Sue Mell
TRANSPORTED

In my teens, in the early 70s, I often took a Saturday morning train from Grand Central to visit a camp friend at her parents’ enormous house, which you could see from the Hartsdale station. Her father was a concert cellist who demanded diligence, and I would sit beside her on the piano bench as she practiced, thumb and pinky toggling the octaves of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”

Neither of her parents ever seemed to be around, and we freely smoked hash and drank apricot brandy with one of her older brothers, on whom I had a major crush. Either he or someone he knew had a car, and one warm and misty fall night, she and I rode on the hood—a slow moving boat steering through the dark quiet channels of their neighborhood.

On the way back to Grand Central, I would sleep, my neck aching by the time I arrived in the echoing terminal with its constellation-adorned ceiling. Next, the steep escalator down to the subway platform for the 7 train, which I’d take to the end of the line, then a short bus ride to complete the long exile-like journey back into my regular life.

Sue Mell’s story collection, A New Day, is forthcoming from She Writes Press in September 2024. Other work has appeared in Narrative, Hippocampus Magazine, and Jellyfish Review. She lives in Queens, NY, where she cares for her mom and a gray tuxedo cat named Poppy. For more, visit her Substack, So Much Stuff, where she writes about how the things we collect—and can’t let go of—express who we are.

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