Page 23

A little more than a week after moving into their summer place, things were really starting to click for Annie and Charlie.

She was generally up an hour or more before Charlie, in the kitchen by seven, putting a pod into the Nespresso machine, dropping

a slice of whole wheat bread into the toaster while her coffee percolated, then taking her drink and her toast and jam to

the table and savoring it while she read the New York Times on her tablet.

She and Charlie were only using one end of the kitchen table because half of it was covered with five hundred jigsaw puzzle

pieces that, when done, would be a cover from The New Yorker magazine—this one featuring dozens of dogs in various comical activities—that she had brought with her from the city. So

far, she’d only managed to put together the edges and part of the masthead (“The” and “ew” and “ork”) and turned all the other

pieces face up, clustering them by color. During the pandemic, she and John had ordered several puzzles to get them through

their periods of isolation, but, after completing only one, had sworn off them. John said being hunched over the dining room

table for hours on end was killing his back, and Annie began to feel she was wasting her whole day even when she had nothing

else pressing.

But out here with nothing else to do, she was willing to give the pastime another chance, and so far enjoyed it.

When she heard Charlie stirring, she would take a break from reading the Times and set a place for him. Pour him a bowl of cereal, get the milk and orange juice from the fridge. Once he was down, they would discuss what they wanted to do that day. Go into Fenelon? Drive around randomly and see what they might discover? Hang out on the porch and read their books?

No, no, and no, Charlie would reply.

He had a project of his own that was as engrossing as his mother’s jigsaw. Charlie was building an empire.

It had been several days since he had discovered, in the shed out back of the house, an old Tide detergent box filled with

toy trains. And not just trains, but track and building kits and little trees. He’d told his mother he’d been racing past

the shed on his bike when he decided, on a whim, to try that padlock one more time. He said he’d given it a good yank and

it came apart. Just like that.

“I think it was rusted or something,” Charlie said.

The box had been too heavy to carry, so he had been bringing the contents into the house a few items at a time. Before letting

him get too far along in the process, Annie had put in a call to the leasing agent, Candace, to ask who the toys belonged

to and if they should be returned to their rightful owner.

It was the first Candace had heard anything about a box of toy trains.

“Finders keepers,” she said. “Let your boy have fun with them.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Would today be good

if I dropped by with Stacy? She’s dying to show you her drawings.”

“Why don’t we revisit that later in the week,” Annie said. “We’re still settling in.”

Charlie had been awaiting the results of the conversation anxiously. “Go nuts,” his mother said, and he shrieked with delight.

He had already brought in so many items from the box, including the heaviest ones like the engine and the transformer, that

Annie was able to carry it from the shed to the house.

She put it down on the porch, so there would be room to empty the contents, spread them out, and see just what they had.

“What a haul,” Annie said. “That was some dumb luck, that lock falling apart.”

“I know, right?” said Charlie as he examined the pieces of track and started to arrange them on the porch without connecting

them, seeing what kind of configuration he could make.

“Looks like all this stuff has been in the box a long time,” Annie said. “Hope the engine still works.”

“It will.”

“You sound pretty confident. But if it needs oiling or something we can go back to that hardware store where you got the Brasso

and—”

“It will work,” Charlie said, sounding slightly irritated. “You thought the bike was old and crummy, but it worked.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I can’t set it up out here,” he said. “I have to do it inside. If it rained and it was blowing it could get all wet.”

“What about your bedroom?”

“It’s too small. There’s a lot of track here.”

It was a big house and just the two of them. Annie wondered whether she should let him take over the dining room. But then

she hit on a better idea.

“If you don’t mind sharing space with me, what about the studio? You could put it on the floor.”

Charlie cocked his head at an awkward angle, considering. “Maybe...”

It was as big a space as any, and her worktable only took up a fraction of it. There was plenty of natural light, and she

didn’t know how much work she was actually going to do while they were here, so he’d mostly have the room to himself.

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Will you help me get it all up there?”

She did. Once they had everything moved, and Annie had tossed the empty Tide box down into the basement, she came back up

and offered to help Charlie put the track together.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I want to do it by myself.”

“You sure? Because it would be fun, a project we could work on to—”

“No,” he said firmly, already on his hands and knees, attaching a straight length of track to a curved one, inserting the

end pins from one into the openings on the other.

Annie felt as though one of those pins had pierced her heart. She was willing to bet if John were here, Charlie would want

his assistance. Who said trains had to be a guy thing ? She’d have been on the floor, helping him put this layout together, in an instant if he’d let her.

“Okay, then,” she said, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice. The last thing she wanted to do was make Charlie feel guilty.

She turned, walked out of the room, and left him to it.

Her hurt feelings aside, the discovery of the trains could not have come at a better time. The day before, Charlie had seemed

restless and asked twice about whether his friend Pedro could come up from New York for a visit. Annie had offered that old

parental standby: “We’ll see.”

The truth was, as much as she wanted Charlie to have a good summer here, she did not want Pedro, or any other friend of Charlie’s,

coming for any extended period of time. Two boys running around made a lot more noise than one, plus there would be extra

meals to organize, a different daily routine. Annie felt selfish thinking this way, and if Charlie really wanted his friend

to visit, she would find a way to make it happen.

But Charlie’s restlessness had been cured with the discovery of the box full of trains. She supposed the novelty might wear off, and he’d return to asking again whether Pedro could come up, so Annie, as John used to say, would jump off that bridge when the time came. For the moment she would just enjoy this special time, having Charlie all to herself.

She went into the kitchen and resumed work on her puzzle. Managed to find all the pieces she needed to make “Yo.”

Charlie came down long enough to eat a grilled cheese sandwich, then bolted back up the stairs. While he was on his last bite,

dipping his sandwich into a puddle of ketchup, Annie asked, “How’s it going?”

“Almost there,” he said, and dashed.

About an hour later, Annie heard a sound. Actually, it was more of a vibration at first, the ceiling above her humming. There

was no carpet in the studio. A train running on tracks set up directly on hardwood was bound to make a racket.

She came out of the kitchen and stood at the bottom of the stairs and listened.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Her heart swelled. Charlie was right. It worked.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

She smiled. She wanted to see what he’d accomplished. Pausing halfway up the stairs, she heard another sound drift down to

her.

Woo woo !

A whistle! How cool was that?

Seconds later, she was at the studio door. The engine, followed by a series of cars and a caboose, was zipping around a large loop of track. Charlie had not only assembled that, but he had put together all the building kits he’d found in the Tide box. He had lined them up like a street front. A fire station. A bakery. A restaurant. A church. They looked like snap-together kits, which explained how he was able to construct them so speedily.

Charlie sat cross-legged, the transformer in front of him, his hand on the throttle. His head moved with the train, following

its every move.

“It’s fantastic!” Annie said.

Charlie glanced over his shoulder at his mother and smiled broadly. “I love it!”

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

“It sounds so real,” she said. “Make the whistle go again.”

Charlie pressed a button.

Woo woo !

Without turning his head, Charlie said, “I need more buildings.”

“I don’t know where we would get—”

“Where I got the bike,” he said. “I saw some there. They were old and kind of busted and stuff, but they’d be good. I need

to make the town bigger.”

“Okay, then,” Annie said. “Why don’t we go back there tomorrow. We’ll get lunch, make an afternoon of it.”

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

“You know what place this is?” Charlie asked.

Annie tried to think like a child. What could a few plastic buildings represent in a kid’s imagination?

“Is that New York?”

“Nope.”

“Uh, is it the town where we got the bike? Is it Fenelon?”

“Nope.”

“I give up. You tell me.”

Charlie turned and looked at her. “This is where Daddy lives now.”