My arrangement with Sanita, in exchange for the four hundred a month, was that Will would visit me four times a year, Christmas, Summer, Easter and for some strange reason, Columbus day for four or five days, missing some school if necessary. It chanced that I was working in New York the first two years and on each occasion, I decided to take him by train to visit my sister in Albany as she had a beautiful house on the outskirts of town, a yard surrounded by woods, a warm family and pets, the loving family he needed to see as his possible future. On both of these three hour train rides something memorable happened.
On the first of these trips I had the worst few minutes of panic and fear that I ever experienced in my life. I lost him in Grand Central station, returning to New York city. The platforms were packed and we were separated in the flow of bodies pushing us along, like a tide. I had both our suitcases in my hands and none to hold his hand. We were separated in these different tides. It was five minutes of pure terror for me. It was rush hour and the place was packed with a thousand hurrying strangers. I had the bags and he had no I.D. on him. I rushed to the service counter to make an announcement then, in desperation, ran back to the ramp were we’d exited the train, now empty, except for him standing there alone, wise boy, eleven years old, knowing to stay put when lost.
This second event had no connection to me personally. Most people would hardly have noticed it and forgot about it completely in a day. But the more you think, the more you read and sharpen your mental faculties, your imagination, and improve in your ability to take in and digest the experiences of life, much of it pleasant. But there’s a flip side to this sensitivity whenever you encounter a bitter scene with profound implications. It disturbs the mind to obsessive degrees. All is not well in Denmark, as Hamlet would say, and you don’t know why.
The subject is love, and the inexplicable frailty that accompanies it. A large part of this journal, the history of my life, describes my duels with it, and the contest is never resolved or ended. It derails the best thinkers of all ages, as there's no logic or reason to it, the irresistible, illogical attraction that bonds two different people together and makes them lovers or mates for years.
Once again I was on the train to Albany with my now twelve year old son, boarding early afternoon as soon as I whisked him from the Newark airport. We only had four days and he loved the ride and visiting my sister and her family in their big house, with a backyard full of trees, (the leaves turning red) and parks and places to hike in the cool weather, with dining room dinners each night, and a cozy, lit fireplace in the den and T.V. afterwards, quite the change from his life in Florida, his vagrant mother, moving from one dump and boyfriend to the next.
This was a scenic four hour ride up the Hudson valley, right along the river. It slowed and stopped at many small towns along the way for just a minute. At one such town I saw a very pretty mother standing on the platform, waiting for the train to stop. My window paused right in front of her, just a few feet outside. She was lovely, tall, with light brown hair, in a sort of hippy dress, probably in her mid-thirties. She was extremely excited and had a whole gaggle of small children around her, five of them, aged three to ten, the smallest one, a little girl, practically clinging to her long, blue, denim skirt.
She started waiving wildly as the train approached, with the biggest smile on her face, prompting the children to waive with her. The train slowed to a halt, a few passengers stepped off and she watched intently as each one did, waiting for the man she so eagerly expected. But it didn’t happen. The look on her face, as the last few got off, turned to concern. Then there was a lag, with no one getting off, which turned her face to worry and finally to the fullest flood of grief and tears, as she realized he wasn’t on the train, or worse, not getting off.
In all my life I never saw such a piercing image of devastating grief and tears on a woman’s face, right outside my overlarge window. If it were open I could have touched her. What added to the tragedy was that the children, again taking her cue, started crying too, as profusely and completely as her, while the train slowly chugged and pulled away.
The scene was so affecting to me I almost felt like crying along with them. I couldn’t stop wondering for the next thirty minutes what sort of man would deceive and ditch such a beautiful woman. I cursed him in my mind as a wretch and total fool, to pass up so much pure love. But then I realized I didn’t know the circumstances. Maybe the children were too many, too great a burden for his income and job to support. Or maybe he just missed the train in New York by a few seconds and was on the next, the whole scenario about to turn into a blissful reunion a few hours later, showers of kisses, a large table and dinner full of smiles, and afterwards a warm, perfumed bed and wife awaiting.
There’s no seeing the future or the fate of others, (or ourselves), or the hidden motives in people’s hearts. I suspect most people don’t even see it in themselves, or the reasons for their movements. But this violent shift in one woman’s face, (an extremely lovable and unforgettable face), from the meridian sunshine of pure joy to the most pitiable wrenching of every facial muscle into unbelievable grief, watered by tears, all happening within a minute, struck my mind as a symbol of the fragility of our human condition, of a person’s thin, brittle vulnerability at any second, a 'Glass Menagerie’.
And it makes me wonder that maybe something similar to this occurred in Laurel’s heart after our first night together, or Diane’s after our second date, or my ex’s mind after a few years, shattered dreams, not as fast but perhaps as deep. But they all turned from hot to cold towards me, without a word or hint as to the reason why.
I have no guilt in being a party or a cause to such radical shifts of emotions. I am what I am, incapable of deception in words or looks. I never initiated advances. They made the first moves on me, throwing their arms around my neck in delight, inviting me to bed. But I’m baffled by the convoluted workings of the female mind, the inexplicable circuitry, the sudden turns of their affections, what seems like a shattering of their ‘dreamscapes’.
I never met a man who could begin to explain to me a woman’s desires and drifts, or a woman who would, so I’ve given up that quest. It’s beyond logic and reasoning. All I can do on this subject, (the female psyche) is to give exact descriptions of my own and my friends histories with the other sex. They might reveal some clues into the unexplained meanderings of affections.
I won’t claim such sudden, devastating, shifts don’t happen to men. I expect they do upon first hearing of the unexpected loss of a parent or wife or child by some freak accident. But men often show it less, or not at all, some Stoic chill or cold logic in their brain restraining the flow of tears, or somehow deflecting the blow. I don't say that a tear never comes to my eye, but when it does it's always in the privacy of my study or my pillow.
