The man beside me was big.
Not fat, exactly. Broad. Fifty, maybe. Thick neck. Sunburned forearms. A gray polo shirt and khaki shorts and boat shoes without socks. A wedding ring. A canvas messenger bag on the floor between his feet with a lanyard spilling out of the front pocket.
He’d sat down at South Station with a grunt and spread his knees wide so his leg was against mine and opened his laptop on the tray table.
I’d moved my leg.
He hadn’t noticed.
Then he started unbuttoning his shirt.
At first, I thought he was just loosening it. The collar. The top button. Everybody was hot.
Then he pulled the whole thing over his head.
Stuffed it into his messenger bag.
And sat there.
Bare-chested.
In seat 43B. On a packed train. Two inches from my shoulder.
I looked out the window.
Massachusetts going by. Pine trees. Strip malls. A Dunkin’ Donuts. A cemetery.
I tried to ignore him.
I’m good at that. I’ve had practice.
My name is Joanna Pratt. I’m forty-four years old.
I’m a pediatric speech therapist in Brookline. I teach four-year-olds how to say their R’s and help toddlers who’ve never spoken a word find their first one. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter named Maya. I’ve been divorced for six years. I own a small blue house in Roslindale with a porch that needs painting.
My mother is dying.
Her name is Doris. She’s eighty-one. She lives in Queens, in the same two-bedroom apartment in Jackson Heights where I grew up. Pancreatic cancer. They found it in April. By June, they said weeks.
Hospice set up a bed in her living room. By the window. Where she can see the 7 train go by on the elevated tracks. She says the sound helps her sleep. She’s heard it every night for fifty-two years.
I’d been going down every weekend. Four hours there. Four hours back. Every Friday after my last patient.
This weekend, the nurse said, might be the last one.
My mother taught me a lot of things.
How to make a pie crust without a recipe. How to iron a collar. How to walk into a room like you belong there even when you don’t.
And one thing she said more than anything else. Over and over. My whole childhood.
Don’t make a scene, Joanna. 