Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey Page 9

  "Really?" I say, glancing at her with admiration.

  "Well..."she says.

  "But she found another way to test my limits," he says dryly. "She would talk about her love life with Jesse. Explicitly."

  "And loud," Beth admits, no longer hiding this story from me.

  "Too loud. I said, 'Beth, what you do with Jesse is your business. You shouldn't be telling people that. You got to pipe down.' I gave her warnings. Then I said, 'Next time you do that, you're off.' She did it again, and I said, 'That's it.' I stopped the bus and put her off."

  He hits the gas. Miles with only pastures and stands of trees roll by; I note that the sprinkling of passengers with whom we'd begun has thinned to three solitary window gazers, perhaps wandering amid their own fantasies, perhaps trying not to hear a story they might have witnessed. I glance back at Beth. I feel for her; her hormones had flared so giddily out of control that she couldn't restrain herself, broadcasting soft-core porn on a bus.

  "How long were you banished?" I ask Beth.

  Without taking her sight off him, she says, "A long time. It was terrible." I try to reconstruct her life in that grim period: day after day, Rodolpho gliding along the streets, Beth perched on the curb as he sails by, longing for all the indulgences she'd raved about in her letters. I know that she pined for the way that he would keep the heat off in the winter until she boarded, and then, only for her, blast it on. I know that she missed his spontaneous quizzes: practical arithmetic problems, hard spelling words like "Mississippi." But her greatest hunger, I'm sure, was for those times when he would uncap a pen at a traffic light and compose poetry on the back of a transfer. His marriage had disintegrated, and he needed to write it down, and sometimes, when it was just he and Beth on the bus, he'd fish out a transfer, and read her his rhymes. She would glow the rest of the day, feeling deliciously privileged.

  We crest a hill, and the sky opens wide. "Then one day," he continues at the next curb, "I saw Beth up ahead at one of my stops, and instead of passing by, I braked and opened the door. She was standing all alone at the foot of the steps. 'I told you you're off the bus,' I said. In a tiny voice, she said, 'I've learned my lesson.' I said, 'Once and for all?' 'Once and for all.'"

  Beth's smile resumes, her eyes remembering.

  "I wanted our little spat to be over, too," Rodolpho says. "'All right,' I told her. "'Come on.' She's been riding with me ever since."

  "Not evry day," Beth quickly corrects him.

  "She sticks to my limits: three days a week, with only one trip each day."

  This diet seems too meager for her tastes, but, she tells me later, she can tolerate it, "'cause I get Saturday afternoon." That's when Rodolpho parks on a side street, unwraps the turkey sandwich he's brought for lunch, and allows her to sit in the empty bus, singing along to the Top Ten countdown on her radio while he eats. Then, when he's finished, he'll unfold a slip of poetry from his wallet, and she'll shut off her radio, and in the narrow luncheonette that's all their own, he'll read to his audience of one.

  We park beneath the airport canopy as a Cessna zooms down the runway and lifts off. Rodolpho lets the last passengers out, but looks through the windshield, watching the aircraft rise.

  "I got a surprise for you," Beth says to him.

  He glances at her, then out the window behind her shoulders, where, I see, he spies a planter bursting with hyacinths. "Bet I know what it is," he says.

  "Oh, you know, I know you do, you know me. Iz spring and you know what I want to do in the spring, 'cause thiz when you all take your ties off, yeah, thiz the good time, you know it."

  She rummages in her Pooh backpack. A single-engine Bonanza bellies up to the airstrip.

  "I wanted to be a pilot," Rodolpho says, his voice a murmur as he peers out to the plane. "I wanted to be out there, up free in the air, able to see everything."

  "Why don't you try?" Beth says, her face in her bag.

  "I did," he says. "I took lessons here. I even soloed a few times."

  "So what happened?" I say.

  He breaks the hypnotic pull that the plane seems to exert on him. "You know, I had a lot of plans. I was going to make money, and have everything that money could buy my wife and me: the nice home, the nice cars, the credit card. That was my idea of success. I worked three, four jobs, making myself rich. I bought a house. I had another house built for us. I got a Dodge Ram. I took flying lessons. I thought this was it, that I was going to get everything I want.

  "But there was one problem. I worked so hard for all this that I was never home. My wife'd get upset, but I wouldn't give an inch. It was my way or the highway—it was just no balance at all. Finally, it all came crashing down around me, and when the divorce came, I ran out of money to pay for flying lessons."

  "I'm so sorry," I say.

  "Oh, it's all right," he says. "Because I met a woman after all this, and now I look at success a different way. It used to be just stepping out every morning and seeing my Dodge Ram sitting there, all shiny. Now it's making Sabrina smile. That's my idea of success now: not thinking of what I can get, but thinking of what I can give."

  "Did you ... did you ever try to fly again?" I say, my voice suddenly raspy.

  "No, but I'm not sure I need to anymore." I nod, a gesture so politely forced that I briefly feel a crick in my neck. "I really don't need anything," he adds, "except to be able to come home, share my day, cry on somebody's shoulder, have someone I want to do things with. I still want to fly, but it's better to keep my feet on the ground if I have to pay that kind of price." I stretch my face into a smile but can't help wondering if I could discipline myself to reach this point in my own life.

  "Do you think you'll marry Sabrina?" I ask Rodolpho.

  "I hope so," he says. "But if things don't work out, at least I found somebody new. Somebody new within myself, that is."

  "Got it!" Beth says, and extracts a Polaroid camera from her backpack.

  "I knew it." Rodolpho laughs.

  "Knew what?" I say.

  Beth says, "Iz warm enough for pictures."

  Then Beth bounds down the steps to the curb, camera in hand. I expect Rodolpho to rise and pose beside his headlights, but he remains in his seat, cooperatively unbuttoning his driver's shirt, just enough to show a little chest hair.

  "Thaz it," she says, pointing her lens up the steps toward him. "A little more."

  "You got three buttons already," he says. "Last year I just did two."

  "Four this year." She laughs, and he obliges.

  She snaps a shot, then climbs back on the bus. As Rodolpho gives the engine gas and spins his wheels back toward the road, Beth holds the photo in her palm, watching the image emerge. Rodolpho's slim torso appears, then his arched, hollow cheekbones, and finally his solemn face.

  "So many of you drivers," I say to him, as he slows to a stop, "seem to be philosophers, anthropologists, spiritual guides, commentators on what it means to be human, and how to be human a little better. It surprises me."

  Rodolpho brakes, then turns back, and I see I've earned his pint-sized smile. "What do you do when you're a bus driver? You spend time with people and you sit and you think. I've thought all kinds of things in this seat. I think a lot in here about life."

  I glance at Beth, who is not listening to us, but is gazing down at the image of her living deity, a person who not only imposes limits on her, but on himself, too. Both of them have learned the hard way. The bus suddenly seems chilly to me. I lean close as she presses a ballpoint to the Polaroid frame, her crooked scrawl coming out smaller than usual, and hence tidier, without spilling onto the photo. Her body warms me, as, slowly, the letters add up. Number One DRiver, they say.

  The Drivers' Room

  "Watch out," Jacob says. "It can be a soap opera in here."

  Rodolpho has just deposited us at the bus terminal and pulled away, but as luck would have it—or as Beth has cleverly planned it—we happened to run into Jacob, who was just exiting his own bus for a break.
Beth is again in search of a bathroom, so we are walking with him toward a glass door off an employee parking lot. "Thiz the drivers' room," Beth says, going in.

  We pass from the windy spring morning into a coffee- and muffin-scented room of surprising serenity. Enclosed by the four corners of the bus terminal—garage, parking lot, dispatcher's office, and the bosses' offices—the drivers' room is, I've gathered, the inner sanctum. It's where the seventy or so drivers in this company secure their belongings, exchange tips and hard-luck stories, eat, read, lay down their heads, and have a laugh.

  As a result, members of the public are viewed here as trespassers and immediately shown the door. Beth, however, perceives herself as more worthy than the rank of common folk, and the bosses, who have cast a kind eye upon her, agree. So when there are no curmudgeons who might ignore the bosses' wishes, Beth finds a bathroom here. Today there are no curmudgeons.

  As my vision adjusts from sunlight to fluorescent tubes, I make out a rectangular space, with two walls of blue lockers—one of which incorporates an interior window to the dispatcher's office—another wall of vending machines, and one plate-glass window from which to scout out incoming buses. The four metal tables, each ringed by metal chairs, are almost militarily austere. Drivers cluster about, sipping from mugs, playing cards.

  Beth emerges from the bathroom and glides up to me. "Thaz Perry, and Melanie, and Marco, and Rod, and Karl. And thaz Betty," she adds, pointing toward the dispatcher's office.

  Nods and waves follow. Then Beth produces a birthday card from her pocket. It's for a driver whose big day is still months off, but why wait for the last minute? I am amused until I remember that, when I was a student, I handed in papers months early to avoid the suffocating feeling of deadlines, and as a college teacher, I write my syllabi half a year in advance. Now Beth carries the card to the dispatcher's window, passing it through for Betty's signature.

  Everyone seems at ease, which makes sense. In the drivers' room, there are no rainstorms or demanding timetables or passengers squabbling about fares. "What soap opera?" I say to Jacob. "This place is pretty nice."

  Jacob says, "Believe me, it ain't always so peaceful."

  With an almost imperceptible nod, he beckons me into the corner. "If you knew what this room has seen. Guys come in here, they gripe about the union, they gossip about each other. Some of them can get pretty hot under the collar."

  He talks about drivers attacking company policies, whispering rumors of their colleagues' infidelities and financial troubles. "But that's not all that gets folks going. Sometimes," Jacob says and sighs, "it's Beth."

  "But she's not doing anything," I say, as Beth delivers her card to Karl for signing, asking him about his slipped disk.

  "Well, some of us are her defenders, and some..."

  And some, I know, thinking of the stories she's already told me, rail on about her when she's not here. They mock her chatter, get on a soapbox about her joblessness, and grumble about the way she, and some other riders, require extra personal attention.

  Jacob's words, and Beth's stories, conjure up what I've learned is a typical scene: One of Beth's foes is grousing about her, casually stirring up others. The complaining escalates into a quarrel when one of her protectors speaks up on her behalf, then ratchets up even higher when, moments later, she is spotted shuffling off a bus toward their sanctuary. The angry guy bounds to his feet, fuming at the plate-glass window, and if that doesn't cow Beth into retreating, he seizes the door handle so she can't let herself in. At this point Beth sometimes does leave, but sometimes plants herself in the parking lot outside and heckles him back, until her enemy is enraged and red-faced, shaking his fist.

  Clearly, not all the drivers are professors and dreamers. But just as clearly, it seems to me, Beth could handle her adversaries better.

  Earlier, when she was gloating about a confrontation in the drivers' room, I'd said, "Maybe you could give them some privacy in here. It is where they relax during the workday."

  "I'm not hurting anybody. There's no reason I can't go in."

  "Then maybe you could tell them you're sorry you've gotten them upset in the past, but you'd like to work things out now."

  "I'm not sorry," she said. "They're jerks. I don't say I'm sorry."

  So the bad blood goes on. In fact, about six months ago, a particularly stressful confrontation occurred.

  A few new drivers had just come on board. For Beth, such events are momentous occasions. Throughout the weeks of training, she'll peer around corners to get a look, bursting with questions for anyone who's met the newcomers. Are they nice? Fun? Good-looking? The bosses, she knows, will be singing her praises during training, saying, "If you worry about making a wrong turn when you get started, there's this young lady who rides all the buses. She knows all the drivers, all the routes, all the times and checkpoints. She'll make sure you don't get lost." Beth will keep a vigil at the postings outside the dispatcher's office, and when they change every Saturday at noon for the following week, she'll run her small fingers down the list, searching for unfamiliar names. Finally, one will appear, listed beside the assigned run. The next Monday, she'll dress in her most glorious purple, paint extra layers of magenta and tangerine on her toenails, arrive at the appointed corner early, do a foot-to-foot shift in time to some inner countdown, until—there! Riding over the hill in a shiny silver steed, destination banner flying: a new face, a new voice, a new birthday card recipient waiting for her at the top of the steps, where this uninvited fuchsia squiress will assist him the rest of his way.

  Beth may never have heard of King Arthur, but she understands chivalry. So as the weeks pass, she observes the new drivers' courtesy to herself and others. Then, the subject choosing her lord, she will adjust her travels accordingly.

  But sometimes, these quests do not fare well. "New guys come in," Jacob confides, "and think they can look good, take her to dinner, be nice—and then they can't stand her anymore."

  Six months ago, Beth became besotted with a new driver, Henry. He's a fortyish, broad-shouldered, broadly smiling guy, and, with his brown hair, bronze-tinted skin, and slight Hispanic accent, he reminds me of Desi Arnaz. After his bus training, Henry would walk with a sprightly step across the drivers' room, clapping other drivers on the back. Out on the road, he'd sweep up to a stop where Beth was waiting, proclaiming, "Beth, my darling!" He told her, "Me and you, we're like a stamp and an envelope, like peas in a pod. You're my riding buddy. You should win the Golden Steering Wheel Award." She instantly granted him a slot in her Top Ten.

  Every day, Beth climbed bright-eyed onto his bus, primed for an hour of conversation, of feeling loved and indispensable. They were two loyal companions, venturing through the world, slaying dragons, or tilting at windmills, or whatever they pleased—what did it matter? They were filled with stuff and possibilities, and they were together.

  The one hour on his bus slid into two, the two into five.

  Maybe somewhere in their travels, Henry longed to say, "Hey, all's well and good, darling, but could you give me a breather now and then?" Perhaps he was too tactful to be as direct as Rodolpho had been, or felt guilty because he'd encouraged the collaboration.

  Only after three months did he begin to object. He was in the drivers' room one evening, packing up to leave, with no one else around. Beth knew this; that was why she'd stopped in. As Beth tells the story, he said to her, "Beth, sweetie, the bosses just asked me into the office. They've been getting calls from some passengers who are complaining about you talking to me."

  "They have?" Beth said.

  "And," he went on, "the other drivers are growing jealous about how much you're choosing me over them."

  "They are ?"

  "And a lady yesterday said, 'Every time your little missie gets on the bus, you never ask her for a pass. Maybe she doesn't have one this month—'"

  "I do have one. And so what? Iz not her bizness."

  "I don't understand why people do what they do, but I thin
k you should know that people are talking." Then he got up and, with an apologetic smile, made his way to his car.

  "Iz wee-ard" she mused to other drivers when she drifted onto their buses the next day. After all, even the surliest of riders were not routinely phoning the bosses about her conversations with the other drivers. And why would the drivers give even one thought to her time with him?

  The drivers heard her out. Some said, "He's making up stories." Some said, "Henry's a good guy, so what he says must be true." Some said, "True or not, just lay off for a while."

  "Well," she concluded, "if he wants me to stop he'll tell me to stop." By noon she'd jumped onto his bus as if nothing had happened, and didn't notice that she chatted more than he.

  The rest of the story, I learned from other sources. One day, when Beth was elsewhere, Jacob entered the drivers' room to find, among the quiet crowd, Henry sitting there on break. Jacob called over to his table, "I hear you're having trouble with Beth."

  Henry set down his newspaper. "I can't take it," he said.

  At this point the truth is up for grabs. All I know from speaking with people who were in the room at the time is that Jacob and Henry briefly commiserated, then exchanged words, and then things somehow got so heated up that Henry jumped out of his seat and Jacob strode toward him and soon voices were bellowing and the other drivers in the room were saying, "Hey, guys, settle down, take it easy." The two moved closer anyway, glaring, jabbing fingers...

  Another driver leapt to his feet, put his arm around Jacob, and then everyone calmed down. In the morning, both apologized.

  Days passed. Unaware of the argument, Beth rode on, brushing off the quietness in Henry's voice and the distance in his eyes. But she knew something had changed. She wrote me letters about it.

  To Sis.

  Hi. Henry told me to Play it cool for a While that's what he said. No I said. some of it okay. I can't Wait to see you. I hope by theN Henry should be back. to his own self.

  Cool Beth