Last Sunday was, you may recall, a particularly lovely day. Leaving the brisk autumn air behind her, a friend of mine made her way down into the subway in the early afternoon and caught the Red Line going north. The car was jammed and, according to custom, silent. People kept their eyes averted from one another, wrapped in mutual anonymity and swaying slightly as the thing started and stopped.
The doors opened and my friend saw a tall man wearing a numbered bib get in. With his eyes cast down, like those of everyone else, he put a hand up on the metal railing and stood quietly as the doors closed. He wasn’t trying to attract attention to himself, but my friend couldn’t stop looking at him.
She stared at him intently across the crowded car, willing him to look at her. After a while he did, and she mouthed a question. He smiled, and nodded: Yes.
“Do you want to sit down?” she pantomimed, rising a little from her seat.
He shook his head: No, but thanks.
She ducked her head at him, as if to say, “C’mon, you must be exhausted!”
He smiled back at her, but shook his head again. He was comfortable standing, really.
She threw up her hands in mock exasperation, and that, she thinks, is what drew the two of them to the attention of their fellow riders. The people around and between them seemed at that moment to register the silent exchange the two had been having. They noticed the man’s bib, and the medallion he wore with the word “Finisher.”
And then followed one of those precious moments in modern urban life when people step out of their invisible sarcophagi, engage with those around them, and depart feeling strangely refreshed, reconnected, and inordinately happy.
“Excuse me,” another passenger said, “but did you just run the Marine Corps Marathon?”
The man with the medal nodded modestly. Smiles broke out all around him.
“My daughter ran it last year,” said a woman.
“What was your time?” asked a man in a sport coat.
The runner answered. My friend couldn’t recall afterwards what he’d said — and it wouldn’t have meant anything to her anyway, due to her own sports-averseness — but it seemed to mean a lot to the other passengers.
“That’s fantastic!” said the man in the sport coat.
A guy in a Capitals sweat shirt asked the runner whether he’d beaten his own best time. A young couple joined in, talking about races they’d run. The runner mentioned that mile eight had been tough for him, and people laughed understandingly. The atmosphere had changed utterly — from funereal chill it had become warm and lively, as at a mobile cocktail party.
The train car jerked and began to slow down.
“Well, this is my stop,” said the marathon man, tipping his head toward the door.
As he stepped out the door, half a dozen passengers waved and called out, “Bye!” and “Get some rest!” and “Well done!”
Then the doors closed and the train pulled away and everyone went back to their own affairs, outwardly unchanged but inwardly, well — inordinately happy. It was, as I said, a particularly lovely afternoon.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
