Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

“What?” Mrs. Muirhead said.

“I was just telling the girls some of the differences between men and women. Men are more adventurous and aggressive with greater spatial and mechanical abilities. Women are more consistent, nurturant and aesthetic. Men can see better than women, but women have better hearing,” Mr. Muirhead said.

“Very funny,” Mrs. Muirhead said.

The girls retired from the melancholy regard Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead had fixed upon each other, and wandered through the cars of the train, occasionally returning to their seats to fuss in the cluttered nests they had created there. Around midnight, they decided to revisit the game car, where, earlier, people had been playing backgammon, Diplomacy, anagrams, crazy eights and Clue. They were still at it, variously throwing down queens of diamonds, moving troops through Asia Minor and accusing Colonel Mustard of doing it in the conservatory with a wrench. Whenever there was a lull in the playing, they talked about the accident.

“What accident?” Jane demanded.

“Train hit a Buick,” a man said. “Middle of the night.” The man had big ears and a tattoo on his forearm.

“There aren’t any good new games,” a woman complained. “Haven’t been for years and years.”

“Did you fall asleep?” Jane said accusingly to Dan.

“When could that have happened?” Dan said.

“We didn’t see it,” Jane said, disgusted.

“Two teenagers escaped without a scratch,” the man said. “Lived to laugh about it. They are young and silly but it’s no joke to the engineer. The engineer has a lot of paperwork to do after he hits something. The engineer will be filling out forms for a week.” The man’s tattoo said MOM AND DAD.

“Rats,” Jane said.

The children returned to the darkened dining room, where Superman was being shown on a small television set. Jane instantly fell asleep. Dan watched Superman spin the earth backward so he could prevent Lois Lane from being smothered in a rockslide. The train shot past a group of old lighted buildings, SEWER KING, a sign said. When the movie ended, Jane woke up.

“When we lived in New York,” she said muzzily, “I was sitting in the kitchen one afternoon doing my homework and this girl came in and sat down at the table. Did I ever tell you this? It was the middle of the winter and it was snowing. This person just came in with snow on her coat and sat right down at the table.”

“Who was she,” Dan asked.

“It was me, but I was old. I mean I was about thirty years old or something.”

“It was a dream,” Dan said.

“It was the middle of the afternoon, I tell you! I was doing my homework. She said, ‘You’ve never lifted a finger to help me.’ Then she asked me for an aspirin.”

After a moment, Dan said, “It was probably the cleaning lady.”

“Cleaning lady! Cleaning lady, for god’s sake. What do you know about cleaning ladies!”

Dan felt her hair bristle as though someone were running a comb through it back to front, and realized she was mad, madder than she’d been all summer, for all summer she’d only felt humiliated when Jane was nasty to her.

“Listen up,” Dan said, “don’t talk to me like that anymore.”

“Like what,” Jane said coolly.

Dan stood up and walked away while Jane was saying, “The thing I don’t understand is how she ever got into that apartment. My father had about a dozen locks on the door.”

Dan sat in her seat in the quiet, dark coach and looked out at the night. She tried to recollect how it seemed dawn happened. Things just sort of rose out, she guessed she knew. There was nothing you could do about it. She thought of Jane’s dream in which the men in white bathing caps were pushing all her grandma’s things out of the house and into the street. The inside became empty and the outside became full. Dan was beginning to feel sorry for herself. She was alone, with no friends and no parents, sitting on a train between one place and another, scaring herself with someone else’s dream in the middle of the night. She got up and walked through the rocking cars to the Starlight Lounge for a glass of water. After 4:00 a.m. it was no longer referred to as the Starlight Lounge. They stopped serving drinks and turned off the electric stars. It became just another place to sit. Mr. Muirhead was sitting there, alone. He must have been on excellent terms with the stewards because he was drinking a Bloody Mary.

“Hi, Dan!” he said.

Dan sat opposite him. After a moment she said, “I had a very nice summer. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Well, I hope you enjoyed your summer, sweetie,” Mr. Muirhead said.

“Do you think Jane and I will be friends forever?” Dan asked.

Mr. Muirhead looked surprised. “Definitely not. Jane will not have friends. Jane will have husbands, enemies and lawyers.” He cracked ice noisily with his white teeth. “I’m glad you enjoyed your summer, Dan, and I hope you’re enjoying your childhood. When you grow up, a shadow falls. Everything’s sunny and then this big goddamn wing or something passes overhead.”

“Oh,” Dan said.

“Well, I’ve only heard that’s the case, actually,” Mr. Muirhead said. “Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?” He waited for her to smile. “When I grow up I want to become an Indian so I can use my Indian name.”

“What is your Indian name?” Dan asked, smiling.

“My Indian name is He Rides a Slow Enduring Heavy Horse.”

“That’s a nice one,” Dan said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Mr. Muirhead said, gnawing ice.

Outside, the sky was lightening. Daylight was just beginning to flourish on the city of Jacksonville. It fell without prejudice on the slaughterhouses, Dairy Queens and courthouses, on the car lots, Sabal palms and a billboard advertisement for pies.

The train went slowly around a long curve, and looking backward, past Mr. Muirhead, Dan could see the entire length of it moving ahead. The bubble-topped cars were dark and sinister in the first flat and hopeful light of the morning.

Dan took the three postcards she had left out of her bookbag and looked at them. One showed Thomas Edison beneath a banyan tree. One showed a little tar-paper shack out in the middle of the desert in New Mexico where men were supposed to have invented the atomic bomb. One was a “quickie” card showing a porpoise balancing a grapefruit on the top of his head.

“Oh, I remember those,” Mr. Muirhead said, picking up the “quickie” card. “You just check off what you want.” He read aloud, “How are you? I am fine () lonesome () happy () sad () broke () flying high ().” Mr. Muirhead chuckled. He read, “I have been good () no good (). I saw the Gulf of Mexico () the Atlantic Ocean () the Orange Groves () Interesting Attractions () You in My Dreams ().”

“I like this one,” Mr. Muirhead said, chuckling.

“You can have it,” Dan said. “I’d like you to have it.”

“You’re a nice little girl,” Mr. Muirhead said. He looked at his glass and then out the window. “What do you think was on that note Mrs. Muirhead had you give me,” he asked. “Do you think there’s something I’ve missed?”

Jenny lies a little. She is just a little girl, a child with fears. She fears that birds will fly out of the toilet bowl. Starlings with slick black wings. She fears trees and fishes and the bones in meat. She lies a little but it is not considered serious. Sometimes it seems she forgets where she is. She is lost in a place that is not her childhood. Sometimes she will say to someone, Mrs. Coogan at the Capt’n Davy Nursery School, for example, that her mother is dead, her father is dead, even her dog, Tonto, is dead. She will say that she has no toys, that she lives with machinery she cannot run, that she lives in a house with no windows, no view of the street, that she lives with strangers. She has to understand everything herself.