got drunk. No more effort or inclination to record it all in her little diaries, to remember how it had all played out.

Her father said, “No, not her sister. Just a friend.”

Pauline was going to be kept in the hospital for a few days at least, and of course they could have visited her in the morning, but there had been some questions about psychiatric history and her mother felt it would be best if they went right down there. Pauline all alone, she said. She must be so scared. Her father had already dressed and gone down to warm up the car. A

“The woman is such an ass,” she said, loud enough to wake Clare. “I thought it was about Jacob.” It seemed the crying jag was going to happen anyway.

Her mother took her briefly in her arms, she smelled of her familiar lotion, warmed by sleep. “I know,” she said. “It startled us all. But the army doesn’t call. They send a telegram. Or they come to the door. And not in the middle of the night, I should hope.” Then she backed away, brushed her daughter’s hair. “It’ll be over soon,” she said. “Things are winding down over there. He’ll be home before we know it.”

A

A

“And you have to go to school,” she said. “Go back to bed.” Then she asked again, “You’ll be all right?” and A

The front door stuck a little before her mother got it open. A

It was full daylight by the time her parents returned. A

A

Her mother held up her hand. Her lips were pale. Her hair was littered with gray. “I’m not saying all year. I’m saying till her wrist is healed. Till she’s herself again.”

A

But her father, who was watching the coffee percolate on the stove with something of Jacob’s own distracted absorption, looked at her over his shoulder and smiled. He’d liked the joke.

“I think it’s mean to make the boys sleep in the basement,” A

Susan laughed. “Hey, I sleep in the attic,” she said.

“Well, the attic would make sense,” A

But her mother, buttering toast, was thinking of something else. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said shortly. She was about to lose her temper. “It will just be for a few weeks.”

“Your mother has enough on her mind,” their father said.