Lucille Takes the Super Chief

Lucille Takes the Super Chief

           Immediately after boarding the train, Lucille climbed up the steps to the domed observatory and ordered a scotch and soda to calm her nerves. Even as The Super Chief lurched away from its pause in the rococo splendor of this Midwestern Union Station, and began its steady labor towards Los Angeles, part of Lucille still remained unconvinced that armed police would not burst through the doors and haul her off the train. It was not common in 1959 for a wife to travel without her husband, and Lucille felt like a fugitive. She was in flight not from the law, but from the prison of her own life.  From her distracted husband Don, from the tidy, drab little home they had made together, with its haunted nursery, nagging in anticipatory silence.  Lucille had left Don a note telling him not to worry, that she was visiting a “fellow Aussie” and would be back in ten days. And now, feeling the delight of escape blooming in her chest, Lucille wasn’t sure that she would return at all.

           Lucille loved trains. She wanted nothing more than to gaze out the window and watch the landscape spilling by like a wound cleansing itself. She recalled the thrill, back in Australia, of taking a train called The Ghan to Alice Springs with her family, watching all trappings of white civilization, phone poles, billboards, banks, vanishing as if erased by the smoke the train left behind.  The builders had not counted upon the serious rains that would often flood the Ghan's route, requiring that the passengers be escorted the remainder of their journey by camel.  As a little girl, Lucille had hoped desperately for such an exotic rescue.

           Like a mighty metal dragon, this train of her childhood shot through a terrain that was both barren and lush at the same time. Lucille saw trees festooned with dazzling chartreuse and azure leaves, yet when the train passed, these “leaves” took flight, hundreds of wild Budgies filling the air. At one stop in the shimmering swelter of the Outback, money had exchanged hands out the window and Lucille’s parents placed a hand-carved boomerang in her lap, images of wallabies and fruit bats and emus etched into the wood.  It now hung, all these years later, on the wall above the bed she shared with Don. At night sometimes, the adult Lucille tiptoed downstairs past the framed wedding picture of she and Don, who had looked so handsome in his officer’s uniform that first time he came into the hospital where she worked as a nurse in Melbourne.  He had flirted with all the nurses, but in Lucille’s case, it became his mission to win her over. He had brought her back to the cold and grey Midwest, to the lonely suburbs, boasting when he told the story of their meeting to his friends, like he'd caught the biggest fish. She touched one of the empty frames, the small silver ovals she'd placed around the room, poised to capture someone's infancy. 

           The train Lucille had chosen for this American journey was called The Super Chief, a luxury train that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, 2,223 miles.  Her ticket was Don's gift to her, in the sense that she had withdrawn the money yesterday from his account to pay for it. She’d been through hell these past two years, and surely he would concede that she deserved this.  She knew Don would be working late that night, as he had been so many nights lately, so left him some meatloaf and scalloped potatoes in the fridge with the note on top, assuring him that her Aussie friend “Gwen” would be there on the other end to greet her and take care of her. This was her first lie.

           Her friend in Los Angeles was not Gwen, but rather Glen, a man she had known most of her youth in Australia, who had wound up settling in L.A.  She had also failed to mention that this was the man who had once told her if she ever said the word, he'd come running.  She wanted escape, she wanted anonymity, and, she had to admit, from Glen, she wanted only a balm for her savaged ego, an admirer, nothing more.  In Australia, she had known who she was, had confidence, but in the American Midwest, she had come to doubt her skills, been shy about her accent, grown subdued.                                                                                                                                               

            Lucille was a beautiful woman, petite with a full bosom and tiny ankles that seemed only to draw more attention to her shapely calves.  When they hosted cocktail parties, the more the men drank, the more the men flirted, and the more Don staked his claim on her, pulling her close and kissing her neck making a growling noise until she pushed him away. And when they danced, the others would clap encouragement.  She did not know that some of these same guests and neighbors whispered behind her back that she couldn't have a baby because she was too "artistic" or "foreign," or "high strung." They were wary of anyone who could take their breath away like that. 

           She awoke at dawn to the screech of the trains brakes,  having no idea where she was, then in seconds, registered fully what she had done. There was no remorse, instead a fresh sense of roominess inside her, of possibility. Each time she panicked that she was destroying trust, ruining a perfectly good marriage and risking all her security, another voice quelled that one with murmurings of adventure, and the promise of no more pretending. She pulled on her day clothes and pushed down the length of the train, through door after door, pausing now and then just for the experience of being in between the train cars. The cool morning air carried with it a heady new scent that another passenger lurching by informed her was sage.  Lucille sucked it in. She wanted to bathe in it. 

           That space in between the cars seemed dangerous, loud and exciting, and Lucille jumped across the shifting metal discs, hesitating as one would before choosing which escalator step to finally step on.  She stopped to study the route marker framed on the wall and saw that at that moment, they were going over the Raton Pass, leaving Colorado and entering New Mexico. She made her way to the dining car and was seated with several others at a spotless table with a white linen tablecloth, polished silverware, and a fresh yellow rose in a test tube vase set inside some sort of spring. The time passed smoothly that day, and even at the stations where the conductor said they could all get outside and stretch, Lucille did not call Don from a payphone. She wanted to keep the trip her own. 

           The second day of the journey seemed like a testing ground for The Super Chief's prowess. Passing through mountain range after mountain range, straight up she climbed, barely losing steam. The massive red rocks stood sentinel like great monks of the desert and made Lucille feel protected. She pushed down her window and put her head out, the alpine wind in her hair. The curves of the tracks were so extreme though the mountains that she could actually see the front end of the train snaking its way up. The expansiveness of this desert, her bravery in taking this trip alone, even the propulsion of the train had caused in her to let go, for however long it might last, of that persistent goal, that obsession, a baby, that one thing that she had believed would make her truly happy. Now, she surrendered to all things out of her control and welcomed the unknown.  She read her beatnik book which also seemed to be preaching directly to her, condoning spontaneity. She slept the sleep of a person at peace, and felt like a different woman when the conductor announced that the train had reached its destination, the Union Station of Los Angeles.

    "Lucille!” called Glen, waving at her wildly from the platform, and then taking her in his arms as she stumbled off the train. “I was worried. Your train’s three hours late.” He stapped back from her, his hands on her waist and looked her in the eyes.  “And I see that you’re still a stunner.”

           Lucille returned the warm hug, thinking that Glen still smelled like straw, even though he was a city guy now. They had had some good times in the straw back home, but they had just been kids back then.

    "Glen, I've forgotten my Aussie. We're going to need a translator."

    "Fie on these Yanks, Luce. First they steal our women, next our native tongue. You'll be right as rain in a fortnight,” he said, laying it on thick.

    "I'm only staying a week, Glen."

    "Sure, sure...that's the official story. Now tonight I've got the couch made up for myself chez Glen. You get my bed and that's something I wouldn't do for just anybody except those that's mangled my heart like a great croc and left me for dead." Here he pounded his heart with his fist and flung the back of his hand against his forehead with great melodrama.

    "Oh gw'on you big baby,” Lucille said, shoving him affectionately. “I'm sure you've got many Hollywood starlets to console you out here. I'm not the repentant type, Glen so don't waste your drama on me."

    "Ah Luce, you're a cold hearted one...but the truth of the matter is it's too late to get you to Malibu; so tomorrow we'll get you set up by the sea." Then, he tsked‑tsked as he grabbed Lucille's small suitcase. "How you ever ended up in Kansas is God's own little private joke."

           From Glen's place, you could see the Hollywood sign. He said a lot of people jumped off it during the McCarthy debacle, but that was hopefully behind them now. "Bloody puerile anti-Semite sadistic bugger," was how Glen described McCarthy. Glen's home was a little cottage with a porch sagging under the weight of astoundingly robust potted plants, some of them splitting the seams of their painted clay containers. His cottage was shoulder-to-shoulder with another little bungalow with a sagging jungle of a porch, and so on, all of them huddled around a small swimming pool. Even in the dark, the place felt lush, smelled of jasmine and jacaranda. Glen told her some of the gossip about his neighbors, mostly actors or screenplay writers, "all of us, struggling, pioneers," he said, and indeed the cottages seemed like covered wagons forming a safe circle against the city beyond the gate.

           "Why do you want children anyway, Luce?" asked Glen the next morning over a breakfast of oatmeal and papaya, once they’d caught up a bit. Lucille was stunned. No one had ever asked her that directly before. “I mean I know you’ve had a rough go of it, but I’ve never known you to want something so bad you’d risk your health over and over like this.”

           In Kansas, in the movies, on T.V., having children was a given. She realized she was always envious of her pregnant neighbors in part because their bodies simply took over. For them, for most of the women her age, if you had any ambiguities or doubts, too bad, in nine months a baby popped out and you simply had to learn to deal with it. Any decision-making about motherhood was already out of their control.  But this was not the answer Glen was after. He wanted burning maternal desire, he wanted bright-eyed clarity.

    "Glen, I'm in suburbs of the Midwest.  I've given up my nursing career. All my friends have no other life outside their children so that's all we talk about. I've got a husband who wants "the good life," and for him that's a trim yard, a good scotch, a nice car, and some kids to bounce on his knee. And me too...well, I'd be a good mother. I mean, I like children. Besides, I need something to put my energy into. I...I just do. I do want a family."

    "Even if it kills you?" he asked, his eyes dark as she'd ever seen them.

    "I think I was looking for a plan B, once I had lost the third baby. You know me Glen...I always need a plan or I get restless. I get scared." Lucille felt a lump in her throat and she started moving the dishes around on the table like they were puzzle pieces.  “Problem was, I didn’t have one.”

    Glen had set the old picnic table that all the tenants shared out by the pool. A lovely bird not much bigger than a bumblebee buzzed by Lucille's cheek, startling her, hovered a second by her red lipsticked lips, then sped off to stick its nose in a trumpetvine blossom. Glen put his hand over hers and they sat quietly for a moment.

    "Well, how’s about now? Did train travel magically give you a plan B?  Here’s one for ya: you bag everything in that anemic burg and start over again with an up and coming actor in an exciting city. An actor who, I might add, has always loved you, and will soon be seen as the man with the indeterminate foreign accent who boards the bus and asks the time on "Father Knows Best."

   Lucille laughed at this.  "Plan B, Glen, is still hatching. And stop tempting me," she said, punching him in the arm. "You know I'm weak."

    "Weak you're not, Luce. Not one weak bone in that fine little body."

    Glen told her as they drove towards Malibu through the biggest mess of cement and road signs that Lucille had ever seen, that she'd be rid of him for a few days at her beach hideaway, because he had work. She found herself comparing him to Don, ticking down a list of pros and cons about each man. Stop, she told herself. This trip is not about either one.

    Lucille could smell the ocean before she could see or hear it. Her heart raced and she wondered how she could have survived so long away from it. She had grown up with the salt scent of the sea, with its maroon sandollars and thrashing kelp. Before Glen had even stopped the car, Lucille's shoes were off and she was hiking up her skirt, running towards the water. The little sand dabs scurried into their holes as each wave withdrew, making the beach look like it was simmering.

    “Watch out for the undertow!" Glen hollered, but he was smiling at her sheer joy, shaking his head when a huge wave knocked her down and ripped open her cardigan so she came out from under it looking just like a siren. Lucille was sobbing. She hadn't realized how homesick she was. For the sea. For people who talked like her. For her old, true self. She had become so focused on Don and the trophy of the baby that everything else had been elbowed out of the picture. Another wave knocked her down and sucked her out a bit farther. It felt like a good firm hand, slapping her awake from a stupor. 

           My God, thought Lucille, I'd completely forgotten about pleasure, who I am, what makes me rosy. How could I? Another wave clipped her at the knees and as it bounced her like a ball on the sandy bottom, then just as she was coming up for air, another wall of water slammed her down to the bottom again.  A little panic squeezed her heart.  She knew how easy it would be to just drown, stop fighting it and get sucked out to the deep beyond. She could just relax and stop feeling so out of step with her own gender, her neighbors, her husband.  But as she began to kick and use all the strength in her arms to break through the succession of waves she was trapped in, it was Lucille's own life that suddenly, urgently mattered. She wanted it all, the failures, the lumps and bumps, and never, never again would she forget about Lucille.

    She had so much sand down her bra and panties that she could barely crawl her way upright, out of the surf. She strained to break from the pull backwards, but when she finally did, she began to laugh, giddy, stumbling towards a stricken-looking Glen on shore, ready to save her, stripped down to his skivvies and running.  

    “Oh sure laugh,” Glen croaked.  “I didn’t need to survive the war and a stalemated career and all the horrors of bachelordom only to have the piss scared out of me now, wondering if you were ever going to surface again.”

    Lucille’s knees were scraped and there was salt water in her eyes, nose and ears, but she felt so alive, all that damned yearning and self‑doubt obliterated by the pounding she took, by her baptism in the brine. She recalled something her mother had said, Never turn your back on the ocean, and Lucille heard that in a new way in this moment. She would figure out later how to keep this perspective alive when she returned to Kansas, if she went back. And if she did go back, she would start up her nursing career again, insist upon it.  And maybe, while she was here, she’d invite Glen to her little cottage and they could pick up where they had left off in the hay barn, and she would never tell a living soul. Any of these would work as a Plan B.  But for now, she only wanted the totality of the sea, its indifference, the ongoingness of it, so much larger than herself, something she could count on.