The Lake Shore Limited Read Online Free PDF Page A

understand her grief, to allow it, to come into it with her. His compassionate, dispassionate sense of the familiarity of what she was going through--in spite of all that was extreme about the circumstances--was what she leaned on. Maybe she had even counted on him to expect her to emerge from it eventually, in the same way he emerged from his sorrow each time one of the children he had come to love died.
    As she had. Hadn't she?
    She was sitting on a little banquette against the wall, facing Pierce and the room behind him. While they talked, she'd been watching it slowly fill up, the well-dressed couples being led in, the parties of businessmen, sitting, looking at the menu, chatting.
    And all along a group of people was slowly assembling at the large round table directly in back of Pierce, calling greetings to one another as they drifted in by ones and twos, embracing, catching up. As their mass grew, Pierce turned several times in his chair to give them hard looks. He didn't like it--their noise, their obliviousness of how it might be affecting others.
    Even as she and he ordered their meal, as their first course was brought to them, these people were all still standing, moving around their table to talk. Their voices were loud and cheerful.
    She leaned toward Pierce and said, "It's a family reunion, don't you think?"
    "What luck!" he said. Or she thought that's what he said. It really was quite noisy.
    They didn't try to talk for a while. Gradually the party sorted itself out, sat, and began to quiet down, talking now in twos and threes; and she and Pierce began to talk again too.
    But as she had watched the family gather together, laugh together, she was thinking about Pierce, about his family--three older brothers and a younger sister. His parents were still alive, too, as ridiculously lighthearted, as willfully oblivious of difficulty as ever, jolly stereotypes straight out of the sentimental Dickens. The reason Pierce could be so irritated by this family's noise was that he was just that privileged, too, she thought. Because he had such a family--welcoming, loud, traditional.
    Oh, there were wrinkles. His next older brother had had four wives, and one of his divorces was so messy and drawn out that it resulted in his losing almost all contact with his kids until they were grown. And no one was exactly certain of the parentage of either of his sister's two children--probably including herself, Pierce thought.
    But his family's ease together, their fondness for one another, these were things he took for granted. A big family such as this one next to them--such as Leslie had wanted to make with him--this was not the miracle to him it was to her. It didn't seem a precious gift to him or seemingly to any of the others in it. They were all, like him, offhanded in their generosity and inclusiveness, so much so that the first time she'd visited, she had trouble sorting out the multiple guests from Pierce's siblings. And she herself was welcomed just as carelessly and warmly as those guests were. As Gus had been, too, eventually.
    Gus. She thought of their own sad growing up--the loneliness, especially for him. The long bitter silences between their parents.
    Now Pierce was asking her what she'd read about the play.
    "Well, they say it's not as experimental as her earlier work."
    "Ah," he said. "Good."
    She waved her hand and pushed her plate slightly away. She'd finished. Or she'd eaten all she could. If they were at home, she would have asked for a doggie bag. Just as well. Pierce made fun of her for that, for her frugality.
    "And the story is this terrorism stuff," he said.
    "Right. Actually I tried not to read too much about it. I like a little sense of not knowing what's coming. Just what I told you--a wife maybe caught in a terrorist attack, and the family sorting out various issues , I guess you'd say"--she made a face--"whatever they might be, while they wait to hear."
    "But it's not 9/11."
    This was not a question.