“Joanne. I told you.”
“Joanne?”
“Well, yes.”
“Mom,” Ben Joe said, “Joanne’s been gone for seven years.”
“Oh. I thought Jenny wrote you about that.”
“Wrote me about what?” He was up off the bed now; Jeremy looked over at him curiously.
“I think maybe you didn’t get our last letter,” his mother said. “Come to think of it, it was the next-to-the-last letter about the eaves pipe falling down. The last one should get there today or so. Have you gotten today’s mail yet?”
“No.”
“Why, what time is it?”
“Mom,” Ben Joe said, “is Joanne home or isn’t she?”
“Yes, she’s home.”
“Well, then, why? And when did she get there? Why didn’t you—”
“She left,” his mother said vaguely.
“Just now? Didn’t she know I was on the phone?”
“No, I mean she left Kansas.”
“Obviously she left.”
“She took the baby and ran away from her husband.”
“What?”
Ben Joe sat down again on the edge of Jeremy’s bed. Jeremy took a sidelong glance at him and then got up and left the room.
“Ben Joe, is there a bad connection on your end? Can’t you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
“Well, don’t be so dramatic, then. What’s done is done, and it’s none of our affair.”
Ben Joe closed his eyes, briefly; he wondered how many times in his life he had heard his mother say that.
“Are you there, Ben Joe?”
“Yes’m. How is she?”
“Oh, fine. And the baby’s a darling. Very well behaved.”
“Has she changed much? Joanne, I mean. What’s she like now?”
“Oh, the same as ever.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“She’s asleep. She stayed up last night to watch the late show.”
Ben Joe took a breath, hesitated, and then said, “I’m coming home, Mom.”
“Ben Joe—”
“It won’t hurt to cut a few classes. I want to just see how everything is.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“I know, but I want to set my mind at rest. I’ve been worrying.”
“You’re always worrying.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mom.”
“Ben Joe—”
Ben Joe hung up, neatly and quietly. There was that giddy feeling in his head that always came from talking for any period of time with his mother, or even sometimes with his sisters; he felt confused and uncertain, as if he and his family were a set of square dancers coming to clap the palms of their hands to each others’, only their hands missed by inches and encountered nothing. It was only after he had gone over the conversation in his mind, arranging it in a logical order and trying to convince himself that everything was really all right, that he felt better. He stepped to the door and said, “Jeremy?”
“Yeah, Ben Joe.” Jeremy came in, looking quickly at Ben Joe’s face. “Trouble?”
“I’m going home for a few days. If the university calls, you tell them I’ll be back, will you?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll take that night train. Be there by morning.” He pulled his suitcase out from under the bed and then sat down, staring at it blankly.
“You see what I mean,” he said. He spread his arms helplessly, looking up at Jeremy, who was leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his dungarees and his face worried. “You get these cheerful little financial statements, and meanwhile what’s going on? Joanne’s run away from her husband and come home, after seven years of only phone calls and letters from her—”
“Joanne,” Jeremy said. “She the one with the red dress and bangles?”
“Yep. Her. On the way out to get your toothbrush, will you pick up today’s mail? I bet they tell about it in a P.S., that’s what.”
“You going to try and make her go back to her husband?”
“No, just going to see her.”
“Well, I’ll go get the mail,” said Jeremy.
“Okay.”
Ben Joe crossed back to his bureau. The drawer was still open; he pulled out a large leather jewelry box and flipped the lid up. Inside were all the odds and ends that he never knew what to do with. He searched through two-cent postage stamps and Canadian nickels and old scraps of addresses and worn-out snapshots and eventually he came across the torn-off flap of an envelope with train times scrawled across it. He picked out the night train to North Carolina. Then, whispering the time to himself as he walked, he went to his closet to choose the clothes he would wear home.
2
His car on the train was only half full; rushing through the darkness it made a hollow, rattling sound. It was cramped and peeling inside, with dirty plush seats and a painted tin roof. At the front hung a huge black-and-white photograph of some people on a beach in Florida, to show that this was the southbound train. Maybe once the photograph had been shiny and exciting, so that passengers gazing at it had counted the hours until they could see the real thing. But now the plastic sheet over it had grown scratched and dull, and the people in it — dozens of tiny people in homely old bathing suits, caught forever in the act of skipping hand in hand toward gray waves or sitting close together under gray-and-white umbrellas — seemed as sad and silent as the flat, still palm trees above them. For a while Ben Joe gave himself up to just staring at it, until the strange feeling it gave him was gone and it was only a photograph again. Then he turned away and looked at the people who shared this car with him.
Mostly they were upright, energetic Negro housewives, sitting like wide shade trees over their clusters of children. Around their feet were diaper bags and paper sacks and picnic baskets; above their heads, in the baggage racks, was an abundance of feathered hats and woolen scarves and sturdy, dark-colored coats. Like Ben Joe, who had a sheepskin-lined jacket folded across his lap, they had come prepared for the time when the hot, stuffy car would suddenly turn too cold for sleeping. They clucked to their children constantly and passed them hot lemonade and pieces of Kleenex, dug up from the bottoms of grocery sacks whenever they heard someone sniff, whether it was their own child or not.
“Here your pacifier, Bertie.”
“You let Sadie at the window now; you been at it a sufficient time.”
A thin blond man in a pea jacket passed through, carrying a box of toys with “80 cts” printed on it in purple nail polish. He came even with the children just across the aisle from Ben Joe and from the box he pulled out a toy — a rubber donkey with a cord and squeeze-bulb attached to it. The children reached for it, their hands like four little black spiders.
“Want it?” the man asked.
The children looked at their mother. She was a comfortable, smiling woman sitting in the seat ahead of them with a friend. When she heard the man’s voice she turned and looked at the children and smiled more broadly, and then frowned and gently shook her head.
“Watch,” the man said.
He pressed the bulb and the donkey bucked, tossed his head, kicked up his heels. Then the little rubber knees buckled in the wrong places and the donkey was lying down in the man’s hand, limp and ridiculous-looking.
“Only eighty cents,” the man said.
The children watched, round-eyed. With one hand the little girl began stroking the back of her mother’s head, patting the curls of her hair with soft, tiny pats.
“How much you say?” the mother asked. She turned only halfway, so that she seemed to be asking the woman beside her.