One hour: her last conscious thought before the rhythm of the rails lulled her to sleep.
When she awoke, it was with the odd, dreamy sense that her wish had been granted, that the train, whose destination was Penn Station, would make an exception and take her to Grand Central, as it had when she was a girl, where her mother would be waiting at the information kiosk beneath the gold clock. Even more bizarre, her mother would still be forty-six. Damned awkward, that part, being older than your own mother. But otherwise it was a sweet fantasy, and Sarah dreamily indulged it. Maybe they’d both move to New Mexico and live in the desert together. By the time the train pulled into the city this lovely vision, instead of diminishing, had become even more powerful, so intense, in fact, that Sarah was actually surprised to realize it was Penn Station, not Grand Central.
She caught a cab and gave the turbaned driver the address of her hotel, but when they passed Grand Central, she changed her mind and told him to pull over. Though she hadn’t been inside the terminal in four decades, it was just as she remembered it. The kiosk still stood in the center of the great hall beneath the four-sided gold clock, and there a middle-aged woman, her voice rising in anger, was arguing with an older woman who was inside the kiosk giving out information. How many times had Sarah, as a girl, witnessed her mother, clearly in the wrong but still adamant, having just such altercations with functionaries? Why, this woman wanted to know, would the man at the hotel have instructed her to go to Grand Central if it wasn’t the right place? Was it Sarah’s imagination, or was her voice identical in tone and timbre to her mother’s?
“You must’ve misunderstood him,” the clerk ventured to guess. “If you want to go to Long Island, you need the LIRR out of Penn.”
“I didn’t misunderstand,” the traveler insisted. “Don’t tell me I did. You weren’t even there.”
No, she wasn’t there, the other woman conceded. She was here, and she’d been here, working in this very information kiosk, for the past ten years and knew which trains ran where. “You want the Long Island Railroad,” she said. “That runs out of Penn Station, whether you want it to or not.”
Whereupon her adversary turned to Sarah and said, “Do you believe this?”
Though they were the same height, she had the distinct impression that the woman was looking down at her, as you would at a child, and while Sarah saw little physical resemblance to her mother, she recognized her manic exasperation and half expected her to grab her hand when she stormed out.
“You want the Long Island Railroad,” the clerk called after her, then looked at Sarah, assuming she was next in line. When their eyes met, it was as if she’d been talking to her all along. Which was when Sarah suddenly knew where she was going.
LIKE THE SURROUNDING TOWN, the Sundry Arms had fallen on hard times. Now called just the Arms Apartments, its residents were black and Hispanic, its concrete courtyard weedy with neglect. There was also a smell Sarah wasn’t sure she’d ever encountered before, which had nothing to do with cooking or living or, for that matter, dying. After a lifetime in Thomaston, she thought she knew the odor of poverty, but this was different. Stagnancy? Hopelessness? Rage? The courtyard pool had been filled in and a makeshift playground set up, though the slide listed to one side and the seat of the rusted swing dangled from a single chain. Filthy, discolored toys were strewn everywhere, and graffiti bloomed on the interior walls. Towels and sheets were draped over the railings.
Sarah had forgotten that each apartment door at the Sundry Arms had been painted a different bright color. Many were now wide open, and some sported round holes where the knobs had been, a sad acknowledgment that there was nothing inside worth stealing. The nearest apartment looked more like a storeroom than someone’s dwelling. Inside, the furniture was piled high with stacks of clothing, both children’s and adults’, organized by type—undergarments, shirts, pants, outerwear and so forth. Up against the far wall was a mound of what had to be hundreds of pairs of shoes. Did someone live here, or was this some sort of communal room where stolen or donated items were collected? And for what purpose? This was much, much worse, Sarah couldn’t help thinking, than anything you’d find back home on the Hill, and she now understood why the taxi driver had said, “You sure this is the place you want, lady?” when he dropped her off.
It wasn’t as if she’d expected everything to be the same. The Sundry Arms had been sold a year after her mother and Harold died, and a lawyer had called her a few times in the interim. By virtue of their recent marriage, Sarah had stood to inherit part of the complex, but Harold had a daughter of his own, and besides, the place had been mortgaged three times, so the bank would be first in line. In the end the property had sold for half what was due on the loans, which meant that everybody had lost. It now looked like there’d been no winners in the forty years since.
The apartment her mother had rented was at the far end on the second floor, and Sarah smiled when she saw it still had a bright blue door. Except for Harold’s, which was really two units, her mother’s had always been the best, and looked like it still might be. There was a window box outside, and the flowers blooming there were the only living, growing things visible, unless you counted the grubby, largely unattended children. One tiny kid with coffee-colored skin and a runny nose had forced his head between the upstairs railings and was crying in a language Sarah didn’t recognize for someone to extricate him.
Sarah had no idea how long she’d been standing there, taking it all in, before she was startled by a voice at her elbow.
“You from the state?” said a small, round black woman of indeterminate age. “You look loss.”
“I feel lost,” Sarah admitted. She’d been so sure at Grand Central that coming here was the right thing, as if her mother had left a trail of bread crumbs for her to follow.
“Who you here for?”
“No one,” Sarah told her. “I used to live in that apartment, actually. Summers, with my mother.”
“Musta been a while ago,” the woman said, not disbelieving her exactly, just letting Sarah know that her story needed some work. Several curious children of both genders and half a dozen mixed races toddled over. A tall, lanky black girl who was maybe twelve looked on from the doorway of the apartment crammed with all the clothing and shoes. Why wasn’t she in school?
“I was thinking about renting an apartment, actually,” Sarah told the woman, immediately regretting the emphasis and realizing she’d probably offended her. She’d been thinking about renting until she saw the skin color of the people living there. That’s how it must have sounded.
But if the woman took offense, she gave no sign. “Go ’cross the street. Sundry Gardens,” she suggested, then consulted her watch. “Fact, you bess get goin’. Doan mean to be unpolite, but the gangstas all be wakin’ up soon.”
“Gangsters?” Sarah said, not sure she’d heard right.
“Wannabes, most of ’em,” the woman acknowledged. “But aroun’ here? If that’s what you wannabe, that’s what you end up bein’.”
“What if you’re a girl?” Sarah smiled at the lanky girl in the doorway, who surprised her by smiling back.
“If you smart, you learn quick.” She followed Sarah’s gaze and turned to regard the girl. “You doan wannabe nothin’. You juss be.” She said this loud enough for the girl to hear, and Sarah couldn’t help thinking this was for the girl’s benefit, suggesting maybe she wasn’t as smart as she needed to be.
AT THE OFFICE of the Sundry Gardens, a tough-looking woman roughly Sarah’s age, talking with a lighted cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, seemed shocked that she’d been across the street. “Lucky you made it out alive. It’s Banger Central over there.”
From where Sarah stood at the desk she could see into the adjacent living quarters, where a teenage boy with a pimply face was stretched out on a sofa. The layout, from what she remembered, was a mirror image of Harold Sundry’s office-apartment. “Banger Central?”
“Gangbange
rs,” the woman explained, ash from her cigarette falling onto the registration form. “Wait till sundown. They come out like roaches, hang out down at the corner in front of the old gas station. Conduct their business right out in the open. The cops drive by every hour or two, pretend they give a shit. The real fun begins after midnight. Hope you don’t mind foul language. Muthafuckin’ this and muthafuckin’ that, calling each other nigger. Shoot you if you did.”
Sarah smiled, remembering how Harold, forty years ago, would open his window late at night and call across the avenue, “Kiss my ass, Elaine.”
“Anyhow, I’m putting you in back where it’s quiet. Quieter. So, is your husband dying or what?”
“I’m sorry?” Sarah said, brought up short. Had Lou had another spell—how would this woman know?
“Women like you, the ones renting by the week? Their husbands are usually in the oncology unit. The motels near the hospital are more expensive. That’s not you, huh?”
Sarah shook her head.
The woman waited for her to elaborate, and when she didn’t, pushed the paperwork forward for her signature. “Read this,” she said, pointing to the asterisked paragraph that explained the refund policy. “You may think I don’t mean it, but I do.”
That she said “I” instead of the customary “we” made Sarah wonder. “Are you the owner?”
“Yeah. I must look unlucky, huh?”
Sarah considered telling her that unlucky was across the street, but just pushed the signed form back, along with her credit card. “Your last name wouldn’t be Sundry, would it?”
“Used to be. I inherited the place from my mother when she smoked herself into an early grave.” She stubbed out her cigarette so she could run the card through her machine. “She got it in the settlement when she divorced my old man. He owned that shithole across the street, back when it was white. Got himself a snootful one night and drove into a tree when I was still a kid. People are mostly fools. Maybe you noticed.”
Sarah said she had and looked right at her when she said it, but Harold’s daughter didn’t catch on. Indeed, she seemed pleased that they were philosophically compatible. “You decide to stay beyond the week, which you won’t, I can probably make you a better deal. I’m putting you on the second floor because my grandson’s a Peeping Tom,” she said, handing Sarah her key. The boy in the next room had to have heard, but he didn’t react. “Draw your curtains anyway, ’cause he can climb like a monkey. It’s his one skill.” Sarah had gotten as far as the office door when the woman said, “Thomaston.” She’d lit another cigarette and through the smoke was studying the personal data on the form. “Where’s that?”
“Upstate.”
“Why’s it ring a bell?”
“The woman who was in the car with your father the night he ran into that tree used to live there,” she said. “She was my mother.”
The woman’s mouth opened but nothing came out. It was still open when Sarah closed the office door.
GIVEN THE PROXIMITY of gangbangers and voyeurs, Sarah slept surprisingly well, a deep dreamless slumber from which she awoke refreshed. She rented a car, drove to the cemetery and found the stone that marked the grave where her mother and Harold Sundry lay side by side. She didn’t remember much about the burial, just how bitterly cold it had been. Cold enough to freeze the tears to her cheeks, if she’d cried, but she hadn’t. To her astonishment, it was her father who’d completely lost control, breaking down in violent, angry sobs. It had been the first of many breakdowns. He would never again be in charge of anything, not a class, not his daughter, not even himself. He left Thomaston shortly after her graduation and took a job clerking at a used-book store in Albany, where he died three short years later. But in a sense she buried them both that day.
After laying a wreath, Sarah drove toward the shore through some of the old neighborhoods where she’d babysat during those long-ago summers. The houses didn’t look nearly as grand as then, when they’d been vacation homes. Many now had a run-down, year-round feel, and the vehicles parked among the weeds were mostly pickup trucks and windowless vans that sported logos of the sort her mother used to design; their wheel wells were rich with salt rust. Money, it seemed, had found another outlet.
After a while she drove back into town, looking for traces of her mother’s spirit. The restaurant where Sarah had fainted when her mother told her she was marrying Harold was still open but under a different name, and the old textile mill where she’d rented studio space had been razed. The supermarket where they’d gone for weekly groceries now felt like an extension of the Arms, its produce as brown as its customers, its shelves stocked with items long past their sell-by dates, though apparently good enough for poor people. There Sarah bought cereal, milk and orange juice, bread and cheese, enough to get her through a day or two. By the time she returned to the Sundry Gardens she felt utterly dispirited, wondering what had possessed her to pay for an entire week. The day she’d just spent was more than sufficient to convince her this was a mistake. Yesterday, her anticipation had been palpable. It had felt like the children’s game where some object is hidden and one child is given clues by the others how to find it. You’re getting warmer…warmer…even warmer. That’s how Sarah had felt on the LIRR. Pulling up in front of the Arms, she’d been so certain—You’re scalding hot!—that she hadn’t really seen where she was, what she was looking at. Even inside the complex, with the squalor of that courtyard so conspicuous, how her heart had leapt at the sight of that blue door! Later, crossing the street to Sundry Gardens, she had again heard those voices, mocking now: You’re getting cooler…cooler…cold. Today they’d whispered throughout her travels and, when she returned to her apartment and locked the door against the outside world, announced gleefully You’re like ice!
Shut up, she thought. Who asked you?
More than anything she wanted to call home, to tell her husband and son to expect her return shortly. Maybe she’d spend a night or two in the city, like she’d originally planned. What prevented her from making this call, she supposed, was pride. After explaining to everyone that she needed to be alone, she hated to admit she didn’t know how to go about it. Not that Lou would have cared. He’d be relieved and overjoyed to see her, beyond grateful that things were returning to normal. And Owen, very much his father’s son, would be glad, too, for many of the same reasons. It was Tessa she’d have trouble facing. They’d always been friends, but over the years, since Big Lou’s death, had grown ever closer. Just how close was, of necessity, their secret. Though she’d never understood why, Sarah had long known that Lou distrusted his mother and was suspicious of her intentions. Once, before they were married, he’d accused her of planning to sell Ikey’s the minute his father was “out of the way,” and Sarah had been hard pressed to persuade him that the opposite was true, that Tessa was merely trying to insulate the store against the terrible eventuality that her husband’s cancer might return. When Lou finally understood how wrong he’d been, he was mortified and for some time thereafter racked by guilt for having believed his mother capable of such treachery, but before long other and different suspicions returned. After they were married, when Sarah and Tessa spent time together, he always wanted to know what they’d talked about, as if convinced his mother was warning her against him, though nothing could have been more remote from the truth.
It was true, though, that Tessa Lynch’s confidences usually coincided with those times when her son was most troubled, a spell bearing down or having just occurred. The most dramatic of these had happened shortly after Big Lou’s death. His passing had hit them all hard, but for many months both women had wondered if Lou would ever bounce back, and that was when Tessa decided to tell her about Dec Lynch. Sarah had long feared there’d been something between them, yet it turned out that she’d had it all wrong. Dec had been Tessa’s first lover, before she’d even met Big Lou, who at the time was still trapped on his parents’ failing farm. Dec had recently returned to Thomaston after being dis
charged from the army, and according to Tessa everything about him was dangerous and exciting. Her father, having heard all about him, had forbidden her to have anything to do with the Lynch boy, but when Dec bought a brand-new Indian motorcycle and offered her a ride, she’d immediately climbed on. And by the end of that first ride she’d decided she wanted everything to do with Dec Lynch. Which meant she’d have to lie. To avoid scrutiny they’d usually meet somewhere downtown and roar off on the Indian. Later, Dec would drop her off a few blocks from home so her parents wouldn’t connect her return to the rumble of the motorcycle in the quiet night.
She was a natural the way she rode, Dec told her, leaning into the curves instead of away, as you would if you were afraid. And when he saw she wasn’t, he couldn’t help wondering what would frighten her, so he let out the throttle. But though the Indian went like the wind, Tessa never once told him to slow down, and his inability to scare her, she thought, scared him a little. She didn’t tell Sarah about the sex, of course, but the motorcycle metaphor left no doubt in her mind that they leaned into the curves there, too. In retrospect, Tessa admitted, their affair seemed like a madness, almost viral in its feverish intensity. Had they stayed a couple, she said, they probably would’ve ended up robbing banks. Whenever they were together, a feeling of complete abandonment came over them, their individual wildness made exponential by proximity.