London Calling Read Online Free PDF Page B

the train before anybody else.
    I had always liked this part. In fact, I liked everything that was to follow. I had been making this trip for as long as I could remember. Mom and Dad, even when Dad had a driver’s license, always took us by train to see Nana and Grandfather Mehan. We got on the train here and rode up to Back Bay Station, Boston. Then we walked to the MBTA and took the Green Line trolley out to Brookline.
    I felt a low rumble and spied the dim outline of a train approaching, so I hurried back to alert Mom and Margaret. The three of us rolled our suitcases down the platform and climbed aboard a car near the center of the long train. I lifted all three suitcases onto the overhead racks, and we settled into the red leather seats. Mom and Margaret sat in one row, while I flopped into the row in front of them.
    I always sat on the right side and looked through the window. I never read or listened to music. Instead, I studied people during the few seconds that it took for the train to pass them by. In that time, I would learn all that I could about them. I would observe their lives briefly; then I would never see them again.
    An elderly conductor dressed in dark blue with a brimmed cap entered the car. He collected our tickets, then smiled and touched his finger to his cap. He was what my nana would have called “a colored gentleman.” She’d have said that to his face, too, thinking it was a compliment to him. She was very old-fashioned that way. She lived in the past a lot, even when she appeared to be in the present.
    After a few stops, I noticed that the taped station announcements were running late. A prerecorded voice would announce that we were about to pull into the station that we had just left. It didn’t bother me, but it caused Mom to make an angry comment every time it happened. She wasn’t really angry at the recording, though. She was really angry at Dad, and she grew angrier as we got closer to his station.
    As planned, Dad was standing on the platform at the Newark Airport station. Mom pointed at the door and told me, “Lean out and wave to him, Martin. He’ll never see us.”
    I did as I was told, actually stepping out of the car to let a stream of passengers in. I spotted Dad standing there in a black funeral suit, staring casually through the windows of the car behind us. I waited until his stare worked its way up to me. Then I waved.
    Dad was a thin man with black, wavy hair and sad blue eyes. He smiled his unhappy smile at me. Then he picked up his suitcase and walked forward. “How are you, Martin?”
    “Okay.”
    “Are your mother and Margaret inside?”
    “Yes.”
    He indicated that I should go in first. He followed me into the center of the car, where he made the same polite greetings to Mom and Margaret. No hugs and kisses. No personal greetings. Not in this family.
    An elderly woman had taken my seat, so I squeezed in next to Margaret and Mom. Dad stood in the aisle for a moment with his suitcase, looking around. Then he walked to the front of our car and kept on walking, through the sliding doors and out of sight.
    Mom spoke through clenched teeth. “He’s going to the lounge car. Great. He’ll be in great shape when we get to Boston.”
    Neither Margaret nor I said a thing. We sat there with the assurance, shared by all children of alcoholics, that there was absolutely nothing to say. It had all been said before.
    Margaret claims that she can remember many times when Dad was not drinking. I can only remember one. Four years before, we had taken part in a Mehan family reunion in Ireland. As it turned out, it was only a few months before my grandfather Mehan died.
    Nana, Grandfather Mehan, and Aunt Elizabeth flew to Ireland out of Boston; Mom, Dad, Margaret, and I flew out of Newark two days later. Mom told her family that we had to wait for Dad to finish a vacation assignment, but the truth was that we couldn’t afford to go on their flight. We had to find a deal where we