Person on the Page

I. What I Remember

We were in a hurry.

Mother always walked fast, but I struggled more than usual to keep up with her as we sped through the train station with her suitcase. She held my hand and dragged me along behind her, her oversized purse swinging from her shoulder, clunking into my head with every step.

We were going to Grandma’s house, she said, as we rushed along. In a strained, high-pitched voice, she sang, Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go. She said Grandma would probably have a nice roasted chicken dinner ready for us when we arrived.

I was four years old. I have only a dim memory of that day. Images appear in my mind like grainy photographs: the long corridor of the train station, rows of seats on the train, the feeling of Mother nudging me along, and the vague sense that something was wrong.

The train was almost full. She led us to two empty seats, one with a man’s suit jacket draped over the back. She told me to sit in the seat with the jacket, and she settled into the one beside me.

Though my memory of that day is cloudy, one detail stands out vividly. Mother and I were seated on the train when a tall man in a white shirt and thin black tie appeared in the aisle beside us, looming over us. He said something to her that I didn’t understand, but from the tone of his voice, I could tell that he wasn’t happy. I sensed that she wasn’t happy either. Whether she was frightened or angry I wasn’t sure, but I knew he was upsetting her.

Mother explained to the man that those were the only two empty seats together that she could find. Yes, she’d seen his jacket there, she said, but she’d hoped that he wouldn’t mind if she and her little girl sat there together.

The man yanked the jacket from the seat behind me. He stood over us, holding it up with one hand and swiping at it with the other as he looked down on us. Mother said she was sorry and that she didn’t think we had wrinkled it. The man turned his back on us and moved down the aisle.

I remember clearly the words Mother called to him as he walked away.

“Hey, Mister. Send me the bill for having your jacket pressed.”

He didn’t acknowledge that she had spoken to him. He walked to a seat several rows ahead of us and sat down.

II. What I Didn’t Know at the Time

Mother was leaving my father.

That’s why we were on that train heading from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland. I didn’t know the reason for our trip until years later, long after my father died, when she told me the story.

Earlier that day, she had called for a taxi to take us from our house in McKeesport to Pittsburgh, where my father worked. She wanted to go shopping, she said. My parents had only one car, so when my father was at work Mother usually stayed home. But that day, she said, she wanted to go out.

When we got to Pittsburgh, we went to the building where my father worked. She told me that when we got to his office, she found him there with a woman. I don’t remember being at his office that day, so I have no idea what Mother saw. She knew from what she observed, however, that he was having an affair.

I don’t know what my parents said to each other that day. I don’t know what, if anything, the woman said. I only know that we rushed to the train station because we were going to visit Grandma.

As the train made its way to Cumberland, the words Mother had spoken to the man with the jacket imprinted themselves in my mind. Lulled, I suppose, by the motion and sounds of the train, I started hearing them over and over, in the tone in which she had spoken them.

The words took on a melody in my mind. They became a song that I began singing. First softly, to myself, but then loudly enough for Mother to hear.

Send me da bill — 
for havin’ your jack — et
presssssed!

Mother sighed deeply.

III. What I Think I Understand Now

When I was four, my parents were in their forties. Both had had previous marriages that ended in divorce. My father had served in the Army during World War II, and my mother had worked most of her life to support herself. They were older and had more life experiences than most couples with a small child.

I don’t condemn my father. He died before Mother told me the story. He didn’t have the opportunity to corroborate or deny it. He couldn’t explain himself, justify his actions, or voice regret.

My parents were human beings. Human beings are restless. Prodded by longings and unmet needs. Capable of noble levels of commitment and fidelity, but prone to faults and failures. Humans try, they stumble, they let each other down.

I am now much older than Mother was when she married my father. From my present vantage point, I see someone already battered by the harsh realities of a woman’s existence, trying to make a better life for herself through marriage.

Over the years, Mother told me about her experiences as a young girl with almost no education, working for Cumberland’s downtown merchants in department stores, clothing shops, and shoe stores.

Long before the Me Too movement emerged, she told her own stories of being sexually harassed and molested by men who held her ability to support herself in their hands. She endured their abuses before laws existed to call attention to the fact that such treatment was wrong.

For Mother, marriage to my father was a way to climb the socioeconomic ladder to a better life. Having a man to support and protect her afforded her a level of privilege and comfort she could not achieve on her own.

Yet, when faced with her husband’s infidelity, she chose not to suffer in silence and endure. She did not accept the fact of another woman in his life the way many women have. 

She decided to leave.

IV. What’s Important about What I Do and Don’t Remember

I don’t remember Mother taking me in a taxi to my father’s office in Pittsburgh that day. Nor do I recall being there when she found a woman with him. Oddly enough, I have no memory of what must have been highly-charged moments in my parents’ lives.

The train ride to Cumberland — that’s what I remember. A sign of Mother’s refusal to accept what was and is the fate of many married people. I remember the strained sound in her voice as she spoke to me, trying to make the trip sound like an adventure, and my own sense that something was wrong.

Most clearly, though, I remember the man on the train towering over us, peering down at us seemingly in judgment. The way he pulled his jacket from the seat behind me and fussed with it. And Mother’s comment to him as he turned away from us. Hey, Mister. Send me the bill . . . .

I imagine the resentment she must have felt that the man seemed to care more about his jacket than the welfare of a woman traveling alone on a train with a small child. He may have reminded her of all of the injustices she had suffered over the years at the hands of men.

After we had been at my grandmother’s house for a few days, my father arrived there. He and Mother talked, and a decision was made that we would return together to our house in McKeesport.

I continued to sing over and over the song that had written itself in my mind. Mother’s words to the man on the train set to a melody my mind created, repeating itself during the days that my parents must have spent mending their broken marriage.

That song is still in my mind. I hear it now.

Cover Photo: Guido Susmel at Pexels