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Show 1-3 realize how much Mother must have missed him. She did not speak to me of her loneliness. She kept our routine, saw her friends, played her piano, handled the constant fear of my grandparents. But I watched her eyes as she read his letters, as she folded his clothes away in the cedar chest, as she held his shirts to her face before packing them away. I knew, or thought I knew, the depth of her pain. On the day he was to come home from the war, she drove to the station in the new Model A. After we parked, I had to run to keep up with her long strides as we walked to the platform where the troop train would arrive. We were, as usual, early, and she did not talk to me, or even notice me while we waited. She stood, on the very edge of the platform, her long fingers interlaced, the feather on her hat trembling Slightly. When the train arrived, we were surrounded by other wives and children, parents, brothers and sisters and were pushed back against the green wall of the station. Mother stood on her tiptoes to see over the crowd, gripping my shoulder for support, as the men began to leave the train. The healthy men left the train first, jumping off the steps, running the length of the platform, searching faces, tumbling into embraces. My father did not come. I began to worry that he was not on this train, but I did not dare mention this to Mother for fear she had not yet considered the possibility. As the crowds thinned, she seemed to relax, as if the accumulated emotion spent on all the reunions around us had drained her of her own feeling. Suddenly, a train door rattled open, far at the end of the platform. A wooden ramp was pushed out and dropped to the cement below. Mother's hand tightened on my shoulder. A nurse looked out and down the track in our direction. Only a few people waited with us and they were silent as the nurse was helped |