Joy Williams - Taking Care

Dan excused herself and started toward the lavatory on the level below. Mrs. Muirhead called to her as she approached and handed her a folded piece of paper. “Would you be kind enough to give this to Mr. Muirhead?” she asked. Dan returned to Mr. Muirhead and gave him the note and then went down to the lavatory. She sat on the little toilet as the train rocked along and cried.

After a while, she heard Jane’s voice saying, “I hear you in there, Danica Anderson. What’s the matter with you?”

Dan didn’t say anything.

“I know it’s you,” Jane said. “I can see your stupid shoes and your stupid socks.”

Dan blew her nose, pushed the button on the toilet and said, “What did the note say?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said. “Daddy ate it”

“He ate it!” Dan exclaimed. She opened the door of the stall and went to the sink. She washed her hands and splashed her face with water. She giggled. “He really ate it?”

“Everybody is looped in that Starlight Lounge,” Jane said. Jane patted her hair with a hairbrush. Jane’s hair was full of tangles and she never brushed hard enough to get them out. She looked at Dan by looking in the mirror. “Why were you crying?”

“I was thinking about your grandma,” Dan said. “She said that one year she left the Christmas tree up until Easter.”

“Why were you thinking about my grandma!” Jane yelled.

“I was thinking about her singing,” Dan said, startled. “I like her singing.”

In her head, Dan could hear Jane’s grandmother singing about Death’s dark waters and sinking souls, about Mercy Seats and the Great Physician. She could hear the voice rising and falling through the thin walls of the Maine house, borne past the dark screens and into the night.

“I don’t want you thinking about my grandma,” Jane said, pinching Dan’s arm.

Dan tried not to think of Jane’s grandma. Once, she had seen her fall coming out of the water. The beach was stony. The stones were round and smooth and slippery. Jane’s grandmother had skinned her arm and bloodied her lip.

The girls went into the corridor and saw Mrs. Muirhead standing there. Mrs. Muirhead was deeply tanned. She had put her hair up in a twist and a wad of cotton was noticeable in her left ear. The three of them stood together, bouncing and nudging against one another with the motion of the train.

“My ear is killing me,” Mrs. Muirhead said. “I think there’s something they’re not telling me. It crackles and snaps in there. It’s like a bird breaking seeds in there.” She touched the bone between cheekbone and ear. “I think that doctor I was seeing should lose his license. He was handsome and competent, certainly, but on my last visit, he was vacuuming my ear and his secretary came in to ask him a question and she put her hand on his neck. She stroked his neck, his secretary! While I was sitting there having my ear vacuumed!” Mrs. Muirhead’s cheeks were flushed.

The three of them gazed out the window. The train must have been clipping along, but things outside, although gone in an instant, seemed to be moving slowly. Beneath a street light, a man was kicking his pickup truck.

“I dislike trains,” Mrs. Muirhead said. “I find them depressing.

“It’s the oxygen deprivation,” Jane said, “coming from having to share the air with all these people.”

“You’re such a snob, dear,” Mrs. Muirhead sighed.

“We’re going to supper now,” Jane said.

“Supper,” Mrs. Muirhead said. “Ugh.”

The children left her looking out the window, a disconsolate, pretty woman wearing a green dress with a line of frogs dancing around it.

The dining car was almost full. The windows reflected the eaters. The countryside was dim and the train pushed through it.

Jane steered them to a table where a man and woman silently labored over their meal.

“My name is Crystal,” Jane offered, “and this is my twin sister, Clara.”

“Clara!” Dan exclaimed. Jane was always inventing drab names for her.

“We were triplets,” Jane went on, “but the other died at birth. Cord got all twisted around his neck or something.”

The woman looked at Jane and smiled.

“What is your line of work?” Jane persisted brightly.

There was silence. The woman kept smiling, then the man said, “I don’t do anything, I don’t have to do anything. I was injured in Vietnam and they brought me to the base hospital and worked on reviving me for forty-five minutes. Then they gave up. They thought I was dead. Four hours later, I woke up in the mortuary. The Army gives me a good pension.” He pushed his chair away from the table and left.

Dan looked after him, astonished, a cold roll raised halfway to her mouth. “Was your husband really dead for all that while?” she asked.

“My husband, ha!” the woman said. “I’d never laid eyes on that man before the six-thirty seating.”

“I bet you’re a professional woman who doesn’t believe in men,” Jane said slyly.

“Crystal, how did you guess! It’s true, men are a collective hallucination of women. It’s like when a group of crackpots get together on a hilltop and see flying saucers.” The woman picked at her chicken.

Jane looked surprised, then said, “My father went to a costume party once wrapped from head to foot in aluminum foil.”

“A casserole,” the woman offered.

“No! A spaceman, an alien astronaut!”

Dan giggled, remembering when Mr. Muirhead had done that. She felt that Jane had met her match with this woman.

“What do you do!” Jane fairly screamed. “You won’t tell us!”

“I do drugs,” the woman said. The girls shrank back. “Ha,” the woman said. “Actually, I test drugs for pharmaceutical companies. And I do research for a perfume manufacturer. I am involved in the search for human pheromones.”

Jane looked levelly at the woman.

“I know you don’t know what a pheromone is, Crystal. To put it grossly, a pheromone is a smell that a person has that can make another person do or feel a certain thing. It’s an irresistible signal.”

Dan thought of mangrove roots and orange groves. Of the smell of gas when the pilot light blew out on Jane’s grandmother’s stove. She liked the smell of the Atlantic Ocean when it dried upon your skin and the smell of Jim Anderson’s fur when he had been rained upon. There were smells that could make you follow them, certainly.

Jane stared at the woman, tipping forward slightly in her seat.

“Relax, will you, Crystal, you’re just a child. You don’t even have a smell yet,” the woman said. “I test all sorts of things. Sometimes I’m part of a control group and sometimes I’m not. You never know. If you’re part of the control group, you’re just given a placebo. A placebo, Crystal, is something that is nothing, but you don’t know it’s nothing. You think you’re getting something that will change you or make you feel better or healthier or more attractive or something, but you’re not really.”

“I know what a placebo is,” Jane muttered.

“Well that’s terriffic, Crystal, you’re a prodigy.” The woman removed a book from her handbag and began to read it. The book had a denim jacket on it which concealed its title.

“Ha!” Jane said, rising quickly and attempting to knock over a glass of water. “My name’s not Crystal!”

Dan grabbed the glass before it fell and hurried after her. They returned to the Starlight Lounge. Mr. Muirhead was sitting with another young man. This young man had a blond beard and a studious manner.

“Oh, this is a wonderful trip!” Mr. Muirhead said exuberantly. “The wonderful people you meet on a trip like this! This is the most fascinating young man. He’s a writer. Been everywhere. He’s putting together a book on cemeteries of the world. Isn’t that some subject? I told him anytime he’s in our town, stop by our restaurant, be my guest for some stone crab claws.”