“Excuse me,” she said to her companion when she returned to her seat. The woman was sprawled and did not move. The man on the aisle was watching, smiling still. “Excuse me,” she said again, and now the woman merely turned her face away with a small snort and bubble. The man across the way said, helpfully, “You might have to poke her.” She looked at him straight on for the first time. An older man with a five o’clock shadow, balding, almost handsome, some missing teeth in the side of his smile. A look of weariness about him, too, of course, at this hour, but a kind eye. Did she really want to go through life without a man to protect her? He reached across the aisle to touch the woman’s thick elbow. “Madam,” he said. And louder, “Madam.” Again someone in the car called, “Pipe down.”
Sally, weary herself, screwed up her courage and shouted, “Excuse me!” She reached out—even to her own eye her movements had grown weird, as if weirdly weighted—and pressed a finger into the woman’s shoulder. The flesh beneath her coat seemed barely to give. Her wide thighs, straining against her dark skirt, twitched a bit, but continued to block the way. The man on the aisle said, “Madam,” once more.
Struggling to keep her balance in the aisle, Sally looked at her empty seat on the other side of this fleshy obstacle. She had never in her life so desired a single destination. She wanted only to curl into it, turn her face to the cool window. She wanted only to be left alone. Suddenly, in a kind of desperation, she reached down and slid the shopping bags off the woman’s feet and into the aisle. One of them toppled, an orange and a gold compact and a bit of bright silk, a scarf or a slip or a nightgown, spilling from the top, causing, at last, the woman to stir. She reached out her spiked hands in the startled way of sleepers, and in an instant of fear and rage, Sally swung her fist into the woman’s palm, made contact with it, and then swung again, striking this time the inside of her fat wrist, touching the bone beneath the ringed flesh. And then, it seemed all the same, continuous motion, although in truth it was choppy and abrupt, like pounding laundry, she swung again—the woman tried but failed to raise her elbow in defense. Sally felt the hard surface of the woman’s dry teeth against her knuckles, felt, too, the tacky lipstick and the humid breath.
“Keep your damn hands to yourself,” Sally said, stepping over the woman’s feet, kicking the greasy bags with her heel. “Stay away from me.”
She cleared the woman’s lap and drove herself into the seat, her heart pounding. Turned her face to the window.
There was an astonished pause, and then the woman shouted, “Mercy!” Panting more forcefully. Or not panting now, but sobbing. Sally glanced briefly over her shoulder. The woman, her awful fingers pressed delicately against her mouth, was now leaning out into the aisle to retrieve the bag. The man across the way had bent down to help her, and the little bald boy appeared, handing her the escaped orange and the thick gold compact. An act of betrayal on both their parts, Sally thought. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she heard the woman say as she wept. “Thank you, kind sir.” She told them, “You’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”
Sally turned her face to the window. Once again, she felt the woman’s breath on her neck. “A fine Sister you’ll make,” she hissed.
Sally raised her shoulder against the sound, against the woman’s breath. She was now the one who was panting. Her anger a clenched fist in her chest. And yet there was pride, too. She had, after all, spoken up.
“You’re a devil,” the woman said into her ear. Without turning to face her, Sally bared her teeth at her own reflection and whispered, “You are.”
The windowsill of the train was now as sooty as any subway’s.
The smell of soot, in fact, was lofting through the car. She put her forehead to the glass to see if there was a refinery outside, a house fire, a blazing garbage dump. Fire and brimstone. It seemed the right smell for this hellish train, this terrible journey that could not have taken her farther from the convent’s clean laundry and the pretty joy she had felt just this afternoon about the consecrated life she was called to.
There was only darkness beyond the train window, her own vague reflection passing over it. She wondered how many miles they had gone and, with the thought, felt the flood of tears she had not realized she’d been keeping at bay, had been keeping at bay since she last glimpsed Sister Jeanne and her mother through this very glass. She put her fingertips to the window. Her mother and Sister Jeanne had once stood framed within it. The tears came, bitter and unrelenting. Life a bleak prospect to a motherless child.
At her back, she heard the dirty woman say, “Serves you right.”
It was three in the morning.
By the time the train came into the station in Chicago, she had done her calculations: she had the money in her wallet, and the remaining bills pinned to the lining of her handbag. She also had a dollar in each shoe—following the Tierney twins’ advice. She would get herself a sleeping car for the journey home.
There was the scent of morning air inside the beautiful station—the familiar scent of early-morning city air that made her feel for just a moment that she had not arrived but returned. There was something lovely in the bright beams that poured in from the skylights, touching down here and there on the wide floor.
There was the bustle of many busy people, the trailing presence of the dirty woman, whose breath she could still taste. She saw the two nuns who were there to meet her, their clean and simple forms, arms folded, idle hands tucked into their sleeves. One was young, one older. They both smiled as she approached. Their skin, after the heavy powder of the woman on the train, looked pure, newly formed, despite the peach fuzz and wrinkles on one and the scattering of blemishes on the other. She recognized the smell of sunlight and starch on their habits. She recognized the offer of friendship in the younger one’s shy brown eyes.
She would love the companionship of nuns for the rest of her life.
“Here you are,” the old one said, holding out her immaculate hands, welcoming her. “We’re so happy you’ve thought to join us.”
Sally put her suitcase down. She might have seen the Bronx girl walking quickly past from the corner of her eye. “The truth is,” she said, “I’ve thought better of it.”
Stabat Mater
THERE WERE NO NURSING SISTERS on the street when she walked up from the subway. No Patrick Tierney, either, to call out, “What did I tell you?” when he saw her lugging herself home. That was lucky. She had slept only briefly on the train coming back—buttoned into a lower bunk, but no less terrified going east than she had been going west. The torment on the trip out had been those awful people. The torment of the trip home was the utter loneliness of that dark, narrow berth.