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By Andrea Jarrell
Anna relied on her mother to make things go smoothly, but
they were on the wrong train and it was her mother’s fault. She folded her
arms across her chest and looked out the open window, picking the Italians
from the tourists. She saw the man with the silver cart rolling up the platform
toward their end of the train. “Dolci! Coca!” he hawked. She and
her mother had been in Venice for five days and were on their way to Rome.
The train was now stopped halfway between, in Florence.
“Get something if you want,” her mother said from behind
the green Michelin guide. Rather than her mother’s face, Anna saw the white
letters spelling ROME across the book’s cover. Even without looking at her,
her mother knew what she was thinking.
“Are you hungry?” Anna asked hopefully.
“I can wait,” her mother said. This seemed a cruel response.
Anna could not wait. She’d eaten both her mother’s buttered roll and her
own before they left their Venice hotel that morning, but she was hungry and
her mother wasn’t.
Normally, they would have packed a picnic, enjoyed going
from shop to shop for good bread and cheese, a sweet and some Cokes. But
they hadn’t because there was to be a dining car with white table cloths and
waiters.
At the Venice station, Anna’s mother had searched the phrase
book to talk to the ticket seller. “No, e pieno,” he said. “Completamente,
Signora.” Anna listened, but did not try to understand. Her mother would
do that.
“Le vacanze?” He shrugged. “Napoli,” he
said as if that were the answer.
Finally her mother explained it was a national holiday that
weekend, many people wanted to spend it in Naples, the stop after Rome. The
express train was completely full, but a local was leaving almost that very
minute. In a rush, Anna’s mother bought two tickets, stuffing the lire through
the little arch in the window. They ran toward “sette, sette,” track
seven, where the ticket seller was pointing animatedly. There would be no
restaurant car.
At first Anna had welcomed the chance to skip a meal. She
saw herself jostled by the forward motion of the train, someone who needed
only the passing countryside and Henry James to feel full. She was not fat,
but her ample breasts and hips made her self-conscious, and in her determination
to starve them away she was always hungry.
Like a letter in the mail Anna seemed always to be waiting
for some confirmation that she was beautiful. She’d started registering men
looking at her by the time she was 12, but boys her own age didn’t clamor
after her the way they did other girls. Unless you counted Eric and Scott—boys
her friends called “pervs.” She’d dated Eric for several months, not telling
her friends. After they’d come close to having sex she’d broken it off. He’d
called her mother wanting help to get Anna to go out with him again. She
wondered if her mother would have pleaded his case had she known how they
spent their afternoons.
Anna watched the man with the silver cart move past the train
window again. Except for the red cans of American cola, she could not see
what he was selling.
“It doesn’t look like anything good,” she said and went back
to The Europeans and the same sentence she’d read three times.
Hearing the catch on the wooden compartment door being opened,
they looked up from their books. The door thrummed along its track, gaining
speed. A small man with an age-spotted head stood in the doorway. He put
one finger to his mouth, wincing. Anna had also pinched her finger opening
that door.
He made a grand little bow toward Joan, who lowered the green
guide, granting the man her beautiful smile, a smile meant to welcome him
as if he were a guest arriving at her dinner-party door. The man made his
bow in miniature to Anna. She tried a smile, knowing before she began, it
would not match her mother’s. She looked out the window. No longer able
to see the silver cart, she dug in her straw bag for her wallet and said,
“I’m going to get something.”
As Joan turned to look out the window again, her dress rode
up her leg. Let him have his look, she thought, knowing the old man was watching
her from behind his newspaper. Once again she found the pink of Anna’s dress
down the platform. Joan turned back to the Michelin guide and read about
the unfinished curls of Canova’s Paulina. The fight she and Anna had had
the night before kept her from feeling hungry and the morning’s strong coffee
roiled in her empty stomach. They hadn’t spoken about it again this morning,
but she had been up most of the night fretting about it. Tired, they’d been
late to the station, too late for tickets on the express.
“Why do you talk to them?” Anna had said as they walked down
their hotel corridor.
“I was just being polite,” Joan answered.
“But the way he kept touching you.” The girl shuddered,
squeezed her eyes shut for an instant. “God.”
A man had been seated at the table next to theirs at dinner
the night before. Sitting on the banquet beside Joan, he had leaned toward
her, touched her elbow twice. His hair was thin, but he wore a beautiful
suit and had lovely white teeth, which showed often through his many smiles.
She knew he was married despite the absence of a ring, not
that that really mattered to her. The only man she’d dated since Anna’s father
had been a married lawyer from her office.
Joan imagined accepting the man with the beautiful smile’s
unspoken invitation. A Campari and soda at one of the little cafes on the
square, perhaps, or in the lobby of his hotel. Who knew from there? But
it was impossible. After she’d paid the check she’d kept herself from glancing
back at him.
“It’s like you don’t even know what they want.” Anna had
spat the words at her once they were back at their hotel.
“I believe I know a thing or two,” Joan said.
“Not lately.”
Slipping out of her shoes, Joan had snapped, “And why do
you suppose that is?” She regretted the words before she’d finished, but
they’d hung there between them—her daughter staring at her—the blame placed.
She put the Michelin guide down again and looked out the
train window.
Old Benedetto Danieli glanced up from his paper as the pink
fabric of the young American’s dress brushed his pant leg and disappeared
through the doorway. Even if he had not overheard them speaking, he would
have known they were Americans. Their expressions concealed nothing—like
children playing grown-ups. The mother, he was sure she was the mother, sat
in the corner of the compartment reading. She must have felt him looking
at her because she glanced over forcing him to cough slightly into his fist
and look away. Danieli was not a man used to feeling furtive, yet her legs
drew his eyes surreptitiously away from La Repubblica. The woman was
neither showy nor frumpy the way so many Americans were. Her legs were good—a
graceful ankle and the kind of high calf Danieli appreciated—young legs, he
thought. In fact, as he allowed his eyes to wander over her breasts—snug
in a simple dress of light wool—to her face he saw that the freshness of her
unlined skin made her seem almost too young to be the mother of the adolescent
girl he’d seen leave. Yet, by the way this woman glanced out the window every
few moments, turning her head always to the same spot, he recognized a mother
tracking her child. He had watched his own wife appear to read or to carry
on a conversation while plotting the position of their three children.
Outside, Anna surveyed the cart. No sandwiches or the little
olive pizzas they’d had in Venice, just sweets. She had finally chosen a
box of biscuit cookies when she heard the first chug of the train. She thought
the word “jump,” but she just stood there watching, watching the train gain
speed and pull away from the station, the flat box of butter cookies tucked
under her arm.
Joan and Anna had been visiting all the romantic spots.
In Venice they’d sailed in a gondola beneath the Bridge of Sighs, aware, as
they passed, of the legend that if you kiss under the bridge your love will
last forever. Joan knew Anna was embarrassed to be sitting on the cushioned
seat beside her mother in front of the handsome gondolier. “Better to see
these things with each other than not at all,” she’d said to Anna more than
once on this trip.
“I’m spoiling you,” she teased. “Whoever you marry will
have a lot to live up to.” In her own marriage she had not been spoiled.
She’d left Anna’s father before the girl was 1 year old.
Their Venice hotel had been off the Piazza San Marco. When
they’d first
begun traveling they went on TWA packaged tours, but as Joan
had read more and saved more, all that had changed. This was a hotel for
the cognoscenti, she’d told Anna proudly when she’d made the reservations.
But on their first night the hotel had made a mistake—reserving two single
rooms rather than a double. The situation would be rectified the following
day, but that first night they had no choice but to take the two kitty corner
rooms.
They had joked about their plight over dinner, but when it
came time to go to bed they found themselves unwilling to separate.
“We’re being silly,” she’d said.
“What does it matter if we’re across the hall?” Anna agreed.
“We’re just going to be asleep.”
Joan nodded. Anna had gone to her room but came back a moment
later holding her pillow. She climbed into the narrow bed with her mother.
“Do you have enough room?” Joan had asked as they placed
the two pillows side by side.
“Yes,” Anna lied. “Do you?”
“No,” Joan said and they laughed knowing that this would
be one of the stories they told when they got home.
Their faces close on the smooth, white cotton pillows, they
exchanged smirks. Without saying so, each felt this was what made them special,
better than other mothers and daughters. They didn’t want to be apart.
Now Joan was trying to explain to the old man on the train
the plan she and Anna had if they ever got separated like this—about meeting
at the next stop. Joan kept saying, “my bambina” stupidly, but he seemed
to understand, saying Arezzo. Arezzo would be the next stop. When at last
they finally arrived she was surprised but grateful when he helped her haul
their suitcases and got off with her.
The train schedule was on a circular stand that turned round
displaying times, track numbers, and destinations. Anna twirled it until
she found the train she and her mother had been on. ROMA was in red
letters next to it. Rome would be the next stop. Her eyes stung but she wouldn’t
let herself cry. She’d cry when she saw her mother again. Immediately below
that listing, she saw another red ROMA. She knew she didn’t have enough
money for a ticket, just some purple and orange lire amounting to about $9
but she ran toward the listed track.
Her sandals slapped the concrete and she pretended not to
see the faces that followed the silly running girl with long yellow hair,
who had no purse, no suitcase, only packaged cookies, not even good ones.
She felt her thin cotton dress wrapping her thighs. She heard a low approving
whistle as she rushed on.
She was breathing hard when she found the train.
The conductor, a young man in a dark blue uniform, shiny
from too much wear, stood in the doorway writing on a clipboard, readying
the train to leave.
“Scusi Scusi,” she said. He did not speak English.
She tried the French she could remember.
He shook his head. “No, e pieno,” he said.
She knew the words. She and her mother had repeated them
to each other, trying to imitate the finality of the Venetian ticket seller’s
tone. This was the express train they were supposed to have taken in the
first place. She felt as if she had unexpectedly bumped into someone she
knew.
The conductor didn’t quite understand her story. He pushed
his hat higher on his forehead as he looked her over, considering. “Avanti,”
he finally shrugged. He motioned her to come with him, but did not return
her relieved smile.
As Anna followed the conductor, she looked into the first-class
compartments they passed. Here were the rich Italians on their way to Napoli.
She glimpsed tortoiseshell sunglasses, female lips palely frosted, a designer
handbag shutting with a hushed snap. In one of the compartments she saw a
bronzed woman seated by a man also luxuriously
tanned with wavy hair like spun silver. At last, Anna and the conductor emerged
into a long car lined with tables covered in white cloths. The restaurant
car—the only empty seats on the train.
Waiters were moving around the tables, polishing wine glasses,
laying out silver, folding thick napkins. They wore the trim black trousers
of their uniforms, but above them only their undershirts. Anna looked away
embarrassed. The conductor pulled a chair out for her at the nearest table.
After he left she slid to the seat closest to the window and the train started
to move. She watched the Firenze sign pass by as they left the station.
Danieli stood next to the mother on the platform. For the
second time, they waited for the doors of an arriving train to open. Shrieking
brakes jolted the train to a stop. Surely the pink dress would step from
the train this time. Anna, that was the girl’s name. Danieli had not asked
the woman’s name and he had not offered his, but he knew Anna’s. The passengers
moved off and new ones boarded. The conductor reached down to pull in the
steps. The train moved on just as the first one had. Danieli knew Anna was
not coming to Arezzo. When the mother stomped her foot, he saw that she knew
it too.
The restaurant car began filling with the first-class passengers
Anna had seen earlier. The bronze woman and the silver man sat at the other
end of the car. Her appetite had gone away with her mother’s train, but everything
suddenly smelled so good. She was sure the conductor had not meant her to
stay for lunch. She looked to the door at the end of the car, waiting for
someone to tell her to leave.
The waiters wore their starched white coats now, buttoned
high with black ties. She watched a blond waiter with blue eyes walking down
the aisle. She knew some Italians were fair, but because they looked more
like her she usually didn’t notice them. His coat was smooth across his shoulders
and he, like the passengers, was very tan. And then he was by her side.
“Antipasto,” he said. “Scampi.” She knew
she should tell him she wasn’t meant to eat. “Zrimps,” he said at her hesitation.
“Very good.” He smiled at her as if he had heard something amusing about
her and then walked away.
His name was Claudio. He told her this when he brought the
veal.
“Bell’assai,” he said at the plate.
“Yes,” she agreed, nodding. It was beautiful. The meat,
lightly battered, golden with flecks of black pepper. Lemon wedges fanned
in a pinwheel beside it. Chopped tomatoes with a green herb mixed into them
and something that looked like a delicate basket woven of orange and purple
vegetables, but she didn’t know what kind.
“American?”
“From California,” she said and then added, “Where they make
the movies.”
Her mother sometimes said this to strangers they met while
traveling, but it sounded foolish to her now.
He put his hand to his chest. “Roma.”
“You live in Rome?”
“Si,” he nodded. “But, eh,” he motioned down the
aisle of the train, “Il treno e la mia casa.” He shrugged.
“The train is home?”
“Si si.”
Anna laughed. The older woman at the next table was watching
them.
Again, Claudio waited for Anna to begin eating. When she
picked up her fork, he stepped around behind her and filled her wine glass.
He stepped back to the aisle. “Buon appetito, Anna.”
She felt she had misbehaved by telling him her name, but
she liked the way he said it, the way he drew the first part out like something
he’d discovered.
She saw that his eyes were gray not blue.
How old did he think she was? She wondered. 17? 18?
Joan and the little man sat in the engineer’s car without
speaking. They were on their way to Rome—something the old man had suggested
after Anna had not arrived on the second train in Arezzo. All Joan knew was
that this man was someone— everywhere they went people deferred to him, which
was how they’d managed to get on a full train even if it was in the engineer’s
car. Their luggage lay in a heap on the grimy floor. Every so often a workman
pushed open the door of the car. When he did, Joan could hear the wheels
drumming on the tracks below and could smell the earth outside. The open
door made her feel that she might fall through. She saw herself dropping
onto the tracks, her pale green dress smudged in the fall. Rather than making
her afraid, seeing the image relaxed her, drew her to it.
Anna knew she was waiting for Claudio to finish working.
Whatever was going to happen would begin then. The diners had returned to
their compartments. He and the other waiters cleared the messy tables. Anna
leaned against the window. What had been open country was becoming more populated;
they were nearing Rome. The waiters had unbuttoned their white coats again,
letting their black ties hang loosely. This time their undress did not bother
her, but made her feel conspiratorial. She tried not to look too often at
Claudio, but when she did she found him watching her.
Finally, he sat down at her table and lit a cigarette. “You
go to Napoli?”
“Napoli?” She said.
“Si, si. Tonight holiday.” He said it like
holy day. He sat back in his chair.
“Big party,” he said. “Bell’assai. Lights. Singing.
You will come?” He
leaned toward her again.
He did like her. She had not imagined it.
She watched the way he held his cigarette and turned a narrow
box of matches at the same time. She listened to the little matchsticks rattling
in the box and realized she was nervous about kissing someone who smoked.
While he’d been cleaning up she’d been thinking of that, of him kissing her.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go.” She felt the thrill of saying
yes. “But I have to come back tonight.” She was talking fast.
“Tonight, yes. Tonight Ahh-na.”
The train entered a tunnel just then. She saw their pale
heads reflected in the window.
She’d tell her mother she’d made a mistake that she’d thought
the train would stop in Rome. She’d had to go all the way to Naples and come
back. The train people had been nice. They’d helped her even though she
had no money.
The stop in Rome was a long one with workers in coveralls
passing her window and men pushing dollies loaded with palates of drinks and
snacks. Anna watched the crowd out the window, wishing the train would move
on.
“Roma, no?”
She turned and saw the young conductor who had helped her
board the train.
He looked at her and then gestured out the window.
“Roma,” he said again.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Napoli.”
She felt him staring at her, caught in her lie, but she would
not look at him again. At last, he walked away.
She watched the conductor walk down the aisle and push through
to the next car. She got up and went the other way. She wanted to find Claudio.
Tentatively, she poked her head into the galley and saw him
sitting with two other waiters. The dirty, narrow kitchen was not like the
beautiful plates it produced. They nodded at her as if her coming there was
no surprise. What had he told them? Feeling foolish she wheeled around.
She was standing in the open train door when he caught up with her. She watched
the crowd, coming and going, just steps away. The automatic doors of the train
exhaled with a loud woosh, closing quickly and then opening again—a warning.
She jumped back.
“Anna,” he said. His face was at her ear. She turned to him
and found his mouth. She tasted cigarettes and coffee.
“Anna,” he whispered and kissed her again. But that was enough.
She looked out the door. The steps had been pulled in. The doors began to
close again. She jumped.
The concrete sent a shock through her thin sandals. She picked
herself up, not caring if the faces around her were watching. Halfway down
the platform, the deliciously dangerous taste of cigarettes and coffee still
with her, she couldn’t help but laugh remembering the cookies she’d left hidden
under the table in the restaurant car.
Knowing eventually her mother would find her Anna positioned
herself on a central bench in the Rome station. It was the old man she saw
first. She might not have recognized him except for the fact that he was carrying
her suitcase and her straw bag with the pink and orange scarf she had tied
to its handle. Her mother rushed at her and held her very tightly. Anna hugged
her mother; a little ashamed that she no longer felt the tears she had given
herself license to cry when they were reunited.
“Why didn’t you go to the first stop?” Her mother squeezed
Anna’s shoulders as if she might shake her. “Arezzo. We waited and waited.”
Her voice trailed up, wringing out each word.
“It was Rome,” Anna said. “The sign said Rome.” She looked from her mother
to the old man and saw that she would not be able to
explain it.
“Anna. Anna. Anna,” the little man shook his head. She
liked hearing her name with the same “ahs” that Claudio had used.
Gathering up their bags the three of them walked toward the
station’s ornate open archway. Taxis lined the curb. Usually the drivers
made Anna nervous with their hovering, their urgent vying to be chosen. Tonight,
as they walked with the old man, they were not pestered. He steered them toward
the first cab in line and said something to the driver.
As the taxi pulled away, the old man bowed at them the way
he had when he first entered their compartment. Anna waved, smiling. She
could not see her mother’s face, and so could only hope that she was smiling
too. When the man was gone, they leaned back against the seat, side by side,
their shoulders almost touching.
Andrea Jarrell is a higher education communications consultant
who lives in Rockville.
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