The Woman From Clairsville

Most people never leave Clairsville. It is the type of town that has one of everything, one doctor, one bank, one school, one baker, and one woman that desperately yearns to escape it.

The woman sat erect on the train station bench, impatiently awaiting the sound of screeching metal, the sound of her new beginning. It was not as if Clairsville had ever wronged her, or had been unpleasant in the slightest, in fact, the very gloves she adorned were a gift from the town seamstress, the woman who used to watch over her while her father was at the smithy. She smiled and slid the soft fabric gloves off her hands, running her fingers over the delicate lace hem, but her smile soon faded as her eyes fell to the gold band that remained tight on her finger. She pulled it slightly, but it refused to journey over her knuckle, so she slid it back into its place over the green tint it created on her skin years ago. She remembered the day she first put it on, the fiery color of the autumn leaves, the reddish tint of her husband’s nose, and the promise that he made to never stop loving her. Despite it being simply a memory, her face still burned with guilt. I should be grateful, she thought, Most girls would be grateful, but then again, most girls in Clairsville have had six children by my age and are ripe with another.

A man passed hurriedly by her, creating a current of wind that threatened the ticket in her bag to spill out onto the concrete. She desperately searched for a clock, determined to not miss her boarding call as there was only one train that ran through these parts and it was in a town that required a few miles journey out of Clairsville and it only came once every few months. She saw that she still had nearly an hour before the train arrived, so she rested her eyes and let herself escape into yet another daydream of what her new life could bring. 

Perhaps I’ll become a florist, she thought, Surely city folks are in need of some greenery in their lives. And I’ll live in a small place, no, not small, quaint, yes, I like that, it’ll be quaint and cozy, and there will always be a pot of tea on the stove because I’ll never know when a friend may pop in! 

This was always how her daydreams started, with a place of her own, and a job in a little shop working as this or that, but as hard as she tried to delay it, soon enough a man would walk into her shop, or knock at her door, or she would simply bump into him in the street, and yet again she would be face to face with her past--her reality. 

           Perhaps she was a coward for leaving while he was on business, for departing without a word goodbye. Within the hour she would simply be a memory—a whisper of a ghost—in a house in which she was determined to no longer call a home. Her husband was not cruel, nor did he ever lay a hand on her, he even gave her a monthly stipend that allowed her to buy the very ticket in her bag, and yet this was the reason she had to leave him. How could she look at a person who gave her the world and be content in knowing she could never give him the family he desired? How could she look at a man who shared the blood of a child she could never bear, and in all honesty, never desired to? She looked up at the sweltering midday sun, blinking the thick tears from her eyes. Only one managed to sear its way down her cheek, but she quickly wiped it away with the sleeve of her dress as the once refreshing wind now sent a chill down her spine. 

           A small crowd began to form on the platform, so she gathered her courage and the small bag of belongings that accompanied her, and made her way toward the tracks, bowing her head as the fear of being recognized outweighed the logic that no one else from Clairsville would be boarding this train. A soft rumble became barely audible, and the woman’s stomach began to form knots of what she couldn’t determine to be excitement or apprehension. The metal rails began to shake as the train neared and the woman could see in her periphery a little girl frighteningly grasping her mother’s hand and suddenly the bubbling excitement was replaced with a wave of nausea. The platform vibrated below her feet as metal clashed on metal and a long screech pierced the noon day and the train came to a stop. 

The crowd suddenly dispersed, creating a path so that passengers could exit onto the platform, but the woman was frozen in place, staring at the clunky grey walls that would bring her to her freedom, to her daydream, to the life she never thought she could have. As the doors slid open and the passengers began to pour out, she wondered where each of them was going, who they were going home to, or leaving home from. She glanced down at her hands every few seconds, fearful that the ticket that was creating indents in her tight palm would suddenly disappear, fearful that the moment she was living was just another one of her daydreams and right now she was back at home, asleep on her bed, and the pot of water she was supposed to be watching had begun to boil over. But as stared out into the crowd of bustling passengers, she knew this was no daydream, this was her new beginning. 

As she migrated deeper into the frenzy of bodies, she became concerned that she would miss her boarding, so she elbowed her way through the crowd in a most unladylike manner and couldn’t help but smile at the thought of her mother’s disapproving scold if she saw her now. She kept her eyes locked on the neck of the person in front of her, using them as her reference point until she reached the final step of the platform where she finally turned to hand her ticket to the conductor, but as her eyes looked that way, she was met with a face she knew better than her own. The two stood frozen for a moment, shock registering through both their minds and bodies, but the emotions that followed were vastly different. His shock drifted into delight, as she was sure he believed her to be waiting upon his arrival, but soon his eyes drifted from her stony expression to her extended arm, to the nearly crumpled ticket she was grasping in her hand. She willed words to form in her mouth, rationales, lies, perhaps even the truth, but she found that all she could do was watch as the emotions processed on his wholesome countenance. The longer she stared, the faster the image of her new life began to dissipate and become what it always was and always would be: a daydream.

A passenger who stood behind her shouted something unintelligible at the two, and the man was finally pulled out of his stupor. His eyes met his wife’s for just a moment longer, just enough so that only she could see that despite his tight-lipped smile, tears had begun to brim his eyes. Then he simply tilted his hat in her direction, stepped off the platform, and walked off into the sea of passengers. Before the woman could react, the passenger behind her was pushing her into the train and in a rush the ticket was pulled from her hand by the conductor, and she was ushered to a seat. As she sat down her mind finally understood what had just occurred, He’s setting me free, she thought, I’m—… 

She looked out the window from her seat and onto the platform, searching the throngs of people until her eyes sought out the patchy grey coat, the fraying hat, the disappearing body of a man that had loved her enough to lose her. The train began to rumble as it prepared for the journey ahead and the woman noticed the little girl and her mother sitting in the seats diagonal from her, only this time the little girl had let out a blubbering wail that paralleled the screech of the train beginning to slide on the rails. The woman took one last look at the platform as the train headed to the next destination, even though she knew that the man would be halfway home by then. The country became a blurry scene of greens and blues, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the train gaining speed or the tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks, and for the first time in her life, the woman thought to herself, Why would anyone want to leave Clairsville?