The Train

 It’s not often you make a clear and concise decision, but today you did. Pen in hand you scribble a few lines down on a piece of paper, feeling the smooth glide of a new pen on clean paper. Capping the pen you take one last look around before picking up the bag at your feet. This is was the moment, just like the moment of a movie, and there was no turning back now.

Suitcase in hand, you pull the door tightly behind you. He won’t realize what’s happened until it’s too late.You’ll be on the train and there won’t be any coming back. A cab rounds the corner at the end of the street and for a moment you think about hailing it, even going so far as to start to raise your arm, but a cool breeze blows and you lower your arm and walk instead.

There is something you realize about walking away from it all that makes the decision that much more effective and poetic. You smile to yourself as you walk trying to picture his face when he comes home and finds you no longer there. It’s funny. In twenty years of marriage you never once saw him cook, never once watched him roll those crisp sleeves up to do the dishes and now the image of it makes you laugh and it is carried away in the breeze.

The walk to the train station isn’t long. He’d insisted on being relatively close to it when purchasing a house, for work he said. It was so important to him to be near the train to make his work commute easier and so he could walk instead of paying the ridiculous cab fares he always complained about. It wasn’t as if he’d actually taken the train, not in the last ten years or so, not since he got everything he wanted and your world came crumbling down around you.

For twenty years you did everything you could to make sure his life was easier and that he got everything he wanted. School had been important, but when he decided it was time to get married, that was it and all those credit hours sat on an invisible shelf collecting dust. Of course everyone said that you were doing the right thing, that a husband’s drive and that his life should come first and you were doing the right thing by staying home. But you watched as the life he’d promised you and the life you had parted ways. It was slow at first, so slight that you almost didn’t notice it. But gradually the separation of the two lives increased in speed and you no longer recognized it.

For hours you labored incessantly in the kitchen creating the perfect meal that would be ready just as he walked through the door, only to sit at one end of the table and not recognize the man sitting at the other end. Then he started working late. Hours after the dinner you slaved over had gone cold, he would walk through the door, mumble something about eating at the office and tumble into bed smelling of gin and perfume.

You made excuses to yourself and artfully dodge the subject around friends and family. Even though you had no children you still had the perfect marriage as far as anyone was concerned. But as you sat waiting the night before, smoking that long cigarette he had badgered, you to give up, you came to a decision. You weren’t going to take it anymore because last night he hadn’t come home at all. Polishing off the last of the whiskey that had chilled over ice, you marched up the stairs and packed.

The walk to the train station passed faster than you thought it would and suddenly it was real and you could feel the nervousness from your toes to the tips of your finger tips clinging tightly to the handle of the suitcase. One step. One step and you could make a change to your

 life and actually get some iota of it back. Inside the station the doubt you’d been pushing away starts to creep into your mind again. Are you doing the right thing? A quick glance at the time. You should be home preparing dinner. He would be so cross when it wasn’t on the table.

As quick as it came, the doubt in your mind shifts to resolve and your hand grips the suitcase handle a little tighter. A quick march to the ticket booth and you secure your ticket from a slightly overweight balding man who eyes you with lust and suspicion. After all, what would a good married woman be doing getting on the train at this time of day with a suitcase in hand and no husband?

Two quick loud whistles and you set one high heeled shoe aboard the train and then the other. The polite gentleman in the uniform asks you to find your seat so that others may board and the train gets underway. You find an empty car, set the suitcase at your feet, and stare out the window from the seat. Any minute now this train will pull out of the station and any minute now you will no longer have to worry about what will be on the dinner table.

A knock on the door jam of the compartment pulls you out of your thoughts and smiling back at you is a handsome man in a slightly crumpled suit. You smile back and carefully remove the glove from your right hand then your left. The man’s eyes dart down and seeing the gold band on the third finger of you left hand smiles one last time before continuing on.

You look down at the promise that came in the form of a gold band. How much of your life had changed since the band had been slid on your finger over twenty years ago. It was a broken promise now and the ring no longer held the meaning it once did. You place two fingers on it, one on either side and slowly tug it over the large bump of your knuckle. It’s a strange sensation to have something in place for so long and then to no longer have it. With one last look at the gold band you tie it carefully into your scarf and place it inside your purse.

A final whistle blows and the train rolls forward pulling you to a new future. Something forces you to look up and out to the platform and slowly a familiar figure appears. Arm wrapped tightly around the waist of someone who is most certainly not you, your husband plants a kiss on the woman’s shapely neck and looks toward the train. It is only a moment. Your eyes meet and he sees the pain in your eyes as well as the determination. His arm drops from the woman’s waist and he starts following the train along the platform, eyes locked on yours.

Finally he runs out of platform and there is lightness in your chest. You’re free. You’re free and he knows it. He has seen the determination in your eyes and it’s settled. You expected to cry, to shed at least one tear for the time wasted you’d never get back and for the break in your heart you knew would ache eventually, but it does not come. The steady rhythm of the train rolling over the track causes your eyes to grow heavy and your head feels as if it weighs three times as much as normal. Surely just a moment’s rest wouldn’t hurt.

It feels as if you have just fallen asleep when someone taps your shoulder. Your eyes flutter open and an elderly woman’s face fills your view and she smiles. “Sorry to wake you dear but you’re thin as a rail and might be in need of a bite to eat.”

“That would be lovely,” you say, righting yourself. You exchange a bit of money for a small sandwich and the old lady disappears into the next car. The scenery outside changes

 little by little and as each mile passes you and you realize as much as the scenery changes so have you. What will I go by? You ask yourself because surely you can no longer use your shared last name and to go back to the old one feels wrong, like a glove that doesn’t fit anymore. This was a whole new life and so it required a whole new name and that required some thought.

It is well after dark when the train pulls into the station in a town with a name you couldn’t remember because the only reason you were here was the fact that it was the next train leaving. Outside the train, the smell of salt air fills your nose and immediately attaches to your clothing. The sun has gone down. There are noises from fun seekers who still fill the boardwalk, but you head away from all that.

The beach is nearly deserted now and the moon is the only light you have to see in front of you. The heels you have on aren’t practical for sand so you step out of them leaving them where they were in the sand. A few more steps and your feet are being lapped by the receding waves plastering your stockings to your legs. Carefully you remove your hat laying it gently on top of your suitcase before removing each of the twenty or so pins that hold your hair up. As each pin falls into the sand you feel a little stronger.

Blindly you reach into your purse and remove the scarf you placed there with the ring enclosed. You undo the knot until the ring is lying in your hand reflecting the silver of the moon. You look at the gold band. It’s so simple. But it has worn over twenty years of marriage. The once shimmering gold is now dull. What a perfect reflection of the marriage it represents. You kiss the band, not from sentimentality or a longing for the husband you left confused on the platform, but as a goodbye to your old self. With one good throw you send the band and what’s left of you former life sinking to the bottom of the ocean.