The Metro North

She was telling Sheila all about the divorce. The Goodes and their Bad Divorce. She was pleased with herself. Something had always seemed to Carol to be off about the Goodes. They were all smiles, all laughter, but Carol knew that kind of marriage had its dark side. She and Tony weren’t like that. They didn’t smile or laugh, but they loved each other, and Carol took umbrage with couples who pretended like what they had was so precious when secretly they were dying to get the hell away from each other. That’s why Carol was friends with Sheila. Sheila and Brian only smiled occasionally, and they never laughed. At least not in public. The Goodes thought they were better than everyone, and now they were separated. Served them right, although she didn’t say it that way when she told Sheila about Richard Goode having an affair and Deb Goode needing to go into a psych ward two weekends in a row because of it. All she said was--

“Isn’t it all so tragic?” --and of course, Sheila agreed with her.

It was.

They took these trips twice a year. Carol picked up Sheila at her house in Warwick, and the two of them drove down to New Haven together. They got there early so they could park in the garage next to the station, which filled up quickly on weekends. Sheila used the restroom while Carol got the tickets at the kiosk. They would both grab a medium black coffee and a muffin, and then wait on the platform for the train even though they’d be waiting for fifteen minutes in the cold. Both of them agreed there could be nothing worse than missing the train even if another one was only half an hour away. They acted like people who were in a rush despite their first engagement in New York always being a 2pm matinee. They always arrived in the city by no later than 10am, but they would still fret and agonize as though they were down to some kind of wire.

No matter how good the shows they saw were or how delicious the lunch and dinner or how clean the hotel was that they shared, if they were being honest with themselves, they would admit that gossiping on the train was their favorite part of every trip. At least, that’s how Carol felt about it. Who knew what Sheila was feeling? She seemed equally happy and unhappy about everything in her life. Carol recalled that even on her wedding day, Sheila looked like she could take off at any moment, and it was a miracle Brian hadn’t had a panic attack at the altar. He must know something about his wife that I don’t, Carol thought to herself, that’s the only explanation.

There was, in fact, another explanation.

From the age of seven and a half, Sheila knew things about people. She could look at them and know their deepest secret. The one they sometimes didn’t even know about themselves. It first occurred when Sheila looked at her paternal grandfather and knew he was in love with a man. She remembered that night getting into bed and asking her mother why Grandpa liked men the way her mother loved her father. The sting of the slap stayed with her for days afterwards, and she never brought forward another secret after that. She would look at someone, know what they were hiding, and then keep it to herself. Maybe that’s why she enjoyed gossiping with Carol so much. It was a chance to learn about something she already knew and feel a certain kind of relief when she could finally talk about it with someone.

Yes, Richard Goode was having an affair. Sheila didn’t know that because of her innate talent, but because she was the one Richard Goode had been having an affair with for the past seven months. Her husband had no idea, because he was too preoccupied with guilt over getting their family into debt by gambling on high-risk stocks and the occasional sports bet. Infidelity wasn’t an issue in Carol’s marriage, but there was a different kind of deception at work. Carol didn’t love her husband anymore, and Tony never loved Carol. In spite of that, they were still carrying on successfully and probably would until one of them died. That lack of love in her marriage was the main reason Carol enjoyed picking apart other relationships, especially happy ones. Richard and Deb Goode had destroyed each other, but there was still real love there. The same way there was love between Sheila and Brian. Love was always a step on the road to destruction. The kind of apathy that existed in Carol’s marriage--the kind of nothingness--that wouldn’t lead to disaster, but it wouldn’t lead to Paradise either. If there was an Afterlife, Carol and Tony wouldn’t even bother to go looking for each other past the gates. That’s what Sheila knew, but she didn’t know it for sure. She just knew that her friend was in a loveless marriage. She also knew that she was three months pregnant with Richard Goode’s baby.

“They turned off Simone’s electricity twice already this year,” Carol didn’t miss a beat as she handed the conductor her ticket, “She’s got plenty of money. It’s not from a trust fund, but it’s something like that. I forget what they call it. Anyway, she’s just bad with money. Tony’s offered to help her, because that’s what he does. He’s better with money than anyone. He and I both feel for her, because it can’t be easy losing your husband like that, but she says she doesn’t want our help. Meanwhile, she thinks we don’t notice when her lights are off for days at a time.”

Carol was relieved that Simone didn’t want Tony’s help. She was worried that Simone would try to sleep with Tony, and an affair was what scared Carol the most. She talked about husbands cheating on their wives or wives cheating on their husbands, because she thought if she talked about it, it would scare the specter of betrayal away from her door. Carol was one of those people who believed that conversation could ward off bad luck the way garlic could keep a vampire at bay. So she talked and talked and talked about men and women stepping out, and each time she did, she felt more assured that her husband would never do such a thing. She looked at the Simone situation as a win-win. They had been good Catholics and offered a widow their help, and she had declined.

Now, all was well.

Sheila was friendly with Simone as well. That was how she knew that Simone’s electricity wasn’t being turned off. Simone would leave all the lights off for two or three days, because she felt as though she were engaging in some kind of ancient mourning ritual of which only she knew the rules. She’d fast and wail and she sold most of her furniture and she was only using natural deodorant and it wasn’t working and Sheila tried not to scrunch up her nose when she was over Simone’s house having coffee and some stale banana raisin cookies. Sheila knew that there was no danger of Simone sleeping with Tony or anybody else’s husband, because Simone loved her dead husband so much she was going to wait a year and then take her own life. Either that or she would die of a broken heart. Her big secret was that she wasn’t capable of moving on. Sheila hoped that she was wrong and that somehow a secret could change, but she’d yet to find one that did. The action attached to it might, but what it indicated stayed the same. If you were an addict, you would always be an addict even if your addiction went into remission. If you were a liar, you’d be a liar no matter when you stopped telling lies. Simone who lived two houses down from Sheila was a romantic, and romantics didn’t recover when their romances ended. Carol was a gossip, and she always would be. The question was--

Did she gossip about Sheila?

Harlem and 125th Street as the last stop before Grand Central. Any story Carol was in the middle of had to be wrapped up in about ten minutes, because there was an unspoken agreement that they didn’t gossip once they were in the city. From that point on, it was strictly talk about homeless people, tall buildings that kept getting taller, posters for shows they’d like to see, posters for shows they wouldn’t like to see, memories from past trips, asking a dozen times what street their hotel was on, remarking on how Uber was replacing taxis, Carol recounting the story of that one taxi ride where they both thought they were being kidnapped, Sheila reminiscing about the time they stumbled into a jazz club and caught an impromptu Diana Krall concert, how the Museum of Modern Art must have inappropriate paintings on display, and how sad 9/11 was.

“I guess the moral of the story--” Carol said, finishing up a juicy anecdote about the newest couple in the neighborhood, “--is that if you’re going to get frisky with your wife in your living room, you’re going to need thicker curtains. Not those cheap sheer ones they must have bought at Walmart. At least go to Target. My god.”

The train pulled in. Carol got up, pulled down Sheila’s suitcase from the rack above their seats, and handed it to her. Then, she grabbed her own. Sheila could never say that Carol wasn’t thoughtful. Carol felt that she was always thinking of Sheila. Perhaps too much. She worried about her for some reason, while, at the same time, desperately wanting her approval. That was why they were friends. That was why Sheila was the only person she wouldn’t gossip about. Hell, she’d gossip about Tony before she’d gossip about Sheila. That was a little secret she kept to herself.

“You ready,” she asked, the first people already pushing their way onto the platform.

Sheila stood up, and gave Carol a smile.

“Yes,” she said, “Let’s go.”

Carol tried not to look so surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Sheila smile. It shouldn’t have taken her aback the way it had, but there was no helping it. It was such a nice smile. 

What a shame that she didn’t use it more often.