The train ride was endless. I thought I could bypass time by napping for a few hours, but there were so many stops I was wide-awake with five hours to spare.
She-who-shall-not-be-named would be proud. I can hear her now, saying, “Look at you! Who knew you could be this present for so long?” and she would snicker to herself and proceed to go back to sleep, properly tired and resting before we reached the city.
She’s not here, but I still hear her voice in my head– an unwelcome reminder of my trip in the first place.
I packed as much as I could into my carry-on case. With my hours cut at the bar the past few months, I couldn’t afford any extra luggage for two passengers. Turns out an extra bag on a train is still permissible if one of the ticket holders doesn’t show. I didn’t know until I was already well into my trip, mentally kicking myself for not reading the fine print in the email. I only had enough clothes to last a few weeks, three at the most.
Most of my carry-on was filled with necessities I decided were more important than clothes, or hygiene. Namely books. I could never leave my copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, not with her. Wilde’s prose got me the new job in the first place. She never liked the book, and honestly, that should’ve been the first sign. When I told her about the job offer as publisher, she thought I was lying.
“What do you mean, Chicago?” she said, “Everything you know is here, in Atlanta, with
me.”
“What about the job at the bar? I thought you loved that place.”
“It’s so cold in Chicago, why do you want to live in a place so cold?”
“Did you even once think of me when you were making this decision?”
“What about Scorpio? Are you really willing to leave him with your friends here? No offence, they’re terrible with pets...”
On and on she went, critiquing my choice and my friends and even the clothes I packed. When I walked away from our closet and started towards the bookshelf, she grew more irate. I didn’t realize how much she cared for Wilde’s book until I took it from its place--top shelf, right-hand side. I also took my copy of L’Etranger, the first book I learned to read in French. She taught me in French. I grabbed the bound copy of my thesis, a book on applied linguistics, and my undergrad International Affairs textbook, out of spite. That was the first class we took together.
The books were heavy, and much too bulky for my small carry-on. I struggled to zip it past the thesis, but I refused to keep it in that apartment. My life is bound to words, and the words I wrote are too important to me to stay hundreds of miles away, discarded by someone that never read them and never will. My ankle is still sore from pulling the carry-on down the three flights of stairs to the main lobby. I was completely drenched in sweat by the time I got to the taxi I called thirty minutes before. She never offered to help, not once.
No worries, I’ll get a toothbrush when I get to the city.
There’s a woman across from me, reading a book with too-tiny font. The title says Hate to Love You by an author whose name starts with a C. I couldn’t read it because there was a sticker covering the bottom of the cover that said BARGAIN in bold, red letters. She’s engrossed in the book, her eyes never leaving the pages. Must be some read, because she hasn’t looked up once during our 8-hour trip, even when the staff asked her if she wanted refreshments. She didn’t even falter, just shook her head no and continued on.
The woman, I named her Kathy in hour two of the trip, also only brought a carry-on. What is she running from, I thought, that she could only take what was most important to her? Consolidation is a difficult task, and not one to be taken lightly. There’s a heaviness in the minimal luggage over her head, a reminder of what Kathy had to leave behind.
Or maybe she’s just going on a weekend trip. Who’s to say?
Once, in my senior year of college, she and I took a weekend trip to the beach. It was April, and the water was still cold, but that didn’t stop us from packing all of our swimsuits and shorts that had been waiting in storage for the past year.
The pool was closed at our hotel, and the hot tub was out of commission for the entire trip. We took our towels, sunglasses, and sunny dispositions to the beach when the weather was a whopping 55ºF and cloudy. By the time we came back to Atlanta, we both contracted walking pneumonia and had to stay in the apartment for a week.
She held me in bed when I shook so much I thought I would bite my tongue from all head-to-toe shivering. I remember one night after I had pushed my Anthropology midterm to the following week so I had time to study, she looked at me with the sweetest, most pity-ridden eyes. She pulled the duet over our heads and she used the light from her phone as a guide to my lips. Maybe it was my fevered mind, but I think that was the best kiss I’ve ever had.
That was surely the best trip I’ve ever taken.
Finally, finally, the train pulls to its last stop. Kathy eventually pulls her eyes away from the book and looks out the window. I follow her gaze to the Chicago skyline, highlighted in deep orange hues from the sunset. As she grabs her carry-on, she catches me staring. She smiles, and begins to walk towards the front of the cabin, the sacred book held firmly in her left hand. I follow her lead and head towards the exit.
Outside the sunset is somehow more beautiful. I hear traffic around us– I’ll have to grab a taxi soon– but I want to spend some time taking in the city. I’ve never been to Chicago. Neither had she, which she made sure to tell me countless times leading up to my departure. She was eerily silent on the actual date of my “trip,” perhaps because she knew no amount of conversation could change my mind.
Suddenly I was choked up, overwhelmed with my newfound freedom. Six years in Atlanta, three spent with her. How could I make such a drastic change at such a time in my life? Who gave me the right to decide my own fate, separate from her’s?
I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders, and walked towards the exit sign, to the sound of fast-moving taxis and busy people. The roar of traffic drowned out my fear.
