“We got through the day,” Hayley-Jane told Joanie, attempting a positive spin on their boredom. “We almost always get through the day.” They had just graduated from Our Lady of Sorrows Academy, the all-girls high school they’d studied so hard to get into and prayed so fervently to get out of. They referred to it simply as “Sorrows,” as they discussed with languorous detail how difficult it was to live with their parents during this viciously hot summer before college.
Joanie was giving herself a manicure, applying a milky green polish to the nails on one hand and a peachy violet color to the nails on the other. The effect was not as artistic as she’d hoped, and she wiped it all off. She knew she could do better. “We could look for jobs again,” she said.
Hayley-Jane threw a sofa pillow at her, knocking over one of the little nail polish bottles on the coffee table. “I have a better idea,” she said. “I think we should take a train trip.”
Joanie was intrigued. She set the bottle upright and wiped up the small spill with a tissue. Joanie was accustomed to cleaning up. “But do we have enough money?”
“I’ve got the password to my mother’s Amtrak account. It’ll be at least a month before she notices the charge, if she ever even does. Let’s go to New York City and walk around the museums and drink cocktails or something.”
“Hallelujah,” Joanie said. “Let’s go pick out stuff to wear.”
* * * * *
They managed to snag two adjoining first-class seats on the nine a.m. Acela Express from Providence to New York, planning to return that same evening, and informing their parents that they were driving to New Hampshire to spend the day with a friend. Hayley-Jane insisted on sitting next to the window, and Joanie didn’t care, because her aisle seat afforded her a better view of the “occupied” lights on the restrooms, and who was going in and out of them. She didn’t have to go, but she liked to keep an eye on things just in case. She could easily see out the large window next to Hayley-Jane anyway, since her friend kept her head down most of the time communing with her phone.
Joanie poked Hayley-Jane. “Look at that!” she said, as they passed by some wetlands outside of Old Saybrook . “What a beautiful white water bird!”
Hayley-Jane looked up, mumbled “Egret,” and closed her eyes to nap.
“Huh,” Joanie said. “I had no idea.”
* * * * *
The Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station was bustling and bright and the two friends gawped at their surroundings for a long minute before taking the main exit to the street. They didn’t really know where they were, but they didn’t think it mattered because they were going to take a cab anyway. They had already discussed being terrified of the subway.
“I’ve been thinking,” Hayley-Jane said. “If we take a cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art we can walk around in there as long as we want, have lunch in their fancy cafeteria, and decide what to do next—if we have any time left, that is. What do you think?”
Joanie was happy with that plan. She’d already found out that the Met was having a special exhibit of Rothko, whom she adored. Sometimes when she looked at his paintings, she imagined herself in her own painting studio, dressed in raggedy paint-covered overalls and a thin, sexy t-shirt, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. Rothko paintings made her dizzy, especially that Crucifixion series. She wasn’t at all religious, but she felt something deeply sad and confusing when she stared at them.
They only had time for the massive Egyptian sculptures (with Joanie peeling off to view her Rothkos), but they felt sophisticated and other-worldly—other-worldly from Providence, anyhow. After a lunch of sushi and lemonade amidst the frond-festooned décor of the cafeteria, they realized they’d have to hurry back to the train station. They felt independent and satisfied that they were well on their way to pulling off a deviously clever plan.
Hayley-Jane seized the window seat again, and just as the train pulled into the station at New Rochelle, the first stop outside New York, she got up and bolted out the door, leaping over Joanie, who had fallen into a deep slumber as soon as they’d boarded.
The woman in the seat opposite Joanie tapped her arm and pointed at the window, where Hayley-Jane grinned at her and performed a little shuffle step on the platform. Joanie banged on the window with both fists. “What are you doing?” she yelled. Hayley-Jane spun around and tapped a bit more, using a few steps she remembered from fifth-grade dance lessons. She looked deliriously happy.
Joanie got up and almost tackled the conductor, who was ambling down the aisle collecting tickets. “My friend is out there,” she screamed. “We need to get her back on the train.” But even as she screamed, the train began slowly rolling out of the station: chug, chug, chug. She raced back to her seat, pressed her face against the glass, and watched her friend’s expression change from cockiness to panic. Joanie called Hayley-Jane’s cell, which rang right next to her, lying on the seat next to Hayley-Jane’s purse and jacket. The conductor contacted the New Rochelle office, but Hayley-Jane had not materialized.
Joanie, exhausted, cried for a minute, but then just settled into staring out the window. In Old Saybrook, a huge flock of egrets had descended along the dark, shining waters. Witnessed from an airplane, Joanie imagined, the scene might have resembled a Rothko, the congregation of white birds forming a crisp white slash across the blocky dark greens and greys of the shoreline and woods. She felt alone, but not sad. Someday it wouldn’t matter what other people did or thought. Someday she would have a paintbrush, or something like it.
About the author
Diane Wald has published five chapbooks, four poetry collections, two novels, and hundreds of poems in literary magazines. Her most recent books are The Warhol Pillows (poetry), and My Famous Brain (novel). Her next novel, The Bayrose Files, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing.
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