Headlights

            by Tessaly Jen

 

Marilyn stood just behind the caution stripes lining the subway tracks. She clutched her purse to her gray knit skirt suit, knowing not to trust the rambunctious New Yorkers who came through the station each morning. The toe of her black stiletto tapped on the dirty cement, her lips pursed in intense concentration. A wrinkle of stress crossed her forehead, stretched tight by her sandy hair twisted into a knot at the back of her head. She leaned forward as a low rumble filled the station. Two bright lights shone from the black tunnel.

 

            Horace sold a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum to a twenty-year-old man wearing a Columbia sweatshirt. Before serving the next customer, he scribbled something down on a small notepad. Horace had been working at the ­­­­­station’s vending cart for seven years. He was a stout man with greasy black hair. He rotated between a Yankees t-shirt, an I♥NY t-shirt, and a Metropolitan Museum t-shirt his mother had bought for him in hopes of giving him a taste of intellectual culture. In a small spiral bound notebook, Horace kept track of each pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum that he sold through a complex system of tally marks, circles, and smiley faces.

 

            Cindy took the train from the station every morning to get to school. Her elementary school had been close enough to home for her mother to walk her there each day, but as soon as she’d entered sixth grade, her mother had told her she needed to take the train. Initially her mother had agreed to ride with her but by the third week of school, Cindy had had to walk to the station and ride alone. Even though she had been doing this for a few months, she was still frightened of the man with scraggily hair who sneered at her when she entered the station each morning, and she panicked when the machine wouldn’t accept her metro card. Cindy’s ginger hair contrasted with the navy and gray uniform she wore for school. She hated her bright hair; she’d rather have ordinary dusty brown hair that no one would notice. When she was younger, her mother had brushed her hair each night before tucking her in and told her how beautiful it was, a royal robe adorning her head. But her mother hadn’t touched her hair since her father had died three years ago.

 

            Marilyn was pressed to get to a meeting by exactly 8:00 AM. She hadn’t heard her alarm go off and had woken up twenty minutes later than planned. Her hasty application of mascara had left a black smudge next to her eye and she hadn’t had time to make her usual stop for a cup of coffee-to-go. In her hurry to get down the stairs at the station, she had stumbled a bit and her work bag had tumbled onto and crushed an old homeless woman’s donation cup. She had rushed down the stairs to pick it up, not thinking to apologize, but as she had stooped to reach the handle, the homeless woman had grabbed her wrist. Marilyn had released a delicate shriek before jumping back, yanking the bag away.

            “You crushed my goddamn cup,” the woman snarled, clutching the empty cup in front of her.

            “Well perhaps sitting at the bottom of the stairs is not the most logical or considerate place to set yourself down,” Marilyn replied haughtily.

            “Mother fucker!”

            “Hmph!” Marilyn exclaimed beginning to turn away.          The woman narrowed her eyes and growled. Her growl echoed throughout the station paired with the clicking of Marilyn’s slender heels as she strode quickly away, exclaiming “foul creature” under her breath.

            Having rushed out of her apartment without brushing her teeth, Marilyn was in desperate need of a breath freshener. She approached the vending stand which displayed an array of brightly colored magazines and candies. She picked up a pack of Wrigley’s Winterfresh gum and handed it and a one-dollar bill to the greasy-haired vendor. As the middle-aged man searched under the counter for something, Marilyn tapped her foot, turning anxiously to look for headlights in the tunnel. She couldn’t understand why the simple transaction was taking so long. All the man needed to do was hand back the pack of gum and give her a penny. Hell, she didn’t need the penny, she just wanted the gum. When Marilyn turned back toward the man he looked up with bright eyes.

            “What?!” she demanded. Horace’s expression fell slightly. He looked down at the giant smiley face on his tablet.

            “You’re my thousandth Wrigley’s buyer,” he mumbled. Marilyn narrowed her eyes and scrunched up her nose in annoyed confusion.

            “You keep tabs?”

            “Yeah.” He put his tablet gently on the counter as if it were an ancient manuscript. Marilyn regarded the grungy paper covered in black scribbles and stained by the grease from Horace’s potato chip breakfast. “But only on the Wrigley’s.”

            “What for?”

            “Well, it’s kinda a long story, but basically it goes back to my childhood. I grew up in Chicago and my dad took me to Wrigley Field for my birthday each year. He never let me buy candy at the games but he always gave me a stick of Wrigley’s cause you know, it was fitting. Anyways, I’ve been chewing it ever since. And then when I got this job, I thought it’d be interesting to keep track of how popular it was with other people.”

            Marilyn, who had been distracted by Horace’s story, realized why she had begun talking to such a ragged man in the first place.

            “May I have the gum please?” she ordered, tapping her foot noisily on the floor.

            “Oh, right ma’am. Here it is. Enjoy!”

            As Marilyn put the gum in her bag, Horace began to fidget, twiddling his thumbs.

            “Ermm, excuse me ma’am. Would you go out to dinner with me? You see, I told myself that whoever bought the thousandth pack of gum must be someone very special so it seems that since you’re the thousandth buyer, I should treat you to something nice. So I was hoping you might accept my offer, but I suppose I’d understand if you’re too busy.” Worried that the blond-haired beauty would walk away, Horace spewed these words out without stopping to take a breath. Consequently, he had to huff a bit to catch his breath at the end. “But it really would mean the world to me. And you know, it wouldn’t be like a date or anything, just one man intrigued by Wrigley’s paying for a customer’s dinner. I mean, hopefully we would sit together and maybe even have a conversation, but I suppose that wouldn’t truly be necessary. Ermm, I’m Horace.” He put his hand forward to shake.

            “I don’t think that’s poss…” Before Marilyn could finish her sentence, she heard the familiar rumbling of an oncoming train. But when she turned, she was surprised to see how the small station had filled up in the course of their transaction. She tried to push her way through the crowd but tripped over a redhead’s rolling backpack and just missed the train’s closing doors. Marilyn stomped her foot on the ground as her face started to flush. She pivoted on her heel to face Horace. “Thank you oh so very much for that wonderful conversation that cost me my ride to work,” she yelled across the platform. “Thanks to you I will be late to a very important meeting.”

            “Oh, you’re welcome ma’am. I enjoyed talking to you,” he called back.

            The ginger-haired schoolgirl giggled a little at Horace’s ignorance. Marilyn turned swiftly toward the young girl. “And it might do you well to keep that lovely little backpack by your side instead of letting it stray behind you as a hazard to anyone trying to catch a train. Don’t you think?”

            “I don’t know ma’am.” When Cindy saw Marilyn’s frigid eyes, she hastily added, “Yes I suppose so. It won’t happen again.”

            Marilyn turned back toward the tracks, took out a piece of gum, began to chew it, and stood, gripping her workbag.

            Cindy had seen Marilyn in the station nearly every morning. She was fascinated by her. Unlike Cindy’s mother who had looked somewhat sloppy for the last three years, often wearing shirts stained by coffee, mismatched socks, or only one earring, Marilyn was always put together. With chic suits, neat hair, and shiny shoes, Marilyn looked flawless to Cindy.

            Cindy sometimes caught herself staring, the way she used to gaze at her mother and father. She remembered watching her parents embrace each other and dreaming of being in love the way they were. When she stared at Marilyn, she could forget that she was a miserable student with, as a teacher once told her, an inauspicious future (she had looked up “inauspicious” in her dictionary and wondered whether the teacher had used such a big word to make her feel stupid, or to say what she meant discreetly). Instead, she could imagine herself a stylish thirty-year-old working as a successful business woman. She would be the manager on the third floor of Macy’s. With her handsome salary she would buy a cozy apartment in the Upper East Side. She would take her terrier for walks in Central Park where she’d meet the love of her life. They would get married and honeymoon in Venice and...

            Cindy came abruptly out of her reverie when she noticed two steely eyes looking into her own.

            “For goodness sake, didn’t your parents ever tell you not to stare?” Marilyn questioned edgily.

            “Huh? Oh, me? Sorry.” Cindy stammered before looking to the ground. Half to herself and half to Marilyn she added, “My dad didn’t have time to teach me much and my mom doesn’t care.”

            Marilyn heard the girl’s confession and relaxed her cold expression momentarily. But when she noticed the mark the girl’s backpack had made on her black heels, her face tightened again. “Honestly, if it’s not a filthy woman growling at me, it’s a greasy vendor hitting on me, and now I have to deal with you yet again. Your wide eyes watch me like a picture show every morning. I just don’t understand what could possibly be so captivating.”

            “I, um, I like your hair,” Cindy murmured.

            “You what? I’m not a psychic; you have to speak up for me to understand anything.” Marilyn’s voice had risen substantially by now and had drawn the attention of several anxious morning commuters. Horace was watching apprehensively from afar as if he wanted to protect the young girl from being the victim of Marilyn’s bad day.

            Cindy could feel her ears turning red and was suddenly aware of the itchiness of her wool skirt. She curled her toes in her shoes and clenched her fists, trying to hold in her tears. She hated to be yelled at. Just after her father’s death, her mother had gone through a vengeful phase when everything had seemed to be Cindy’s fault. Cindy wasn’t sure if it was better now that her mother ignored her entirely, but at least her mother no longer saw her cry. Now Cindy would let her tears fall silently when she went to bed. On bad nights she would lie there, wanting her father to comfort her but knowing he couldn’t. On good nights she would imagine herself as the successful businesswoman honeymooning in Venice. But just now she wasn’t so sure that Marilyn was that woman. That beautiful successful woman whom everybody wanted to be. Cindy looked back at Marilyn, no longer able to contain her tears.

            “Goddammit! Now all these people are going to think I am some sort of psychotic bitch who makes children cry.” Marilyn’s piercing voice startled Cindy further and her silent tears grew into sniffling sobs. Her hurt eyes looked up to Marilyn, pleading for forgiveness. The nervous glances of bystanders turned into stares, but the bright lights of an oncoming train saved Cindy from their attention.

            Marilyn boarded the train and left, obviously disturbed by the situation but not shaken nearly as much as Cindy who was left on the platform, her tiny shoulders shaking with gentle sobs.

 

            The following morning, Marilyn swiped her subway card through the machine, thankful that she wasn’t late for work again but already agitated because the homeless woman had growled at her again. As she walked into the station, she noticed two policemen talking to the greasy-haired vendor. She overheard something about a “sad story…dad had died…mother devastated.” God, another sob story, she thought, annoyed.

            As she passed the stand, Horace’s distressed eyes found hers. The policemen noticed Horace’s distraction and turned to face Marilyn.

            “Excuse me ma’am,” the more brawny policeman stated. “Have you seen this child? Her name is Cindy Benson. She was last seen here yesterday morning.” He held up a picture of a small red-haired child sitting in the lap of a handsome, equally ginger-haired man. “She’ll be a bit taller by now. This was the most recent picture her mother could provide us with, but she said it was from about three years ago.” Though Marilyn had never seen the gleeful expression on the girl’s face, she instantly recognized the hair.

            Marilyn’s stomach fell. The picture blurred in her mind as memories came flooding back.

            She’s ten years old, huddled in a ratty blanket by the lake in Central Park. It’s a chilly autumn night and the trees above her are shaking with the wind. It’s been three months since her parents were killed by the car crash that left her an orphan. Since then, she’s had to live at a foster home with twelve other children and an exhausted foster mother.

            One of the older boys punched her this morning for stealing his cereal—the box had been empty when she’d entered the cluttered kitchen. She had found two dollars in her foster mother’s coat and left the house silently, clutching her blanket, one of few possessions that she’d been able to keep after leaving home. She walked to the subway station at the corner of their block and bought a ticket the way she remembered her foster mother doing. She boarded the train with the red number two and rode until Columbus Circle. The familiarity of the journey comforted her as she walked out of the bustling station and through the park’s welcoming gates. Relying on the memory of those many Sundays and making only a few wrong turns, she found the lake.

            She sat there observing the people who came and went. At one point a family passed by in a paddleboat. She had asked her parents to ride in a paddleboat every Sunday, but they had only obliged on her birthdays, claiming it wouldn’t be special if they did it each week. She sat there all day and stayed as dusk fell, bearing the cold to stay with the comfort of familiarity. She only left when a police officer found her and took her back to the foster home.

            Her foster mother scolded her for running away and “scaring her like that” but Marilyn didn’t care. How could the woman who had only met her two and a half months before care so much? She didn’t love Marilyn and Marilyn didn’t love her. Marilyn didn’t love anyone anymore. She didn’t want to talk to anyone or be with anyone or care for anyone. She couldn’t because it hurt too much. She had learned that love wasn’t worth the pain of loss, so she decided it was easier to stay detached, detached from everyone. And with nobody to care for or to care for her, she would devote herself entirely to work, first school work and then real work. She would work until she became someone important, until she could forget that it hurt to be alone too.

            “Ma’am. Excuse me. Ma’am. Are you alright?”

            The policemen and the station and Horace came abruptly back.

            “What?” she asked in an uncharacteristically feeble voice.

            “Ma’am, have you seen this child?”

            Marilyn looked at the grinning girl in the photograph.

            “No. I’m sorry. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning.” Yesterday morning. Oh no. Yesterday morning. Was it her fault? Was she the punch in Cindy’s face? But she didn’t know Cindy. It wasn’t like she had crashed into Cindy’s parents’ car and killed them both. But it didn’t matter. What if Cindy wasn’t found by the police?

            “Ma’am, are you sure you’re alright?” the brawny policeman asked again.

            “Yes. I’m fine,” Marilyn answered distractedly.

            The policeman turned back to Horace. “Well we’ll be back later if nothing turns up. Please call if you hear anything.” After handing Horace a phone number, the man left, followed by his partner.

            Marilyn looked up at Horace. Her mind was swimming and she was having trouble standing steady. She searched the vending stand for something tangible, something concrete that would tell her she wasn’t dreaming. Her eyes found the bright array of gum. “May I have a pack of Wrigley’s please?” she asked softly.

            “But ma’am, you just got a pack yesterday. You were my thousandth buyer. I asked you to dinner and you…well you didn’t exactly decline…”

            “I can’t go tonight.” Horace looked as if Wrigley’s had just gone out of business. “But I’ll be here again tomorrow, so maybe we can work something out for tomorrow night.” Wrigley’s was back in business.

            “Yes of course!” he proclaimed.

            “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

            “See you tomorrow.”

            Horace’s eyes followed Marilyn as she walked to the platform. A low rumble signaled the oncoming of a train. Marilyn watched as the bright lights came closer, glowing like Cindy’s curious eyes. Marilyn thought of the young girl, hoping she would get the second chance, the chance to forgive and move on, that she had just given to Marilyn.