Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

The girls explored the entire train, north to south. They saw everyone but the engineer. Then they sat down in their violet seats. Jane made faces at a cute little toddler holding a cloth rabbit until he started to cry. Dan took out her writing materials and began writing to Jim Anderson. She was writing him a postcard.

Jim, she wrote, I miss you and I will see you any minute. When I see you we will go swimming right away.

“That is real messy writing,” Jane said. “It’s all scrunched together. If you were writing to anyone other than a dog, they wouldn’t be able to read it at all.”

Dan printed her name on the bottom of the card and embellished it all with X’s and O’s.

“Your writing to Jim Anderson is dumb in about twelve different ways. He’s a golden retriever, for god’s sake.”

Dan looked at her friend mildly. She was used to Jane yelling at her and expressing disgust and impatience. Jane had once lived in Manhattan. She had developed certain attitudes. Jane was a treasure from the city of New York currently on loan to the state of Florida, where her father, for the last two years, had been engaged in running down a perfectly good investment in a marina and dinner theater. Jane liked to wear scarves tied around her head. She claimed to enjoy grapes and brown sugar and sour cream for dessert more than ice cream and cookies. She liked artichokes. She adored artichokes. She adored the part in the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker Suite where the Dewdrops and the candied Petals of Roses dance to the “Waltz of the Flowers.” Jane had seen the Nutcracker four times, for god’s sake.

Dan and Jane and Jane’s mother and father had all lived with Jane’s grandmother in her big house in Maine all summer. The girls hadn’t seen that much of the Muirheads. The Muirheads were always “cruising.” They were always “gunk-holing,” as they called it. Whatever that was, Jane said, for god’s sake. Jane’s grandmother’s house was on the ocean and she knew how to make pizza—’ za, she called it — and candy and sail a canoe. She sang hymns. She sewed sequins on their jeans and made them say grace before dinner. After they said grace, Jane’s grandmother would ask forgiveness for things done and left undone. She would, upon request, lie down and chat with them at night before they went to sleep. Jane was crazy about her grandmother and was quite a nice person in her presence. One night, at the end of summer, Jane had had a dream in which men dressed in black suits and white bathing caps had broken into her grandmother’s house and taken all her possessions and put them in the road. In Jane’s dream, rain fell on all her grandmother’s things. Jane woke up weeping. Dan had wept too. Jane and Dan were friends.

The train had not yet left the station even though it was two hours past the posted departure time. An announcement had just been made that said that a two-hour delay was built into the train’s schedule.

“They make up the time at night,” Jane said. She plucked the postcard from Dan’s hand. “This is a good one,” she said. “I think you’re sending it to Jim Anderson just so you can save it yourself.” She read aloud, “This is a photograph of the Phantom Dream Car crashing through a wall of burning television sets before a cheering crowd at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.”

At the beginning of summer, Dan’s mother had given her one hundred dollars, four packages of new underwear and three dozen stamped postcards. Most of the cards were plain but there were a few with odd pictures on them. Dan’s mother wanted to hear from her twice weekly throughout the summer. She had married a man named Jake, who was a carpenter. Jake had already built Dan several bookcases. This seemed to be the extent of what he knew how to do for her.

“I only have three left now,” Dan said, “but when I get home I’m going to start my own collection.”

“I’ve been through that phase,” Jane said. “It’s just a phase. I don’t think you’re much of a correspondent. You wrote, ‘I got sunburn. Love, Dan’…‘I bought a green Frisbee. Love, Dan’…‘Mrs. Muirhead has swimmer’s ear. Love, Dan’…‘Mr. Muirhead went water-skiing and cracked his rib. Love, Dan’…When you write to people you should have something to say.”

Dan didn’t reply. She had been Jane’s companion for a long time, and was wearying of what Jane’s mother called her effervescence.

Jane slapped Dan on the back and hollered, “Danica Anderson! What is a clod like yourself doing on this fabulous journey!”

Together, as the train began to move, the girls made their way to the Starlight Lounge in Car 7, where Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead told them they would be enjoying cocktails. They hesitated in the car where the train’s magician was with his audience, watching him while he did the magic silks trick, the cut and restored handkerchief trick, the enchanted saltshaker trick and the dissolving quarter trick. The audience, primarily retirees, screamed with pleasure.

“I don’t mind the tricks,” Jane whispered to Dan, “but the patter drives me crazy.”

The magician was a young man with a long spotted face. He did a lot of card forcing. Again and again, he called the card that people chose from a shuffled deck. Each time that the magician was successful, the audience participant looked astonished and thrilled. Jane and Dan passed on through.

“You don’t really choose,” Jane said. “He just makes you think you choose. He does it all with his pinkie.” She pushed Dan forward into the Starlight Lounge, where Mrs. Muirhead was on a banquette staring out the window at a shed and unkempt bush that were sliding slowly past. She was drinking a martini. Mr. Muirhead was several tables away talking to a young man wearing jeans and a yellow jacket. Jane did not sit down. “Mummy,” she said, “can I have your olive?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Muirhead said, “it’s soaked in gin.”

Jane, Dan in tow, went to her father’s table. “Daddy,” Jane demanded, “why aren’t you sitting with Mummy? Are you and Mummy having a fight?”

Dan was astonished at this question. Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead fought continuously and as bitterly as vipers. Their arguments were baroque, stately and, although frequently extraordinary, never enlightening. At breakfast, they would be quarreling over an incident at a cocktail party the night before or a dumb remark made fifteen years ago. At dinner, they would be howling over the fate, which they called by many names, that had delivered each of them to the other. Forgiveness, charity and cooperation were qualities unknown to them. They were opponents pur sang. Dan was sure that one morning, Jane would be called from her classroom and told as gently as possible by Mr. Mooney, the school principal, that her parents had splattered each other’s brains all over the lanai.

Mr. Muirhead looked at the children sorrowfully and touched Jane’s cheek.

“I am not sitting with your mother because I am sitting with this young man here. We are having a fascinating conversation.”

“Why are you always talking to young men,” Jane asked.

“Jane, honey,” Mr. Muirhead said, “I will answer that.” He took a swallow of his drink and sighed. He leaned forward and said earnestly, “I talk to so many young men because your mother won’t let me talk to young women.” He remained hunched over, patting Jane’s cheek for a moment, and then leaned back.

The young man extracted a cigarette from his jacket and hesitated. Mr. Muirhead gave him a book of matches. “He does automobile illustrations,” Mr. Muirhead said.

The young man nodded. “Belly bands. Pearls and flakes. Flames. All custom work.”