Pug Hill - Alison Pace [94]
chapter twenty-nine
How Do You Know?
As the train pulls out of Penn Station, I try not to listen to the little voice inside my head, the one that lives in the bad place, the one that tells me there’s something slightly uncool and maybe a little bit stunted about spending your vacation time with your dad. I try not to listen, but of course I do, and am compelled to answer back (inside my head, of course) that I’m really lucky to have an entire week to hang out just with my dad; that, really, how many people get to do that?
I’m taking the train out to Huntington, but actually I’ll get off at Cold Spring Harbor because Dad decided at some point in my train traveling career that he preferred the drive, so much more scenic, to and from the Cold Spring Harbor station, even though the Huntington station is so much closer to the house.
And I believe the part about the scenic, I do; my dad is very into scenery, is very much a proponent of stopping and smelling the roses, and will often go ten, fifteen, twenty minutes or more out of his way to do so. But I also think he picks me up at the Cold Spring Harbor station because it’s about ten minutes before the Huntington station, and he knows that I’m not the biggest fan of train travel. My dad is one of those dads, and I’ve always felt so lucky for it, whose greatest joy in life has been being a dad.
But as much as I’m looking forward to a relaxing week with Dad, it’s not like I can’t say I wouldn’t like a spa week for myself, but I understand the logic that it’s much nicer for Dad to have someone helping him with the dogs for the week. Not that that is entirely the logic, but still. And it is a lot of work these days, especially with Captain and all, and I know Mom felt she had to take Darcy to the spa with her, because of the commune of course.
The train is just pulling up to Mineola. I’ve always thought of Mineola as the halfway point to home, even though I have no idea if it really is anywhere to the halfway point at all. I pay very little attention on the train. After a train ride I’ve been taking for most of my adult life, you’d think I’d know exactly the midway point, like I’d be able to say, “Oh, I know. Mineola is thirty-four minutes into the sixty-eight minute trip,” but really, I have no idea. There are mysteries to the train that I feel, for me at least, will never be solved.
Like when they announce right before my stop sometimes that the last three cars will not platform. How do you know if you’re in the third-to-last car? I mean the last car, fine, you know, because you can look out the back window and see nothing else, but if you look out the back window in the third-to-last car, all you know is that there are cars behind the car you’re in.
It’s too hard to tell, looking through windows reflected in windows if you’re in the third or, let’s say, fourth-to-last. I never know what to do; I always wonder, should I move forward just in case? But I hate walking between the cars, along of course with public speaking, walking between train cars really freaks me out.
I always remind myself to pay more attention when I’m getting on the train, to take note of where the last car actually is, in relation to the car I’m getting on, rather than simply getting off the stairs, and with tunnel vision, right onto the car that’s right there. But I never leave enough time to get to Penn Station, and I’m always frazzled and hectic once I get there, running for my train. I so often forget all about the possibility that I might be in the third-to-last car.
And I have forgotten to figure this out today, and so of course, the announcement comes, “Next stop, Cold Spring Harbor. The rear three cars will not platform in