Page 22 of Leaving the Station
“‘What kinds of questions’ hardly counts. It’s more of a follow-up.”
“You can’t change the rules.”
“Fine.” I need to know what questions led her to stop believing in an entire religion; they must’ve been pretty powerful.
But fair is fair.
She shifts in her seat. “Do you believe in God?”
I frown. “That’s what I asked you.”
“No, you asked me if I believed in Mormonism,” she says slowly. “I’m asking you if you believe in God.”
I dig under my fingernail. “Another super chill question.”
“I answered yours.”
There are a few people who’ve fallen asleep sitting up in booths, but other than that, the train is quiet. There’s nothing happening except for this conversation. So I answer her question.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
She doesn’t respond; she’s braiding her hair, watching me.
“Is this your strategy? Get me to keep talking so that you don’t have to ask another question?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t think it matters that I don’t believe in God,” I tell her. “Because that’s not what I like about Judaism. The parts that are God-heavy have always freaked me out. I don’t like reading the English translations of the prayers we say at services, ‘Blessed be our God, ruler of the Universe,’ and all of that stuff.”
Oakley’s watching me carefully now, her back straight.
“I think what I really believe in are people,” I say. “Maybe that’scliché, but... I don’t know. When I’m at synagogue and everyone’s singing together and the candles are lit and the ark is open, it feelsbigger.” My idea solidifies as I say it. “There’s something holy about being with other people. About the fact that I can say I’m Jewish and it connects me to my ancestors going back thousands of years.”
Oakley stills. “That’s not the answer I thought you’d give.”
“What did you think I’d say?”
“Nothing serious,” she tells me.
“I could say something wild to cancel it out.”
“Like what?”
“Like that I believe squirrels are government spies.”
She laughs. “No, you don’t.”
I smile. “No, I don’t.”
We talk for a bit longer; about hikes we’ve been on in Washington and the people we’ve spoken to on the train.
The conductor announces that we’ve arrived in Cleveland, and that, “If this is your stop you’d better wake up,” and then we make a few brief stops in towns in Ohio that I’ve never heard of, though I don’t say that to Oakley.
When I flip my phone over to check the time, it’s five in the morning.
Oakley and I were talking for most of the night.
Some of the people sleeping in coach have wandered into the café car, and there’s the faintest hint of blue in the previously black sky.
