Wings (part two)
Not for the first time, Charles wondered if there was anything he could have done to change the outcome. He was exhausted from the mental stacking up and kicking over the last week in his mind, and so the train had easily rattled him into a doze.
As is true of all us human beings when asleep, Charles looked much older than his 13 years; the sun on his face, parchment paper in a ball next to him that had held his sandwich, Converse shoes off, legs tucked up underneath. He was traveling alone, which was unexpected and a strange feeling.
The train gave a lurch and he shifted awake, rubbing his eyes with his fists, and smoothing his cowlick. He slid the canteen out of his bag beside him, took a long swallow, and put his shoes back on while looking out the window. The landscape was getting busier with low lying houses and backyards with fences which held people living their ordinary, suburban lives. The noon sun blazed.
A young woman who had boarded the train a few stops previous, sat across from Charles and watched him. She smiled when he looked up at her.
“Hello,” she said. Her brown eyes were big and magnified into beetle-like orbs by her glasses, she had curly hair which was also brown, and gold bangles bobbed alongside her face. She wore a yellow dress with brown flowers and Doc Martens on her feet. There was a stack of books beside her and she held something about poetry in her hand, the title obscured.
“Hi,” answered Charles.
“Where are you headed today?” Her voice sounded soft and southern under the trick-track of the train car.
“Visiting Queens. On business.” He suddenly fibbed.
She stuck her bottom lip out and nodded, her beetlesque eyes glittering.
“Oh well, what kind of business, if you don’t mind me askin’.”
“I’m in Singer,” he sat up straight, “you know, sewing machines.”
“Do you make your own clothes?” she asked.
He gave a slow shake of his head, thinking it was a silly question,
“No, I’m in the warehouse. Sewing’s for girls anyhow.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said slowly, shifting in her seat and stacking her books a little neater. “A man who knows how to make something — to start and finish anything by hand — is a rare, important thing. Like say, you want to grow a potato, or a herb for cookin’. You can do that with the right soil and light and water and a little hope — all’s you need is a window box.” She paused and stared out the window, in no great hurry to get where she was going. “Or grabbing a piece of wood and making a bench for sittin’ with a couple of cinderblocks under it.”
Charles had never heard of anyone doing that with cinderblocks.
She continued, annunciating her words in an unusual fashion,
“It’s the opposite with this war; these boys think they’re out to save us and make world peace… it’s foolish. We need ‘em here, growing things. Businesses. Families. Startin’ and finishin’,” she shook her head ponderously, golden bangles bangling like a disappointed elephant. “We need more of it.”
“I suppose so,” said Charles, suddenly feeling somber.
They were quiet.
He folded his hands and looked out the window. As the train slowed, he saw:
A black and white cat sitting on a fence
A lady’s arms hanging laundry
A smudge on the inside of the dirty train car window
“I make lunches by hand,” he mumbled.
She looked at him, “Say again?”
“I make lunches by hand,” he said louder. “I scrub the sheets and all the undies by hand. I make our weekend roast chicken by hand… slappin’ stuffin’. And my sister wants to be an angel for Halloween, so I started collecting feathers. Suspect I might make that outfit for her. Not yet sure how it’ll turn out, but might even use that sewing machine.” He smiled.
The train slowed, accompanying a long quiet.
“You’re more than just a Singer man,” she pronounced, standing up and putting her books in a bag, her dress snagging around her knee high sock. She turned to him and stuck out her hand (he noted an opal ring and a slim gold one), “Yes, much more,” he shook it, standing up and feeling taller than he might have earlier that day. “Good to speak with you,” she said, turning and leaving the car, sliding the door closed behind her.
//
As the train arrived at the station in Queens, Charles knew not to look for her because he didn’t look for her anywhere. He made his way through the crowd of people receiving friends and family, hugs and handshakes and laughter — a few like him went against the tide and headed off on their own, looking to make meaning elsewhere.
//
It took him 40 minutes to walk from the station to her apartment. Her building was brick and six stories high, on the corner of a street with leafy trees and the contented quietness of burgeoning families and older couples.
He was sweating and thirsty.
He jogged across the street with his duffel bag, giving a subtle wave to the Volkswagen who was approaching quickly and bounded up the steps of the building. Looking at the register he found her:
‘GILLIAN, H’ and scanned her name and button with his fingers. He didn’t push it because she wasn’t home but he liked to find her name all the same.
He waited a few minutes for someone to leave the building, and then he took the open door. He ran the stairs up to the fifth floor and stopped at 501. The key was under the mat.
Charles dropped his duffle by the couch, took off his shoes, socks and t-shirt, filled a glass of water and opened the window above the kitchen sink. He closed it again and pulled the curtain over it, as the air was hotter outside than it was in.
Standing only in his jeans, he picked up a picture of her with him and Cecilia before Cleo was born. They were sitting on the sidewalk at the end of the driveway, outside the tiny house with the green door. He was wearing his boy-scout uniform, his knobby knees together, feet splayed. Her arm was draped casually across his shoulders and she held Cee close beside her, who wore an old-fashioned bonnet. It was a nice picture. He touched Cecilia’s face with his pinky and placed it down carefully.
He moved over to her small kitchen table under the window which faced east, and the leafy green park. He rifled through these things:
A telephone bill
A pair of undies, folded (he grimaced)
A brochure for a rally for the war in Manhattan (END VIETNAM NOW!)
A key with a tag on it and the initials ‘FR.’
Charles sipped his water and blinked and felt things he didn’t understand.
So, he turned to the fridge and wondered about groceries and if he should go out and get some, and opened it. Then he felt very tired.
He turned on a small fan that was sitting on the kitchen table and laid down on the mint green couch, his feet hanging over the end. He plumped a lacy pillow behind his head, put an arm over his eyes, and fell asleep to the sound of the fans oscillations.
He was awake before she finished turning the lock in the door but he kept his eyes shut, listening to her move and rustle around, jingling keys and a bag, and then shuffle into the living room in her inside sandals. She stood and looked at him for a few long breaths. He could see her outline (pear-shaped) through his mostly closed eyes, then she went to the kitchen for water. He turned and stretched, and sat up feeling surprised that he had slept for two hours.
“Hi baby,” she smiled, hands on wide hips from across the room. As he stood up and walked over to her, she laughed, “You’re sauntering! When did my baby start to saunter?”
She hauled him into a big hug, his chin nearly resting on the top of her head. Mumbling into his shirt she said, “When I caught sight of those big feet of yours dangling off my couch I thought some mysterious man was in my apartment waiting for me!”
“Nope, just me,” he smiled as she stepped away, drinking him in,
“Good. Where are your sisters?”
“Dad thought it best they stayed home.”
“Did he now,” she said, moving about the kitchen putting a kettle on. “Tell me why,” as he sat down at the table across from her.
“He lost his job on Monday. I guess a half dozen Singer men were laid off.”
Her back was to him but he noticed that she stopped ever so slightly with unsticking filters for coffee.
“He came home in a right state… you know, where he’s silent…”
“But seething.” she finished his sentence, turning toward him. “Yes, it can be a dangerous mood.”
He nodded and continued, “He was quiet for awhile until the girls were off down the street at the Stewarts and then he started ranting about the company and then suddenly he said it would be best if the girls stayed home with him instead of comin’ out here, but he wouldn’t say why exactly. He got real mad.” He said again.
“So anyway,” Charles said, filling the space, wanting to turn it right, “I made sure they had their lunches made (‘You’re not just a Singer man,’) and I set up Mrs. Stewart to come by and pick up the girls for school in the mornings and to have Cee home with her for the afternoons, and I asked him not to drink too much… he didn’t appreciate that. Well, it’s been a hard week and I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’m worried about us.” He felt embarrassed that he rushed through the end in a hurry, and that his voice trembled.
There was much he omitted from the story, and she knew it.
She looked imperceptible and impassive leaning against the sink, hair tied up on top of her head, cheeks round, green eyes set wide apart like her hips. A face he’d always recognized to be unknowable. It felt strange to have her eyes.
Sometimes he would get a glimpse of the knowing of her, but it would change or pass quickly; like when he used to pick up her guitar and practice the cords she had taught him when he was small. Now, sometimes in the basement of the church, he would pick or strum something out that sounded like a tune, a coherent rhythm he could almost relax into, a moment of her coming in, but then he’d lose it as quickly as he thought he had it.
The light started to change into late afternoon golds and ambers, casting different patterns on the kitchen table; the fan turned slowly on its axis, the coffee maker gurgled.
The space held sorrow, a distinct lack, a running-from, and shame.
//
She had made herself busy with cups and rinsing them in hot water to heat them and placed a mug of coffee in front of him, sitting. “I don’t like that you drink coffee. So I made us decaf.” She bent one leg and drew it up, wrapping her arm round her knee.
“How’s work?” Charles asked, meeting her avoidance. “Place looks nice.”
She shrugged, “Pays the bills with shifts at the grocers, while I keep looking for something more permanent. I have a friend who may get me a spot at a gallery on 140th.’’
He recognized she had been saying all this for a while.
He noted two big art pieces leaning against the wall by the door, full of primary colour and splash — one was of what looked like feathers up close in detail. “Cleo would like those,” he nodded in their direction as she followed his eyes. She murmured in agreement and swallowed the last of her coffee.
“Would you go out and get us a few things for dinner and breakfast for tomorrow? I might have to pop out later tonight for a ‘do at this gallery, but it would be good to have food sooner than later.”
She slid a ten dollar bill across the table and said, “Eggs, meat, fruit that kind of thing.” He gave his brain a shake inside as he found it hard to absorb what she said; he would like a list, written out of exactly what she needed, but didn’t say so.
“Sure,” he stood up and grabbed his backpack by the couch. "I’ll be back soon.”
As he walked down the hallway, he thought again of the words she used two years ago when she had left — guitar on her back, as he sat on the front stoop needing her, and not understanding — the coherent tune slipping through his hands,
“I’ll be back soon, baby.”
