City of Boys (10 page)

—Oh, Alice’s father says, —I can see it. He nods and reads the rest of the story, then looks up at Alice’s mother. —I can see it just perfectly.

Alice looks over at the paper, but there is only a grainy picture of a hotel, with a little white circle around one of the windows. Alice turns her head and looks at the outskirts of the city, a few squat colorless buildings that give way to wide empty fields.

—I guess I can, too, her mother says. —He was probably depressed by the scenery. He probably couldn’t stand to look at one more cornfield.

She puts her magazine down next to her, on top of the stack of newspapers. —I don’t think I can either, she says and stands. —I’m going to smoke.

She walks down the aisle with her purse held in front of her, balancing herself gently, with only one hand against the seats, but even so, people look up as she passes. Alice’s father waits until she is gone, then says, —Well, that shows you something right there. Those are wheat fields, not corn.

He folds the paper and lays it over Alice’s mother’s magazine, then opens his map. —Okay, he says, —if we’re in Missouri, then Arkansas is next.

He traces his finger along the route. —And after that, Oklahoma. He smiles. —Now Oklahoma. There’s a state. You’re going to love Oklahoma. Let’s see how far it is.

Alice bends over the map with him as he inches his knuckle along the blue line. Each small interval is approximately sixty miles, and there are just short of seven of them from the border of Missouri to Oklahoma.

—Six times seven, he says, and stops. —Thirty-six, he says after a moment, —so that means three hundred and sixty miles. That’s not so far.

Alice leans back; just beyond the fields outside she can see
a little suburb, a flat, treeless patch of houses that seems to grow right up out of the land, hardly distinguishable from it, as though it is all-land, houses, bushes, cars-made of the same gray substance. It is so different from their orderly white neighborhood in Ohio, with its bright green lawns and fresh white sidewalks, the grass carefully clipped every Sunday by men just like Alice’s father.

—Wait a minute, he says. —Six times seven. Six times seven.

He pulls a pen from his pocket and writes it down, 6 × 7, in the margin of the map. —Six times seven, he says again, and she wants to tell him the answer, but instead she closes her eyes and waits for it to be time for dinner. In Ohio, she thinks, under the snow, the stiff green grass is growing. In the summer, her father will cut it, and it will grow back again, and again, stiff and frozen. She half sleeps, half listens, and over the rattle of the train, she can hear her father quietly going through the multiplication tables.

The dining car is only half full when they have their dinner, and as the waiter puts down their plates, Alice watches the ice in her parents’ drinks shake with the motion of the train. —Well, her father says cheerfully, —only five hundred miles to Oklahoma. He picks up his knife and fork, and looks down at his roast beef sandwich. —You’re really going to like Oklahoma, he says to Alice. —I’ve always loved it there.

Alice’s mother looks around for an ashtray, then finally leans her cigarette on the lip of her butter plate. —You’ve never been to Oklahoma, she says.

Alice’s father puts down his silverware and places his hands on either side of his plate. Then he leans forward until his tie is almost touching his gravy.

—I’ve been to Oklahoma, he says quietly. —I was there when I was fifteen. At a basketball camp.

—Oh, she says. —Well, I didn’t know that. You never told me that. I can’t see why you would expect me to know that. —I’ve told you, he says. —I’ve probably told you ten times. Twenty.

Alice watches a family across the aisle from them, and wonders what they’re talking about. There is a girl about her age, and a boy, younger, and she wonders how life would have been different if she’d had a brother, but she cannot imagine another presence in their house; though it is large, it seems barely able to contain each of them as it is.

Alice’s father picks up his fork. —Oklahoma, he says, —is a wonderful place. I think I had the best time of my life there. The best.

He cuts his sandwich in half and watches gravy spread across the plate. —I could probably do very well for myself there. I could probably make a very satisfactory life for myself there. Maybe, he says, —maybe I’ll look into it.

—Fine, Alice’s mother says. —And we can all eat dust.

She smiles at Alice. —Oklahoma is a state full of dust, she says. —Nothing but dust. And dirt.

Alice’s father looks up. —I didn’t say we would all go, he says, and he stares at Alice’s mother a moment as Alice watches her peas tremble in their small bowl. She looks up as the waiter approaches and stands quietly by their table.

—Excuse me, he says apologetically to Alice’s mother. He hands her an ashtray. —I’m afraid we don’t allow smoking in here. He puts the ashtray down, then leaves, and Alice’s father watches as she puts her cigarette out.

—Probably everyone was complaining, he says. —Probably everyone in the whole car. He smiles as he stabs his fork into his sandwich.

* * *

After dinner, they retreat to their cabin and sit nervously on the bolted furniture. All they can see of the world outside is a square of darkness in the window: no moon, no stars, not even the reflections of houses, or city lights, just a square of black, and in it their own reflections, trapped like ghosts in the glass. Finally, Alice’s mother stands.

—I think I’ll go to the smoker, she says. —At least I can find some conversation.

When she is gone, Alice’s father smiles. —Isn’t this fun? he says.

—I guess so, Alice says. She pats at the hard bottom bed of the bunk and sits, then leans back against the wall with her book.

—Hey, her father says, —you don’t have to stay in here with me. There’s lots to do on a train. You just have to know how to find it.

He gazes at her until she puts down her book and leaves the cabin.

She walks down the center of the aisle, not touching the seats as she passes them, maintaining her balance by shifting her weight with the movement of the train. She stops in the cold breeze way between the cars; when the train comes to a jerk in the tracks, the hooks that hold the cars together rattle but hold fast, and she wonders what would happen if the train came apart right here, right underneath her; she would have to think quickly, and leap for either car, but she has a crazy vision of herself straddling the empty air between them, stretching wide as they separate.

Just outside the door to the smoker, Alice can see her mother, sitting, with her back to Alice, at a little white table, across from a man in a dark sweater. As Alice approaches,
she watches the man watch her mother; he smiles every now and then, lifts his eyebrows, nods. His eyes move across her face, down to her hands, back up again.

—I could do a perfect figure eight, Alice hears as she approaches. Her mother takes a drag of her cigarette and smoke rises, a delicate frame around her head. —I was, in my way, she goes on, —a kind of prodigy.

The man nods and looks around the room. When Alice stops at the table, he smiles vacantly, and Alice’s mother turns.

—Oh, she says. —Alice. Alice, this is Mr. Gregg. He’s traveling to Albuquerque. On business.

—Alice, he says. —What a pretty name.

—Yes, says Alice’s mother. —Isn’t it?

She puts her cigarette out and smiles at Alice. —It’s a family name, she says, but Alice cannot remember anyone in her family named Alice. The man looks out through the window at the dark screen of the world passing by, and when he looks back, he seems surprised to see Alice still there.

He smiles grimly. —Well, Alice, he says, —what do you want to be when you grow up?

Alice looks at her mother and tries to imagine what she herself will be, what she will do when she is that age; probably by then she will smoke, and she will be married to a man much like her father, and in the summers she will probably take vacations with him and their little quiet children. She closes her eyes a moment and tries again: instead of all that, she will have a different life, one in which she will doze after she has had her breakfast, and in the evening she will lie down after supper. She will have a cat that sits quietly in her lap, and when it dies, she will get another.

—I don’t know, she says finally. —A nurse.

—Ah, the man says. —The medical profession.

Her mother smiles at her. —That’s what I wanted to be, too,
she says. —A nurse. She looks at the man. —And I could have been. I would have made a good nurse.

She stops and taps a cigarette from her pack. The man picks up his lighter, but she looks down at the cigarette and does not bring it to her lips.

—I’d still like to be a nurse, she says. —But it’s too late for that.

—Oh now, he says. —It’s never too late. Not for a woman like yourself. You’re still quite a young woman.

Alice’s mother looks at him and smiles. —Really? she says.

—Oh yes, he says. —Oh yes. He flicks his lighter and Alice watches the flame pass across her mother’s dark eyes.

Her father is in the chair by the window when she returns to the cabin; the map and newspapers are spread open around him on the floor and in his lap is the Kansas City paper. From the door Alice can see the photo of the hotel with the white circle around the window. He looks around at her and drops the paper on the floor.

—Where’s your mother? he asks.

—Smoking, Alice says. —She’s still in the smoking car.

—I suppose she’s making friends, he says, and Alice nods.

—Your mother is a very friendly woman, he says, gazing at her, and she can tell he is waiting for a response, but she sits on her bed and picks up her book. Finally he reaches for one of the newspapers on the floor, and over the top of her book Alice watches him read: his eyes run quickly across the paper and all the way down it, but when he finishes, he comes back to the top, without turning the page. He is waiting for Alice’s mother to come back; he is waiting for something to happen, Alice can tell, and she wants to be far away when it does, but already she knows that it will not happen without her; if she is gone, it will wait for her to return–to come out of the bathroom, or to arrive home from
school, or to wake up–and while it may not be something too terribly awful–a word, a look, a small mean flick of the hand–she will be there for it; she is a part of it by now. There was a time when her parents, having quarreled, would turn to her with sad shocked looks for all that they asked her to witness, but now it goes on as though she is not even there. Her father abandons the paper and looks out the window; the only light is that of the train, cutting through the black country. She wonders if he is thinking of the life he might have had in Oklahoma, or of her mother, or if he thinks nothing at all, his mind an empty field, crossed only from time to time by a few thoughts rattling over a rusty track.

By the time her mother comes back, Alice has finished her book, and her father is cheerful again, back to plotting out their trip. He looks up and smiles briefly at Alice’s mother as she sits on the chair by the bed. She picks up a magazine and stares at it for a while, then closes it.

—Do you remember, she says to him, —that I wanted to be a nurse?

He looks up from the map and makes great show of closing it up carefully, along its original folds; when he is done, he smiles. —No, he says. —I don’t remember that.

—Well, she says, —I do.

He looks out the window, and she nods. —You know, she says, —I am still relatively young. I am still a relatively young woman.

He does not answer, but his lips are moving and as he gazes at the passing scenery Alice tries to tell what he is saying. After a moment she realizes he is going through the multiplication tables.

She puts her book down and goes into the tiny bathroom to brush her teeth for bed, and one by one they all go into the
bathroom, then emerge in their nightclothes. Alice’s father climbs onto the top bunk first, and her mother follows. Just before her mother pulls her leg up, Alice sees at her ankle a fine spray of blond hairs that she has missed with her razor. She wonders what her mother was thinking that day, leaning over her long white legs; if perhaps she was thinking of all the things she might be doing instead of that. Alice turns her face to the wall, wondering who has slept in these beds before them, what family took this room before tonight. She concentrates on not listening, but it’s an unnecessary effort: her parents make no noise at all; they lie above her like stones, and she cannot even hear them breathe.

She wakes to darkness, not knowing if it’s the jerking of the train that woke her, or her mother, who is in the chair near the bed, watching her. Her hair is outlined in the feeble light from the window, and her eyes are dark smudges in the dark circle that is her face. She leans forward and touches Alice’s arm gently.

—You know, she says softly, —I really did want to be a nurse. I wanted to work in a hospital. I really did. It’s not just something I made up out there like you did. I really wanted that.

Alice closes her eyes and feels the train move underneath her. She wonders what state they’re in now, what city it is that casts the dirty light over the fields outside. She wonders how long it will take them to reach Oklahoma, and she hears and does not hear her mother move from the chair; she feels and does not feel her mother’s cold lips on her forehead, her hand smoothing her hair back; she sleeps and does not sleep, so that when her mother leaves the room, she knows it but does not hear her go. Above her, her father finally moves, turning over on the thin mattress, and Alice can feel
that he is awake. When she falls asleep again, she dreams she is in a tall empty room without windows, her feet buried in sand and her face in flames.

She wakes with a sudden jolt of the train and she is startled by her first sight: the world rushing by in a cluttered blur of objects. Then she remembers where she is and closes her eyes to try to recall that moment of opening her eyes and not knowing where she was, but it is too late. All around her on the train, people are waking to a world that is not their own, and for just a moment they forget everything: husbands, lovers, children, wives, even the destinations toward which they rush with such determination; then they look around; their eyes fall on their clothing, the faces of their children, their familiar suitcases and books, all of the things they carry with them. The mattress shifts above her and she wonders what it must be like for her parents to wake to each other every day–if, for only a moment, it is a surprise. She opens her eyes again and sees her mother’s face dangling over the mattress, smiling upside down at her, and she can hear her father brushing his teeth in the bathroom. He comes out dressed, smiling tightly.