W-365—4-8-8-4

It rattled the house twice a day with a jarring clip that let you know that its industrial usage was being forgotten. Once at noon, and once at the cusp of two in the morning. I heard the cuckoo of the time, and I shuddered awake as I felt the loose weight of a rocks glass fall from my hand onto a floor that was dated and worn by the anxious scuffing of boots. I swallowed a gasp as frantically considered the empty train car. It was paneled wood and tufted seats and the windows were thick with a grime that assured you there was nothing to be seen flicking past outside.

I knew this train. I knew the tarnished, rusting yellow of its belly. I knew the soot covered windows that told no stories from the outside. I knew this train for I saw it twice daily, yet never knew it to house any passengers but its crew. I ran a hand over my hair that was damp with sweat and I rose slowly, inching towards the door to the hallways. I clumsily ground the empty glass into the mangled floor with my heel as I reached for the handle.

“Martha!” I recoiled with a chill as I turned to find Betty McGillis sitting on the seat opposite the one I had just woken in. Betty No. 3 as she was called jokingly by husbands and wives in the neighborhood.

“Betty!” I gasped. She didn’t look away from the dirtied window. She stared absently at the passing landscape. There was a jolt on the train, and it seemed to quicken pace. It matched my heart as I watched her trace long and looping circles in the grime.

“Do you think it will slow, Martha? This train? Where does it go so urgently, do you think?” Her hand wound from top to bottom, side to side, drawing loop after loop, her eyes unblinking and filled with tears.

“I don’t know, Betty,” I said softly, my own eyes brimming as the train only seemed to gain speed. It should never go this fast. It’s never gone this fast.

“I wonder how far it will take me…” Betty muttered. “I wish you had come to chat, Martha…I do love trains. I wonder how far it will take me.”

“Betty…Betty why are we here? Where is it taking us? What have they done? Betty! Why isn’t it stopping?” I shook her and she stayed transfixed on the landscape that passed in a frenzied blur. I turned to the window and I was stunned to see my own house flick by. I shuddered as I saw myself for fraction of a second in the window, staring just as absently at the tracks as Betty. The cadence of the train tripled in speed. Thump-thump-thump-thump, thump-thump-thump-thump.

“I only ever loved the sound of the trains…” said Betty softly as the train shuddered and a streak of crimson flashed over the dinge.

———

I had clipped it from a magazine with a pair of trimming scissors in my sister’s upstairs bathroom with rollers in my hair. I smoked a cigarette through lace curtains and maneuvered carefully around the white clapboard siding. W-365. It was small, but large enough to still be called a home and large enough to house dreams. That’s all it was as I guided the blades across the glossy page, a dream, and I was lucky enough to have one then.

W-365. “Pleasing features.” It didn’t look any different than any of the homes all of us scrambled to be hoisted over the threshold of after the war. “Pleasing…” I mumbled as I exhaled a turret of smoke and tossed the remaining Slim into the toilet.

It was a manifestation made out of boredom. I had gone to the bathroom to get away from the gaud of my sister’s wedding. I had gone upstairs because it was the only window in the house that didn’t have to be held open with a ruler or a pile of books. I read the magazine because it was the only one there, and as a train whistle blared, I looked up from the crumpled W-365 and it became smooth once more. Like Technicolor it materialized on the jagged edge of a sea of the same. All white clapboard and “Williamsburg Blue” shutters.

“It’s a 4-8-8-4!” said Maxwell as he held a hand on his hat and watched the steam roll off the back as it sparked and surged down the tracks. A strand of numbers encapsulated our dreams. W-365 – 4-8-8-4.

Maxwell loved trains, and in the naivety of youth I thought I must have manifested this for him too: the home and the tracks so close to one another. The smile on his face made me warm inside as he watched it shrink into the distance. One hand on his hat, the other hooked in the band of his pants. “I think we’ll be happy here.”

Happiness. It’s what I felt watching him watch that train. It’s what I felt when he carried me over the threshold. It’s what I felt when Charlie and Margaret were born. It’s what I felt when his mother would leave after she stayed those long weekends. It’s what I felt as we watched the afternoon train thrash by, and he’d shake his head in amazement as if it didn’t happen every day like clockwork. But somewhere in the happiness, something began to spoil.

A dark spot on a vibrant fruit at first. Flashes of the war would come back to him. They would throttle him at night, and he’d grab wildly at bedside lamps or the clock on the nightstand to defend himself. They’d come and go like his train. I’d drop a too sudsy plate and he would come up out of his chair like the flick of a lighter. That’s when the yelling would start. Then he decided he liked to yell, and that’s when I decided I didn’t like to listen.

He liked to be with the children, and I liked that he didn’t seem to be so cross when he was with them. He didn’t yell at Bridge, and he didn’t yell at baseball games, and he didn’t yell at church, and he didn’t yell when the train came, and we lived a perfected version of our lives in those moments.

Chet and Betty McGillis next door loved Bridge too. We called her Betty No. 3 because it seemed in this neighborhood there was a Betty on every corner, and as we met them, Maxwell began to number them off and it caught on. Betty No. 3 loved lots of things. Steeped cups of Earl Grey, mechanics magazines, vodka tonics at three p.m., lavender laundry soap, and the passing of the trains, just like Maxwell. But Betty wasn’t like me. She couldn’t hide chaos with a smile. She couldn’t laugh when it didn’t suit her, and three p.m. vodkas suddenly began to start at noon when the train whirred past. She didn’t like what the war had done to Chet, either, but she couldn’t stop herself from listening to him yell.

———

I didn’t know where Maxwell was. I didn’t know where the children were, and I didn’t care. The sun was hot, and my white roses curled up brown at the tips of their petals. It melted the ice in my gin and tonic, yet it was only eleven a.m.

“Martha!” I didn’t know how long I had been staring at their decay. My cigarette had almost burned out and my eyes seared from the smoke and dissociation. I blinked painfully and held up a garden-gloved hand. Betty No. 3 was watching me worriedly. “What are you doing? I thought you’d fallen asleep upright.” I blinked at her again and spat my cigarette butt into the flowerbed.

“The heat,” I called. “It’s ruined them.” My voice was docile and weak. I motioned to the roses, and Betty No. 3 looked at me with her head cocked to the side. She was still in her nightgown, and I wondered why she thought to share comments when she too had her vodka in hand and wore her dressing gown in her driveway.

“Do you think you’d like to come over and chat?” she called back. She held her newspaper like an infant, and I noticed that she swayed a little. Her eyes were rimmed in red and her toes danced as if there was a fast tune being trumpeted.

“The roses…” I called to her. “I think I’ll be pruning the rest of the day. I—come over tomorrow. We’ll play cards. Charlie has swimming lessons every day this week. I’ll have the afternoon.”

I wasn’t sure Charlie did in fact have swimming lessons. Where were my children? I blinked at Betty No. 3 swaying like she was caught by a breeze and nodded my head at her as I turned back to my roses. Where were my children? I stared again at the roses and barely noticed as my trimming shears fell from my hands into the earth. I took my gin and went indoors.

———

“Mommy, Mommy!” I started and turned to the foyer as Charlie ran towards me, his bangs still dripping from the pool, and he smelled of chlorine.

“My angel,” I cooed and steadied myself as I dropped to my knees to embrace him.

“Mommy! I jumped in—I jumped into the deep end and, and I didn’t even hold my nose, Mommy, and I swam all the way back to Mr. Bradley! And I didn’t even hold my nose!” I smiled and ran my hand over the curve of his face, delighted in his delight.

“You’re a natural! Just like we said you would be. Isn’t he something, Dad?” I asked.

“He sure is…” Maxwell replied, Margaret slung over his back like a knapsack. “A regular fish out of water.” He tousled his hair as he looked me over. “Looks like someone had an oil change while we were out.” I laughed thickly as I pushed my rocks glass into the floor to help me stand.

“I surely did! London Dry, I think it was that they put in the engine…” The two of us stood toe to toe, mutual distaste.

“Can we play outside, Mommy?” Margaret asked, kicking anxiously against her father’s back.

“Of course, darling,” I said, kissing her temple. “Don’t go too close to the fence! Mind the traps your father put out for the groundhogs!” The two of them took off out the back door, the screen door screaming along with them as it swung closed.

“You’re a real piece of work, Martha,” whispered Maxwell as he pinched his nose. I rolled my neck and laughed at his disdain as I picked my rocks glass off the floor and crossed to the radio.

“Well then stick a hook in my back and hang me on the wall, Maxwell.” ‘Amapola’ began to prattle over the radio and I sighed, hoisting my gin into the air. “Dance with me.” He looked at me helplessly as he fished in his pocket for his smokes.

“This can’t go on, Martha,” he muttered as he slapped the pack against his wrist.

“No, Maxwell…no it can’t.”

“You shouldn’t spend so much time with Betty No. 3; I fear she’s becoming an influence.”

“Oh yes, because she’d have to be bat-shit not goggle on and sit by and recount the glory days over and over again with you boys…whether you yell it in your sleep or whisper it gently as you reminisce. She’d have to be wild because that man…that man.” I seemed to hear it as if it were a memory. The wild and jarring pace. Thump-thump-thump-thump. The wild scribbles on a dingy window.

“That man loves her, Martha, as I love you! You have no idea what that war was…what it did to us…She’s a goddamn drunk. She smokes, she swears, and she stays in her housecoat and can barely pick up the newspaper in the driveway. I love you, Martha, god’s truth, but if you think I’ll allow—"

“I HATE YOU!” I screamed; tears ran down my face. Thump-thump-thump-thump. “Oh my god, I hate you.” I held the cool of the glass up to my head. Thump-thump-thump-thump. “You’re right it can’t go on like this.” My head pounded and I tried to blink away the sound as I crossed over to the window. “Maxwell…Max…I had a dream last night…I—” I stopped short. Thump-thump-thump-thump. The tap of her toes seemed to step in time to Jimmy Dorsey crooning through the radio. Vodka soda in hand.

“Do you hear that?” Maxwell asked softly. He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt to check his watch. “It’s fifteen ‘til…It can’t be time for the train.” I stared in disbelief as she carefully pulled up the hem of her nightgown and twirled onto the tracks. Thump-thump-thump-thump.

“Betty,” I gasped in horror. The weight of my gin hit the floor to splatter my exposed ankles. 4-8-8-4 sparked in the distance. The horn sounded in urgency as it barreled down the tracks, unable to stop. It looked like Independence Day as it streaked towards the house with a determination I had never seen before.

“Good god!” Maxwell yelled as the pace of it shook the entire neighborhood. “Good god! Martha! Get away from the window!” He had seen her, swaying on the tracks.

Betty No. 3 turned back her glass and threw it at the oncoming train before spreading her arms wide. I screamed and closed my eyes. I was there with her again in that train car. I reached out for her hand as she mouthed words and scribbled wildly through the grime. It couldn't stop.

“How far will it take her?” I screamed as tears ran down my face and Maxwell pushed my nose into the starched front of his shirt. “She loved the sound of the trains.”