Publisher: BookBaby www.BookBaby.com
Publication Date: November 2014.
Copyright ©2013 by Sybil Rosen
Library of Congress Registration #: TXu001896187/2013-09-26
ISBN: 9781483539393
Book Design: BookBaby
For Glyn
Table of Contents
Change in Kingston
Lizzie Takes Roanoke
Graceland
South of Peculiar
Approaching Normal
The Nashville Institute of Beauty and Poise
One-Way to Blythe
Truth or Consequences
A New York Minute
Acknowledgments
I’m going down to the Greyhound station
Gonna get a ticket to ride
Gonna find that lady with two or three kids
And sit down by her side
Blaze Foley, “Clay Pigeons”
She never thought this would be the place
Where she would find her saving grace
But she fell in love, she fell in love
On the backseat of a Greyhound bus
Sara Evans, “Backseat of a Greyhound Bus”
You may bury my body, ooh, down by the highway side
So my old evil spirit can catch a Greyhound bus and ride
Robert Johnson, “Me And The Devil”
Change in Kingston
The driver knew her by her perfume. She had been a regular on his route for months. Every other Tuesday afternoon he had come to expect her. Gilbert Craddock was a large-limbed African-American in his early fifties. A veteran of the Gulf War, Gil prided himself on his professionalism. The creases in his uniform trousers were as crisp and ironclad as his self-imposed rule: never get involved with a passenger.
The scent of crushed orchids announced the woman’s arrival. Gil did not know a crushed orchid from an uncrushed one, but those were the words her perfume brought to mind. He took her ticket, careful not to make eye contact. She was tall and young and clad from head to toe in hooded robes. This afternoon her downturned face was framed in fabric neither blue nor gray but a shade in-between, the color of fog. The chador’s hood fell in a straight line above dark eyebrows curving thickly over blue-green eyes shot with amber. She might have been Persian, or one of those Eastern European Muslims, Gil could not tell. It was a harmless game he liked to play, speculating on the bloodlines of his more exotic passengers.
He had seen many women clothed like her during his service in Kuwait. Her appearance was always a jolt in time, but it was more than that. Names had been required on tickets since the 9/11 terrorist attack, but hers – D. LaSalle – gave no real clue to her origins. The voluminous cloak made it impossible for him to guess her shape, though that had not kept him from trying. He had not even realized she was pregnant until last month and now, this Tuesday, a newborn slept in a sling across her breast. A secondhand Winnie-the-Pooh diaper bag was looped over her robed shoulder.
“Congratulations,” Gil stated with perfectly-pitched warmth. His voice had a graveled charm he knew how to use to his advantage.
LaSalle kept her lashed gaze lowered. In all this time she had never spoken a word to him. She was modest, as befit her clothing. The cloying perfume seemed a bit over the top – but who was Gil to complain?
New Paltz was the second stop on his northbound New York City-to-Montreal shuttle. The bus was running ten minutes late. Gil paged quickly through LaSalle’s ticket. It was always the same: a return schedule to Binghamton, the sizeable crossroads a hundred miles northwest of here. From New Paltz, Gil would take LaSalle twenty miles north to Kingston, where she would transfer to the westbound bus for Binghamton. He was anxious to get her on board so she could make her connection without any trouble. Eyes averted, he tore off the top sheet of her ticket and handed her the remainder.
A long slender hand darted out from the loose sleeve, like a fish from cover. Her ring finger was encircled with a thin, blue wedding-band tattooed into the skin. A black inky splat interrupted the smooth back of her hand, a dark blossom on beige velvet. Gil recognized the mark. It was the smeared remnants of a visitor-stamp from the Shawangunk Correctional Facility, the only evidence of LaSalle’s morning visit to the maximum-security prison just a ten-dollar cab ride from the bus station.
LaSalle was what Gill called one of his prison widows – a single wave in the invisible tide of wives, mothers, girlfriends, sisters making these clockwork migrations up and down the eastern rim of New York State. Some of them would be riding this bus long after Gil retired.
LaSalle’s ticket swam with her hand and disappeared up her sleeve. As she swung past him, Gil inhaled. “Change in Kingston,” he reminded her, as always. He never expected a reply.
This afternoon LaSalle faltered, startled. She glanced back at him, offering up a rare gaze into the agate eyes. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara, her mouth quivered. Then, just as quickly, her face spun away in a pale swirl of fabric and grasping the inside rail of the bus, she pulled herself and her baby on board.
Gil followed the trail of orchids onto the bus. His mind was wholly alert. She had made eye contact; that had never happened before. In her eyes he had read grief and a disquieting resolve.
He locked the bus door and secured the new protective shield that separated him from his passengers. The bus was not usually crowded this time of the week. His was a relatively new vehicle, the unsoiled gray upholstery not yet rubbed away. There were outlets for radio headsets on every seatback, rarely used except in bad weather or national emergencies.
Gil scanned the bus for his newest rider. Predictably, LaSalle had chosen a window seat four rows back, directly behind his cab. She was gazing out, her fine profile curtained by the hood, her lips moving. Gil’s description was apt today: she was like a woman in mourning, shorn of her usual reserve. Of course she was a mother now; that alone could explain it.
Gil checked the aisle. The space between the two long rows of double seats was broken by a dangling hand here, a resting knee there. In the back, beside the bathroom, a pair of worn sneakers stuck up, tall as a pylon. Gil frowned; that was a safety violation. He glanced at his watch. If he took the time to clear the walkway, LaSalle might miss her connection.
He lowered himself behind the wheel, angling the rearview mirror that reflected his riders to get a better view of LaSalle. Then, honking twice, he trundled the bus out into the quaint college town.
The village sloped down to the river. The terraced main street teemed with students in shorts and tank tops. They overflowed the coffee shops and bookstores, tie-dye and tattoo parlors, spilling out into the street to celebrate the fine weather and the end of the school year. Gil navigated the close single-lane traffic, the brazen jay-walkers. In the passing storefront windows he caught the reflection of the bus. The long, blue rectangle skated across the glass in broken motion, the flying silver dog on its side in perpetual pursuit of its prey. Gil’s gaze shifted forward. He never tired of this view. Beyond the town, on the other side of the river’s broad floodplain, a long low ridge of cliffs gleamed in the sun, white and ribbed like the bleached fossils of whales. Bright clouds foamed above them. From the highest point of the mountain, a lone stone tower jutted up like the fixed needle of a compass.
At the first stoplight Gil picked up the microphone and blew into it. “This is the northbound bus to Montreal.” His rap had the basso cadence of a late night DJ. “Making stops in Kingston. Albany. Plattsburgh. Canada. No smoking. No drinking. No cursing. No weapons. And please keep your body parts out of the aisle.”
He glanced up into the mirror. The hand and knee had been withdrawn but the sneakers had not taken the hint. Gil sighed. He was not going to add to LaSalle’s worries by making her late.
“Next stop Kingston,” he concluded. “Change for Binghamton and all points west. Kingston in fifteen.”
He hung up the mike. His practiced eye swept the seats in the mirror. Some heads were bent, reading or knitting, others thrown back dozing under headsets or ear buds. Gil watched LaSalle arch her neck. She closed her eyes. Her arms were clasped around the ball of infant against her, as if its small weight was the only thing holding her in her seat.
Every two weeks she traveled these two hundred miles. To see a man Gil assumed was her husband, through a glass window for less than an hour. A man she might never touch again. What a waste of youth and beauty. She ought to be out enjoying herself, like these kids in the streets, Gil thought, a spike of outrage masking his jealousy. The intensity of her devotion was an enigma to him. He had just left a lover in New York City, another waited for him in Montreal. This back-and-forth working arrangement suited Gil’s mercurial nature well. In his mind he had been unfaithful to both women with LaSalle.
The light turned green. Gil turned the bus north, out of town. Here, there was less traffic and fewer pedestrians along the rural road. To his left, the bony cliffs ran parallel to the two-lane highway, towering over stone-bordered pastures and orchards in bloom. After five miles or so, the cliffs broke into boulders big as houses. The rocks grew smaller and smaller, finally flattening into woods thick with white pine, oak, and at this time of year, flowering mountain laurel.
A blue-girded bridge spanned the north-flowing Walkill River. They were coming up on Rosendale. Kingston was ten more miles up the road. Gil would have to wait another two weeks to see LaSalle again. Though he spent so little time in her presence, she had come to consume more and more of his thoughts. He felt a connection between them – a bond that, to his mind, had been confirmed by her brief, searing glance.
An upward motion in the mirror caught Gil’s eye. LaSalle had stood unexpectedly. He watched her glide into the aisle, angling toward the back, toward the restroom he presumed. He released the accelerator. The bus slowed. She was using the seatbacks to brace each step, reaching hand over hand over hand. From the back she looked like a runner in slow motion undeterred by the weight of the child or the bold cocoon of cloth. As she passed the seats filled by women, Gil saw their heads bob up, one by one, to smile at her. They don’t see Muslim, they see mother, he thought.
That thought was quickly followed by another, this one uninvited. He had not actually seen LaSalle’s baby, had he? Only its round shape against her breast. She could be hiding anything in that sling, or under her robe. What did he know about her, except that she was capable of misguided loyalty? His eyes ricocheted from the mirror to the road to the mirror.
At that moment LaSalle pitched forward. One hand went around the sling; the other stopped her fall just inches from the floor. From inside the cloth her baby began to shriek. Gil’s eyes returned to the road in time to brake against a curve. The bus swerved. Passengers cried out. Gil brought the bus back to the lane. He debated whether or not to pull over. LaSalle would surely miss her connection then. He blinked the overhead lights; that sometimes had a calming effect.
By now LaSalle had found her footing and scrambled up. The bathroom door closed behind her and her screaming infant. The restroom light on Gil’s dashboard came on. Gil checked his mirror. The aisle was empty. He flashed with regret on the sneakers; no doubt they had caused her to stumble. He had failed her twice in one moment.
In the bathroom the baby went silent mid-cry. Gil reached again for the mike. “All right,” he crooned. “Everybody just breathe.”
Passengers jostled back in their seats. They whispered and grew still. No one stirred again for miles.
Gil’s hands gripped the steering wheel. Sweat slid down his forehead. He raised an arm to swipe his head before the saltwater ran into his eyes. He was flooded with shame. He had made false and hurtful assumptions about LaSalle. He, a black man, who knew all too well about stereotypes. He had violated their bond – and himself in the process. It did not matter that LaSalle would never know; he had betrayed her with his thoughts.
The bus was already inside the Kingston city limits. Rows of peeling frame houses lined the streets of the shabby river town. In the distance a siren mourned.
Gil took up the mike once more. “King-ston.” He pronounced it singsong. “This is Kingston.”
The dingy bus station squatted in the northeast corner of a noisy intersection. Across the street was a boarded-up bank; on the other corner sat a small brick radiologist’s office. Behind the station, a diner advertised Free Coffee with Doughnuts.
LaSalle’s bus was parked in the loading zone along the curb. “Okay,” Gil stated into the mike. “That’s the Binghamton bus in Lane 2. I won’t let it leave without you. The rest of you going on with me, we are here five minutes. Feel free to get out, have a smoke, stretch your legs. Do not wander from the station. Because like my ex-wife said, ‘I love you but I’ll leave you.’ And she did.”
It was a line he relied on whenever he needed to ease tension, his passengers or his own. His riders rose, chuckling, the panic of miles ago already forgotten. The bus emptied in no time.
Gil signaled the driver in Lane 2. LaSalle had not yet come out of the bathroom. After a moment, he went up the aisle, hands on his hips. He halted at LaSalle’s seat. The floor was littered with white scraps scattered like colorless confetti. Gil bent to retrieve a few. His brow furrowed as he puzzled them together. They were the torn pieces of LaSalle’s return ticket to Binghamton. When had she decided not to go home?
The shreds fell from his hand. Briefly Gil entertained the possibility that she was staying on the bus with him. He could make amends for his failings; he would find a place for her in Canada, he would take care of her and the child. Their life together would anchor him and from her he would learn the meaning of devotion.
Gil rapped on the bathroom door. His heart was pounding. “Mam?” He dared not call her by name, not yet. That would be a serious breach of his code.
“Are you all right?” he asked, through the door.
She did not answer. Gil looked at his watch. “This bus has to leave in four minutes,” he stated, feeling foolish. He was in unmapped terrain here, where there were no traffic signs or rules to guide him.
There was no reply. “Four minutes,” he repeated helplessly.
“Go away,” she commanded from behind the door.
Gil held his breath. He had heard LaSalle’s voice. He pivoted obediently and went back to his cab, lifting his attaché case onto the seat and shuffling tickets mindlessly. He would not take her dismissal as an insult. No, on the contrary, it felt intimate, as if she trusted him to understand her motives. Her accent was not Middle Eastern, more likely Hispanic, he noted. Another wrong assumption he had made about her.
Three minutes ticked by. His passengers re-boarded, clutching bags of chips, candy bars, and sodas. Still LaSalle did not appear. Gil went up the aisle again, pretending to count the unfilled seats. His hand was raised to knock on the restroom door when his arm halted in mid-air.
On the other side of the door LaSalle was hissing, a sound like air escaping a punctured tire. “I will not tell you this again, cariña.” Her whisper was fierce. Who was she talking to?
“How your father wooed me and won me. How he stole me from Jesus and brought me to Allah.” She could have been speaking into Gil’s ear. “Well.” She hissed again. “They have both abandoned us.”
There was a rustle and flap of fabric. Gil put his hands on the door. He swayed on his feet. He heard LaSalle murmur, “He said he was going to die in there. He said God told him to surrender and that I must let go, or I will die also.”
Gil leaned against the door. He feared for LaSalle’s sanity. He prayed no one was watching. He was eavesdropping on a passenger and he could not move away. Their connection, he realized now, was as weightless as his shadow. He felt strangely bereft, as if that same shadow had suddenly deserted him. He did not know her at all. His mind jumped to the woman waiting for him in Montreal; she, at least, was real. Gil saw himself with unusual clarity: he would always be this back-and-forth man shuttling between destinations and love.
“Forget this day, cariña,” LaSalle was whispering. “Forget everything I have told you.”
The inside latch clicked. The bathroom door opened and LaSalle stepped forward. For a second she and Gil stood face-to-face, hands in the air inches apart, like dancers in a reel. Gil noted only the startled expression in her eyes before he bounded down the aisle.
At his cab he bent over the attaché case, closing it with a snap. He could feel his heart ticking against his ribs. As always LaSalle’s perfume preceded her. Gil straightened. He had to say something.
“See you in two weeks –” he began. His greeting went unfinished.
LaSalle’s cowl and robes were gone. She wore jeans ripped at the knee and a white off-the-shoulder lace blouse. Her arms were long and gleaming, her waist slim. The weighted sling crossed one naked shoulder, the diaper bag hung from the other. The prison stamp had been scrubbed from her hand, though the tattooed wedding ring remained.
LaSalle turned her face from Gil’s confusion. A rope of ebony hair swung like a pendulum against her back as she hurried past him down the bus steps. Gil followed, his large frame filling the doorway of the bus.
“LaSalle!” he called after her. “I’m sorry.”
She was already gone. All that remained was a flash of Winnie-the-Pooh bouncing around the corner of the station, and the faint sweet smell of dying orchids consumed by the fumes of the bus. Gil never saw her again.
Lizzie Takes Roanoke
Lizzie never intended to go by bus to her 40th high school reunion. She never intended to go, period. As she boarded the careworn coach panting in the gas station parking lot, Lizzie’s hazel eyes glistened with mossy self-pity. She tried to re-trace the steps that had brought her to this calamity. She should never have mentioned the reunion to Ros in the first place, or the fact that the five-day nostalgic binge was being held in November this year.
Ros had not hesitated. She had a sudden strong hunch this reunion could be a game-changer for Lizzie. “Just think.” Ros’ voice was dry as sandpaper. “Seeing how fat, bald, and miserable the popular kids have got might be a positive thing.
Lizzie had shot Ros the Look, the squint-eyed glare that asked, Is that supposed to be funny? Ros had been Lizzie’s kid sister for fifty-odd years and Lizzie still didn’t know when she was kidding.
This time Ros was not. Lizzie had been down in the doldrums ever since her husband Morty passed suddenly, three years ago, at the age of fifty-five. Their kids were grown and elsewhere, her grandbabies were school photos on the fridge. She had stopped going to church, or bowling. When her car died last summer, she hadn’t even bothered to replace it, as if making the point that there was none.
Besides, reunions terrified Lizzie. Announcements came every ten years like booster shots for diphtheria. In high school she’d been shy, invisible and – let’s face it – flat-chested. Short of a boob job, she would have to make some sort of spectacular entrance, one guaranteed to make her classmates stand up and cheer. Lizzie had thrown the announcement in the trash.
But Ros kept insisting that she go. And pretty soon the idea of renting a fancy new car to drive to Roanoke rolled to the front of Lizzie’s mind and parked itself there. It was no stretch to picture herself squealing up to the Patrick Henry High School gymnasium in a gleaming black Lincoln town-car convertible, curling orange and red flames painted on the side. The image brought on a hot flash, which she took for a sign.
In the end Lizzie settled for the priciest car Rent-A-Dream had to offer: a mother-of-pearl-gray Cadillac convertible with a satin maroon top and four hundred miles on the dash. Ros hadn’t made a peep about the extravagance, or the five-hundred bucks Lizzie had to borrow four days before her trip. The loan would pay off part of the balance on her credit card so she’d have enough room on it for the Caddy. Ros had handed over the check without comment. Her round flat face conveyed the emotion of a frying pan. She even agreed to take Lizzie to get the car early Monday morning. Lizzie secretly suspected her little sister was curious to see the Caddy for herself.
The day had been a disaster from beginning to end but at least Lizzie looked nice. She had on make-up for once, and the slimming dove-gray suit Ros had picked out for her at Dillard’s. It went well with her thick salt-and-pepper hair and the liquid green eyes, her best features by far. The matching hat had a cranberry-colored silk rose the size of a small cabbage that bobbled every time Lizzie so much as blinked. It badly needed a safety pin.
“Did you get the check in the bank?” was the first thing out of Ros’ mouth that morning. Lizzie’s slippery grasp of money was a constant thorn in Ros’ considerable side. Lizzie nodded and bit her lip. She’d deposited the check late Friday afternoon, close to closing. That same day some nonsense from the Department of Motor Vehicles had come in the mail, some rigmarole about discontinued insurance and the license plates on her late car. She had thrown that in the trash, too, along with the reunion announcement.
The sisters dropped like twin white sandbags into the front seat of Ros’ SUV and closed the doors. Lizzie flipped the visor down to check herself out in the mirror.
“I don’t look ridiculous, do I?”
“Not especially.” Ros felt Lizzie’s laser-Look without turning her head. “What? You look fine.”
Lizzie leaned back, one hand holding her hat as if she could already feel the wind on her face. “I’m going to put down the top and sail in there like a movie star.”
“La de da.” Ros backed the SUV out of Lizzie’s driveway. “And if nobody sees you in the parking lot, you can always drive the car into the gym.”
The Rent-A-Dream office was sandwiched between a Waffle House and a Red Lobster on a worn stretch of Maryland state highway. The SUV swung into the parking lot. Lizzie scanned for the Caddy. There were popsicle-colored limos, a few glammed-up Chevy Malibus, and one very impressive hot-pink Mustang convertible.
Lizzie gasped: there was the Cadillac, without a doubt the classiest car on the lot. The dark-red top was a silk umbrella over a chassis that curved like Lennox china. And the hubcaps – Lizzie had forgotten about hubcaps. These sparkled like a pimp-mobile’s.
Ros shifted into park and shined her eyes at her sister. “You are going to have a fabulous time and I get to say ‘I told you so’.”