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? Annie, on her way upstairs to read Faulkner, said to herself, “the odor of aging female flesh,” and found some recompense in the phrase for the long, annoying dinner.
Her mother, in the kitchen with the dishes, understood that the question that made her stand stock-still, the water running over her hands, rose out of her sudden solitude, out of the momentarily silenced house, the midwinter darkness at the window over the sink. She understood-since she had had these moments a dozen times at least since Jacob went over-that there was no premonition in it, only a sudden surfacing of what was, of course, a constant fear: What was he doing right now, as she rinsed out the good crystal in the sink, wearing the blouse she’d worn to Mass this morning, although she’d put on slacks before dinner, the house silent around her, the boys’ room empty above her, Annie reading, Clare in the car with her husband and Pauline, what was Jacob doing right now, on the other side of the world (world without grace, without fair measure, without evenhandedness, as far as she could tell)? What was he doing, her firstborn, her mildest child, and did he need her?
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 Annie and little Clare’s breathless entrance into the world. Mr. Persichetti’s strong arms.
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-Annie’s Christmas gift to her the year they had seen it. She dried her hands, turned to gather the plates from the kitchen table. There was enough of the roast for the girls’ sandwiches tomorrow. Pauline had been garrulous tonight-the three drinks had done it. She was no thinner than she used to be, but age was making her gaunt, hollowing her cheeks, darkening the circles under her eyes. Mary Keane carried the dishes to the sink. Upstairs, Annie turned a page. Across the hall, her brothers’ room was empty. On the boulevard, the bus behind them lit the rearview mirror above Clare’s head. Pauline presented her cheek to the girl for a kiss and then held up her gloved hand and told John Keane to stay where he was, she could open her own door, thank you.
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 Annie had seemed pleased with the loopy earrings that were certainly not to Pauline’s taste, but that the girl at Lord amp; Taylor had said were just right for teenagers. (“Something for my niece,” Pauline had said, a little white lie that she had been telling salesclerks and strangers for so long now, she no longer noticed it herself, or questioned its meaning. Something for my little niece, for my nephew in college, for my sister’s boy in Vietnam.) She was a black girl, the one behind the counter at Lord amp; Taylor-which wasn’t as nice as it used to be-and Pauline had asked for her advice in defiance of her own expectation that the girl wouldn’t know anything, would most likely respond with a dumb or indignant look, as if puzzled by Pauline’s strange notion that the people behind the counter were supposed to help the people on the other side. (Or so she had put it at dinner tonight, telling the story.) But it turned out the girl was actually quite gracious, looked something like Leslie Uggams, and so added to the pleasure of the nice conversation they’d had (“Something for my niece. A teenager”), and to the satisfaction that Annie had indeed approved of the gift, was the nice story she was able to make out of it all at the dinner table tonight, one that led to all kinds of reminiscence about how gracious salesclerks used to be and remember when you could just say, I think I’ll have it sent?
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 dinner tonight-feel safe riding the subway at any hour. That was over now. There was a drunk at the back of the bus, muttering angrily to himself. There was a fat Spanish woman nodding to sleep across the aisle. The familiar world was slowly being overrun by strangers. The smell of odd spices drifted into her apartment at all hours now, even clung to her clothes. Courtesy-a man holding a door for you, tipping a hat-was long gone. You could not take it for granted that anyone spoke English.
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?”