People in the Sun

I was on the bus, heading home from a birthday weekend in New York.

I went up a few times a year to see a couple of plays and my college friend Shelley. Shelley had her own apartment in the city and designed sets for professional theater. I lived with my parents in Baltimore, worked at whatever, and wrote beginnings of plays and lost interest and wrote again but never finished anything. I told myself quiet desperation was an important ingredient for eventual art. There were probably other ingredients I hadn’t identified.

Shelley had spoiled me, as always, and gave me a surprise birthday party studded with Very Successful Creatives, probably thinking they would inspire me, but, honestly, they just made me feel very… pale.

After a New York visit, I usually spent the whole bus ride home reestablishing myself as the center of the universe. This particular time, though, an elderly woman asked if the seat next to me was taken. I said no, smiling my distracted smile to show I wasn’t up for sharing life stories. She used a cane that matched her frail limbs. It took her about five minutes to lower herself onto the seat, and I couldn’t figure out how to help, other than looking encouraging, but then maybe she wanted some privacy while she settled in, so I turned away. She fell asleep as soon as she landed. I stared at the passing exits, imagining a different life for myself off this or that one, some happy, some poignantly drab.

The driver announced we’d be switching to back roads because of an accident on the turnpike. The first stretch of rough paving jolted my seatmate awake. She focused on the clipped fields bristling past the window.

“What were we looking at?” she asked, maybe of me, maybe not. I answered what I thought she meant. “There was an accident on the turnpike, so we’re I don’t know where in New Jersey.”

“I can see it so clearly,” she said, and then realized she was talking out loud. She turned to me. I must have put on my artificial-interest face, because she looked embarrassed. I immediately felt bad. “The fields,” she said, unable to muster the conviction for a full sentence. “They reminded me….” Time for penance, I thought, and asked, “What do they remind you of?”

“Sitting on a patio, a cement patio, looking across a field. Somewhere. Me and Bob, my husband. All dressed up, just looking.”

She looked at me like I might remember it, too. I went for the prompt. “You don’t remember where?”

Her eyes switched to low beam. “I don’t know. Bob and me, and another couple, just sitting. There was a young man behind us, reading.” She shook her head. “Four of us, looking off, but there’s nothing to look at. Everyone’s all dressed up, just sitting there.”

“Vacation, maybe?”

“We never went on vacation. Well, almost, once, but there was an ice storm, so we turned around.”

“Huh. Can you remember anything else about it? Besides sitting?”

“I don’t know. It’s odd. There’s different versions.”

I knew the feeling. “Well, that’s interesting. Like what?”

“It’s a reunion, veterans, after the war. Bob wants me to meet everyone, and they all talk about Bob.” She almost laughs. “The way they talk, he sounds like someone I’d like to meet. We’re sitting on that patio, after lunch, and I’m wondering how there are two Bobs, mine and theirs.”

“Sounds like a pretty clear memory.”

“But we didn’t, we weren’t there. Bob would never go to a reunion. He didn’t talk about the war.”

I opened my mouth, but she didn’t need prompting now. She shook her head slowly.

“Or, I’m in the sun on the patio because I’m recovering from something, and Bob has come to take me home. And we’re sitting there looking at nothing like everyone else, and I’m getting ready to tell Bob I’m not coming home.”

“Wow. Did you? Leave him?”

“No. Almost. More than once. This patio, we’re sitting there with this other couple, and I know why I’m staring at nothing, but I wonder why they are. So, instead of thinking about what to say to Bob, I make up stories about them.”

I nodded. “I do that a lot.”

“I’m not sure … what I remember … if any of it’s true.”

“Well, what do you want to be true?”

I swear she blushed. I didn’t know old people could blush.

“That we’re on our honeymoon. We’re going to get on a train and just go. We don’t care where—we have a month to do whatever we like. Bob says I should decide, and I say, ‘We’ll just go and see what we like when we get there.’” She looks out the window and exhales. “I know that one’s not true.” She looks down, and all of the air goes out of her. Subject closed.

I smile at the side of her head and offer her a cookie. She takes one but doesn’t eat it. She naps again, and I stare out the window. I can feel all the lines radiating from her stories. I color in the pictures they make, but each one is tinted with sadness, leading to this worn-down woman next to me. I don’t want them to end that way.

We’re the last people off the bus, and a middle-aged woman is waiting for her—her daughter, I decide, and I’m right. I help pull her bag out of the storage bin, then grab my own.

I have to ask. “Would your daughter know, about that story?” She looks embarrassed, but I persist, turning to the daughter. “Your mother was remembering something, but she wasn’t sure of the details.”

“Mom?”

Her mom doesn’t volunteer any information, so I continue. “She and, your dad? Bob? They’re somewhere, on a patio, cement, they’re all dressed up, with some other people, just sitting and staring at some fields.”

The daughter shakes her head. “That doesn’t sound like any place I know.”

I can’t give up. “It must have meant something for her to remember it so clearly. Or, maybe it’s a photograph?”

I can see the memory arrive on the daughter’s face, and she laughs. “Mom, I know what that is. Do you remember? My field trip, in fifth grade.” She turns to me. “Mom always chaperoned our field trips. It’s the only time she got to go anywhere.” She looks at her mother again. “We went to the art museum, in Washington, and you liked that one painting. You looked at it for, like, half an hour. We had to come back for you. And you bought a copy. What was it? Edward Hopper?”

Her mother inhales, and then she laughs. “Oh, my!” she says, “People in the Sun. People in the Sun. I loved that picture.” She shakes her head and laughs again. “I made up so many stories, looking at that picture. The main woman, I don’t know, she looked enough like me.” She smiles again, slowly, and it spreads until it lights up her eyes, and I can see her forty, fifty years ago. “What stories,” she says. “My stories.”

They leave, and I leave, and I tell myself to remember her face just then, her blooming smile. That blooming smile.