Chapter Forty
FORTY
Ted is an idiot, the lost-and-found office is closed. Of course it’s closed, it’s the middle of the night, what was he thinking? The only positive with the darkness is that no one can see him blushing at his own stupidity.
“I can break in,” Louisa assures him enthusiastically.
“We definitely aren’t going to break in,” Ted snaps.
He tries the locked door once more, as if it might suddenly change its mind. Then he screams a very, very bad swear word inside his head. He is so tired of traveling, so tired of himself. He thinks about how strange the artist was: every time he talked about the trips he made in his twenties, his voice always sounded like it was carbonated with joy. Madness, Ted thinks.
“I’ll be fast! This isn’t even a difficult lock!” Louisa insists.
“We aren’t going to break in!”
“So what are we going to do, then?”
“I don’t know, because you keep talking all the time, so I can’t think!”
“Okay. Have you finished thinking?” she says after maybe nine seconds.
“No.”
Fifteen seconds pass.
“How about now?”
“No!”
“Well, hello? Can’t I just break in while you’re thinking?”
She’s taken her screwdrivers out of her backpack and is ready.
“Can you just try to… not be yourself for two minutes?” he implores.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just weren’t you ?” she suggests, walking toward the door.
“No! Wait!”
“I’m just going to—”
“Stop it, I said!”
“But it will be quick! I’m just going to—” she insists, and then he loses his temper.
“What’s wrong with you? If it’s closed, how would anyone have left anything here since we got off the train?” he blurts out, a lot angrier than he means to be.
“Oh,” she says, reluctantly putting her screwdrivers down.
“Just… stand still! This is all YOUR FAULT from the start!” he snaps, so unexpectedly that she flinches, as if he has thrown something at her.
Ted has never regretted anything so instantly in his whole life. Louisa backs away so quickly that she trips over herself.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” she whispers, biting her bottom lip so he won’t see it trembling.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean…,” Ted says, but it’s too late.
She throws her arms up and blinks hard.
“No, no, you’re right. It’s my fault! That’s why I didn’t want the damn painting from the start. I knew you’d be disappointed in me, sooner or later, so it was better that I just…”
She searches for words, trying not to cry, her tongue trying to find somewhere to hide as her teeth chatter. Ted has never carried a heavier guilt, because it’s himself he’s looking at then, every time his mom raised her voice. It is an act of violence when an adult yells at a child, all adults know that deep down, because all adults were once little. Yet we still do it. Time after time, we fail at being human beings.
So when Louisa can’t find the words to explain how she feels, Ted fills them in for her, in a voice so crushed that it vibrates on every consonant:
“Better that you just… left me right away? Is that what you were going to say? That it’s too scary trying to be liked by anyone? It’s easier to just give up?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
He breathes so deeply that his rib cage rattles beneath his suit jacket. Then he confesses:
“I thought about leaving you, long before you left me. I was thinking of getting off the train when I went to the bathroom.”
That prompts a new record in silence between them.
“We suck at abandoning people,” she eventually mutters.
“We should practice,” Ted smiles.
She smiles too. They probably have more to say to each other, but they don’t have time, because instead they are interrupted by a voice behind them in the darkness:
“There you both are!”
Unfortunately, the voice doesn’t know what sort of night they’ve had, or what effect a voice in the darkness on a deserted train platform will have on them right now. Ted spins around in panic, red in the face like only a middle-aged man who really can’t cry attractively can be. Louisa turns around with a screwdriver in each hand and her eyes wide open with wild rage, ready for war. The woman in front of them on the platform almost falls onto the tracks.
“I… I…,” she stammers.
It’s the mother from the train. A little farther away, a man is standing with a stroller, he looks sleepy and terrified, two emotions that really aren’t easy to combine. Louisa clears her throat the way you do when you’ve almost attacked someone’s mom with screwdrivers by mistake, and quickly hides them behind her back. Ted wipes his face with the sleeve of his suit jacket.
“Er… hello there,” Louisa manages to say.
“What… what are you doing here? In the middle of the night?” Ted wonders.
“I’m waiting for you!” the mother smiles eagerly when she regains her balance, before she catches sight of Ted’s face and exclaims: “Oh my, what happened?”
At first Ted honestly doesn’t understand what she means, then he looks at himself as if he’s borrowed his body from someone else. His pants are torn from the fence he climbed over, his jacket looks like he found it in the forest, his taped glasses are holding on to his nose for dear life, and his face isn’t just streaked with tears, but also full of bumps and bruises.
“It’s a very long story…,” he begins with resignation.
“Are you okay? Should I call a doctor?” the mother asks, the way mothers do.
“Don’t worry,” Ted says.
“Are you hungry? I’ve got some cookies in the stroller! You need to eat!” she says, and without waiting for an answer calls out: “Honey! Can you bring me the cookies?”
The man with the stroller approaches very, very warily, as if he has just read a “Do Not Feed the Animals” sign at a zoo.
“No thanks, I’m not really hungr—” Ted tries to say.
“EAT!” the woman says tenderly, albeit in capital letters.
The man gives Ted a look that indicates clearly and concisely that he really recommends that Ted eat. So Ted eats, as does Louisa.
“You’re going to be a good mom…,” she says.
“What did you say?” the woman smiles sternly, clearly disapproving of her talking with food in her mouth.
“Nothing…,” Louisa mutters, and shoves another cookie in.
The man clears his throat discreetly at his wife.
“Honey. Perhaps you should…?”
At first the woman looks horrified, then she chirrups:
“Oh! Yes! Sorry! The conductor saw you both get off without your things! And my husband was going to pick me up from this station anyway, so I was going to take them with me and leave them in the lost-and-found office. But of course that was closed. I’m so forgetful. I’ll just have to blame baby-brain!”
She smiles as if they ought to know exactly what that means, so Louisa and Ted just nod politely and eat more cookies. They’re exhausted, their brains aren’t exactly working brilliantly either, so it takes a few seconds for them to realize what she’s actually saying. Only then do they see what she’s got with her: Ted’s suitcase and the box containing the painting.
“YES! YES! YES! YES!” Louisa exclaims, showering the stroller with crumbs, her voice echoing around the station.
She’s so relieved that she feels sick, then she starts laughing hysterically, and would probably have thrown her arms around the woman’s neck if that hadn’t required physical contact.
“Excuse me,” Ted says, so quietly that no one hears, because the woman exclaims in delight:
“I hope nothing is broken! That box looks like it contains something fragile!”
“It’s perfect, everything’s perfect!” Louisa assures her, looking down into the box.
“Excuse me…,” Ted repeats, to no avail.
“And here’s your suitcase, Ted!” Louisa blurts out, looking through the pocket as if she were thinking of pointing out that someone has stolen his money, before she realizes that it was her.
Ted adjusts his glasses, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and eventually manages to say:
“Excuse me… there was a small box too. It was next to my suitcase, about this big…”
The woman turns to him, unconcerned.
“Yes, but that was empty, wasn’t it?”
Ted rocks as if the world is moving.
“Excuse… me?”
The woman tilts her head to one side.
“Oh no, it wasn’t empty? It was so light. I thought it was… trash.”
Ted’s mouth opens, but the scream is silent. Louisa looks from Ted to the woman to the painting, then collapses like a punctured bouncy castle.
“What… what happened to it?” she asks, without daring to listen to the reply.
The woman scratches her hair nervously.
“I think the conductor threw it away. Was it important? Oh no, now I feel stupid… oh, it’s this baby-brain…”
Ted composes himself, but his voice is breaking when he whispers:
“No, no, please. Don’t think that. You’ve done more than enough, really. This big box is the most important one. The other one was… oh, don’t worry. Thank you, really. I wish I could give you some sort of reward, but…”
The woman shakes her head.
“Certainly not! I’m just happy I was able to help. You helped me go to the bathroom in peace on the train, a mother never forgets a thing like that,” she smiles to Louisa.
Louisa takes the box containing the painting in her arms, silently paralyzed by the realization that the artist’s ashes are gone. So Ted repeats in a thick voice:
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
He puts his hand gently on the box, almost touching Louisa’s hand, trying to comfort her.
The woman smiles happily, then writes her address and phone number on a piece of paper and hands it to him.
“If you’re ever passing through here again, do get in touch. We have a guest bedroom you’d be welcome to stay in.”
Ted doesn’t really know what to say in response, so he writes his own name and phone number on a scrap of paper and hands it to her. What would anyone want that for, he thinks, embarrassed.
Then the woman and man wave, turn away, and steer the stroller off into the night. Ted is left standing there with the piece of paper, and Louisa looks at it as if it is an unbelievable treasure. A guest bedroom , did these people live in a palace or something?
“Come on!” she mutters, taking a firmer grip on the box containing the painting and beginning to walk.
“Where are you going?” Ted calls.
“We need to find a taxi and follow that train! We have to get those ashes back!”
But Ted doesn’t follow her. He remains standing where he is, he could swear he hears the flutter of wings as a flock of birds takes off toward the sky some distance away.
“No, no, wait…,” he says.
Then Louisa turns around and misunderstands again. Not to brag, but she really isn’t bad at misunderstandings.
“Don’t you want me to go with you? I know everything is my fault! Just let me help to…”
Ted slowly moves his hands as if he’s trying to wave down an airplane, which is probably roughly the same level of difficulty as getting Louisa to stop talking. He nervously takes off his glasses and puts them on again, several times. He is going to need an awful, awful lot of tape when all this is over.
“No, no, Louisa, it isn’t your fault. I should never have said those things before. I’m sorry that none of this turned out the way you imagined. You dreamed about the painting and the children in it all your life, and the only one you got to meet was… me. And I’ve just been… myself, the whole time. You should have gotten to meet the others instead. You would have liked them.”
“I like you,” she whispers, as if she is on the point of being abandoned.
He scratches his receding hairline.
“The last thing my best friend asked me to do before he died was to look after the painting and you. I’ve failed at both. I’m sorry it didn’t all turn out like a fairy tale for you. What was it you said you felt when you saw the postcard of the painting when you were younger? That you dreamed you could fall asleep and wake up on that pier? And that you would… learn to swim?”
Louisa wipes her eyes on the box in her arms.
“I’m sorry you had to take responsibility for me, Ted. I’m sorry that I’m… me. Okay? I’m sorry for everything! But just, let’s go , now! We need to find a taxi and go after that train, and…”
But Ted doesn’t move from the spot. He just sticks his hands in his pockets and looks up at the night sky, taking deep breaths and noticing the smells of the sea and dog shit. He thinks of everything that has died, but even more about all the things that are still alive.
“Can you really break doors open?” he asks after a while.
“Yes, of course I can,” she sniffs, as if all normal people can do that.
“Come on, then. I’ve got a better idea,” he says, and starts to walk off in the other direction.
“No, we need to go after the train! We need to find the box of ashes!” she cries.
Ted replies, and his voice sounds like it’s carbonated:
“It’s okay. He was always going on about how much he loved traveling.”
So they don’t chase after the train. They go to the small street of shops instead and look for the sporting goods shop. Louisa breaks in, they leave money on the counter, Ted writes an apologetic note. They take towels and bathing suits out of the window display.
The sun will soon be rising. They walk to the sea. He teaches her to swim.