Pandora by Holly Hollander

relative in the crack-up college. For myself I wouldn’t have minded—I act pretty crazy half the time anyway—but I knew my father didn’t want it talked around town and Elaine would throw a fit. Anyway, my big point was that I was grown up enough now to be trusted; and if I let somebody else in on our private stuff like that, I’d be proving right there that they were right and I was wrong.

That left the hardest way. But it wasn’t really so hard, and I had plenty of time. The Chicago, Wisconsin & Northern runs commuter trains—every hour on the hour, after the morning rush—between Barton and Chicago. And it stood to reason that there’d have to be several Greyhounds a day going from Chicago to Dawn and, as they say, points west. So all I had to do was get to Barton to catch a train.

Riding Sidi would have meant leaving him tied up someplace for most of the day and maybe getting him stolen; I wasn’t about to do that. Riding my bike would’ve made a lot more sense, but it would mean parking it at the railway station, a sure tip-off that I’d gone into Chicago to anybody that knew me. That left walking. It’s a little over four miles; but I’d done it before, and besides I figured I might get lucky and be able to hitch a ride with somebody I knew.

Which I did.

I hadn’t more than reached the county road, when here came Larry Lief in his van, and I knew him pretty well because I knew his sister Megan. I stuck out my thumb, and he stopped, and I hopped in. “Give me a ride into town?”

“Certainly,” he said. “How’s your folks?”

“Okay.” I was looking at his profile and trying to decide whether I’d ever seen anybody better looking. It wasn’t easy, but it sure was fun.

“I was out at your place just the other day,” he told me. “You’ve got a nice mother.”

It was a big lie, but I thought he was just being polite, so I said, “Sure.” Maybe my voice wasn’t quite what it ought to have been.

We stopped for a light, and he looked around at me. “You deserve one,” he said; and then, “We don’t always get what we’ve got coming, Holly. None of us.” Then he switched on the radio.

Right here I want to write that I forgot it almost as soon as it happened; but I guess I didn’t, really. Larry wasn’t just being polite when he said that, and I knew it. Ever since he’d gotten out of the army and come back to Barton to live with his folks, I’d known that Megan and his wife, Molly, thought he had big problems, just from the way they talked about him. But I think that was the first time I’d really realized they weren’t just worrying over nothing. It isn’t too easy for somebody that good-looking to look down, but I was still thinking about Larry and how down he’d looked while I hiked across the parking lot and up the steps to the CW&N station.

There was only one other person waiting for the ten o’clock train, a guy at least ten years older than I was. I noticed him because he turned for just a second to give me the once-over as I came up, and he had a once-over like I didn’t think anybody could have. It didn’t take long at all, but I felt like I could hear the shutters click. Those eyes had me cold, and he’d know me again if he met me in the New Guinea jungle twenty years from now.

After that, naturally, I looked at him. Those two little camera lenses were bright blue and set quite a ways behind the rest of his face, which was bony. There was a high, squarish, almost narrow forehead, and straw-blond hair in a widow’s peak. It was getting pretty thin, and the rest of him was thin already— in fact, he was one of the skinniest people I had ever seen. One leg was stiff; he had one of those plain wooden broom-handle canes that they sell in drugstores, and it looked old. He was wearing khaki work pants and a white office shirt, open at the throat and rolled up past the elbows. He had a little trouble getting onto the train when it came, and that’s when I made my mistake, or anyway what I thought for a while was a mistake.

(Really I don’t make many mistakes, because I’ve found out that if you just yell at a mistake long enough it will usually straighten itself around and turn into some kind of shrewd move—like the time I broke my leg and got out of gym and my father promised to buy me the horse that turned out to be Sidi.)

Anyway there I was, the little Girl Scout, trying to catch hold of the cane so I could help him up. He could have done it okay by himself, but anyway (I guess because he wanted to show he was grateful) he went down to the smoking car with me and sat down next to me. He smells cleaner than anybody else I know—like he’s washed himself all over with lye soap. You don’t ask where anybody’s going on a CW&N commuter, because everybody’s going to Chicago, so I said, “Going shopping?”

“No. Just going to try to collect a few bad debts. You?”

I said I was going to see a sick relative, which I thought was very clever of me at the time, and we got to talking. After a while, because it was on my mind, I guess, I asked whether he knew anything about bus service to Dawn.

He laughed, surprised, and said, “Oh, you’re going to Dawn? That’s quite a coincidence—so am I. How’s your uncle?”

And before I could think about what I was saying, I said, “How’d you know about him?”

“Herbert Hollander is your uncle? I thought so.”

“We always keep this really quiet,” I told him. “Have you been talking to Mrs. Maas?” My mind was going round and round, because it looked like pretty soon this would be worse than if I’d taken her Ford.

He laughed again (he has a good laugh, the kind you’d like in the audience if you were a comedian) and winked and said, “I have spies everywhere!”

“Do you know my father?”

He shook his head. “I wish I did. I’ve seen him on the street, just as I’ve seen you, but we’ve never spoken.”

“You know my mother, then.”

“I have several friends who know your mother. One is the shampoo boy at Felice’s.”

“He told you?”

He shook his head. “I doubt that your mother’s small talk under the drier contains many references to Herbert Hollander.”