Taking Care by Joy Williams Page A

a gift from her. Your mother reminded me of the blazer she had bought for me. I spilled buttered popcorn on it at the movies and you can still see the spot. She reminded me of the hammock she bought for my fortieth birthday, which I allowed to rot in the rain. She recalled the shoulder bag she bought me, which I detested, it’s true. It was somehow left out in the yard and I mangled it with the lawnmower. Descending the cobbled hill into Guanajuato, your mother recalled every one of her gifts to me, offerings both monetary and of the heart. She pointed out how I had mishandled and betrayed every one.”
    No one said anything. “Then,” Mr. Muirhead continued, “there was the Modena Cemetery in Italy.”
    “That hasn’t been completed yet,” the young man said hurriedly. “It’s a visionary design by the architect Aldo Rossi. In our conversation, I was just trying to describe the project to you.”
    “You can be assured,” Mr. Muirhead said, “that when the project is finished and I take my little family on a vacation to Italy, as we walk, together and afraid, strolling through the hapless landscape of the Modena Cemetery, Jane’s mother will be screaming at me.”
    “Well, I must be going,” the young man said. He got up.
    “So long,” Mr. Muirhead said.
    “Were they really selling postcards of the mummies in that place?” Dan asked.
    “Yes they were, sweetie-pie,” Mr. Muirhead said. “In this world there is a postcard of everything. That’s the kind of world this is.”
    The crowd was getting boisterous in the Starlight Lounge. Mrs. Muirhead made her way down the aisle toward them and with a deep sigh, sat beside her husband. Mr. Muirhead gesticulated and formed words silently with his lips as though he was talking to the girls.
    “What?” Mrs. Muirhead said.
    “I was just telling the girls some of the differences between men and women. Men are more adventurous and aggressive with greater spatial and mechanical abilities. Women are more consistent, nurturent and aesthetic. Men can see better than women, but women have better hearing,” Mr. Muirhead said.
    “Very funny,” Mrs. Muirhead said.
    The girls retired from the melancholy regard Mr. and Mrs. Muirhead had fixed upon one another, and wandered through the cars of the train, occasionally returning to their seats to fuss in the cluttered nests they had created there. Around midnight, they decided to revisit the game car where earlier, people had been playing backgammon, Diplomacy, anagrams, crazy eights and Clue. They were still at it, variously throwing down queens of diamonds, moving troops through Asia Minor and accusing Colonel Mustard of doing it in the conservatory with a wrench. Whenever there was a lull in the playing, they talked about the accident.
    “What accident?” Jane demanded.
    “Train hit a Buick,” a man said. “Middle of the night.” The man had big ears and a tattoo on his forearm.
    “There aren’t any good new games,” a woman complained. “Haven’t been for years and years.”
    “Did you fall asleep?” Jane said accusingly to Dan.
    “When could that have happened?” Dan said.
    “We didn’t see it,” Jane said, disgusted.
    “Two teenagers escaped without a scratch,” the man said. “Lived to laugh about it. They are young and silly but it’s no joke to the engineer. The engineer has a lot of paperwork to do after he hits something. The engineer will be filling out forms for a week.” The man’s tattoo said MOM AND DAD.
    “Rats,” Jane said.
    The children returned to the darkened dining room where
Superman
was being shown on a small television set. Jane instantly fell asleep. Dan watched Superman spin the earth backward so he could prevent Lois Lane from being smothered in a rock slide. The train shot past a group of old lighted buildings, SEWER KING , a sign said. When the movie ended, Jane woke up.
    “When we lived in New York,” she said muzzily, “I was sitting in the kitchen one afternoon