Malorie(47)

And Mom did.

On cue, she nodded Malorie’s way and said, Those are better stories than the one I’m reading.

Now, it’s impossible not to see Mom as she might look today. Older, whiter, meeker. She must be wearing a blindfold because, even in Malorie’s imagination, she can’t have anybody look in a public place. Certainly no one she cares about.

She sees Mom, blind, reaching out across the aisle. Her fingers are white and wrinkled and she says, Do you hear that? People are talking in the cabins you pass. And when people talk, they reveal themselves. And when they reveal themselves, you need to be listening.

Malorie almost starts at the sound of voices coming from her right. Her gloved hand on the wall, she understands she has come to the series of cars with rooms, like the one Tom and Olympia are in. Here people have spaces of their own. Here people have two beds, red cushions on a bench, a mirror.

Here, too, people talk.

Malorie stops. She listens.

She hears:

“…a new start. And that means everything. Not just where we live, Judy, but how we live. And how we treat each other, too…”

Malorie asks herself if she, too, is starting over. But she knows this isn’t the case. What she’s doing is justifying all the living she’s already done.

She continues, up the hall, gloved hands sliding along both walls. The fingers of her right hand intermittently touch doors. She hears voices. A new set. She pauses. She listens.

She hears:

“…have to find a bath sooner than later…”

“…longest we’ve ever gone…”

She continues. She thinks of the dead bodies in storage. The safest two passengers on board.

Her gloved fingers touch the walls. Another door.

She hears: “…never again in my life. I mean it. No more big houses. I want us to find the smallest shack in the state to call home…”

She continues. She bumps into someone.

“Excuse me,” she says.

She has no doubt this person is eyeing her the way they did at the school for the blind. Here she stands, hoodie and gloves, blindfolded in a place where they’ve been told they don’t need to be. Long sleeves and long pants. Her hair covers her neck.

She makes to pass the person and bumps into him again.

It’s a him. She can tell. He’s soft in the middle and taller than her and he smells like a man.

“Excuse me,” she says again.

Maybe the man is old. Like Dad must be now. She recalls the first time she saw her father had aged. It was during a soccer game of Shannon’s. Malorie was in the stands with Mom and Dad, and Shannon’s team was up by five goals, and another man asked Dad if he wanted to shoot baskets on the small court beside the soccer field. Dad said sure and joined him, and Malorie watched as the two started to play one-on-one. Then the other soccer team scored, and Malorie got swept up in Shannon’s game again. When she looked back to the half-court, she saw Dad, the strongest man in the world, lean and fit, a full head of dark hair like her own, she saw Sam Walsh on the ground, one hand on his shoulder, grimacing.

She went to tell Mom, but by then Dad was already getting up. And when the other man tossed Dad the ball again, Dad made to shoot, then stopped himself. He passed the ball back and made his way to the bleachers. When he sat down beside Malorie, he said, Guess I can’t do that anymore.

Now, Malorie reaches out, and the tips of her gloved fingers touch the body before her.

“Please,” she says. But she says no more. What is this man doing? And what is she doing? Has she forgotten that, just because she’s taken every precaution to avoid the creatures, actual people have always been and will always be just as bad?

“Move,” she says.

But the man doesn’t move.

Malorie breathes in, she holds it, she breathes out. She thinks of redheaded Annette going mad, because how can she not? A blind woman gone mad. And maybe it wasn’t from the touch of a creature after all but the touch of a man.

“Please, if you would,” she says. “Move.”

Maybe the man is old. Maybe the man is asleep. Maybe his back is to her and she’s got it all wrong. Maybe he’s blindfolded, too. Maybe he’s deaf.

Maybe.

She hears no movement. She doesn’t know what else to say. She could knock on the nearest door. Call out for assistance. She could stand still until someone else enters the hall and asks the man to move for her.

The train shakes. It makes her think how feeble this all is, how everybody in the world is only on somebody else’s train, somebody else’s big idea, and how safe that person thinks is how safe it is for all.

Tom and Olympia are on the other side of this man. This man who will not move.

“Please,” she says.

She has to decide. She can’t sit still. She didn’t take her kids and leave her home and make it here just to be frightened into standing still by someone she doesn’t know. Someone she’s never seen. Someone she will never see again.

So she moves. She walks as if the man was never here. She passes where he must be. She doesn’t feel him. Doesn’t hit him. Doesn’t bump into anything at all.

She stops, reaches out behind her, feels both walls. The train rattles as she takes another step forward. She reaches out. Feels nobody. She goes the length of the hall, then back. All the way. She feels to know the doors to each cabin are closed and have been closed, since she did not hear them move. She smells the air. It still smells of a person, of a man. She can easily recall the touch of him. A bigger body. Like Dad’s was.