#5 (Liz)

Jason sat in Union Station waiting for the bus that would take him to the airport. He’d read about Union Station online and the picture were pretty but here in the station it was mostly busy and dirty and it all felt way too chaotic to enjoy – Jason was stressed. He thought he’d enjoy Union Station. He didn’t. The brass roud-top benches and chairs, the ones in the historic room, the high-roofed domed hall where they shot the TV shows, it was crowded and there were crazy people and people who looked unhappy and wouldn’t meet his eyes – Jason didn’t really want to go home but he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to go back to his apartment, his routine.
Jason had My Antonia open in his lap. He had it open to the wolf scene, the two Russians – he was punishing himself by reading it; he’d already read it, a bunch, he couldn’t remember – he’d read it first when he was a little kid. His mom had started it on audiobook during a car trip, it was summer and the air conditioner broke on the first day and they had 13 days to go – they didn’t finish My Antonia, they only made it through to northern Idaho and then his mom didn’t put it in anymore, they just listened to the radio – but when they got back from their road trip (they made it as far as Minneapolis) – when they got back at 4 in the morning and they’d driven all night, they’d been camping each night, just the two of them, and no showers because they were lazy for five days, Jason thought, remembering; it might’ve been five but that was give or take – they’d gotten home to their mossy little house and it was wet on the plants and just starting to be dawn and clear-skied, no more stars and the sky still not like day - Jason’s mom had lugged in a couple bags alongside Jason, a couple shaky, happy trips back and forth to the car, back and forth through the familiar, dark steps between the house and the garage, happy because they were home, and then she’d gone up to bed. Jason couldn’t sleep, though, and he’d gone to get the My Antonia book from the bookshelf next to the TV – his mom liked to read and there were a lot of books. Jason liked walking around the kitchen, holding the book, when it was just almost dark and getting lighter and his mom was sleeping – poking in cupboards just to see that the food was there, the actual sturdy glass cups, the things – 8-year-old Jason on the road trip had really missed things. Jason tried remember, sitting in Union Station, in the kind of creepy brass dome-backed chair, drawn, grumpy-looking man in a suit beside him, if as an 8-year-old home from that road trip he’d made himself some food. He guessed not. Jason liked to graze when he got home. Enjoying everything – marshmallows, little rice crackers, some very stale popcorn balls that his mom had made before the trip and they’d forgotten to eat them all or take them but maybe Jason ate them when he got home because his mom always put M&Ms in.
And then Jason had taken the book up to the loft – old wood ladder propped up against the living room wall to get there, Jason was going to be glad to see that, going home again, now, for just a visit – the 8-year-old Jason had taken My Antonia up the ladder to the loft with house all quiet, dawn getting brighter through the little loft window, and he’d read through words, flipping pages, phrases that sounded familiar from a week and a half ago, a roadtrip ago, the illustrations looking familiar and then not-familiar but he couldn’t really remember, and he’d found the picture of the wolves chasing the sled and the bride half-off, pushed off to the wolves – and so he’d focused then, quit flipping, and read –
It had been cool the first time. Jason had read it and then more awake and jittery than before and he didn’t know what next, maybe comic books, maybe searching through the drawers, familiarizing himself, his mother’s household stuff in the kitchen –
Jason, adult Jason, opened his copy and looked at the picture. Same picture, different book – Jason shut the book and looked around – Union Station, going home.