Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

“Hello,” Ben Joe called back.

“Hello—”

“You hush now,” his sister whispered.

“Oh,” the little boy said sadly. Ben Joe turned right on Main Street, smiling.

People were gathering sparsely around the glittering little movie house, and he could see dressed-up couples eating opposite each other in the small restaurant he passed. Just before he crossed to head down the gravel road to the station, a huge, red-faced old man in earmuffs stopped beside him and said, “You Dr. Hawkes’s son?”

“Yes,” Ben Joe said.

“Going away?”

“Yes.”

“Funny thing,” the man said, shaking his head. “I outlived my doctor. I outlived my doctor, whaddaya know.”

It was what he always said. Ben Joe smiled, and when the light changed, he crossed the street.

The gravel road was just a path of grayish-white under his feet, but he could see well enough to walk without difficulty. Even so, he went very slowly. He stared ahead, to where the station house, with its orange windows, sat beside the railroad tracks. The tracks were mere silver ribbons now, gleaming under tall, curved lamps. All around there was nothing but darkness, marked occasionally by the dark, shining back of some parked car. Ben Joe shivered. He suddenly plunked his suitcase at his feet and after a minute sat on it, folding his arms, staring at the station house and still shivering so hard that he had to clamp his teeth together. He didn’t know what he wanted; he didn’t know whether he wanted Shelley to meet him there or never to show up at all. If she was there, what would he say? Would he be glad to see her? If she wasn’t there, he would climb on the train and leave and then it would be he who was the injured party; something would at last be clearly settled and he could turn his back on it forever. He looked at the blank orange windows, still far away, as if they could by some sign let him know if she was there and tell him what to do about it. No sign appeared. A new idea came; he could wait a while, till after his train had left, and then surreptitiously catch a local to Raleigh and take the later train from there. But what good would that do? The picture arose in his mind of chains of future wakeful nights spent wondering whether he should have gone into the station or not. He rose, picked up his suitcase again, and continued on down the hill.

It was warm and bright inside, and the waiting room smelled of cigar smoke and pulp magazines. Nearest Ben Joe was a group of businessmen, all very noisy and active, who mulled around in a tight little circle calling out nicknames and switching their brief cases to their left hands as they leaned forward to greet someone.

“Excuse me,” Ben Joe said.

They remained cheerfully in his path, too solid and fat to be sidled past. He changed directions, veering to the right of them and continuing down the next aisle. A small Negro man and his family stood there; the man, dressed stiffly and correctly for the trip north, was counting a small pile of wrinkled dollar bills. His wife and children strained forward, watching anxiously; the man wet his lips and fumbled through the bills.

“Excuse me,” Ben Joe said.

The husband moved aside, still counting. With his suitcase held high and tight to his body so as not to bump anyone, Ben Joe edged past them and came into the center of the waiting room. He looked around quickly, for the first time since he had entered the station. His eyes skimmed over two sailors and a group of soldiers and an old woman with a lumber jacket on; then he saw Shelley.

She was sitting in the far corner, next to the door that led out to the tracks. At her feet were two suitcases and a red net grocery bag. Ben Joe let out his breath, not realizing until then that he had been holding it, but he didn’t go over to her right away. He just stood there, holding onto the handle of his suitcase with both hands in front of him as if he were a child with a book satchel. He suddenly felt like a child, like a tiny, long-ago Ben Joe poised outside a crowded living room, knowing that sooner or later he must take that one step to the inside of the room and meet the people there, but hanging back anyway. He shifted the suitcase to one side. At that moment Shelley looked up at him, away from the tips of her new high-heeled shoes and toward the center of the waiting room, where she found, purely by accident, the silent, watchful face of Ben Joe. Ben Joe forced himself to life again. He crossed the floor, his face heavy and self-conscious under Shelley’s grave stare.

“Hello,” he said when he reached her.

“Hello.”

Her dress was one he had not seen before — a waistless, pleated beige thing — and she had a round feathered hat and gloves the same color. So much beige, with her dark blond hair and her pale face, made her look all of one piece, like a tan statue carved from a single rock. Her face seemed tighter and more strained than usual, and her eyes were squinched up from the bright lights.

“Ben Joe?” she asked.

He sat down quickly in the seat opposite her and said, “What?”

For a minute she was silent, concentrating on lining up the pointed toes of her shoes exactly even with each other. In the space of her silence Ben Joe heard the whispery sound of the train, rushing now across the bridge at Dublin Cat River and drawing nearer every second. Men outside ran back and forth calling orders; a boy pushed a baggage cart through the door and drenched them for a second in the cold, sharp air from outside. Ben Joe hunched forward and said, “What is it, Shelley? What’ve you got to tell me?”

“I came by taxi,” she said after a moment.

“What?”

“I said, taxi. I came by taxi.”

“Oh. Taxi.”

He stood up, with his hands in his pockets. Outside the whistle blew, louder and closer this time. The two sailors had risen by now and were moving toward the door.

“I got my ticket,” Shelley said. “And I’ve got, wait a minute …” She dug through the beige pocketbook beside her and came up with a navy-blue checkbook. “Travelers’ checks,” she said. “I don’t want my money stolen. We didn’t talk about it, but, Ben Joe, I want you to know I am going to get a job and all, so money won’t be any—”

The train was roaring in now. It had a steamy, streamlined sound and it clattered to a stop so noisily that Shelley’s words were lost. All Ben Joe could hear was the steaming and the shouts and above all that the garbled, rasping voice of the loud-speaker. Shelley was looking up at him with her eyes glass-clear and waiting, and he knew by her face she must have asked a question.

“What’d you say?” he asked when the train had stopped.

“I said, I wondered, do you still want me to come?”

She started lining up the toes of her shoes again. All he could see of her face were her pale lashes, lying in two semicircles against her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. When the shoes were as exactly even as they could get she looked up again, and it seemed to him suddenly that he could see himself through her eyes for a minute — Ben Joe Hawkes, pacing in front of her with his hands in his pockets, setting out in pure thoughtlessness toward his own narrow world while she looked hopefully up at him.

“Course I still want you,” he said finally.

She smiled and at once began bustling around, checking in her purse for her ticket, leaping up to push all her baggage out into the middle of the floor and then stand frowning at it.

“We’ll never get it all in,” she said. “I tried to take just necessities and save the rest to be shipped, but—”

“Come on.” He grabbed her two suitcases and left her to carry the grocery bag, which seemed to be filled with hair curlers and Kleenex, and his own, lighter suitcase. When she had picked them up, he held the door open for her, and they followed the straggling soldiers out into the cold night air, across the platform and up the clanging steps to the railroad car.