Constance

I don’t really know what to make of it, though it was so odd that there must be something to be made. It was Wednesday. It was mid-morning. And it was on the subway.

I was riding the F. I had all my bags in my lap and a New Yorker in one hand and in the other, a travel cup full of coffee that was burning the undersides of all my fingers. I was sitting in a seat on the end of a bench, by one of the doors, the one everybody wants.

The pages of my magazine were coiled around the spine and I was holding it upright but blatantly, as in not even pretending, not reading it. And that’s why I noticed when Constance came lumbering down the car. She tossed her tote bag on to the pair of seats that face the front of the train and then crashed herself into an empty seat-and-a-half on the opposite side of the train.

The weary haze across her eyes seemed a veil between her and the other passengers, but it took just a few moments for her to focus in on a guy sitting near by. Her expression sharpened and she shot forward in her seat and implored him to “listen, listen to me. Listen to what I’m saying.”

Constance rides the F a lot. Constance isn’t her name. It would be a mind-blowing coincidence if it were, anyway.

But I’m not even sure that Constance knows what her name is. I named her Constance because she rambles with such relentless urgency and because there is something puritanical in her desperate tone and frightened demeanor.

Constance is one of those unhoused subway riders who doesn’t ask for money, but talks at you. I’ve had a few conversations with chatty panhandlers, but I’ve never uttered a word to Constance because she speaks with absolutely no mockery and to respond to her at all would be to mock her. Her mental status is clearly altered; her awareness of her surroundings and other people is spotty and her speeches, while impassioned, are rarely comprised of complete sentences.

So everyone else on the train averted their gazes and I used my magazine to conceal the fact that I was keeping an eye on Constance.

And my defensive curiosity is the only reason I noticed what happened next.

The train stopped somewhere in lower Manhattan and, in overlapping moments: Constance rose from her sprawl and trudged across the train car to stand near me; a man with a saxophone filtered in through the exiting passengers; a woman about my age in a Burberry coat cast an inspective glace at the discarded tote bag and decided to take the seat beside it; the saxophonist dropped a hat on the floor and clipped his instrument to a cord across his chest; I caught the scent of stale smoke on Constance’s unwashed coat sleeve; Constance remembered her bag and moved to quietly retrieve it; the train cars closed; the saxophonist made eye contact with Constance as he filled his lungs and began to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

In all of my subway rides, I’ve never seen two subway performers encounter each other, and even though Constance doesn’t ask for money and doesn’t seem to have a talent, I wondered how her presence would effect the sax player’s stint in this car. They were both attracting attention and they were both in the same car and they were so close to each other, I thought the universe might implode. Or at least the F-line.

Constance seemed captivated. Her musty sleeve crept closer to my cheek as her body unwound against the side of my seat. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her features relax. A hint of tranquility touched her face.

The man kept his eyes closed as he played. He collected change—more than usual?—in the hat when he finished. Constance clapped one hand against the silver hand rail.

It’s not like he turned around and gave Constance a dollar. Nobody did. She got off the train at the next stop and he packed up his case and took a seat himself. The woman in the Burberry coat looked out the window at the inside of the subway tunnel.

If there isn’t anything to be made of that train ride, I guess what I’ll take from it are the moments of lucidity that Constance had. The gentle, courteous manner she had when she moved her bag out of the way; how she listened to the music; how she showed her appreciation. The next time I see the terror in her foggy face, I’ll remember that she bowed her gray head as she stepped off the train that morning.