Taking Care by Joy Williams Page B

doing my homework and this girl came in and sat down at the table. Did I ever tell you this? It was the middle of the winter and it was snowing. This person just came in with snow on her coat and sat right down at the table.”
    “Who was she?” Dan asked.
    “It was me, but I was old. I mean I was about thirty years old or something.”
    “It was a dream,” Dan said.
    “It was the middle of the afternoon, I tell you! I was doing my homework. She said, ‘You’ve never lifted a finger to help me.’ Then she asked me for a glass with some ice in it.”
    After a moment, Dan said, “It was probably the cleaning lady.”
    “Cleaning lady! Cleaning lady for Godssakes, what do you know about cleaning ladies!”
    Dan felt her hair bristle as though someone were running a comb through it back to front, and realized she was mad, madder than she’d been all summer, for all summer she’d only felt humiliated when Jane was nasty to her.
    “Listen up,” Dan said, “don’t talk to me like that any more.”
    “Like what,” Jane said coolly.
    Dan stood up and walked away while Jane was saying, “The thing I don’t understand is how she ever got into that apartment. My father had about a dozen locks on the door.”
    Dan sat in her seat in the quiet, dark coach and looked out at the dark night. She tried to recollect how it seemed dawn happened. Things just sort of rose out, she guessed she knew. There was nothing you could do about it. She thought of Jane’s dream in which the men in white bathing caps were pushing all her grandma’s things out of the house and into the street. The inside became empty and the outside became full. Dan was beginning to feel sorry for herself. She was alone, with no friends and no parents, sitting on a train between one place and another, scaring herself with someone else’s dream in the middle of the night. She got up and walked through the rocking cars to the Starlight Lounge for a glass of water. After four A.M. it was no longer referred to as the Starlight Lounge. They stopped serving drinks and turned off the electric stars. It became just another place to sit. Mr. Muirhead was sitting there, alone. He must have been on excellent terms with the stewards because he was drinking a Bloody Mary.
    “Hi, Dan!” he said.
    Dan sat opposite him. After a moment she said, “I had a very nice summer. Thank you for inviting me.”
    “Well, I hope you enjoyed your summer, sweetie,” Mr. Muirhead said.
    “Do you think Jane and I will be friends forever?” Dan asked.
    Mr. Muirhead looked surprised. “Definitely not. Jane will not have friends. Jane will have husbands, enemies and lawyers.” He cracked ice noisily with his white teeth. “I’m glad you enjoyed your summer, Dan, and I hope you’re enjoying your childhood. When you grow up, a shadow falls. Everything’s sunny and then this big Goddamn
wing
or something passes overhead.”
    “Oh,” Dan said.
    “Well, I’ve only heard that’s the case actually,” Mr. Muirhead said. “Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?”He waited for her to smile. “When I grow up I want to become an Indian so I can use my Indian name.”
    “What is your Indian name?” Dan asked, smiling.
    “My Indian name is ‘He Rides a Slow Enduring Heavy Horse.’”
    “That’s a nice one,” Dan said.
    “It is, isn’t it?” Mr. Muirhead said, gnawing ice.
    Outside, the sky was lightening. Daylight was just beginning to flourish on the city of Jacksonville. It fell without prejudice on the slaughterhouses, Dairy Queens and courthouses, on the car lots, sabal palms and a billboard advertisement for pies.
    The train went slowly around a long curve, and looking backward, past Mr. Muirhead, Dan could see the entire length of it moving ahead. The bubble-topped cars were dark and sinister in the first flat and hopeful light of the morning.
    Dan took the three postcards she had left out of her bookbag and looked at them. One showed Thomas Edison beneath