Crossing

“All my friends are dying!” Shouts Esther, curling her fingers around the metal railing. “Or they’re already gone!” 

We stop speaking for a moment, allowing the train’s screeching to fill the silence. I lean over the railing, watching the trees whip by. 

“You seem like a warm person.” I venture. “You’ll be okay.” 

“Thank you.” A pause. “But I do worry. Who will be there to take care of me in the end?”

In an instant I’m transported back to Brooklyn, the emerald lakes giving way to scrawls of graffiti, the scent of pine souring into an unidentifiable acrid smell. The loud, persistent screeching remains.

“Who will take care of me in the end?” I ask Thalia, repositioning my feet in step with the rattling Q train. Thalia smiles, and closes the gap between us. “Chloe. You’ll be fine.” She wipes a single tear from my cheek.

My friends tell me I have a flair for the dramatic, Thalia most of all. I am grateful for that, though. I need someone to bring me back down to Earth.

A crackling from the loudspeaker snaps me back to the Rocky Mountains. 

“Just heard from train traffic control,” Says a cheery voice. “Another train is passing. We’ll be stop here about fifteen minutes. Feel free to stretch your legs.”

I am the first to pop open the clasp to free the train’s door from its hinge and hop out onto the gravel. Esther follows. Sticks crunch beneath our feet as we make our way to a nearby clearing, bordered by a stream. Over the clearing towers the colossal Cascade Mountain, which bathes our bodies in its great shadow.

Esther bends to pick up a stone, turning it over in her hands. “My husband had a collection of rocks like these. He liked the sharp ones, with a little sparkle inside them. After he started drinking, he threw one right through our bedroom window.”

I bite my lip and shift my feet, Esther’s words lingering in the air like a smell. 

How does she feel comfortable telling me – a perfect stranger – such personal things? To know someone you will never see again walks around carrying a small piece of you? Without building trust, without earning it? It is as if she is stripping off her pom-pom hat, infinity scarf, cargo pants, cable knit sweater and pink corduroy jacket, laying them in the snow, and baring herself to me – leaving me in awe, and deep, deep discomfort.

My pain, my emotions, my needs? I swallow all that. I gulp it all down like water, except with a few close confidantes. Easier that way. Less of a burden on everyone around me, too.

At Esther’s age, would I feel differently? Free?

I thought of my own heartbreak, the empty room I left behind in Brooklyn. “This just isn’t working,” Evan said to me, leaning backward on the exposed brick. “I don’t know how to give you what you want. And I’m done trying.” 

And just like that, on the hardwood floor of his Crown Heights apartment, I watched the vision of my life I had carefully constructed over the past four years dissolve into mist. The brownstone we’d dreamed of on Park Place. The child we said we’d adopt. That future wrinkled and rotted like one of Sylvia Plath’s figs off the tree.

I said nothing to him then. I turned from him, gathered my things, and hurried down the steps as quickly as I could. Moving out? The messy stuff? I can deal with that later. There was nothing to do but run, run, run, forget, forget, forget, swallow, swallow, swallow. 

Get as far away as I can. Find solace in nature. Book a ticket. Book several tickets. 

Esther, on the other hand, was not on the Rocky Mountain Express to escape. Even though, as I came to learn that afternoon, her pain was much greater than mine. At just sixty-three, she had lost three friends to brain cancer, fled an abusive husband and freed herself from an emotionally manipulative father. The connections she held closely, she lost. The ones that no longer served her, she severed.

But she bears this pain gracefully, like a heavy coat. Insulating her, fortifying her. And most importantly, keeping it visible, acknowledged, honored. She takes what money she’s saved and uses it for adventure, finding friends along the way. 

The two of us stand side by side, letting the cold wind seep through to our skin. 

We talk awhile longer, me doing my best to hold her pain and her graciously holding mine. As we spoke, the anger and hurt swirling in my stomach lessened, lingering on my skin briefly before disappearing into the trees.

A loud vibration shakes the clearing. I pull my phone from my pocket. It’s Evan. My chest tightens. I look up at Cascade Mountain, which looks even bigger, somehow. I feel both comforted and very, very small. 

Esther looks down at the phone and back up at me. She and I take a long breath together. I ignore my instinct to throw my phone as far as I can into the snow and scream along after it. I answer.

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry. Can we talk? You disappeared.”

The sounds around me grow louder. The stream’s trickle becomes a rush. The wind’s whistle becomes a roar. The white water rapids of the past few days’ events jar into focus.

Before I can respond, the pleasant voice crackles back to life. “We’ll be moving in just two minutes! Everyone please make your way back to your seats.”

“I have to go.” I gulp down air, and let it out slowly. “But I’d love to talk.”

I turn to Esther, who was looking up at the trees, still running her fingers over the sharp edges of the rock. She catches my gaze and smiles at me.

I hook my right arm in hers and we walk, steps in sync, back to the warmth of the train.