He smiled. He twinkled. He scratched his ear. He was so down-to-earth, not at all what she’d expected. He didn’t even wear a tie.
Molly Doyle sat at home in Beacon watching Rosie O’Donnell as she did every weekday morning. It was a treat she allowed herself after indoor chores: to sit in front of the tube with a cup of instant gourmet coffee. She couldn’t believe her ears when Rosie announced that her guest today would be Henry Lewse. Her daughter’s boss. Who was going to her son’s party. Small world, thought Molly. Small, small world.
“And you’re a big villain, I hear?” said Rosie. “They’ve cast you as the evil Mr. Greville. In the movie of the bestselling book.”
The audience ahhhed.
Henry chuckled—Molly couldn’t help but think of him as “Henry” now. “Oh yes. I’ll be the man you love to hate.”
“But nobody can hate you, Henry.”
“We’ll see about that,” he purred sinisterly.
“Ooooh,” went Rosie, making her big-eyed chipmunk face as she waved her palms in the air. Then she announced a station break.
No, Henry Lewse was not the snotty, stuffy Englishman that Molly had pictured. He chatted about Shakespeare as if he were everybody’s favorite writer. Rosie clearly liked him. But Rosie was smart herself, a little like Jessie. One of the things Molly loved about Rosie O’Donnell was how much she reminded her of her daughter, although Rosie was chubbier than Jessie, and happier.
The commercials ended, Rosie returned, but Henry was gone. Molly was sorry she wasn’t going to Caleb’s party tonight or she could meet Henry and tell him in person how good he’d looked on television.
“And that’s all for today, folks,” Rosie declared. “I want to thank my guests again. Oh, I almost forgot: you can see Henry in Tom and Gerry at the Booth Theatre. We’ll be back Monday when our guests will be Mira Sorvino and her fabulous dad. Have a great weekend.”
Molly turned off the TV and went into the kitchen to fix herself some lunch before she worked in her garden. Things should be dry enough outdoors after so many days of rain.
Small world, she told herself again as she opened a can of soup. She knew people who knew famous people. Her own children, in fact.
So why didn’t she go to Caleb’s birthday party? He invited her.
No, he didn’t really want her there. He was just being polite.
But he and his sister had dared her to come. They said she was frightened of the city. Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t scared of the city. She grew up in Queens. How could she be scared of New York?
She should go. It would knock her kiddos off their high horse. The train ride was only an hour and a half. She could zip down for a visit, see her son’s new apartment, meet her daughter’s famous boss, prove her love, and be back home by nine—or ten at the latest.
Do it, she told herself. But don’t call them. Surprise them. That way, if she changed her mind, they wouldn’t think she chickened out.
Molly finished eating and went upstairs to look for a nice dress, nothing too fancy, but not too casual either. This was another reason why she never got into the city. She didn’t know what to wear anymore. Fashions changed so quickly.
But she refused to give up so easily. Here was a nice wool skirt that would go well with any blouse. And here was a blousy shirt that didn’t look too dressy. And earrings. Good simple earrings would make her look nice without turning her into a dowdy old lady.
Piece by piece, she put herself together. She tried not to notice the flutters in her stomach, the coldness of her hands. It was a warm spring day, but her hands were freezing. She sat at her dressing table and brushed her hair. Good thing she’d been to the hairdresser this week or she’d use her gray hairs as an excuse. You are such a ninny, she told herself. What are you afraid of anyway?
Finally, she was ready. She went downstairs. And the flutters in her stomach became painful, like ice butterflies. She grabbed the car keys in the dish on the table, telling her body that this was no different from going to the supermarket. Her body should behave, dammit. It wasn’t her head that was silly, it was her body. She clutched her black leather purse and thought a moment. She went back upstairs to her bedroom. She took what she wanted from the nightstand beside the bed. She felt foolish, yet calmer, safer, as if she were putting a lucky rabbit’s foot in her purse, nothing more.
She drove straight to the station. She walked from the parking lot to the ticket window and out to the platform without pause or hesitation.
The day was lovely. Newburgh looked so green and pretty across the river. It was three o’clock already. She couldn’t understand where the time had gone. The next southbound train arrived. She stepped aboard. It was only a train; it wasn’t like flying.
She stopped being afraid, but the only thing she’d been afraid of, she decided, was being afraid, was going into a panic. Now she was fine.
The other passengers seemed safe. There was even a white lady Molly’s age at the other end of the car, reading a book in hardcover. Molly wished she’d brought something to read. A murder mystery was even better than cigarettes for keeping one occupied. The river flickered and flashed in the windows. Mountains rose on the other side. The Hudson Valley really was beautiful, wasn’t it?
Molly must have ridden this train a thousand times, but when was her last trip? A year ago? Ten years? All she could remember today were the Saturday trips when she took the kids into the city to shop for clothes. Her son was forty now, so that would have been twenty-five years ago? Surely she had been to the city since. But the trips with her kiddos were her favorite visits, her best memories. Rockefeller Center at Christmas, Fifth Avenue in the spring. They sometimes visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but Molly had had too much religion in her childhood—know-it-all priests, fish on Friday, Lives of the Saints—and she wanted to spare her own children. She took them to the theater instead. They saw shows like Hello Dolly!, No, No, Nanette, Follies, and even Grease. Jessie might have been too young, but she was just as tickled by the singing and dancing as her mother and brother. They were all so happy together. Their father stayed home. Bobby hated New York. The city had been his job for too long, and he knew only its dark side, the crime scenes and courtrooms. He said it was no longer the wonderful Oz across the river that they both knew as teenagers.
Molly grew up in Queens, in Sunnyside, a petty Irish village of snoops and snobs and too many aunts. She had dreamed of moving someday into the larger, freer world of Manhattan. Instead she married Bobby Doyle and escaped to the good life of the suburbs, first on Long Island, then north to Beacon. Only rich people could afford to live well in the city. But she could still visit, she could take her kiddos there.
Then one day she stopped. She couldn’t remember why. Because it was too much trouble? Because her kids were old enough to go alone and didn’t want her along? Or because of the stories on TV or in the newspaper or told by Bobby’s cop buddies? Everything went to hell in the 1970s. New York was not safe for old ladies.
Which was ridiculous. She wasn’t afraid of New York. She loved New York. She missed it. She just had no reason to visit it until today.
The train was passing through the Bronx. The projects began to appear, ugly brick boxes packed full of people. Nobody, black or white, deserved to live like that. Then older buildings, five and six stories tall, crowded around the train. There were the dead eyes of empty windows. A huge Technicolor face painted on a crumbling wall swung toward her. She expected to hear police sirens from the half-deserted streets below but heard nothing except the chuckle of wheels under her feet.
They plunged into a tunnel. Her heart was racing. Don’t, she told herself. This is your hometown, this is where your children live. You have nothing to fear.
The lights flickered. Everything went dark. Then they came out into a dingy electric brightness. People quietly gathered their things. The train ground to a stop.
Molly slipped the strap of her purse snugly over her shoulder. She followed everyone out of the car and up the ramp.
And she entered the city of her childhood. Back in the days when everyone wore a hat, Grand Central was its gateway. The ceiling was still painted with an aquamarine sky full of constellations. Molly marched through the enormous room, feeling more confident, like she was young again and her whole life was ahead of her. Then she noticed the people talking to themselves.
They weren’t the crazy black men of twenty years ago. They were white people, corporate men and women talking on those tiny new phones. The things looked like transistor radios or sometimes just a wire. And people talked at them. They talked, talked, talked, talked, talked. What could they possibly be talking about? Did they really have so much to say to each other?
Molly snorted at their foolery. And before she knew what she was doing, she stuck a finger in her own ear and said out loud: “Hello? I just got off the train. I’m in Grand Central Station. You wouldn’t believe how crowded it is here. Why, it’s a regular Grand Central Station.”
Nobody noticed the crazy lady talking to her hand.
“What the heck were you afraid of?” she told her palm. “This city is a riot. This city is a hoot. And you, Molly Doyle, are a nut.”
She dropped her hand and laughed. She stepped more briskly. She couldn’t wait to see the faces of her smart-aleck son and daughter when their scaredy-cat mother showed up at their big-deal party.