A Star for Mrs. Blake (8 page)

“Yes,” he said, somber now. “I heard exactly what you didn’t say. I heard it loud and clear.”

They bumped over the boards and stopped behind the first car. Linwood turned the engine off and they waited uncertainly for the other to get out first. It was quiet except for birds screeching and water sloshing heavily against the shifting platform of the ferry.

“You deserve some happiness,” Linwood said.

It might have taken a whole town and half a hog to get Cora Blake to the train, but once she was on board, Uncle Sam was footing the bills and no expense was to be spared. It was true: the official pilgrimage badge with the red, white, and blue ribbon was like a magic charm that transformed Cora Blake from a humble traveler to a VIP. When she got out of the truck at Union Station in Bangor, her suitcases were whisked away and a senior trainman with a gray mustache, wearing a dark uniform with epaulets, respectfully asked if he might escort her to her seat.

“Lin?” she called. “Aren’t you coming inside?”

Linwood stayed where he was.

“I’d better get Mr. Pig to where he’s going. He’s becoming an embarrassment,” he added, with a glance toward a beat cop who was eyeing the bloodstained sack.

“Don’t go,” she begged. “Keep me company. We still have time.”

Linwood shrugged and gave Cora a halfhearted smile. She could see that her indecision was hurting him.

“No point, really,” he told her.

“It’s—it’s hard times,” Cora said helplessly.

“I know you have a lot to think about. A lot ahead of you.”

She found his wounded eyes in the shadow of the fedora.

“But I am coming back,” she said deliberately.

He nodded, and for a moment they felt the reassuring island connection that had attracted them in the first place. They’d grown up together; they knew each other in ways no outsider ever would.

“Will you give some thought to what I said?” he asked.

“Of course,” she promised. “I’ll think about it every day. And I’ll write.”

“Send me a postcard of the Eiffel Tower.”

Linwood flung those last words over his shoulder, walked around to the driver’s side, got in, turned the engine over, and, as if to show her the frustration words couldn’t tell, jumped the truck right over the trolley tracks and careened into downtown traffic. The trainman, who had been discreetly holding back, stepped forward and offered Cora his arm. They paraded through the station and across the main foyer, turning heads. When they reached the tracks he confided that it was a personal privilege to escort a Gold Star Mother, because his nephew had served on the Western Front, and if anything had happened to him, his poor sister would have lost her mind, so he knew exactly what she’d gone through.

He bowed slightly and helped her step into a car marked
First Class
. Cora was baffled by his behavior but before she could thank him the conductor was there to show her to her seat. “Let me know if you need anything,” he told her. “Anything at all. God bless you.”

The walls were paneled in mahogany and the seats covered in violet-colored velvet, set in groups of two-facing-two so you had a private alcove with a curtained window. There was a fold-down table and a rack full of magazines just for her, but Cora could only sit there, stiff as an arrow, with the tartan bag on her lap, stunned to find herself alone and in this new world of outlandish luxury. After some time other passengers came on board, there were distant shouts and whistles, and the train began to move. A black porter in a white uniform leaned over and said, “An honor to have you with us, ma’am,” and set up her table, then returned with complementary lemonade in a frosty glass. That wasn’t all. He’d placed beside it with great care a dish of sugared almonds, and a napkin that was embroidered
Olsen Railroad & Co
., just like the writing on Mrs. Genevieve Olsen’s ivory stationery! It was thrilling. There were several train lines that met in Bangor, and Cora hadn’t thought a whit about which one she would be on, but as they left the station, she became keenly aware of the money and power behind the railroad set to which Mrs. Olsen belonged,
and Cora knew her!
As they crossed a drawbridge over a quiet inlet she caught sight of herself in the window and thought,
Cora, close your mouth, you look like a kid on Christmas morning
.

Union Station was like an illustration from a child’s book, made of buff-colored brick with brown edging, two peaked façades, and a clock tower in between that wore a conical roof like a hat; a fairy-tale place that promised any train you boarded here would provide a safe and pleasant journey. As they slipped away, past icehouses that once shipped Penobscot River ice all over the world, lumberyards that had given way to paper mills shuttered because of the Depression, Cora was departing a world of simple equations and screwed-down values that she had always taken for granted. The porter came by again to refill her lemonade and leave a saucer with a celery stick and olives and a packet of oyster crackers, which she ate one after the other until they were gone. She was too excited to think. There were three hours and twenty-two minutes to Boston and she could not contain the delicious anticipation of meeting Katie McConnell. Making contact with a stranger. In a washroom. In a train station. It was right out of one of the spy novels that flew off the shelves in the library. Cora pulled out the letters from Party A tied with the blue ribbon and reread the one she’d just received from Katie:

“Dear Mrs. Blake—I will be in the Lounge at 6:15 in the Evening as we said. I have been liven for the day. And here is Good News! I am bringing the Family to. My Husband wants to see us off. He is so very carefull of me. You will meet our little Son, Damian. He is Four years old. Your friend, Mrs. Katie McConnell.”

It was comforting to know that Katie would be in South Station as planned, but there was something about the letter that always stuck. It was that Katie said she had a little boy. Every time she read it, Cora flushed with jealousy. Sometimes when she saw a child with a young mother she felt hunger so strong she believed she was capable of stealing it away. Even though Katie McConnell had endured the unimaginable loss of two sons, Cora envied her for having the softness and beauty of childhood so close to her again. And for having been given another chance at the happiness of motherhood.

The porter offered to reserve a table in the first-class dining car, but Cora declined. She’d had a look on the way to the restroom and it was horrifying: white tablecloths and rattling silver, well-dressed couples silently picking at shrimp over ice. Then, he suggested, perhaps
a seat at the bar? Even worse. Nothing could have dragged her into that smoke-filled den of hard-looking men with flowers in their lapels sitting at circular tables painted black and white like shooting targets, fawning over women with loud red mouths.

Her little alcove was just fine. She devoured the bread-and-butter, ate the apple down to the seeds, wrapped the seeds in a napkin so the porter wouldn’t see, took off her pumps and put her feet up on the automatic footrest, and fell asleep. When she awoke, the small farms that had been regularly dividing the countryside into paddocks and fields had vanished, and all you could see for several miles were grimy shoe factories and textile mills, as if the train ride that had begun at the station in Bangor had passed through time to the pragmatism of present day; as if, where the tracks ended at South Station, Boston was the culmination of a century of progress.

Cora stepped off the train into humid summer air and the smell of coal fire. The steel mass of a dozen engines idling in the open-roofed depot made her feel slight, as if she could be swept away like a leaf under the polished heels of well-dressed commuters striding along the bays, casting impatient shadows on ashen squares of daylight. She followed the crowd through a gate that led to a vast arcade, where high arched windows brought in the evening sun. You’d think, from all the light everywhere, that Boston was a city made of gold.

South Station was the largest manmade structure she had ever been inside. You could hear the rumble of the trains below, but there was also a hush that came from the echoes of voices and hurried footfalls dissipating in the great marble hall. It was just past six o’clock as she hurried through a maze of kiosks selling newspapers and sundries, saltwater taffy and chocolate caramels, people streaming in and out in all directions, until she saw a sign for the women’s waiting room and made a beeline for it, eager to avoid the rows of benches where unsavory derelicts and large immigrant families had spread themselves out.

But the entrance to the women’s waiting room was blocked by a large woman hovering in the doorway, holding on to the molding to support her considerable weight.

“Are you all right?” Cora asked.

“I’m wonderin’ where I might sit down.”

Her voice was soft with a southern inflection. She wore a worn brown cloth coat and a turban-style hat with a veil. The hat was bright purple and seemed to have nothing to do with the coat. Her legs were bowed and her stockings rolled down, the ankles all swollen up. This woman was somebody’s grandma. She had the right to sit down.

“Why, you can rest inside,” Cora said. “You’ll be comfortable there. It’s for ladies only,” she added encouragingly.

The woman’s rheumy eyes moved over Cora with pity, as if she were the slowest-minded idiot in the world.

“Those kinda ladies don’t want me in there. Don’t you worry yourself,” she added with a bitter edge.

The only Negro people Cora ever had anything to do with were the porters on the train and the seasonal workers who came up to Maine from Jamaica for employment on the potato farms. They had made an impression. She remembered being five or six years old and seeing a poorly dressed mother and her children walking down the middle of Main Street, as if they didn’t think they were allowed to use the sidewalk. They wore head scarves made of potato sacks. Cora was frightened and held on to her mother’s hand, but Luella took them right up to those people and said, “That’s not how we do it in our town. You’re welcome here, like any other.”

“It’s okay to go inside,” Cora told the grandma in the doorway.

“Really?” She made a mocking look. “Young lady, you got a lot to learn.”

She mopped the perspiration on her neck and lifted a wicker suitcase. Cora caught sight of a bronze badge on a red, white, and blue ribbon pinned to her stout bosom.

“Wait!” Cora said. “You’re a Gold Star Mother.”

“Don’t make no difference to some people.”

“So am I!” Cora pointed to hers.

The woman’s reddened eyes slowly softened. “Where’d you lose your boy?”

“France.”

“Mine, too.” She rocked back and peered at Cora. Her dark brown
face was all chubby cheeks that crowded her eyes into crescents when she smiled. “Looks like we both going to the same place.”

“New York City? The Hotel Commodore?”

“That’s right.”

“And then are you going on to Paris?” Cora asked.

“So they tell me. If I stay on my feet.”

When she finally followed Cora into the women’s waiting room, nobody paid attention to the colored woman in the purple hat; everyone was in too much of a rush. There was no “waiting” in this cosmopolitan crossroads, where a flood of women from all walks of life, loaded down with shopping bags and children, went in and out at a fabulous rate. The place was more elegant than the clientele, done up like a feminine palace in pink and gold, with round mirrors and clusters of crystalline electric lamps floating from the ceiling as if conjured by a magician. An attendant in a black uniform was handing towels to each patron, and most of them tossed some pennies in a dish.

“I can’t hardly afford to even pee in here,” the grandmother observed.

Cora left her to search for Katie McConnell, even asking strangers if they went by that name, but Katie had not arrived. It was 6:45 p.m.

The elderly black lady had found a seat on a pink settee and invited Cora to sit down. Cora settled beside her, eyes on the door.

“Lookin’ out for someone?”

“A member of my party. We’re supposed to meet and take the train to New York. Her name is Mrs. McConnell,” Cora added, as if saying it would make her appear.

“What’s your name, young lady?” the grandma asked.

“Mrs. Blake. What is yours?”

“Mrs. Russell.”

Cora turned to her and gasped. “Mrs. Russell? You’re in my party, too. Party A?”

Mrs. Russell fumbled with her purse, put on her glasses, and came up with a letter that had the familiar seal of the War Department. “Party A. There you be! Mrs. Blake, member something—”

“Coordinator.”

“Let’s see. There’s a couple of other names … and at the bottom it says Mr. Thomas Hammond and Miss Lily Barnett, R.N.”

“That’s the army officer and the nurse assigned to our group. Oh, good Lord!” Cora continued in a rush. “What a stroke of luck for us to run into each other! Well,” she decided, “this was meant to be! I’ve been waiting and waiting to hear back from you. Didn’t you get my letters?”