The inertia was terrible. It was the way the laws of the universe met with his own habits. Martin Francis was not at all like a sprinter, who must run past the finish line and would stop at last, twenty meters beyond. He was more like a glass of water, filled past the brim, ready to overrun the glass, with only surface tension to prevent a spill. The inertia, the surface tension and the meniscus.
His mother, Mimi, had her own separate inertia. She was in motion, and tended to stay that way. Her energy seemed, to Martin, to come from her unforgivable breasts, which had a way of leading her from place to place. They were, in her own words, ‘her team.’ Not like teammates, but rather like a team of horses to be hitched up every morning with a complex set of bridles and straps.
The two of them stood on a platform, while Mimi finished a last cigarette before they boarded a train, bound for Florida. Last year they had flown.
“Wipe the mud off your face,” she said to him, meaning that he ought to smile. This is what she said when she wanted him to cheer up.
She flirted with the conductor for a moment as they boarded, and wagged her breasts at him. He replied with an uncomfortable smile.
Mimi dressed as though she was in Florida all the time, in white and pastel combinations. Martin had never tried to guess at how many of these ‘sets’ she had but they must number in the hundreds. She was short, and hoarse from years of smoking and talking too loudly at bars.
Martin was short, like her, but quiet. He dressed, for most of the year, so as not to be noticed, and with some success. When they went to Florida, however, his mother insisted that he bring only his ‘Florida’ clothes. They were flower printed or madras shorts and brightly coloured t-shirts, all given to him as gifts at Christmas by his mother. When he wore them they felt like a cheap disguise, like fake eyebrows and a nose. He wore them in the uncomfortable way that mannequins have of looking like someone else has buttoned their pants.
There had been the two of them, more or less, since he was in kindergarten. For a year, when he was eight, somebody named Ken had come to live with them. There wasn’t much for Martin to remember about Ken.
As they took their seats he imagined himself as a prisoner being marched onto a train, destined for some prison camp or other, deep in America. The guard, his mother, barked orders such as “snap out of it,” or “wipe the mud off your face,” or “these are the best years of your life.” He was a prisoner in the best years of his life.
He would be entering the last year of high school when they returned from a month with his Uncle Gil, who was retired and had a trailer down there.
“Maybe you’ll meet a girl down in Florida,” said Mimi. It was her great shame that Martin had never been on a date.
His mother was constantly out on dates, on account of her swaggering breasts. Sometimes she would go out with the same guy for a while, and after a few dates she would have sex with him, when she thought Martin was asleep.
It wasn’t that Martin didn’t want to go out on a date. In fact, it was all he could think about. For hours on end he would practice what he would say if he were on a date with Becky or Lindsay from his class, usually Becky, though, because she was nice, even though Lindsay was prettier. It didn’t matter that he didn’t actually know either of them. He would never have an opportunity to talk to them, and even if he did, what would he say?
Martin could not see the point of going to Florida in the summer. You were supposed to go in the winter to get away from the dreariness of March. His mother said they were not going all that way so that they could turn around and come right back after a week. They would stay for a month to make it worthwhile.
Martin had not seen the engine from the platform and when they pulled away he was surprised to find himself travelling backwards. He could see the city blocks and neighbourhoods that they had passed, and watched as they disappeared, obscured by a building or lost around a corner. He could see the bushes and tangles that separated the track from the shabbiness that lined it. The poor neighbours had all tried turning their backs to it, trying in vain to ignore it. If you asked them they would say, “You get used to it.”
A couple of kids were playing in one of the yards, and had looked up when the engine sounded its whistle, but they were back, and busy with their Tonkas by the time Martin passed them.
Once in the fifth grade his Phys. Ed. teacher had talked about a strongman who had been on ‘That’s Incredible.’ They had all watched it. The strongman harnessed himself to a railcar and pulled it some ways down a special track that had been set-up in the television studio. The teacher had explained that any of them could have kept that railcar moving if they’d had a start. It was getting it started that was the difficulty. Martin doubted that this was true, but he liked the idea. He liked the idea that if the strongman could get the railcar rolling and then just pass it off to him, he could pull that railcar into the television studio.
Martin had no strongman to get his railcar rolling for him. He imagined himself straining against it until his face was red and the blood pounding in his head threatened to burst from his veins. He heaved and jerked at it, without satisfaction as his mother chugged around like ‘the little engine that could,’ her breasts like twin engines, all the while sounding whistles of encouragement to him.
The conductor came around to collect the tickets, and laughed off Mimi’s easy flirtation.
“Perhaps this young gentleman would escort you to the dining car,” he said, smiling at Martin and moving on to the next berth.
