others giggled. “A Navy parade,” Margaret said.
“Dear me,” said Barbara, looking suddenly serious. “I wonder if it’s our train.”
Jean looked up at the display board and saw that Barbara, always the responsible one, was right: the 12:45 a.m. train to Boston, the Narragansett, was boarding.
“Run, girls,” Jean said. “Run. Run!”
They would never have come were it not for that ad in one of the Boston papers: a spring special of $5.75 for weekend round trips, including tax, so long as you took the overnight train. No sooner had Jean clipped it from the paper than the five girls decided on a weekend in New York City. They had grown up together in Somerville, a working-class suburb of double-decker homes north of Boston. None had moved far after high school. It was 1951, and Jean, an only child, was working now as an auto-loan clerk at the Shawmut Bank near Fenway Park. Her friends had found similar office jobs around Boston. Like Jean, they lived with their parents. Manhattan was two hundred miles—and light-years—away.
“What will we tell our parents?” Mary had asked. New York, after all, was not the sort of place everyone approved of.
“Tell them we’re going to Macy’s,” Jean said. “That’s something they can’t tell us we’ve already got in Boston.”
“What ever will we buy?”
“Bathing suits,” Jean declared, though the thought had only then occurred to her. And so it was agreed: with Memorial
Day fast approaching, they were going to New York for new swimsuits.
The weekend had been dizzy. The Rockettes at Radio City. Lunch at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe. A snack at the Horn & Hardart automat, where for a quarter a machine would dispense a fully made sandwich. The tiny room the five shared at the Taft Hotel on Fifty-first Street. The drunks falling out of honky-tonk bars in Times Square. You saw every extreme in New York, Jean thought, and she was grateful for the steadier ways of her hometown.
But to get back—all five had work the next morning—they’d have to make this train.
THE WEEKEND with his family had gone by too quickly, and now Danny Lynch, nineteen, was back at Grand Central Terminal. More than an hour remained before his 12:45 a.m. train north. It was a Sunday evening, and the terminal was empty enough to hear the tap of individual heels against marble. He dropped his Navy duffel against a wall near the ticket booths and flumped to the floor. Drawing his knees to his chest, he looked up at the massive vaulted ceiling. It sparkled, he saw now, with hundreds of gold stars. He had been here before but must have been too hurried to notice. Now the outlines of the fish, the twins, and the hunter seemed darkly alive.
Were these figures really the faces of fortune? Was fate etched in the patterns of faraway suns, cold and unknowable?
It was his first weekend liberty since boot camp. Instead of sticking around Newport with his shipmates, he had traveled nine hours home to Long Island. He couldn’t stay near base, not after the accident. After those sailors drowned, Danny needed to be around people he knew: his parents, friends from Mineola High, his four younger siblings. He never thought he’d admit it, but he even missed his sister Alice, the one who was always calling him Fatso.
It was water—his love for it, and the fascination it held—that led Danny to the Navy. He was the shy son of a newspaper press-man. His father, hands streaked with ink, worked so much overtime to feed and clothe his five kids that they rarely saw him. Never was Danny more at peace than with a reel in his fist as the fish leaped in the ponds near their home in New Hyde Park. The place where land met water was a place where a boy could think. It was a place where a boy could see the everyday marvels of nature, mysterious and pure.
After high school, Danny won a concession at the pharmacy on Brian Street, selling sandwiches and shakes to folks in the neighborhood. The owner had
“Dear me,” said Barbara, looking suddenly serious. “I wonder if it’s our train.”
Jean looked up at the display board and saw that Barbara, always the responsible one, was right: the 12:45 a.m. train to Boston, the Narragansett, was boarding.
“Run, girls,” Jean said. “Run. Run!”
They would never have come were it not for that ad in one of the Boston papers: a spring special of $5.75 for weekend round trips, including tax, so long as you took the overnight train. No sooner had Jean clipped it from the paper than the five girls decided on a weekend in New York City. They had grown up together in Somerville, a working-class suburb of double-decker homes north of Boston. None had moved far after high school. It was 1951, and Jean, an only child, was working now as an auto-loan clerk at the Shawmut Bank near Fenway Park. Her friends had found similar office jobs around Boston. Like Jean, they lived with their parents. Manhattan was two hundred miles—and light-years—away.
“What will we tell our parents?” Mary had asked. New York, after all, was not the sort of place everyone approved of.
“Tell them we’re going to Macy’s,” Jean said. “That’s something they can’t tell us we’ve already got in Boston.”
“What ever will we buy?”
“Bathing suits,” Jean declared, though the thought had only then occurred to her. And so it was agreed: with Memorial
Day fast approaching, they were going to New York for new swimsuits.
The weekend had been dizzy. The Rockettes at Radio City. Lunch at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe. A snack at the Horn & Hardart automat, where for a quarter a machine would dispense a fully made sandwich. The tiny room the five shared at the Taft Hotel on Fifty-first Street. The drunks falling out of honky-tonk bars in Times Square. You saw every extreme in New York, Jean thought, and she was grateful for the steadier ways of her hometown.
But to get back—all five had work the next morning—they’d have to make this train.
THE WEEKEND with his family had gone by too quickly, and now Danny Lynch, nineteen, was back at Grand Central Terminal. More than an hour remained before his 12:45 a.m. train north. It was a Sunday evening, and the terminal was empty enough to hear the tap of individual heels against marble. He dropped his Navy duffel against a wall near the ticket booths and flumped to the floor. Drawing his knees to his chest, he looked up at the massive vaulted ceiling. It sparkled, he saw now, with hundreds of gold stars. He had been here before but must have been too hurried to notice. Now the outlines of the fish, the twins, and the hunter seemed darkly alive.
Were these figures really the faces of fortune? Was fate etched in the patterns of faraway suns, cold and unknowable?
It was his first weekend liberty since boot camp. Instead of sticking around Newport with his shipmates, he had traveled nine hours home to Long Island. He couldn’t stay near base, not after the accident. After those sailors drowned, Danny needed to be around people he knew: his parents, friends from Mineola High, his four younger siblings. He never thought he’d admit it, but he even missed his sister Alice, the one who was always calling him Fatso.
It was water—his love for it, and the fascination it held—that led Danny to the Navy. He was the shy son of a newspaper press-man. His father, hands streaked with ink, worked so much overtime to feed and clothe his five kids that they rarely saw him. Never was Danny more at peace than with a reel in his fist as the fish leaped in the ponds near their home in New Hyde Park. The place where land met water was a place where a boy could think. It was a place where a boy could see the everyday marvels of nature, mysterious and pure.
After high school, Danny won a concession at the pharmacy on Brian Street, selling sandwiches and shakes to folks in the neighborhood. The owner had
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