the way home

On the train ride home from Chicago I pulled out Volume I of A History of Women and settled down to enjoy some quiet reading. It was slightly depressing to be headed back to South Bend, even though I was eager to see Simon again, and my ankle was aching, and the train was practically empty, so I was looking forward to losing myself in the oblivion of a book.

At one of the first stops, however, a woman and a small child took the seat in front of me. I helped the mother heave her suitcase onto the rack over my head, and huddled back down to read, thinking, Great. Little kid equals loud, high-pitched, and squealing.

And not exactly the ideal serendipitous train ride partner. You meet John Cusack on the train, you know? That's what you dream about. You're sitting there alone, reading your book, happy but a little lonely, with that slightly sad twist to your quiet smile as you occasionally look out the window, and this sweet, kind, good man sits in front of you and notices you and starts talking to you.

Not a little girl. But as I glanced up at her with her forehead pressed against the glass I couldn't help but catch my breath at how cute she was. Tiny, perfectly formed, with cappuccino-colored skin and curly-frizzy hair escaping from its ponytail to ring around her neck and huge liquid brown eyes like a deer's. She turned her head and saw me and I grinned and ducked my head, and I heard her giggle.

So we started playing peek-a-boo. One doesn't talk to strangers, so we didn't talk. She just popped her head in the gap between the curve of the seat and the window, and I would mock-shriek and cover my face and hide, and she would duck down and smother her laughter. She whispered to her mom that she was playing peek-a-boo with the lady "that helped you with your suitcase." A really articulate little girl. When I got lost in my book again, she would tap on the window glass or scratch at the seat to get my attention, and the game would begin again.

After awhile we both tired of playing, and then, no longer strangers in the complete sense, we started talking. She remarked about how we were going backward. I learned that her favorite number is four, that she is four, and that her favorite color is green ("So is mine!" I said). I learned that she was going to visit her mother's friend Kelly, and that they had four stops to go. I learned that it was her first time on the train. "Are you having fun?" I asked. She smiled and nodded. I asked her what interesting things she saw out the window. She liked the semi truck full of coal, and the tall purple flowers growing between the railroad tracks and the highway. I pointed out an electric power plant. She pointed out the number 8 on a street sign at one of the stops.

Sometimes we both got shy, and then she'd play peek-a-boo again, or, increasingly, wave at me, stretching her hand halfway between the seats and waggling her fingers. I would do the same in reply. Conscious, perhaps, of the unwritten rule that if you don't talk to strangers, you never touch them, we never quite made contact. I never learned her name, and she never asked for mine. But as we approached her stop, she half-whispered that she wished I were going to visit her mom's friend, too.

We arrived at her destination, and I helped her mother lift her luggage down, and then the little girl popped her head over the back of the seat and said, "We're getting off the train now. Bye-bye." "Bye!" I said. "Have fun visiting your mom's friend!"

And she hopped down into the aisle wearing her little plastic backpack, and went bobbing off, and I went back to "The Sexual Philosophies of Plato and Aristotle," feeling sad that she was gone, and praying silently for her protection and blessing as she grows up.

I'll take a beautiful, well-behaved, precious little child over a John Cusack for a random meeting on the train any day. In real life John Cusack will turn out to have a girlfriend, or a wife, or no job, or two girlfriends, or be a jerk, or pushy, or creepy. You can't go wrong with a good kid.