All Adults Here(6)

* * *



—

Other girls—the girls she had been friends with until very recently, the ones who drank the cold coffee from their parents’ abandoned mugs on the kitchen table and sometimes even an inch of vodka pilfered from the freezer—might have hidden in the bathroom at the opportune moment and then leapt off in a place that sounded more exciting, like Rome (even if it was Rome, New York) or Niagara Falls (even though she didn’t have a raincoat and was too young to gamble), but Cecelia didn’t want her parents to worry. Especially now. What would happen if she didn’t get off the train? Cecelia couldn’t quite picture it—Astrid would no doubt know just what to do, how to stop the train, how to scour the platforms for the next dozen stops. She probably had a walkie-talkie in her junk drawer that could reach the conductor personally. And then Cecelia would be in trouble, and her parents would have to jump on the next train together and they would fight and then they’d be at the Big House and fight some more about whose fault the whole thing was, without ever figuring out that it was actually their fault, if you got down to it. Regardless, she had only forty dollars and a credit card that went straight to her parents’ bank account, and so even if she didn’t mind the idea of stressing everybody out, it wouldn’t last long. She wasn’t built for life on the lam.

The Clapham station was just a long platform with tracks on either side, a mouth with braces. The Hudson River moved swiftly alongside. Cecelia humped her enormous suitcases onto the platform with the conductor’s help and tried not to die of embarrassment as he called her grandmother’s name, his booming voice carrying over the hum of the train and the sounds of passing cars and birds twittering overhead. The station was up a long, precarious flight of stairs, that’s where the waiting room was, with benches made of wood slats. That was probably where Astrid was right now. There was no one else in sight. Some people found cities scary, Cecelia knew, but those people had been swayed by misleading statistics and Batman movies. There was nothing frightening about being in a place where you were always surrounded by hundreds of people—there was always someone nearby who could hear you scream. Cecelia knew, because she was a modern girl, that her race and economic status meant that not only could someone hear her scream, but that someone would also be likely to help. It was also true that, because she was a girl, her parents had taught her to carry her house keys in between her fingers like Wolverine, just in case.

The conductor called her gammy’s name again—“Ast-rid Stri-ick!” as though her gammy were the only contestant on the game show Who Wants to Take Care of This Minor? Cecelia laughed nervously, knowing full well that her grandmother had never been late for anything in her entire life.

“I’m sure she’s upstairs; she must just be in the bathroom.” Cecelia crossed her arms over her chest. Everyone else had already disembarked and trotted happily up the stairs into their loved ones’ waiting arms, or their cars, or Spiro’s, which was one block farther from the water.

The conductor did not smile. Instead, he checked his watch. “We’re now holding up the train, ma’am.”

Cecelia was just about to ask him why on earth he would call a thirteen-year-old “ma’am” when she saw her grandmother running down the stairs, her purse flapping behind her like a taupe leather cape.

“There she is, she’s right there,” Cecelia said, so relieved that she thought she might cry. Once Astrid got to the platform, she waved with both arms until the second she was close enough to touch her granddaughter, whom she then gripped on the biceps and kissed on the forehead. They were more or less the same height now, with the balance tipped slightly in favor of youth.

“You may release her now, sir,” Astrid said. “Mission accomplished.”

The conductor turned on his heel with a small nod, and a moment later, the train pulled out of the station, as if in a huff.

“Hi, Gammy,” Cecelia said.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Astrid said. “I saw someone get hit by a bus today.”

Cecelia’s eyes widened. “Like, a person?”

“A person. A woman my age. I’ve known her for most of my life. So I’m feeling a little bit scrambled. Do you know how to drive, by any chance?” Astrid pushed her sunglasses up so they sat on the top of her head. Her eyes did look a bit swimmy, and for a moment, Cecelia wished herself on the other side of the platform, heading back in the opposite direction.

“I’m thirteen.”

“I know how old you are. I taught your father how to drive manual when he was eleven.” Astrid pointed. “We did parallel parking right over there, on the next street, next to the river.” She mimed a car driving down the embankment and falling into the water. “Ha! Splash!” Nicky was the youngest of his siblings and had done everything early. The family lore was that if Elliot, the eldest, did something at six, Nicky would do it at three, with Porter doing it somewhere in the middle. Being in the middle meant no one remembered anything except as a foggy mist, just the most general idea that Porter had been there. That was sometimes how Cecelia felt about her parents, too, though of course she was an only child and they had no one else to pay attention to, other than themselves.

Cecelia cringed. “I don’t have a car. Obviously. I mean, even my parents don’t have a car.” It was warm, too warm to be standing in the full sun. It hadn’t seemed so hot in Brooklyn. Cecelia was wearing a sweater and she wanted to take it off, but she already had the two suitcases plus her backpack and she didn’t want more to carry. “Who got hit? Did they die?”