Chapter Thirty-Three
THIRTY-THREE
“Are you okay?”
Ted wakes up but can’t see anything, he blinks against the lights in the ceiling of the train, his cheeks cold. The most frightening thing about his dad dying that summer when he was fourteen wasn’t the grief he had felt, but the anger. He’s thought so many times as an adult that it’s a lie that people are scared of being alone, because what we fear is being abandoned. You can choose to be alone, but no one chooses to be left. Sometimes he imagines that mankind invented God just to have someone to be angry with, because you can’t be angry with a dad who’s dead, not even a little bit. Ted was most angry with God because he didn’t get more memories. All he could remember of his dad’s voice was: “Good night, ghosts.” A man walking quietly around the house at night, while Ted was still very young, turning out all the lights and sending a whispered smile into each room: “Good night, good night, good night.” That stopped when he got ill. Ted doesn’t have any images of his dad as a person after that, when the man was alive, all he can remember is someone lying in bed, dying. The cancer went on for Ted’s whole childhood. Yet the most remarkable thing about losing a parent is that you don’t even need to miss them for their loss to be felt. The basic function of a parent is just to exist. You have to be there, like ballast in a boat, because otherwise your child capsizes.
“Are you okay?” the voice asks again, gently.
It’s the conductor, leaning over the seat. Embarrassed, Ted wipes his eyes and face with his palms, hiding behind them for a moment too long, as if he’s playing peekaboo.
“Yes… yes… excuse me, excuse me.”
The conductor smiles awkwardly.
“I’m the one who should be apologizing. I promised her I’d let you sleep, but… it sounded like you were crying.”
“It’s my allergies,” Ted lies behind his hands.
“Oh,” the conductor says. “Would you like me to see if anyone on the train has any medication?”
“No! No! Please, it’s fine, really,” Ted pleads.
The conductor smiles again, and touches Ted’s shoulder fleetingly, and Ted doesn’t hate it. That’s quite a big thing.
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do. The train’s having mechanical trouble again so we’re going to be here for a while,” he says.
Ted nods silently and thinks that the conductor has beautiful hands, beneath the old tattoos and the first wrinkles of middle age, small maps of a life. The baby sneezes on the other side of the aisle, then it laughs, astonished at its own bodily functions. The conductor turns and laughs too. Only then does Ted look around and realize that Louisa is not there. There’s a drawing on her seat, it’s of the artist, but as a young man, not yet sick. It’s astonishing that she has been able to imagine him like that. In the bottom corner she has drawn some skulls and written: For Ted. I hope the birds sing for you. The paper rustles as his fingers start to shake, he stands up but finds just an empty luggage rack. The box containing the painting, the box of ashes, and Ted’s suitcase are still on the floor, but Louisa’s backpack is gone.
“Where… where’s…?” he begins, still confused and half asleep, before he blurts out to the conductor: “Wait! What did you mean when you said you promised her you’d let me sleep ?”
The conductor glances over his shoulder brightly.
“Your friend? She was getting off at this station. I asked if she was going to say good-bye to you, but she said it was better if you got some sleep.”
“What are you talking about? Getting off? Getting off the train? Why would she get off the train ?” Ted splutters, with sudden panic in his chest, like beer cans on a piano.
The conductor looks a bit like Ted has asked him how gravity works.
“Well… you have to get off the train to… get off the train. How do you mean?”
“Why would she get off HERE?”
The conductor really does his best to understand the question.
“I don’t know. I did actually ask, because it isn’t a very safe area at this time of night, but she said she needed to get going. Sorry, is something wrong?”
Ted glances out the window, but the platform is silent and dark, holding on to all its secrets.
“How long is it since she left?”
“Ten minutes, maybe.”
“Ten MINUTES?”
“Yes, we should have moved on, but like I said, we’re having mechanical issues again,” the conductor says apologetically, as if this was primarily a question about the timetable. Then he calls out: “Wait! Where are you going? We’re going to be leaving soon!”
But Ted has already run off the train, out onto the platform, into the darkness. The only thing he’s holding is her drawing. He calls out her name: the first time as an order, the second time as a negotiation, the third time as a prayer. The way a parent would scream at the sea.
He gets nothing back, the darkness is a wall. All he can hear deep inside his head is the artist’s laughter:
“It’s a miracle that you manage to close the bathroom door when you pee, Ted, you’re so bad at being alone! It’s like you’re an introvert, but terrible at it.”
During their last year in that big apartment, the artist was often amused that Ted would sit in a corner reading, without saying a word, but if the artist went into another room he would always turn around after a while and find Ted sitting there reading instead. He didn’t necessarily want to be with his people, just near them. At exactly the same times every day he would look at his beautiful gold watch, close his book, and say: “Time for your pills!” The artist, always busy with something more interesting, like building houses out of playing cards or eating cheese, used to groan: “I should have given you anything else for you birthday other than that damn watch…”
Even so, that watch was the only thing he wouldn’t let Ted sell when they were getting the money together for the painting. He had engraved all their initials on the back: Joar’s, Ali’s, Ted’s, and his own. So that they would always be with him.
“LOUISA!” Ted yells as he runs across the deserted platform and through the turnstile. No response. He slips down the steps to the road in the darkness and almost runs into a stranger.
“Okay there, everything all right?” the man says amiably.
He’s young, with a lilting dialect, and Ted is reminded how far from home he is.
“Excuse me, I… I’m looking for my friend. A young woman, eighteen years old, very tall… talks all the time! Have you seen her?” he explains, carefully picking up the drawing which he had dropped on the ground.
The young man shakes his head apologetically.
“Sorry.”
“Thanks anyway,” Ted nods quickly, looks at his watch, as if he’s trying to work out how far she might have gotten. The man calls after him:
“Do you want help looking?”
“Oh… that’s too much to ask, I…,” Ted mumbles, because he suddenly realizes that he doesn’t even know where to start.
“It’s no trouble! Come with me, my friend’s parked over here.”
He takes Ted gently by the elbow and leads him toward a car. A man is standing next to it, smoking. Ted will never really be able to explain why, but he instinctively folds Louisa’s drawing and puts it in his pocket.
“He’s looking for a girl, we can help him, can’t we?” the young man calls.
“Sure, sure,” the other man by the car nods, and stamps out his cigarette beneath his shoe.
Ted tries to slow down, but the young man has his hand on the small of his back now, guiding him toward the open car door.
“It’s okay, really, I don’t need any help! I’m sure she’s gone back to the train…,” Ted attempts.
The other man has already grabbed hold of Ted’s arms. When Ted resists, the first blow lands, and he lets out a shriek of anger. The second time as a negotiation. The third time as a prayer.
They don’t manage to get him into the car, but they do take his watch. They search his pockets for his wallet, but it’s still in his suitcase on the train. Perhaps he screams again, perhaps that’s why they get so angry that they kick him in the head, he thinks. Even then, his brain tries to figure out how this might be his fault. Then everything goes black. The last thing he hears is a ringing in his ears, like the sound of telephones, and Ted realizes that tomorrow they will be ringing for him.