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Or maybe she had run because she believed that Miriam, with a glance, could do the one thing that they had failed to do this past week-eliminate with certitude the possibility that she was Heather Bethany.
“Walk her by me,” Miriam said softly. “I don’t want to talk to her-that is, I do, I want to scream at her, ask her a thousand questions, then scream some more-but I know I mustn’t do any of those things. I just want to look at her.”
MIRIAM WAITED in the lobby of the Public Safety Building. She thought of putting on dark glasses, then almost laughed out loud at her own heightened sense of drama. After all, this woman didn’t know her. If she’d ever seen Miriam, it was in photographs from that time, and while Miriam knew she had aged exceptionally well, she would never be mistaken for her thirty-eight-year-old self. Fact is, her thirty-nine-year-old self had barely resembled the thirty-eight-year-old version. She remembered noticing how she had changed when the newspapers ran those photos on the first-year a
The elevators were frustratingly slow, as she had learned on her own descent, and the wait in the lobby seemed interminable. But, at last, Infante and Nancy got off the elevator, flanking a slight, blond woman, holding her loosely by the elbows. Her head was tilted forward, so it was hard to see her face, but Miriam studied her-Ruth, was that it?-as best as she could, took in the narrow shoulders, the slim hips, the comically youthful trousers, so wrong for a woman verging on middle age. If she were my daughter, Miriam thought, she’d have better taste than that.
The woman looked up, and Miriam caught her eye. Miriam didn’t mean to hold the gaze, but she found she couldn’t turn away. Slowly she rose, blocking the path of the trio, clearly u
“Mi-Ma’am,” Infante said, correcting himself, protecting her name. “We’re escorting a prisoner. It’s only because of her injury that she’s not in handcuffs. Please stand back.”
Miriam ignored him, taking the woman’s left hand in hers, squeezing it as if to say, This won’t hurt a bit, then pushing up the sleeve of the cardigan sweater she wore, careful not to disturb the bandaged forearm. On the upper arm, she found the mark she sought, the splayed and oh-so-faint scar of a vaccination that had been burst by the helpful application of a flyswatter, missing the fly but scattering pus and blood, creating a wound that had taken weeks to heal, a scab that had been picked continually despite all admonitions to leave it alone, that such picking would leave a permanent blemish. There it was, a ghostly mark, so faint that no one else would notice it. In fact, it was possible that it wasn’t even there, but Miriam believed she saw it, so she did.
“Oh, Su
CHAPTER 41
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round .
They wanted to know what she was thinking, what was ru
Buses were magic. Another bus had brought her to this place in her life, this moment where everything would change. She was ru
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.
It had begun on another bus, the school bus, after the route was reversed at the other parents’ insistence and Su
“Mind if I put the radio on?” the driver asked one day. He was a substitute, young and good-looking, not at all like Mr. Madison, who normally drove the route. “But you have to keep it a secret. We’re not supposed to play the radio. My father, who owns the bus company, he’s really strict.”
“Sure,” she said, embarrassed at the way her voice squeaked. “I won’t tell.”
Then-not the next time he drove, or the time after that, or even the time after that, but the fourth time, in November, when the weather was turning colder: “Why don’t you move up here to the front seat and talk to me, keep me company? It gets awfully lonely, sitting up here by myself.”
“Sure,” she said, gathering her books to her chest, feeling stupid when the bus hit a pothole and she banged her hip hard against one of the seats. But Tony didn’t laugh at her, or mock her. “My apologies,” he said. “I’ll try to keep the ride smooth from here on out, my lady.”
Another time-the fifth time, or maybe the sixth. Their encounters were frequent enough to blend together now, although she seldom saw him more than two or three times a month. “Do you like this song? It’s called ‘Lonely Girl.’ It reminds me of you.”
“Really?” She wasn’t sure she did like the song, but she listened closely, especially to the final line, about the lonely boy. Did that mean-but she kept her eyes on her notebook, a blue binder. Other girls inked the names of their crushes on the cover, but she never had dared. A few weeks later, she tried doodling a tiny “TD” in the lower right-hand corner. “What does that stand for?” Heather had asked, nosy Heather, always spying Heather. “Touchdown,” Su
More and more, Tony talked about himself, over the music. He had tried to join the army, go to ’ Nam, but they wouldn’t take him, much to his mother’s relief and his disappointment. Su
The wheels on the bus went round and round.
“I really wish we could spend time together. Real time, not just these bus rides. Wouldn’t that be nice, if we could be alone somewhere?” She thought it might be, but she didn’t see how it could be arranged. She knew without asking that her parents, as open and freewheeling as they professed to be, wouldn’t let her date a twenty-three-year-old bus driver. She wasn’t sure, however, what would bother them more-the twenty-three part, the bus-driver part, or the wanted-to-go-to-’Nam part.