and boys-they like her.'
'FORGET THAT ABOUT THE TRAIN,' Owen said
'YOUR MOTHER IS A PERFECT WOMAN. NOTHING HAPPENS TO HER ON THE TRAIN.'
Well, although she said she 'met' my father on the Boston & Maine, I never imagined that my conception occurred there; it is a fact, however, that she met the man she would marry on that train. That story was neither a lie nor a secret. How many times I asked her to tell me that story! And she never hesitated, she never lacked enthusiasm for telling that story-which she told the same way, every time. And after she was dead, how many times I asked him to tell me the story-and he would tell it, with enthusiasm, and the same way, every time. His name was Dan Needham. How many times I have prayed to God that he was my real father! My mother and my grandmother and I-and Lydia, minus one of her legs-were eating dinner on a Thursday evening in the spring of . Thursdays were the days my mother returned from Boston, and we always had a better-than-average dinner those nights. I remember that it was shortly after Lydia's leg had been amputated, because it was still a little strange to have her eating with us at the table (in her wheelchair), and to have the two new maids doing the serving and the clearing that only recently Lydia had done. And the wheelchair was still new enough to Lydia so that she wouldn't allow me to push her around in it; only my grandmother and my mother-and one of the two new maids-were allowed to. I don't remember all the trivial intricacies of Lydia's wheel-chair rules-just that the four of us were finishing our dinner, and Lydia's presence at the dinner table was as new and noticeable as fresh paint. And my mother said, 'I've met another man on the good old Boston and Maine.'
It was not intended, I think, as an entirely mischievous remark, but the remark took instant and astonishing hold of Lydia and my grandmother and me. Lydia's wheelchair surged in reverse away from the table, dragging the tablecloth after her, so that all the dishes and glasses and silverware jumped-and the candlesticks wobbled. My grandmother seized the large brooch at the throat of her dress-she appeared to have suddenly choked on it-and I snapped so substantial a piece of my lower lip between my teeth that I could taste my blood. We all thought that my mother was speaking euphemisti- cally. I wasn't present when she'd announced the particulars of the case of the first man she claimed she'd met on the train. Maybe she'd said, 'I met a man on the good old Boston and Maine-and now I'm pregnant!' Maybe she said, 'I'm going to have a baby as a result of a fling I had with a total stranger I met on the good old Boston and Maine-someone I never expect to see again!'
Well, anyway, if I can't re-create the first announcement, the second announcement was spectacular enough. We all thought that she was telling us that she was pregnant again-by a different man! And as an example of how wrong my Aunt Martha was, concerning her point of view that my mother was 'a little simple,' my mother instantly saw what we were thinking, and laughed at us, very quickly, and said, 'No, no! I'm not going to have a baby. I'm never going to have another baby-I have my baby. I'm just telling you that I've met a man. Someone I like.'
'A different man, Tabitha?' my grandmother asked, still holding her brooch.
'Oh, not that man! Don't be silly,' my mother said, and she laughed again-her laughter drawing Lydia's wheelchair, ever so cautiously, back toward the table.
'A man you like, you mean, Tabitha?' my grandmother asked.
'I wouldn't mention him if I didn't like him,' my mother said. 'I want you to meet him,' she said to us all.
'You've dated him?' my grandmother asked.
'No! I just met him-just today, on today's train!' my mother said.
'And already you like him?' Lydia asked, in a tone of voice so perfectly copied from my grandmother that I had to look to see which one of them was speaking.
'Well, yes,' my mother said seriously. 'You know such things. You don't need that much time.'
'How many times have you known such things-before?' my grandmother asked.
'This is the first time, really,' my mother said. 'That's why I know.'
Lydia and my grandmother instinctively looked at me, perhaps to ascertain if I'd understood my mother correctly: that the time 'before,' when she'd had her 'fling,' which had led to me, was not a time when my mother had enjoyed any special
feelings toward whoever my father was. But I had another idea. I was thinking that maybe this was my father, that maybe this was the first man she'd met on the train, and he'd heard about me, and he was curious about me and wanted to see me-and something very important had kept him away for the last six years. There had, after all, been a war back when I'd been born, in . But as another example of how wrong my Aunt Martha was, my mother seemed to see what I was imagining, immediately, because she said, 'Please understand, Johnny, that this man has no relationship whatsoever to the man who is your father-this is a man I saw for the first time today, and I like him. That's all: I just like him, and
