Free Commuters by Emily Gray Tedrowe Page A

answers, still, but because no one else seemed to understand that urgency—everyone talked about “moving on,” and “moving forward”—she learned to hide what she really felt.
    And then, she simply split into two. Little by little, Rachel realized that in this new world, new life, she would have to be two people, one overt and the other private. There was the concerned and mobilized Rachel, the one who was caught up in all the immediate, mutable crises and daily triumphs of a husband’s recovery. The one who sometimes wept fiercely to have him back, alive, and then who was tear-free in the next instant, nailing down every detail of his eight medicines and the rotating shifts of three home-care nurses. This Rachel kept all of them going , the four of them, propelled by everything she had to do, buoyed by Winnie, by friends and neighbors, all of Hartfield, who celebrated Bob Brigham’s miracle and never let her forget how grateful she should be. But sometimes, deep inside, Rachel heard and saw another version of herself, one who shook off what she knew was the right way to be , a Rachel who flew at poor, slow Bob—forgetting what the frightened girls might witness—and gripped his upper arm, and marched himaround the living room and garage, forcing him to look, to remember, to explain, shouting at him, shouting for someone, anyone, to tell her exactly what the fuck had happened to her life?
    As she reached Hand Me Down, Rachel walked slow and slower. She passed Rudy’s shoe store, where a sign announced, fall arrivals soon: get ready for school. In July! Rachel shook her head. She could remember taking the girls on the first warm day of spring to Rudy’s to buy each a pair of sandals. And how they would wear the new shoes deliriously home, a balloon string tied securely to each girl’s wrist, winter shoes—all of a sudden so heavy and worn—packed away in the sandals’ pastel-colored boxes. Old Hartfield, she thought of this—a private designation to mark what Rachel remembered about the town, which had changed somehow when she wasn’t looking. It couldn’t be true, but it felt to Rachel that she had gone underground for those months while Bob was in the hospital, while he was in bed at home, and then when she finally came up for air, everything about where she lived was utterly different. More expensive, more typically suburban.
    Rudy’s didn’t give out balloons anymore. And the staff would smile sadly if you stopped in anytime past February to buy spring shoes, because you’d missed the fashion season when those were in stock. New Hartfield.
    She passed the bank and crossed the street. Outside Hand Me Down’s front window, Rachel came to a stop and stood there, staring blankly through the glass at the racks of outfits as if she were a potential customer. She took out her cell phone and held it tightly, dread rising like nausea. She tapped it against her thigh and strolled next door to look in the Christian Science Reading Room window. Rachel, used to crisp actions, wondered at the roiling fear and doubt inside her. Was this what a panic attack felt like? Ridiculous, after all that she had been through, to fall apart now. Rachel reached out to the window to steady herself. People did this all the time.
    While she was dialing, a woman walked up to Hand Me Down, tried the door, and frowned at its closed sign. Rachel smiled at her, mimed a shrug, and listened to the ring on the other end of the line. The woman looked at her watch, shook her head, and walked past.
    Winnie answered, cautiously. They spoke a little about the weather and the girls. Winnie was saying something about a pool—or a tree?—but Rachel couldn’t follow it.
    She leaned her forehead against the Reading Room’s glass, next to her forearm. As usual, metal clamps were placed neatly on a page of the open Bible, bracketing off the week’s chosen passage. In the contrast of sun glare and the dim gloom of the display, all the words were