“Hello,” he said when he reached her.
“Hello.”
Her dress was one he had not seen before — a waistless, pleated beige thing — and she had a round feathered hat and gloves the same color. So much beige, with her dark blond hair and her pale face, made her look all of one piece, like a tan statue carved from a single rock. Her face seemed tighter and more strained than usual, and her eyes were squinched up from the bright lights.
“Ben Joe?” she asked.
He sat down quickly in the seat opposite her and said, “What?”
For a minute she was silent, concentrating on lining up the pointed toes of her shoes exactly even with each other. In the space of her silence Ben Joe heard the whispery sound of the train, rushing now across the bridge at Dublin Cat River and drawing nearer every second. Men outside ran back and forth calling orders; a boy pushed a baggage cart through the door and drenched them for a second in the cold, sharp air from outside. Ben Joe hunched forward and said, “What is it, Shelley? What’ve you got to tell me?”
“I came by taxi,” she said after a moment.
“What?”
“I said, taxi. I came by taxi.”
“Oh. Taxi.”
He stood up, with his hands in his pockets. Outside the whistle blew, louder and closer this time. The two sailors had risen by now and were moving toward the door.
“I got my ticket,” Shelley said. “And I’ve got, wait a minute …” She dug through the beige pocketbook beside her and came up with a navy-blue checkbook. “Travelers’ checks,” she said. “I don’t want my money stolen. We didn’t talk about it, but, Ben Joe, I want you to know I am going to get a job and all, so money won’t be any—”
The train was roaring in now. It had a steamy, streamlined sound and it clattered to a stop so noisily that Shelley’s words were lost. All Ben Joe could hear was the steaming and the shouts and above all that the garbled, rasping voice of the loud-speaker. Shelley was looking up at him with her eyes glass-clear and waiting, and he knew by her face she must have asked a question.
“What’d you say?” he asked when the train had stopped.
“I said, I wondered, do you still want me to come?”
She started lining up the toes of her shoes again. All he could see of her face were her pale lashes, lying in two semicircles against her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. When the shoes were as exactly even as they could get she looked up again, and it seemed to him suddenly that he could see himself through her eyes for a minute — Ben Joe Hawkes, pacing in front of her with his hands in his pockets, setting out in pure thoughtlessness toward his own narrow world while she looked hopefully up at him.
“Course I still want you,” he said finally.
She smiled and at once began bustling around, checking in her purse for her ticket, leaping up to push all her baggage out into the middle of the floor and then stand frowning at it.
“We’ll never get it all in,” she said. “I tried to take just necessities and save the rest to be shipped, but—”
“Come on.” He grabbed her two suitcases and left her to carry the grocery bag, which seemed to be filled with hair curlers and Kleenex, and his own, lighter suitcase. When she had picked them up, he held the door open for her, and they followed the straggling soldiers out into the cold night air, across the platform and up the clanging steps to the railroad car.
“Passengers to New York and Boston take the car to the right!” the conductor sang out cheerfully. He put one hand under Shelley’s elbow to boost her up the steps. “Watch it there, lady, watch it—”
A thin white cloud of steam came out of Ben Joe’s mouth every time he breathed. Ahead of them the soldiers paused, looking over the seats in the car, and Ben Joe was left half inside and half out, with his arms rigidly close to his body to keep himself warm. He looked at the back of Shelley’s head. A few wisps of blond hair were straggling out from under her felt hat, and he couldn’t stop staring at them. They looked so real; he could see each tiny hair. In that moment he almost threw down the suitcases and turned around to run, but then the soldiers found their seats and they could go on down the aisle.
The car was full of smoke and much too hot. They maneuvered their baggage past dusty seats where all they could see of the passengers were the tops of their heads, and then toward the end the car became more empty. Shelley ducked into the first vacant seat, but Ben Joe touched her shoulder.
“Keep going,” he said. “There’re two seats facing each other at the back.”
She nodded, and got up again and continued down the aisle ahead of him. It seemed strangely silent here after the noise outside. All he could hear were the rustlings of newspapers and their own footsteps, and his voice sounded too loud in his ears.
At the last seat they stopped. Ben Joe put their luggage up on the rack, and then he took Shelley’s coat and folded it carefully and put it on top of the luggage.
“Sit down,” he told her.
She sat, obediently, and moved over to the window. When Ben Joe had put his own coat away he sat down opposite her, rubbing the backs of his hands against his knees to get them warm again.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
Shelley nodded. Her face had lost that strained look, and she seemed serene and unworried now. With one gloved finger she wiped the steam from the window and began staring out, watching the scattered people who stood in the lamplight outside.
“Mrs. Fogarty is seeing someone off,” she said after a minute. “You remember Mrs. Fogarty; she’s got that husband in the nursing home in Parten and every year she gives him a birthday party, with nothing but wild rice and birthday cake to eat because that’s the only two things he likes. She mustn’t of seen us. If she had she wouldn’t still be here; she’d be running off to tell—”
She stopped and turned back to him, placing the palms of her hands together. “What did your family say?” she asked.
“I didn’t tell them.”
“Well, when will you tell them?”
“I don’t know.”
She frowned. “Won’t it bother you, having to tell them we did this so sneaky-like?”
“They won’t care,” he said.
“Well. I still can’t believe we’re really going through this, somehow.”
Ben Joe stopped rubbing his hands. “You mean more than usual you can’t?” he asked.
“What?”
“You mean it’s harder to believe than it usually is?”
“I don’t follow your meaning,” she said. “It’s not usual for me to get married.”
“Well, I know, but …” He gave up and settled back in his seat again, but Shelley was still watching him puzzledly. “What I meant,” he said, “is it harder for you to believe a thing now than it was a week ago?”
“Well, no.”
He nodded, not entirely satisfied. What if marrying Shelley meant that she would end up just like him, unable to realize a thing’s happening or a moment’s passing? What if it were like a contagious disease, so that soon she would be wandering around in a daze and incapable of putting her finger on any given thing and saying, that is that? He looked over at her, frightened now. Shelley smiled at him. Her lipstick was soft and worn away, with only the outlines of her lips a bright pink still, and her lashes were white at the tips. He smiled back, and relaxed against the cushions.