3

五日九月

I missed my train. As I ran from car to the track, then frantically around a fence that separated me from the station entrance toward which I saw mum and dad sprinting, I repeated to myself hoarsely, actually, in airy guttural spurts, “I’m missing my fucking train, I’m missing my fucking train, I’m missing my fucking train.” My hair is still damp from the shower I took half an hour ago. To have leisurely pampered myself unaware of myself that my train was then arriving at Union Station seems outrageous in my current state of heaving devastation.

Two men exit the station as I approach its doors; I refuse to acknowledge them. “Nice to meet you!” says one of them as I pull unsuccessfully then push on the glass door. His accent is unmistakably Chinese; from my peripheral vision I get the sense that he stopped to watch me pass. I think ridiculously that I will have to fly that night. Alternatively we could drive fast enough as to catch the train at the next station. I’m distraught. I think of Robert, who wrote in a letter to me this summer that he felt closer to me after I’d told him about the time I’d asked Juliet to pull over on our way to Clermont before we left campus. I was struck with a sudden and insurmountable anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to finish my work if I spent the afternoon sun tanning with her next to the Hudson. In my reply, which I never sent, I wondered what else might have come from my being more forthcoming with my faults and imperfections.

There is not enough to say what my skin feels like when my mom holds me despite myself and my tearful eye-rolls in the aftermath of our sprint. The Amtrak employee who rebooks my ticket for no charge is young and wearing a Kansas City Bears T-shirt. I collect myself quickly, breath now subdued, rationality setting back in. In the elevator from the entrance, when I was sure the train was igniting its engine, Mom looked at me with severity: “Serena, you’re going to get to Japan.” Now, as the adrenaline descends I am grateful we left an extra day before my flight from L.A. in case my train was delayed. Chris is the name of the guy working the counter. He offers to check my bags for tomorrow’s train. I make a mental note to thank him again the next day.

Reentering the hotel room, it is a place I thought I’d left for the last time. Dad let’s me sleep in the same bed as mum, against whose bosom I am cuddled up. He’s on the pullout couch. I’m still teary despite myself. “Stop making her cry, Joy,” says Dad without looking up from his game of Words with Friends. Not once did they shame me for my outrageous misremembering of the train’s departure time. “You are,” I call with resignation from my enblanketed cocoon. “You talk so much about feeling ashamed when you were a kid for not doing things right. I feel bad about how mean I was then. You were just a caring kid who made mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes.” He’s nonchalant still, and there’s this little nugget of old pain he’s tapping his finger on and saying, “Look sweetie, it’s okay, you don’t have to hold that here.”

“Thanks Tim,” Mom calls over as she sees my mute and watery gratitude, not yet matured into expression. I am grateful for them.