“I’ll cry later,” she said. “I’ll chop onions or something. Now, you have to call me collect when you get in. It doesn’t matter how much it costs.”

He nodded. “I want evidence,” he said.

“Of what?”

“That you cried. I want damp tissues.”

He towered more than a foot above her now, and she remembered the guarded, clever little boy who had come into her life on the day Oliver had left it. She took hold of his chin. “Look, Raj, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and if you don’t keep in touch I’m going to send the Valentine cards you used to make me in ninth and tenth grades to every girlfriend you ever have.”

His eyes widened with horror and she kissed him on his chin. He got onto the train. As it pulled away, he made his usual funny faces out the window. She waited in the station until she could no longer see the train or hear its dreamlike lament.

1960

1960

Dear Raj:

Just a month now from giving birth. I feel prehistoric. Ruth and I are becoming fast friends. She’s going to teach me how to write romances to get a little extra money; things are tight here. We had a good laugh about the two of us writing romances. For me, as soon as the man and woman’s eyes lock together passionately, the only thing that opens up is a view into their doom. Oh, I know that sounds awful, but what have I seen? Reverend Hewitt and Judy (she still hasn’t spoken a word); Maud and Magnus (she’s a lovely woman with such a capacity for joy, but it’s killing her to look after him); my own mom and dad, who lost respect for each other a long, long time ago. Strange for me to see so little of myself in either of my parents. Perhaps I don’t want to. I know nothing of their pasts—just fragments, hints—and now fear knowing. I think about my baby all the time, floating inside me, inside her dream of me. She knows me better now than she ever will, my heart and my blood. I wonder if I should tell her everything about me. Or nothing. I suppose there is some balance that will keep her in a healthy orbit (excuse me, Mr. Physicist).

As you can probably tell, I have too much time to think.