French Braid(64)

“Baltimore next,” a conductor finally called—not over the loudspeaker but in person, standing at the front of the car. He began making his way closer, plucking ticket stubs from above certain seats as he approached.

Candle turned toward Mercy. “Grandmom?” she said. “Time to wake up.”

Her grandmom slept on. Candle gave her a light tap on the wrist. “We’re coming into the station, Grandmom.”

Still no response. Candle bent closer and started to speak again, but what she saw made her draw back sharply. Mercy’s eyes were just the slightest bit open. There was the narrowest slit of glassy shine beneath each lid.

Candle jumped up and into the aisle, bruising her thigh where it hit against the arm of her seat. She stumbled forward to intercept the conductor, who was reaching for a ticket stub above the mirror woman’s head. He was a large, slow-moving man with warm brown skin; she had a feeling she could rely on him. “Mister Conductor?” she said.

“Yes’m?” he said. He had one of those deep, furry, comforting voices.

“I can’t get my grandmom to wake up.”

He didn’t seem to find this alarming. He just said, “Well, now. Let’s see what we can do about that,” and she turned to indicate her grandmother.

Mercy was still leaning her head against the window. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if they’d found her sitting up by then, calmly returning her handkerchief to her purse! Wouldn’t Candle have felt foolish; oh, wouldn’t she have loved to feel foolish! Instead she stood aside to make room for the conductor, and he leaned forward—still not appearing alarmed—and picked up Mercy’s wrist and thought a moment. “So,” he said finally. Then he said, “So, tell you what, little lady. You come up front with me till she’s feeling a mite livelier.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Candle asked.

“Why, she is plumb wore out, looks like to me,” he said. “New York’ll do that to a person.”

“N’Yawk” was how he pronounced it. He made the city sound kinder-hearted than she thought it probably was.

“But is she going to be okay?” she asked him.

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. You just come on with me.”

So she followed him, feeling glad beyond words to get away from her grandmom but also guilty about feeling glad. He led her into the next car forward, where he stopped at the first seat on the right and motioned her into it. Beside her were someone’s belongings, maybe his—a canvas zip bag and a lunchbox. “You just settle yourself here,” he said. “I won’t be any time a-tall.”

Then he left. Watching his back as he lumbered on toward the front of the car, she already missed him.

After that there was some confusion. Partly this was because they entered a tunnel, which she knew meant they were nearing their stop, and the windows grew dark and people started standing up and fetching down their luggage. Then the conductor came back and asked her who would be meeting her upstairs in the station. Or no, maybe first the train came to a halt, still inside the tunnel, and then he came back to ask who’d be meeting her. “My dad, I think,” she said, and he said, “What’s your dad’s name, honey?” and she said, “Kevin Lainey,” and he went away again. But now that she thought about it, “Kevin Lainey” didn’t sound quite right. It was like when you repeat a word too many times and it begins to sound foreign. Was her dad’s name Kevin Lainey? The train was too quiet, lacking not only the hum of the tracks but the rush of the air conditioner, and the car began to grow hot. Then a man came on the loudspeaker—not her conductor but somebody else—to say they would be approaching the station momentarily. People were murmuring; people were restless, and they went on standing in the aisle. A baby started fussing in an itchy, chafing way. Finally the train began moving again and the AC began blowing and they slid out into the light, the lovely late-afternoon light, and the train slowed to a stop and the people in the aisle pressed forward. But the loudspeaker came back on and said the doors wouldn’t be opening quite yet. There would be a brief delay. More murmurs. Now some people did sit back down, but most remained standing, one so close to Candle’s seat that the sleeve of his folded raincoat kept brushing against the side of her head. She thought that if she couldn’t get off the train this instant she would snap like a branch that had been bent and bent and bent; she couldn’t endure it anymore. But then, oh! Her conductor. Her dear, dear conductor, squeezing past the people in the aisle and plodding toward her. “All right, little lady?” he asked her.

“What about my grandmom?”

“They’re seeing to her right now,” he said, “and she is fine and dandy. You just come with me and we’ll get you out of here.”

She should have reminded him that the doors were still shut, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to believe that the two of them could approach the nearest door and it would magically open only for them. And that is what happened. They went out to the space between cars and they turned toward the door to the platform and just like that, it slid open and she stepped straight off the train and into her father’s arms.



* * *



—

He told her things were all right now and they would go find their car now and the two of them would head home now to tell her mom. She didn’t ask what it was they were going to tell her. She somehow knew. She walked beside him toward the stairs without saying a word, without shedding a tear until he said, “I am so, so sorry you had to go through this, Candle girl.”