To Go Home

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

He threw out his hand and smashed the snooze button with his fingers, peeking his head up at the little red letters glowing in the dark room.

“5:30,” he said his voice half-muffled in grogginess and the white pillow case half in his mouth. “Am I…Am I moving?”

He thrust his body out of the bed and flew across the room in search of a light. His hands sought familiar places but found nothing as he stumbled through the dark on wobbly lethargic legs that rattled in beat to whatever it was he was standing on.

“What’re you doing?” said a voice from the gulf of darkness between him and where he had just been laying.

“Who the fuck is that?” He spun around and tripped over his feet falling into what felt like glass or plexiglass and softwood that gave under the weight of his backside.

A light flicked on.

Laying before him in a too-long Brave Little Toaster t-shirt on a bed with messy sheets was a woman with dark hair and dark brown eyes. Her eyes were red with sleep, and a pair of black panties stuck out from the bottom of the t-shirt as she sat up and turned to him. Behind her hung a covered wall light.

“What’re you doing?” she said, rubbing her eyes as she looked down yawning, and then back up at him.

“Who…” he replied, his voice falling as a memory popped into his head of the woman before him riding with him in a car, their hands quietly entwined.

“Beth?”

She looked up at him shocked, and frustrated.

“Did you think it was somebody else?”

“No…I just. How do I know you?”

“What’re you doing?” she said, looking over at the alarm clock that was now going off again. “Why’d you set the alarm for 5:30?”

With that, she reached over and turned the alarm off at 5:39.

“And why’d you only hit the snooze if you set it so damn early?”

“Beth…” He could feel himself suddenly freaking out internally. His fingers felt like…like balloons. His vision blurred. She seemed so far away. “Where are we?”

Her eyes squinted at him, shocked. She rubbed them and looked at him again.

“David, what’re you talking about?” The sound in her voice was hollow and concerned. She tossed the blankets off of her and sat up reaching towards him but he recoiled, again hitting the wall. Behind him there was a door on rails that could be slid open should you pull the metal door handle built into an alcove in the faux wooden door.

“David…you’re scaring me.” Her eyes were two moons, round and white and full of fear. “You’re not still mad, are you?”

“Mad?”

A hollowness sat in his stomach, the kind of hollow that follows a week without food, or a week not wanting to eat food. Then came a feeling of loneliness.

“Listen, David, I know it was bad timing. Believe me, I know that. I was gonna wait until we got home. Fuck…” She sighed deeply and sat back, crossing her legs. “I knew it was a bad idea to have sex again. I’m sorry, David.”

He looked past her and saw lights flickering behind blinds. Rushing across the room he pulled them up and took in the view. Outside distant lights shone in a wide expanse. All he could see were brown fields turned gray in the black of night. And far off, like matte paintings in an old movie, blue hills rose into the purple-spattered sky with salt-flake white stars.

“Are we on a train?”

Beth, her face in her hands, turned to David pulling her red, tear-filled eyes up to his.

“David, are you okay?”

“Why’re you crying?” As he said it he remembered the taste of salt on the tip of his lips, the taste of tears rolling down his face and falling into his open mouth. He remembered the cracked yellow painted door of the train station bathroom and the dent he made with his fist. He remembered coming out to see her, her refusing to look at him as he told her again and again how sorry he was. But she just told him to stop. “Not here,” she’d said. “Later, please, David.”

Again, his hands felt swollen, and she felt far away like she was flowing backward like the bed was rolling away from him. He remembered as a child watching a Tom Petty video where he was dressed as The Mad Hatter and remembered the effect the fish eye lens had on him. That’s what this felt like. Like suddenly his vision had been replaced with a fish eye lens and everything was on a conveyor belt moving away from him.

She stood up and walked towards him. He let her wrap her arms around him. It felt so good. So warm. He leaned into her and placed his head on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, David,” she whispered. “Are you okay? You’re scaring me.”

Suddenly he remembered laying in a bedroom alone. Her in another bedroom on the other side of the house. He pulled away.

She looked down and bit her thumb. Looking at her he remembered so much about her. Her parents split when she was little. She’d always say, “I don’t have a dad.” She hated Christmas and usually spent it alone, refusing to come with him on the train ride home…

The train ride home…

The train ride home…

She’d divorced her husband five years ago and spent years alone, raising her daughter in a tiny house out in the country, working long hours third shift. On their second sleepover, she fell asleep with her head on his lap and kept waking up embarrassed because she was snoring. Her brother died in a car wreck and she went out into the woods alone.

Once she’d come home with him for Christmas and she was painfully quiet the whole time. She hated the train ride. She hated distance. Everything felt so far on the train ride home…

The train ride home…

The train ride home…

He looked up and he was in their living room, his long black and white robe on, her in her It t-shirt and gray shorts. They quietly ate burgers and fries with mayo-ketchup.

“How was work,” he said to her.

“Fine,” she replied. Short.

“Everything alright?”

She rolled her eyes and turned to him. “David…I’m fine. I’m just tired. Please…”

He sighed. “You seem…angry.”

“Fucking Christ. Do we really?”

“What?”

She stood before him, staring at him. He was back on the train.

“David!”

“What?”

“I’ve been saying your name for a solid minute now. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

David walked towards the door, pulled the latch, and opened it.

“David, I’m not wearing any pants.”

He walked out. Inside the sleeping compartment, she jumped across the bed and grabbed a pair of gray sweatpants, and followed him out into the dark of the hallway.

“Where’d you go?”

The aisles were pitch-black except for the series of windows on the side opposite the sleeping compartments. A landscape of deep, dark green trees and powerlines rode alongside the train. Up above little patches of snow topped mountain peaks. Ahead of her in the aisle, she saw nothing but headed forward until she felt the door separating the cars and she opened it. David was standing in between, the sound of the train roaring over them, like steel being ripped apart and rattling. A decidedly uncomforting sound, considering it required staying together so long as they were on it.

“The fuck are you doing?”

“This train isn’t gonna stop, Beth.”

“Eventually.” She looked at him utterly perplexed. “What the fuck’re you talking about?”

“It’s not gonna stop, Beth. It’s not gonna stop. It’s not…” he continued on and on until he started breaking down into tears. She had the urge to hug him but fought it.

“Look…” her voice was slow and measured, full of careful empathy but with anxiety, “I understand that you’re upset and, I don’t know, probably not feeling too good, but please, let’s go back to the compartment. Please.” She reached out her hand to him and he took it.

Her hands always felt so small in his. And she was always getting cold in the fall and winter, always asking for her hands to be warmed.

He took her and pulled it up to his mouth and wrapped both of his hands around it and blew warm air on it. Then he laughed. She smiled, nervously, and then she led him back to the compartment where they lay in bed together. He laid on his back and she on her side, her arm propping her up.

“So…you okay now?”

“I…I don’t remember everything.”

“What d’you mean?”

Running his hands through his hair he felt the thick waviness of it as it tangled around his fingers. The fingers became smaller, became somebody else's, the train stopped or went away and the sound of a quiet piano played in the background as a man sang over it, his warbly voice singing quietly in the background.

He was on a bed. He was on their bed. A small Boston-Russell mix lay at the foot of the bed. Cool air blew in through a tall window, making the sheer light purple curtain twirl.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I feel better.” He tasted the salt of a lie.

She rubbed his back and played with his hair.

“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had to deal with this on my own.”

“I understand.”

“What’d your dad say?”

“Said there wasn’t much time left. Said I should go home. Would you…would you go home with me? I know you hate it.”

The bed disappeared and was replaced with a hotel room. He half-remembered a vague fight doing battle with the lunch in his stomach. Racing thoughts and mistakes played through his head. If only he’d not done that. If only he hadn’t taken it personally being left out. If only he’d talked to her about how he felt instead of blowing up. He just needed to put his words together.

The door opened and in she walked. Her purse was in her hand, along with two tickets.

“Are you ready?”

He nodded and said nothing and followed her out of the room.

The rumble of the train returned.

The train ride home…

The train ride home…

“David, no, it’s got nothing to do with that. It’s just…”

They were in a car, bags packed behind them.

The car ride home…

The car ride home…

“Is it because I’m always home? I work from home, Beth. What else do you want me to do? You’re just…”

“What?”

“Oh, stop.”

“No, tell me, tell me, David.”

“You do this all the time.”

“Do what?”

“You’re just like your father, incapable of loving somebody, and then when you do you push them away…”

The sound of screeching metal rang off in the distance.

“What was that?”

She sprung up and ran to the window, looking out.

“David, something’s wrong.”

“Huh?”

“Something’s wrong. Come on.”

She grabbed him by the hand and ran out of the compartment. Outside stood several other people, standing in the dark, anxiously looking around.

“What’s going on,” said an older woman.

“Nothing, dear,” said her husband, an older man with a mustache and a flannel robe. “I’m going to figure it out. Are you coming with me?” He was looking at David but Beth replied.

“Yeah, we’ll come.”

The man nodded, confused, and walked to the next car, David and Beth following. In the next car, more people were standing out in the aisle, the screeching sound getting louder and louder, now what appeared to create sparks in the window coming from the train’s bottom. And on and on they went until they were stopped by a man in a blue vest, who nervously tried to hold everybody back as they yelled at him to tell them what was going on. He just kept repeating, “Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Go back to your rooms. Please, go back to your rooms,” as sweat poured down his face and his voice quaked in terror. Several people yelled to be let through but the man wouldn’t let them.

Beth walked over to the window and looked outside. They were going around a bend and it was hard to tell what was going on ahead, but it was obvious that a lot of flames and sparks were coming from the front of the train. It was hard to tell if the engine was on fire or if it was just sparks shooting up from the train tracks. In the dark, it looked like a firework show in the middle of a canyon.

“What’s going on?” said David, now standing beside her.

“I don’t know.” She looked ahead, squinting her eyes, and then turned to him. “David, I really am sorry.”

He turned to her. “About what?”

She didn’t say anything but turned her lip up and looked at him with concern.

“I’m serious. I didn’t want to do this now. It’s not that I…”

There was a loud rumble and the entire train shook.

“What was that!” yelled a voice in the dark and an entire crowd of people pushed towards the man in the blue vest.

Ahead the sparks had disappeared. In fact, it looked as if the entire front of the train went completely black.

“David…” Beth turned to him. “I think there’s a bridge out ahead.”

The train shook and felt as if it was soon in danger of falling off the tracks entirely. People screamed and rolled and bumped into each other like a violent, horrifying moshpit. Beth headed back to the previous car and David watched her, then as she turned back to him, he followed.

The doors swung open and they walked through into an empty car. Behind them, people were screaming and they stood in total silence. The train rumbled and rocked careening this way and that.

“David, I’m sorry I did it like this…on our way home…”

The train ride home…

The train ride home…

To go home…

David held a phone in his hand. His cell phone. His phone read “dad” and his voice was shaky. He was back in their living room, Beth and his living room. He’d only ever heard his dad cry a handful of times. This was perhaps the third and he wasn’t even sure if he was crying or having some sort of panic attack as he explained how the cancer had spread. That the chemo couldn’t do anything anymore. He said, “It was only a matter of time.”

“It was only a matter of time…why don’t you come home for a while, if you can? I need some help around the house. Please. Come home.”

David looked up at Beth, her face pale and white.

Later in bed, as she tickled his back she sang the words to him.

“Oh - I'll be true to you,” she sang in a whisper. “Oh yeah, you know I will. I'll be true to you forever or until I go home.”

His mom’s voice on the phone was quiet and in the background. She asked, “Is that David?” and then something else but he couldn’t hear her. Her voice sounded like it was coming through the iron grating of a vent, so small and metallic.

The train rumbled and rolled. She took his arm and pulled him in.

“I’m sorry, David.”

“Me too,” he said.

He remembered every wrong thing he did. Every time he wasn’t there or was too overbearing. He remembered all of the little pieces that stretched out, like their meeting in the park after talking through a dating app, their having sex for the first time and holding each other as they fell asleep, their bodies warm and slick with sweat, their nights spent eating french fries with mayo-ketchup, their quiet car rides…all off it stretched out before him.

To go home…To go home… To go home…

He remembered laying in bed in the hotel, she’d just gone to get the tickets, after she said, “She couldn’t do this anymore.” He said, “It’s because I made you come with me, isn’t it?” She said, “No, obviously. I just…I can’t anymore. I’m sorry.” He didn't believe her but he knew he had to.

The train car pitched left and then right and then hard left and slammed down hard and everything went black, their arms wrapped around each other, and he thought of the end, he thought about going home and then he was.