The Train of Small Mercies (11 page)

Ted laughed and gave Edwin a splash. “This is heaven
,
man,” Edwin said. Slowly he drifted around the perimeter of the pool. “Feel that beautiful water.”

“It feels good, man,” Ted said. “Come on in, Lolly.”

“Let me get a picture of King Neptune first,” she said. Edwin waded over to her and offered two peace signs, his eyes tiny slits in the sunlight.

“What was that yelling?” Georgia called out. She let the screen door slam harder than she meant to, then put a finger to her lips as an apology. She was wearing a white bikini that featured three large silver rings, one that connected the fabric over her breastbone, and the other two joining the fabric at each hip. She walked toward them a little sheepishly, smiling but avoiding their gazes. Even Lolly couldn't help staring so unabashedly. Georgia's full breasts swung with the precision of windshield wipers, and the curve of her waist made both Edwin and Lolly think of a guitar. Georgia was used to being stared at like this, and when she went swimming in public she was relieved when the first seconds of stunned silence were over. She let out a small laugh, as if everyone was so silly, and went up the ladder and slid in before anyone had time to recover.

After she swam to one side, Edwin turned his gaze from her and said to Lolly, “Everyone in, Lol.” Ted, Georgia, and Edwin watched as Lolly stood atop the little platform. Before she could jump, she saw the faces of the Pyle twins, Norma and Nadine, pressed against the chain-link fence.

“Hey, you two,” she called out.

“Hi,” they said in unison. “When did you get a pool?” Norma asked.

“We just got it,” Lolly said. She could feel Edwin trying to get her attention, and she knew what he was thinking:
Don't invite them over.
“We'll have to have you over for a swim sometime.”

“Today?” Norma asked.

“Not today, honey,” Lolly said. “Today we have company.”

Georgia waved at the girls, and the girls eagerly returned it.

“So we'll see you later,” Edwin said. But the girls didn't move.

“It's fine, Ed,” Lolly said, and then made her splash, which, as far as she could tell, was the biggest one all day.

A
fter a quick run-through of the Botanic Garden, Maeve took a bus to Union Station. The train was scheduled to arrive around four-thirty, but even now, inside the cavernous hall, underneath a shimmering, barrel-shaped ceiling that caused Maeve to fall into a neck-craning waggle, there was a steady line of people without luggage weaving in and out between a multitude of police officers and scampering down a flight of stairs; after recovering from her awe of the place, she quickly followed. Eventually the line came to a halt, and after a few minutes she tapped the man in front of her on the shoulder; he had an earplug connected to his transistor radio and took a moment to realize.

“This is the line to see the funeral train, is it?” Maeve asked.

“I hope so,” said the man. He chomped an unlit cigar.

The line took a few steps forward and stopped again. Maeve fished out a postcard she had gotten that morning—of a Venus flytrap said to be one of the biggest in the world—to send to her sisters. She had never sent a postcard before and stared at the empty white space on the back with trepidation. In the picture the plant's “teeth” were as long as nails and terrifying, its “mouth” deep crimson inside and sprung open like a bear trap. Seeing Mr. Hinton each morning had made her think of her father more frequently than usual that week, and she was remembering how he had encouraged her to write her stories down. Maeve gripped her pen until she could feel it press against the bones of her fingers. Finally she wrote: “I was at the U.S. Botanic Garden this morning—quite lovely!—until this horrid creature nearly swallowed me whole.”

The girls would laugh at that—she could see their faces now, turning the postcard over after getting to the end of that first line and then shrieking at the insidious plant. They were all old enough not to believe it, of course, but they would be grateful for the joke all the same. “Maeve!” they would shout in gleeful surprise.

“They say the train has just left New York,” the man said, and held up his radio to explain his source. He wasn't quite ready to turn back around, but Maeve showed no interest in chatting. “What a train ride that must be,” he said before giving up.

As stories went, the idea of a giant Venus flytrap seizing her up was a trifle; she was more imaginative than that when she was still learning to write her name. But she still tingled—how long had it been since she had even
thought
anything outlandish? She leaned against the wall and continued.

“Luckily, I had my Polo mints, and nothing burns a Venus flytrap more than mints. Spit me out halfway down the hall, it did, before keeling over. All the ruckus forced the place to shut down, and now I'm wanted by the authorities for killing the bugger. If they try to contact you, tell them I'm back in Ireland as far as you know . . . and that my career killing the giant Venuses has just begun. Love, Maeve.”

It was silly business, what she had written, but at that moment Maeve could feel herself shaking slightly. Was it relief? Anxiety? She wasn't even sure, but she knew she liked the sensation. And she wondered if she could have even had such a thought if she was still in Massachusetts, where she had carried her grief around like a trunk. For the next few minutes she let a rush of emotions wash through her, and then she fell sad once more, thinking of how close she might have come to starting over here in Washington.

The line trudged forward a few steps down toward one of the train platforms—and stalled again, then started up again and stopped, and everyone resigned themselves that this was how it would be for who knew how long.

O
n the edge of town, Delores pulled into the parking lot for Weir Park. A week earlier she had read in the paper about a local soldier who was killed in Vietnam, and the man's mother was quoted about what a good father he had been to his two little boys, and that one of his favorite things to do had been to walk with them down the street to Weir Park. The paper said he had stepped on a land mine.

Generally Delores took Rebecca—and the boys, when they had become too restless—to the park a couple of blocks from their house, though increasingly it was becoming a hangout for teenagers who smoked and wore bright scarves in their hair and were perpetually barefoot. Delores had noticed how Brian and Greg would watch them, and then pretend to be looking at something else if they caught her noticing. Once, as the four of them were walking home, Brian said, “Those guys are hippies. I bet I could knock their teeth out.”

“What in the world kind of talk is that?” Delores said. “You do
not
talk that violence.”

“All they do is sit there and act weird,” Greg added; lately, a potential scolding from his mother did nothing to prevent him from speaking his mind.

“Peace, man!” mocked Brian. He then took a puff on an invisible cigarette.

“Who do you two think you are to make fun of somebody else? Do you think you're better than those young people because they dress differently? Have they done something to you to make such a violent threat like that?”

“Far out, man,” said Greg, though he had, if anything, voiced something closer to a foreign accent.

“They're hippies, Mom,” Brian said. “What do you care about hippies for?”

“I'm trying to understand how you've decided that
hippies
are somehow unworthy of basic respect. What do you even know about hippies, anyway? What do you even know that makes you so informed?”

“Dad doesn't like hippies,” Greg said. “He says they're lazy and all they do is do drugs and hang around doing nothing.”

“Well, that may be true of some of them—
some
,” Delores said, “but you can't make those kinds of sweeping statements about a whole group of people. That's ignorant. Besides, we don't make violent threats against
anyone
.”

Now, as Delores and Rebecca took in the unfamiliar park, they saw there were just two mothers with their children—a boy and two girls. One woman wore cat-eye glasses in a shade of green and smoked as she talked to the other woman, who was heavyset but appeared younger. Both wore pale sundresses, and their faces looked damp in the stifling heat. Delores and Rebecca stood on the edge and contemplated the monkey bars, a once yellow balance beam, and the sandbox, which was framed with dull, rotting boards. There was also a modest slide with glistening aluminum that looked scalding to the touch, two toddler swings—one broken—and two regular-sized swings. The other women turned to them and smiled quickly before resuming their conversation.

“Okay, Rebecca, what do you want to do first? Do you want me to push you in the swing? It's nice to be at a new park, isn't it? Isn't this fun?” Rebecca was watching the two older girls atop the monkey bars. They seemed about eight or nine years old, Delores thought. The blond girl was stroking the other girl's ponytail. The ponytailed girl seemed to belong to the woman in the glasses, since both of their chins disappeared immediately from under their mouths. The girls were giggling, and the one stroking her friend's hair was trying out an adult voice as she counseled the girl on what to do with her hair. Rebecca, who spent too much time in the company of boys punching one another on the arm and calling one another “idiot” and “retard” and generally expressing themselves in sudden barks of excitement or rage, was transfixed.

Delores whispered, “You're watching the big girls, aren't you? They look like they're having fun.” Delores gave her another moment, then scooted her along and swept her up into the one swing that fit her.

The boy had worked up a respectable pile of sand in one corner of the sandbox, and his tongue stuck out one side of his mouth as he worked.

“Big push,” Delores said. In the air Rebecca's neck twisted so that she could keep watching the girls, who seemed not to notice. Delores pushed a dozen times until she felt slightly foolish. “Well, we can do something else,” she said. She let the swing come to a stop, then lifted Rebecca out and set her down. Rebecca continued watching the girls, and finally Delores said, “Let's go see what they're doing, then. Come on.” Rebecca moved in small, hesitant steps until she and her mother were at the bottom of the monkey bars.

The girl whose hair was still being worked on was saying, “I'm going to keep growing it until it reaches my waist.”

The other girl nodded, focused on her work.

“Hello,” Delores said cheerily. She noticed that the mothers paused their conversation when they heard Delores's voice. “This is Rebecca.”

The girls said hello with little interest. “Do you want me to put you up there?” Delores asked. Rebecca could not speak.

The girl with the ponytail regarded Rebecca for the first time now and asked, “How old is she?”

Delores said to Rebecca, “How old are you?” and got no answer. “She's almost five,” she said.

“Oh,” the girl said, and seemed to do some calculation. “She can come up. This is our beauty salon.”

“A beauty salon!” Delores said. “How about that. Rebecca, would you like me to take you to the top floor of their beauty salon?” Rebecca nodded once, her mouth tucked into a tight line. Delores lifted her to the top rung and helped her get steadied on one of the bars. She let her hands go for a second, then put them back under Rebecca's shoulders. “Are you hanging on?” Delores asked, keenly aware that she was now the prime focus of the two girls and their mothers.

“Yes,” Rebecca said, with some impatience.

“Well, hold on good and tight, okay?” she said, and began to back away. In the sandbox the boy was making a grinding, mechanical noise, but otherwise the playground had become hushed. Delores stepped toward the edge, a short distance from the two women, and waited for the conversations to resume.

“She's a cutie,” the woman with glasses said.

“Oh, thanks,” Delores said. She felt conspicuous for having to stand.

“She looks like you,” the other woman said.

“Not like her brothers,” Delores said. “They look just like their father.” The women smiled and nodded.

“Molly, it looks like you have a new customer,” the woman with glasses said. “Can you say hello to your new customer?”

“I'll be with you in a minute,” Molly said sharply. The idea that she was getting backed up was rather appealing to her.

“That's nice—thank you,” Delores said. “She just loves older girls. Her two brothers are older, but they don't hold the same fascination. Not by a mile.”

“That's her brother, Lee, over there,” Molly's mother said. “She barely acknowledges him, but he doesn't seem to mind. He's always in his own little world.”

“We haven't seen you here before,” said the other woman. “We come here all the time. You didn't just move into the neighborhood, did you?”

“No,” said Delores. She had to think about what she was going to reveal. “We just happened to be out this way.”

The women nodded. It was unclear if they would go back to their conversation now. Finally Molly announced to her client, “Okay, I think we're done,” and the girl pulled her ponytail forward for inspection.

“It looks very nice,” she said in an adult, unconvinced voice. She then moved alongside Molly, becoming one of the salon workers herself, and said to Rebecca, “We're ready to take you now.”

Delores took a few steps when Rebecca didn't move or speak, but then Rebecca began to inch herself into the same position the other girl had occupied. She wasn't used to being up this high, and she studied her fingers' grip around the bar for assurance. Delores started to offer her some assistance, but she was also grateful for the brief reprieve, since she would have Rebecca the entire day.