“He’ll be all right,” Nora said. “We’ll make sure to keep an eye on him.”
They had reached the top of St. Paul Street now. It would be a straight shot south to Penn Station. Nora sat back in her seat, her fingers loose on the bottom of the wheel. Even driving, she gave the impression of floating. She said, “I would just like to say, Denny—Douglas and I would both like to say—that we appreciate your coming to help out. It meant a lot to your mom and dad. I hope you know that.”
He looked her way again. “Thanks,” he said. “I mean, you’re welcome. Well, thank you both, too.”
“And it was nice of you not to tell about his mother.”
“Oh, well, it’s nobody’s business, really.”
“Not to tell Douglas, I mean. When he was younger.”
“Oh.”
There was another silence.
“You know what happened?” he asked suddenly. There was something startled in his tone, as if he hadn’t intended to speak until that instant. “You know when I was mending Dad’s shirt?”
“Yes.”
“His dashiki kind of thing?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I was thinking I would never find the right shade of blue, because it was such a bright blue. But I went to the linen closet where Mom always kept her sewing box, and I opened the door, and before I could even reach for the box this spool of bright-blue thread rolled out from the rear of the shelf. I just cupped my hand beneath the shelf and this spool of thread dropped into it.”
They were stopped for a red light now. Nora sent him a thoughtful, remote look.
“Well, of course that can be explained,” he said. “First of all, Mom would have that shade, because she was the one who had made the dashiki in the first place, and you don’t toss a spool of thread just because it’s old. As for why it was out of the box like that … well, I did spill a bunch of stuff out earlier when I was sewing on a button. And I guess the rolling had to do with how I opened the closet door. I set up a whoosh of air or something; I don’t know.”
The light turned green, and Nora resumed driving.
“But in the split second before I realized that,” he said, “I almost imagined that she was handing it to me. Like some kind of, like, secret sign. Stupid, right?”
Nora said, “No.”
“I thought, ‘It’s like she’s telling me she forgives me,’ ” Denny said. “And then I took the dashiki to my room and I sat down on my bed to mend it, and out of nowhere this other thought came. I thought, ‘Or she’s telling me she knows that I forgive her.’ And all at once I got this huge, like, feeling of relief.”
Nora nodded and signaled for a turn.
“Oh, well, who can figure these things?” Denny asked the row houses slipping past.
“I think you’ve figured it just right,” Nora told him.
She turned into Penn Station.
In the passenger drop-off lane, she shifted into park and popped her trunk. “Don’t forget to keep in touch,” she told him.
“Oh, sure. I’d never just disappear; they need me around for the drama.”
She smiled; her two dimples deepened. “They probably do,” she said. “I really think they do.” And she accepted his peck on her cheek and then gave him a languid wave as he stepped out of the car.
The clouds overhead were a deep gray now, churning like muddy waters stirred up from the bottom of a lake, and inside the station, the skylight—ordinarily a kaleidoscope of pale, translucent aquas—had an opaque look. Denny bypassed the ticket machines, which had lines that wound back through the lobby, and went to stand in the line for the agents. Even there some ten or twelve people were waiting ahead of him, so he set down his bags and shoved them along with his foot as the line progressed. He could sense the anxiety of the crowd. A middle-aged couple standing behind him had apparently not thought to reserve, and the wife kept saying, “Oh, God, oh, God, they’re not going to have any seats left, are they?”
“Sure they are,” her husband told her. “Quit your fussing.”
“I knew we should have called ahead. Everybody’s trying to beat the hurricane.”
“Hurkeen,” she pronounced it. She had a wiry, elastic Baltimore accent and a smoker’s rusty voice.
“If there’s not any seats for this one we’ll catch the next one,” her husband told her.
“Next one! Watch there not be a next one. They’ll stop running them after this one.”
The husband made an exasperated huffing sound, but Denny sympathized with the wife. Even with his own reserved seat, he didn’t feel entirely confident. What if they shut down the trains before his train arrived? What if he had to turn around and go back to Bouton Road? Stuck in his family, trapped. Ingrown, like a toenail.