It used to be a long comfortable commute on the train from Westchester down to her job on Wall Street during which Alison immersed herself in books from the bestseller list. "I can never find time to read evenings or on weekends, so I always read on the way to work," she told her friend Macy once, before Macy married and moved to an island off the coast of South Carolina. They still compared notes on the latest bestsellers, but not as often. Alison found little time to write letters or e-mail with all the work she brought home to do in the evenings and over weekends. There were so many details. She had to be careful not to leave anything out.
One day, a man ran through the train shooting at people indiscriminately. Alison, looked up from her book at the sound of the first shot and for an elongated moment she could not comprehend what was happening. Then she was hit in the shoulder by one of the bullets, just inches from her heart.
She spent her long recuperation reading accounts of the man's life. Various newspapers told how he had been arrested on burglary and assault charges several times, but had served only two years in prison. He was the son of a teen-aged unwed mother who had died early of a drug overdose. He had been raised by his grandmother who could not understand where he had gone wrong. He was always a good child. She had three other daughters. Each had several children. None had turned out like Vaco. "Vaco's cousins cannot understand this tragedy either," the grandmother said. A photograph showed her crying, next to a photograph of Vaco, with his arm reaching forward, as if to block the photographer's view. From what Alison could see of his face in that picture, he appeared to be smiling. In another, he had a glazed look in his eyes. His defense attorney said Vaco was filled with an uncontrollable rage against society. This rage anesthetized him to the wrongs he commited. The attorney argued, under the powerful grip of such rage, a person, surely, cannot be held completely accountable for how he reacts to the society he feels has wronged him.
Details of Vaco's life filled newspapers for many weeks. Alison read them all. She had plenty of time in her hospital bed and later at home. There was very little written about the sixteen people who were hurt or the man who was killed on the train that day. When she mentioned this to Macy during a phone conversation, Macy said the victims' stories would be related in the soon to be published book about commuters' rage. Alison told her nobody had interviewed her for such a book, and that she thought that was a callous thing to say. After hanging up, she thought it might be a long time before she could speak to Macy again.
Alison went back to work eventually. She still commutes from Westchester, but these days, she never reads on trains no matter how long the ride is.
