Page 11 of Leaving the Station
“Have you done this before?” I ask. “Taken this trip?”
Virginia and Clint burst out laughing.
“Oh, hon,havewe?”
“We take the train across this great country of ours at least once a year,” Clint tells me. “More now that we’re both fully retired.”
“Cool,” I say, but what I’m thinking is,Howcould you bear to do the same thingover and over?
I would get fed up with myself.
“This is my first time,” Oakley says.
She’s still facing the window.
“You know what they say about the cross-country train?” Virginia asks. I stare at her blankly, so she adds, “Once you’ve ridden it once, you’ll never want to stop.”
“Is that the official slogan?” I ask, and Oakley snorts, which turns into a cough as Clint stares her down.
“So,” Virginia says in a chipper voice, “we have to play our little game.”
“Not before the meal,” Clint says. “At least let them eat first.”
“No no, it’s better when they’re cranky.” Virginia clasps her hands together. “Makes them more honest.”
“Let’s hear it,” Oakley says. “What’s the game?” She turns from the window then, and her face is even more striking in profile.
She has the kind of turned-up nose that I coveted as a child, probably because of some powerful internalized antisemitism.
“Okay,” Virginia says. “Here’s the question: Do your parents approve of the life you’re living?” Clint crosses his arms over hisstomach as Virginia continues. “I mean to say, are they proud of you?”
“You two don’t have to answer that,” Clint says. “This isn’t even a game. It’s Virginia’s twisted idea of fun.”
Virginia slaps Clint’s hand. “Stop it, of course they have to answer.”
“Mine aren’t,” Oakley says casually.
I shift my eyes to get a better look at her, to see if she’s serious.
She is.
I want to know why this beautiful blond girl’s parents don’t approve of her. Maybe this is ignorant, but it’s hard for me to imagine a blond person not having their parents’ approval. I can’t help but picture her childhood in a big house with a big dog and a blond sibling and two sturdy parents (also blond, of course).
Okay, scratch that, it’sdefinitelyignorant. But it’s what I’m thinking.
Instead of voicing these thoughts, all I say is, “Neither are mine.”
I’m not sure why I admit it, but it’s true—or it will be soon.
“I knew it,” Virginia says triumphantly. “No one who takes the train across the country is living a life their parents approve of. That’s my theory, and it’s yet to be proven wrong.”
“There was that guy from that movie,” Clint says.
Virginia makes apshsound. “He doesn’t count,” she says. “And I don’t believe that any actor’s parents are truly proud of them.”
“All right, let’s ask someone else.” Clint sticks a leg out into the aisle and twists around. “Hey, Paulie, your parents proud of you?”he shouts at a guy sitting a few booths back.
“Ha,” the man who must be Paulie says. He’s wearing a trucker hat and has a face that’s more sun-spotted on one side than the other. “Who knows? Probably not.”
