The conductor punched my ticket. I watched out the window as others filed onto our train. A train arrived on the opposite track, coming from the direction I was headed. Its doors opened. Then into the line descending its steps came someone startlingly familiar: my brother, looking sturdy and healthy, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a drab, straight-cut suit.
Whatever grabs and squeezes one’s heart did so to mine. Act! it screamed. I reached my free arm across the sleeping man and tried unsuccessfully to open the train window so I could call out. Peter was walking quickly toward the station building. I stood, pulled Charlotte close, stepped into the aisle with my valise, and ran to the nearest door. A porter stood in my way.
“Madam! This train is about to leave!”
“I must go out,” I said, sliding past him down the steps. I jumped to the dirt and yelled after the retreating form: “Peter! Peter!”
How well I knew that gait, that plain gray coat Mother had sewed, that broad-brimmed hat and brown hair with its glints of yellow. My heart opened in anticipation of his embrace.
Peter had not yet turned around; he was forty feet or so ahead. I ran as hard as I could, weaving between the other people, squeezing Charlotte to my chest, the valise banging my leg. Charlotte began to protest.
“Peter de Jong!” I cried. “Thee in the gray coat! Stop!”
The man turned. “Is thee speaking to me?”
The face was narrower; the lips were too thin; the eyebrows arched above unfriendly eyes. The man was several inches shorter than Peter and some pounds heavier. In fact, he looked very little like my brother, save for his Friend’s attire. My elation evaporated. I’d been overcome by a longing to know and be known, to see and be seen by just one face I’d cherished.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. I turned away as he, with irritation, did the same.
I had to get back onto the train, but that very train was creaking into motion. Casting off my valise to free an arm, I ran along the track as the monster gathered speed, banging on its retreating side, a moan rising from my throat.
“Stop! Please stop!” I yelled, until a railroad worker clapped his hands on my shoulders and pulled me away.
“That’s dangerous, ma’am,” he scolded sharply. “Can’t touch a moving train. Folks fall under that way.”
I stumbled to find the valise where I’d abandoned it and sat upon its dirty side. Charlotte, no doubt afraid, was twisting in my shawl. I clutched her to me as she rooted at my bodice. She whined quietly. Oh, how I detested myself and pitied her.
“Can’t stop here, ma’am,” the same worker admonished me. “Yer an obstruction.”
I stood and returned to the grand second-story lobby, then down the stairs and out to the street, where I sit now against a station wall, my eyes stabbed by the early sun that shoots like an arrow between the buildings, as dry inside as a pile of sun-bleached bones.
NOTEBOOK TEN
Sixth Month 29
Charlotte was holding my hand to her chest as she nursed. Now she sleeps in my arms, and I’ve withdrawn my hand to write—slowly, so as not to rouse her. Her hands are still arched over the space that my hand occupied. As if my hand remains there. As if my pulse continues to beat against hers.
I pray that my love will continue to fill that space when I’m no longer near. I pray that whatever emptiness she feels will always be countered by my unseen love.
I’ve lit a candle by a window of our room and taken up a pencil. For I must tell how it is that four walls now contain us.
The night after I left the train—nine nights ago—I took a spot on the floor of Broad Street Station beneath a huge fan, near a shed where passengers debark, because the night was sweltering. Mosquitoes swarmed us; I slapped them on my flesh and clothes, leaving bloodstains behind. Charlotte’s body was protected in a blanket, but her cheeks were dotted with bites. I held her hands in one of mine to stop her scratching.
We slept. In my dream, the time was dusk. I stood amid stunted spruce on the edge of a mountain. In awe I looked over an undulating spread of peaks and valleys; an emerald carpet of treetops covered every curve. This was a wilderness such as I’d never seen, where bears and mountain lions roamed, and people accustomed to shelter had better find their way out by nightfall.
But I had no idea which way would lead me out. I walked in one direction, another, and a third, finding no openings in the dense forest as the sky drained of daylight.
Then a voice yelled my name from an adjacent peak. It was the voice of my brother—he who has a virtual compass in his head! I tried to engage my faculties to reply, but my mouth wouldn’t move. Against the downward drag of sleep, all I could force out was a moan. Yet he heard me and took a single step that crossed the intervening valley. He grabbed my shoulders, fingers digging in.
As if it lay beneath a pile of moss or dried leaves, my consciousness was dulled. But the pain those fingers caused in my sore muscles was real.
“Wake up!” said another voice, and then, “It’s her, I’m sure of it.”
Larger hands gripped and shook me. The heat of human breath came to my ear. My mind fought upward until I could open my eyes. Crouched over me were the two young men who’d left me behind.
“Can thee stand?” Peter’s overgrown hair fell into his face as he bent close. “Is thee all right?” Then, to Johan: “It’s a lucky thing thee noticed her.”
I could neither stand nor answer. This was an outcome I’d long given up on praying for.
“What’s thee doing here?” asked Johan sharply. I recoiled at his tone.
“Quiet!” someone shouted. A chorus of muttered complaints followed. The noises roused Charlotte, who stirred under my shawl, hands kneading my abdomen.
I stayed motionless to stall her awakening and gleaned what I could from the men’s appearances. The weary leaning of their shoulders could be explained by the many trains they’d ridden from Pittsburgh, the transfers line to line. But the absence of any luggage, save one small satchel each; the grime on their gray suits and hats; their unkempt beards and strong odors—these spoke of a deprivation reaching well past one day’s travel. Dust darkened Johan head to foot. The pencil tucked above his ear and the papers in his vest pocket told me his scribbling habit was ongoing. His brown eyes looked out guardedly above a scraggly beard that didn’t suit him. Peter’s face, though still inquisitive, held a hint of hardness. He had a beard, too, untrimmed and grimy. As I wondered what had become of these young men’s scheme for success, Johan drew his hands together on his knees.
On his left hand, a scar shone where the pinkie and ring fingers should have been. I gasped.
Johan glanced at me, then averted his eyes. “My hand slipped. At the steel mill.” He said this as if it hardly mattered.
“How terrible,” I said, finally able to speak. He nodded impassively, looking at the far-off lobby wall.
Such coldness from a man who ought to beg my pardon. How did this injury figure into his return to Philadelphia? I wondered if Olivia had rejected him.
Peter put his face directly before mine. “Tell us! What is thee doing here?”