the tracks… – chapters 1.1-2.1 (revised version)

the tracks…

a few months back i posted the opening chapters of my third novel, the tracks…, here.

since posting them, i’ve had a lot of feedback, and plenty of time to think. the original chapters were a little…bleak. too much griping, not enough variety of tone to ensure the reader was dragged along for the ride (hilarious pun not intended). so here, for your reading pleasure, are the tracks…’ opening chapters, revised and – hopefully – improved upon. if you read the original version and can bear to go through the process again, i’d hugely appreciate it; there are differences,especially with suzanne’s and vince’s chapters. if you’ve not experienced the tracks… before, then welcome – it’s treat time. and if you have way too much time on your hands, feel free to compare what you read below with the previous version.

my aim is to publish the novel’s chapters on this blog as i write them, which is ever so exciting. but bear with me; it’s taken a while to get this far. subscribe to this blog and you’ll be notified as soon as i post new chapters.

i hope you enjoy these remixed, rebooted and revitalised chapters. all feedback appreciated. comment on this blog or email me: daaanlewis@gmail.com.

the tracks… – tiny synopsis

the tracks… begins with the death of suzanne on the train tracks at london bridge station, and focuses on the effect her death has on vince – the train driver who inadvertently kills her – and benny, a commuter who witnesses the incident.

the tracks… is a thriller about guilt and responsibility, but also redemption, as the three narrators unravel the reasons for suzanne’s death…and its repercussions.

the tracks… – chapters 1.1-2.1 (revised version)

1.1 suzanne. 11^th october, 2010. 9:17am

This won’t hurt, I tell myself. And I’m right.

I feel a trapped-nerve twinge as I realise what’s about to happen, but nothing more.

I fall and I do not hurt.

The only pain here is etched on the driver’s face. I don’t mean to look at him – I’m not that selfish, regardless of what Graham thinks – and it’s sad to see the shocked impotence in the man’s eyes. But there’s nothing I can do to change the way he suddenly feels.

And to think, it was shaping up to be such an unmemorable morning. Colder than October has any right to be, incessant spittly rain frizzing up my hair: just another mundane Monday, as that song doesn’t go. I’m standing – sorry, was standing – on the platform, impatiently awaiting the delayed 9:12 to Brighton…but those extra minutes on my platform determine everything that follows. They mean the world to me.

London Bridge to Brighton: from soul-sucked to smiley within an hour. Lovely place but, still, I’ve no idea why I’m here today. Here. On this packed platform, listening to Primal Scream and remembering nights nearly half a lifetime ago, when I was forever being bought drinks, danced up against, and wanted.

You’re gorgeous, he always tells me, breath raw onion-tinged. I’d return the compliment, but frankly he’s past his best: a paunch more suited to an expectant mum, and that bald patch accountants always succumb to. Funny he never became an accountant, considering his gift for manipulating numbers.

You’re beautiful, he also tells me, but you deserve to feel beautiful, too. And – ta-da! – his solution: two days at some spa, mere minutes from Brighton station. Two days to unwind and recharge, like some frumpy battery. I admit it, the place looks fantastic, or at least it does on the website, and it pleases me to know it’s cost him a fair bit.

But why didn’t I push it? Why didn’t I ask why today?

Because you deserve to feel beautiful, too.

Thank you, Graham. Such a way with clichés; sounding more like an ad every day. But Brighton? No spas in North London to swirl me off to?

Oh. Of course. I know why I’m here.

I’m an idiot, and I never realised until 9:15 this morning.

They’ve been warning me for years. Thirteen years. I’ve lost more friends than I’ve made since he came along, and not just because of his endless, untrue anecdotes. And Mum…she told me it would come to this. Not a reckoning on the tracks at London Bridge station on a shoddy Monday morning, of course, but she told me he’d somehow be the end of me.

Two days is a long time and I’ll miss you, he says, bottom lip downturned and too pink. But I’ve been selfish lately. Go, I insist, and feel beautiful again.

Ha. I never stopped feeling beautiful. I just wanted to try that hot stone massage Nikki’s always boring on about. I didn’t expect the ultimate in mind, body and soul. What you do whilst we’re apart, Saint Graham, is up to you. Just be aware that I’ll be gone for a lot more than two days.

So have your fun. Build your empire and stoke your harem.

The fact is, I’m packing more excitement into my final second than you’ve ever shown me.

My train slows as it approaches, and this…this, I’m amazed to report, is exhilarating.

It shouldn’t be my defining moment, but life’s been funny like that.

As I fall, I feel no pain. I simply cause it. I look at the driver and instantly destroy him. I wish I hadn’t, but I have, and there’s nothing I can do about that now.

I’m falling and I’m fallen and I’m-

1.2 vince. 11^th october, 2010. 9:13am

“When you’re always driving straight, you never look around to take in the sights.”

I knew I was a genius when I came up with that line.

We were in The Crown, obviously, when Ray’s mouth slacked awe-smacked. “Who said that, then?” he asked. “Shakespeare?”

Bless him. Didn’t have the heart to break it to him that Shakey pre-dated the existential angst of the locomotive driver somewhat, so I simply said: “That’s uncut Vincent Daley gold. Good, eh, Raymong?”

And that’s when Liam whispered, “Good? ’s fuckin’ genius, Vince.”

Genius. Of course I was. We’d been pub-bound for six hours. Anyone who could still utter, let alone walk, straight was a Mensa master.

But that was many years ago, when Sunday was just another word for Friday, when the pints stopped only to make way for the Whiskey versus Scotch debate: two J.D.’s leveled by two point-making Taliskers.

Half a lifetime since I was the exception to the rule. University of Life and better read than the rest of them combined.

And now they’re all graduates. Ex-bankers. Ex-teachers who fell into teaching after they fucked up as bankers.

I’m not the genius I was. I’ve lost the lines, lost the moves.

Because Mel couldn’t care less if I’m a modern-day bard. If she’s not up for a shag, she’s not up for a shag.

And I don’t need to be a genius to work out that, lately, Mel’s most definitely not been up for a shag.

But, still, I try. I can’t help it. I’m romantic like that. I mean, you’d think after twenty-one years of harsh labour she’d be the last woman to give me the horn, but there you go: that’s – as they croon – amore, eh. One lascivious look and I’m mash. Mush. Mel’s Vince Viagra: all I need. More’s the pity.

So I tried again last night.

Nudged her lower back and whispered, “C’mon, sugar, let’s make sweet love,” like some 70s Afro’d Lothario.

The line always used to make her laugh, classic aphrodisiac. But, last night, she remained rolled away as she sighed, “Go to sleep, you silly little man.”

She’s called me that a lot recently. Silly little man. In fact, she’s said the same thing last few times I’ve tried it on. Romance ain’t dead, but it’s stuck for a rut. Another Vincent Daley Original.

I thought she’d be more amenable this morning, like she used to be, up at the crack and all that…but, by the time I woke up, she’d already donned her once-lusty uniform and departed, leaving me alone to half-heartedly mimic that shum-durm bass Beatles song farting from the radio.

So now I’m driving, tired and wound, balls like furry melons. Well, like kiwis, really; big balls full of blighted need. And the fact remains: I don’t know how, I don’t even know why, but if I ever want to get laid again, I have to change my silly little man ways.

I never used to be a little man. Five-five, sure; no amount of stretches can fix that now. But back when there were more of us, on the trains and down The Crown, when the union was a union and not a cunt collection, when a meeting meant more than a matter of one-upmanship…back then I was a big man, with more on my mind than Mel’s behind. Me and my boys, we’d float into work, steer our beasts where we wanted them to be. Alone with our thoughts and our fumes as the days passed in a haze of slowdowns, speedups, stops, starts and stops.

But now the faces have changed, the rules have changed, and the times…well, the times they have a-changed, which is more than I can say for that fucking signal. No explanation, as usual, just the grinding wait as my libido moans. Aaand…finally, clearance. The opportunity to make up for lost time, to pretend I’m exhilaratingly in and out of control. Left Bedford eight minutes late, but now, as London Bridge slips into view, we’re only five minutes behind where we should be. I deserve a medal for this morning’s bulletheadedness: Driver most willing to go that extra mile. Quicker mile.

Like I need a medal. My work is my own reward. That’s another one of mine. Think it is, anyway. It’s difficult to keep track, especially when I’m passing Dylan’s lyrics off as my own to the boys. I can’t help it. I mean no harm.

My work is my own reward. Anyone who isn’t us can’t understand such a simple fact. We explain, and they refuse to understand.

“It’s manual, menial, monotonous,” they moan into ever-spillier pints of piss-weak Fosters, Heineken, Bombardier. And we laugh, place manly hands on shoulders and explain our facts of life, as if talking to children yet to receive their first Christmas choo-choo train: When we start early, we finish early. We spend most of our day on our tods, in our cabs. No dickheads from accounts bugging us for signatures, no twats in ties berating us for botching deals. And no idiots smiling as they finalise our demise.

I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Less importantly, I couldn’t.

I don’t know where they went. The years. One moment I’m open to all that’s open to me…the next, I’m staggering towards a finish I have no desire to be near.

My father’s fortieth, me and Cheryl sprang early onto his bed. He held us both – a rare show of affection I didn’t understand – and Cheryl, eight and unable to sugarcoat, asked him how it felt to be old.

He gripped us and said, “I don’t know where the years went.” His voice sounded thick.

The years went by building a family, but it was clear from his fist-clenched face that he hadn’t achieved what he’d aimed to.    And now his line belongs to me.

I don’t know where the years went.

London Bridge approaches me, the little red dot glowing; one of the colours I live by. Warm yet firm, insisting: time to slow down, fella.

If things went any slower, I’d be going backwards. Retarded. Special, complete with empathetic quotation marks. A one-off. Fuck, I’d love a bloody one-off. One minute, that’s all I’d need. All I’d get. All I’d last, way my kiwis are loaded, so-

I try to keep things passionate, I do. But it’s difficult when she calls me by my full name. A kiss is enough to send her running: to check on the washing, the roast, the Ebay bid for that bag she keeps banging on about. Last night was a blow-out, but pure passion compared to the night before…I moved to kiss her lips, and she offered her neck. I felt that rough ripple as she swallowed. As if nervous, as if my kiss were the worst gift I could give her.

I never blamed her. I never blame-

Brake. I’m braking. Been braking for a while now, not that my train cares.

So on it goes.

The slightest movement.

She’s there. She shouldn’t be there but she is there. And so am I.

I’m hollering, heart speeding, slowing but still moving and she’s staring, staring right at me as we meet for the first, the final, time, as I move through her and I’m not sure what’s happened but I know what’s happened as my hands vibrate and my relentless train finally shudders to a halt.

The world’s just as the world was. October’s still malevolent, the signal still shouts stop as I sit in my cab and look out onto the tracks. Except my window’s a smeary wipe, and my eyes have seen her eyes, seen red and hair, white chips and pink bits.

When you’re always driving straight, you never look around to take in the sights.

I stare ahead, cold and shaking, aware of window-muted screams, of people swarming to my right, but able only to stare ahead, angry and already sorry, unsure what I can do to make this better, as I stare through the red and down tracks I will never see the end of.

1.3 benny. 11^th october, 2010. 9:11am

The late Benny Riley.

That’s what he’ll call me. The others will laugh but I won’t, because a delayed train isn’t funny.

I’ll say, “Sorry I’m late, Jerry,” because it’s the right thing to say, and he’ll reply, “You will be,” and I’ll ask, “I’ll be what?” and he’ll laugh and say, “You’ll be the late Benny Riley if you don’t sort out your fuckin’ time-keeping.” I know the exchange will go like this because Jerry always insists on us doing what he for some silly reason calls “our comedy routine” when I’m late. And I’m late. I missed the 8:42 and the 8:55 was delayed, so it’s at least 9:10 now, and I’m still stuck on this congested crawl into London Bridge, hot and anxious and pressed between commuters angrier than me.

I’d be okay, or closer to okay, if my ears weren’t filled with silence. Worse than silence: laboured breaths, groaning mechanics, voices babbling about how drunk they got last night, that they’ve had it up to here with their boss. Earphones plug out some of the noise, but not enough. Music faded a few minutes ago, and I know what I want to listen to next, but can’t get to my iPod because it’s in my right jean pocket, and one man – much wider than me – is crammed so close that I can’t reach my music without brushing his groin, whilst another man – much taller than me and exhaling last night’s whiskey – has my left arm trapped against his hip. I initially presume he doesn’t mean to cause me discomfort but, when I look up at him, his eyes tell me he’s a Monster.

The train moves a few feet, then shunts to a stop. Some people wobble, including me. The wide man’s groin makes contact and he looks up from his twice-folded Guardian to smile at me. He, I now see, is a Monster too.

It’s stifling on this train as no one has opened a window, and I’m tight with overtiredness. I couldn’t get up this morning. Mum kept warning me I’d miss my train, and I did. I haven’t slept well in…forever. Mum reckons she knows why: “You think and you think and you think. You need to think less,” she says. But every time she gives me such advice I spend the night thinking about her words.

“Empty your mind,” Dad used to say, “it works for me.” To which Mum would reply: “Course it does. You’ve got nothing on your mind in the first place.” She’d laugh, but I wouldn’t, and neither would Dad. He’d just stare at her, as if he didn’t understand what she meant.

Some nights are worse than others, and last night was a little over half as bad as it can get, considering that I’m sure I was asleep before Mum turned off the hall light. She never goes to bed before 1 a.m. But I didn’t sleep well; I kept waking up, and my jaw aches, so I must have been grinding my teeth again. I had various editions of the dream. It’s not going away, and the Monsters are becoming vicious and unreasonable.

Again, the train lurches. Again, we jolt. This time it keeps moving, teasingly slow. I loosen my arm enough to check my digital Casio. They’ve all got them at work now, but I’ve had mine for years. “’Cos you’re a trendsetter,” Jerry said when I pointed that out to him. “You are fashion.” I told him that I don’t care about trends, but by then he was laughing with Red. I hate their private jokes, hate the way whenever I ask, “What’s so funny?” they say, “Nothing, Benny. Nothing’s really funny, is it?”

And they’ll be laughing again when I finally get in. I look at my Casio: 9:14. At least another minute till the doors open, then I’ll have to weave through crowds, get to the Underground – that’s five minutes minimum – wait for a train too packed to get on, wait for another, maybe another, so at least seven minutes to Bank, then onto the Central Line, two stops to Bethnal Green, so ten minutes more, then five minutes’ walk to the shop if I rush…and I’ll get in at 9:42. Twelve minutes late. Jerry always says, “Leave earlier, don’t blame the trains,” but then…then pretends there’s no problem. By 10:00, he’s slapping my back, telling me, “It’s not an issue, we’re all late sometimes,” and letting me choose the next album to play, even if it’s by The Fall, who he hates, or The Stones, who he says haven’t done a decent tune since 1972. I once reminded him that ‘Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)’ was born in 1973, but when he replied, “Okay tune, excruciating lyrics,” I clammed up. The song reminds me of an early education, sitting on Dad’s knee and watching his favourite records spin and shine. I always try to see both sides to every argument, but that time I couldn’t and, as usual, my heart went tight and I fell very quiet.

Life flows better when I keep quiet, but I don’t like my world to be silent. I need my noise so that no other noise intrudes.

The iPod’s always charged up. Every note I own is on it. It can hold up to eighty gigabytes of music, and is at sixty-four gigs already. That’s 13,075 songs. An hour away from thirty-six days of continuous music. It comforts me to know that, whatever happens, as long as I have my iPod and its charger, I can hide from all Monsters and listen to over five weeks of music, without once hearing the same song twice. My soundtrack, to a film that no one but me would wish to see. A continuous stream of sound, from loud to soft, fast to slow and back again; sound that triggers every emotion imaginable, emotions that the bodies now squeezed against me will never make me feel.

As the train halts, everyone primes themselves for a swift, self-serving exit; with the anticipation of escape, space magically appears where it could not exist before. When I got on at Hither Green, the train was already too packed to allow movement and, as a result, I’m ages away from the doors about to open. But the impending exodus loosens bodies, and The Guardian Groin Monster unlatches from me as Whiskey Monster sighs over me one last time. People shove past me as the doors exhale open, but I let them; I have to prioritise. And, free at last, I grip hold of my iPod.

Before the silence, I was listening to ‘Some Lost Children’ by The Exit Wounds, a band so anti-industry they don’t have a MySpace page. Red burnt the song for me, and he only has it because the band are his “drug buddies”. They came into the shop once and looked like cartoons, though they smelled real enough. Red reckons their singer, Dante, won’t be around for long; that’s why the labels are clambering over each other to sign them. Or will do soon.

I’ll listen to anything once before judging but, now I’ve heard The Exit Wounds, I never need to hear them again. The guitars were feedback-drenched but derivative, and all their noise did was steer me towards Spiritualized’s ‘Come Together’; similar-sounding but superior. It feels like a lifetime since I planned to play the song, and I’ve ached these last few moments for that slow drum then explosion. But now the iPod’s in my sweaty hand, my finger’s wheel-caressing ‘Artist’ to ‘Album’ to ‘Song’ and, though it feels wrong to bypass the album’s opening tune, I need the rush I know ‘Come Together’ will bring.

I press the centre circle, wheel the volume so high it almost hurts, and sound surges up thin white wires, through Sennheiser earphones and into my head. I immediately calm, caring only about the glorious guitars building like blocks behind that measured vocal.

I step off the train and breathe in dizzying cold air. I’m at the far end of the platform and will have to weave between many bodies before I reach the Underground. Platform 6 is especially crowded this morning because of my delayed train, so I zag towards Platform 5 in order to avoid people, but end up moving against the tide as everyone rushes to board the Brighton train now pulling in. A Tannoy announcement is masked by squally noise. I’m still ages from the tunnel through to the Underground, fighting my way out as the train comes in, and not even music can dull that familiar tightness at my core. I look up to check the time, but the display is broken yet again, random yellow slabs on black, and my eyesight’s too poor to read the digits on the departures board. I grab the iPod from my pocket to lift the volume, and see my worst fear confirmed as some idiot commuter nudges me: 9:17. Even later than I thought. I really need to move. Because it’s not about being fourteen minutes late; it’s about Jerry making me feel like “his idiot savant”. Mum tutted when I told her he’d called me that, said she’d half a mind to phone him to explain how hurtful he was being, but I reminded her that I’m an adult now, that this isn’t school and I have to fight my own battles, all the while aware that I’ve no true battles to fight, and irritated by Mum’s use of terms like “half a mind” which, really, don’t make any-

Someone’s screaming.

Many people are screaming. I’m only half aware to begin with but, as music strips back, horns and harmonica replaced by choir and handclaps, the screams fill the lull, all too real and really loud. People rush towards me, past me. I need to keep moving, but know that if I don’t find out what’s going on I won’t be able to focus at work, won’t enjoy my lunch break music and, most importantly, won’t sleep tonight. I turn, iPod still in hand, to see the train grind dead, see a crowd of people, smart in charcoal suits and beige raincoats and black skirts, gathering where the train has stopped, as if desperate to ask the driver his destination. But no one’s asking anything. Just pointing at the train, at the tracks, all wide eyes and paling skin.

I walk back towards the growing crowd, note that the passenger doors have not opened, that those still on the train are scrabbling against windows for enlightenment, that commuters on the platform are being joined by station staff.

I walk towards the driver’s cab and see sprinkles, speckles like new-bottle ketchup, patterning the side of the first carriage.

I walk past the driver’s cab and look left to see a mass of greying hair and regrets, staring straight ahead, eyes unblinking, hiccupping instead of breathing.

I walk into the crowd and look where they’re looking. I turn and see that the girl next to me has fine pink spray down her cheek, in her blonde hair, see that others, similarly tattooed, are clutching phones or each other and staring, just staring, like me.

I see too much, and welcome the return of whining guitars to blanket the silence settling on this scene. I move fast, as my mouth dries then salivates, as my heart thumps heavy and stomach hollows. I run along the platform, away from bits and pieces, away from thoughts of what’s happened and who it’s happened to, turn left then immediately right into the men’s toilets.

I’ve passed through London Bridge station five days a week for over three years now, minus time off for holidays, and I’ve never succumbed to using these toilets, no matter how piercing the need to go has been. Not because of the stale beggar stench I now gag on as I rush through the too-narrow entrance, but because of the things that that station assistant told me on the last train home one night. Off-duty and annihilated, bottom teeth like popcorn, he sat too close and told me that it all happens within Platform 5’s toilets. “You’ve just got to know when to go, if you’re that way inclined,” he smiled. “Are you that way inclined?”

I am not that way inclined, and do not want to be here, but I can’t be out there. I charge past overflowing urinals into the left-side cubicle and near-collide with the suited man exiting it, then whip earphones from my ears for fear of ruining them. I see the shameless pebbledash sprays, smell the acrid, unwell stink, sink and grip the dribble-lined rim and let it all out in a throat-ripping rush. I’m rarely sick, but now I am, now I can’t stop being sick. And, over the sound of sickness, I hear shouts and Tannoy announcements. I hear a babble of gossip, of people talking about what they believe they’ve seen without knowing the truth, a truth known only by me, one person’s story forevermore mangled by one second’s movement. I hear sounds I’d never choose to hear, and wish there was music to mask this terrible noise.

The sickness keeps on coming, though my stomach is a void and my mind’s a mess of queasy sorrow, thanks to-

I want to go home, but Mum always says, “Never cry off, never pull a sickie,” though I’m not pulling anything here; I’m sickie, sick, biley blood metallic in my mouth as I strain and fail to see how I can ever make this journey again, ever forget what has happened to us today on those bleeding metal tracks.

2.1 suzanne. monday, 11^th october, 2010. 9:17am

I should have left him and moved to New York. Again and again she invited me. He’s no good, she’d say, her accent some strange meld of Cockney and Greenwich Village. You fell in love with someone who shouldn’t be loved. It happens.

And, now she’s standing mere metres from me, I decide it’s time to admit how right she’s always been.

I’m walking through Bryant Park, onto 42^nd Street. The weather is as glorious as the last time I visited. I look at my watch: 4:17am, but still as hot as I remember. Not uncomfortable, simply unusual. It’s deserted here, even more than it should be so early in the morning, in the only patch of Midtown my mother could ever bear to be.

Much as she loves this park, she doesn’t move to enter it. She stands in the middle of the road and watches me, wearing the orange nightdress I bought her…when? Ten years ago? And she’s barefoot, as usual. No needles left to step on here, she laughed last April. They’ve cleaned right up. Sanitised my home.

I look down and am surprised to see that I’m wearing a black blouse and skirt, a cream raincoat. No wonder I’m hot.

She looks as confused as I feel, her face crumpled and deep-grooved. She doesn’t move, so I walk through fresh-cut, scentless grass towards her. I embrace my mother and realise how much I’ve missed her. She hugs me back, but there’s trepidation in her grip; she’s unsure what’s going on, and so am I. I don’t remember coming to New York; recall no flight, no cab ride, no itinerary or diner hit list. Yet none of this matters.

We talk, but conversation stutters and skips, gallops and cuts. Neither of us moves, except to note our surroundings: serene park behind us, skyscrapers ahead, shooting brashly towards the sky. And it’s clear, from our postures, our stunted speech, that we don’t understand what is happening.

Until my mother’s face changes.

Suspicious eyes soften, wrinkles disappear, and she moulds me a smile so gentle that it’s clear something has occurred to her.

And then it hits me. I’m so stupid. This is a dream. Just a-

Something else strikes so hard it swipes my breath away.

You never sense the obvious, she mouths; a silent echo of her mantra down the years. And I nod, sadly wiser because-

She was an overbearing mother, and when I was a kid I’d tell her so. But rather than take offence, she’d cheerily wind me up. You’ll miss me when I’m gone, she’d warn. Though you won’t need to, Suzie, because I’ll haunt your every move!

Too young to take the joke, I’d plead with her to stop, alarmed less by the idea of her death than her need to haunt me. She’d sense my discomfort and immediately soften.

Sorry, darling, she’d coo. I’m teasing. I won’t haunt you, promise.

I’d calm, and she’d win; any anger quashed by my fear of her passing and – then – her staying.

And that’s when she’d grip my bony arm in her bony hand, fix her blue-green eyes on mine, and tell me: But I will say goodbye. I won’t go anywhere without saying goodbye to my baby girl.

I’d nod, humour her, then hug her with equal dashes of affection and condescension.

And, yet, here I am, next to Bryant Park, awaiting her goodbye.

Mum?

She stands on 42^nd Street in her orange nightdress, the wind lightly picking at frayed edges, smile still full of loving sorrow, but she does not say goodbye.

My heart is flooding, a sea of sadness lapping its edges, because I am adrift on a dream, yet disappointed that my mother won’t keep her word and make me cry with her goodbye.

Mum? I say again.

She looks at me, awkward and alone.

And then I’m hit.

You never sense the obvious.

It’s not Mum’s turn to say goodbye.

Me.

Silly me.

I’m here to say goodbye.

So I embrace her again, and she softens as I rub the fabric of her nightdress. At last, I realise how tacky and comfortless such an expensive gift must have been for her. She’s worn it almost every night since I gave it to her; somehow I suddenly know this.

I’m crying as she’s crying, whispering goodbye, goodbye, and I’m kissing her ear and her neck and her cheek that still smells of her, of soap and good intentions, after all these years and I’m finally unclasping her and we’re both taking steps back onto the unreal pavement on unreal 42^nd Street, as an imagined wind picks up and a very real finality blows us both away.

Because this is a dream and yet, as she fades, I know that my mother is awakening, nightdress damp, desperate to dismiss her experience, compelled to make contact. She feels ridiculous as she texts me then awaits a response, grows anxious as she phones and is callously redirected to voicemail. I never meant to bring her this pain, yet she’s the one I chose, chose without choosing, to say goodbye to.

I’m aching, breaking, but I was raised right, taught that manners are all. You say please, you say thank you, you respond to a hello…and you always say goodbye.

So say goodbye.

I say goodbye and my mother wakes up.

I say goodbye and the train passes painlessly over me; the end as real as I, suddenly, am not.