The 1:20 to the Other Side

Written by Barry Chudakov

William Marston told himself the world was so affecting he needed a detour. 

Too many voices. So loud. So much going down: climate, combat, homeless, horrific.

He rolled his small suitcase across the Tennessee pink marble floors of Grand Central Station. Looking around, he recalled Mary Oliver:

“the world offers itself to your imagination”  

Why was his imagination stalled in negativity?  He stopped under the American flag as he came to a free space a few feet square, watching all the rushing bodies swoosh past him. He imagined the giddy blush of spring: celosia flamma orange, rainbow parrot tulips. Bright colors and rebirth were affirmative, weren’t they? Try as he might to stay positive, his mental churn hectored as he watched face after white-earplugged face.

Everyone deviced. Every event close-up. World in your head. Where to escape?

Tumbling contrapuntal currents ran through William’s mind, preoccupying him, as he made his way across Grand Central. 42nd Street and Park Avenue, the largest train station in the world: 48 acres. 44 platforms. 67 tracks. William looked up checking the time: 12:48. Tiffany glass and opal, worth around $20 million. He looked up further to see 2500 stars of the Paul Hellen ceiling,

Striding up to the ticket booth, William was determined to take a train to the other side, wherever that was.

“Hartford.”

William had no idea why Hartford. He knew no one there. He had heard the name in a commercial once.

“Round-trip?”

“No, one-way.”

As he spoke, William involuntarily raised a self-critical eyebrow.  One-way sounded terminal; like there was only one way. He didn’t mean that. William was literal. In school he had been an average student because quiz wording bewildered him. Waiting for his train ticket, his one-way fumble triggered recall of an early disconcerting math problem: How many pieces of pie could Daniel eat in a week if he ate half a slice on any day beginning with the letter S, and two slices on a day beginning with the letter T? Did you think in numbers or letters? Days or weeks? William liked things to be simpler. More straightforward. When they weren’t, William skipped the problem.

It was not surprising then that William chose a desultory destination. Nor surprising when he got there that he took another train to Westport and from there to New Haven. He had not spent much time in Connecticut. Leaning back in the swaying train seat, William surveyed the car. It was too early in the day for afternoon commuters. The car was nearly full. Out the window, green swaths of foliage, zinging telephone poles, station platforms of metal and concrete. He looked around the car. Almost everyone had white earphones plugged into their faces, connected to phones, tablets, laptops. They were the industrious. Middle-wealth. Bills to pay.

William got off at New Haven to stretch his legs. He encountered two young men, students he surmised, one with a Yale rugby shirt, the other with a Yale ball cap. He nodded as he walked past them. They ignored him. Where next? William savored the juxtaposition of destination and indeterminacy. Everyone else on the train had a destination in mind. He had no such terminus. He routinely watched determined train faces: listening to a podcast; phone scrolling; prepping for a meeting or capturing one just finished. Only the sleepers—there was always one—seemed free from digital walkabouts.

William strolled to the New Haven ticket window. A man stamped nervously behind him. Obviously in a hurry. The look on his face was pure annoyance. William stepped aside to let him through: this was a man who regarded himself as prominent, entitled to more than ordinary consideration, and a fool, a gnat on an elephant’s ass, was holding him back. The man harrumphed his way to the ticket window and said loudly William thought, “Scarborough.” He did not acknowledge William’s largesse; he did not thank the rail employee.

Taking his turn at the window, William repeated the man’s order. He had visited Scarborough a few times as a boy. He had a cousin who lived there. It was a makeshift cousining—his aunt married a man with four grown children and they divorced a few years later. During the years of the marriage, he and his cousin rode bikes through the tony suburb. They were never allowed to visit Manhattan, only an hour’s train ride away. William reflected on his shotgun-cousin’s small frame, the boy’s hokey bravado, his weak third base to home throw. After that last summer before the divorce they would never meet again.

Settling into the train to Scarborough, William looked around. Only the mannerless man. The run from New Haven to Scarborough in the early afternoon was not heavily booked. As the train was about to pull out of the station a woman entered the train and looked around. She might be seventeen, William thought. She had natural thick red hair, heavily freckled face, tattoos on both arms, Doc Martens combat boots, nose ring, short shorts. Despite the sea of empty seats in the train car, she came up to William and sat next to him.

“Where you going?”

She was chewing bubble gum, which she snapped loudly. It smelled of pink citrus.

“Where am I going?”

She looked sideways at him.

“This train’s almost empty. No one around for miles. Looks like I’m talking to you.”

William laughed. He could sense a brightness behind her eyes. Intelligence … or cheek.

“I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know.”

“I just bought a ticket …”

“Yeah, we all do that.”

“The guy ahead of me said Scarborough—so I went there.”

“That’s a first. You don’t look like a vagrant. Wouldn’t mind if you were. You don’t look the part. Gray suit, regimental tie, crew cut. Smell good. But you talk like a Woody Guthrie song: ‘Just ridin’ the rails.’”

William leaned back in his seat, turned and took a closer look at this young woman. Her manner emboldened him to be more personal than he typically would have been.

“I’m betting, cause you’re headed to Scarborough, that your daddy’s rich. You’re the black sheep.”

The woman bit the inside of her lip.

“Not rich. Funny, that’s his last name. Richard Rich, the Big Double R. Rainmaker. Industry muckety. He’s done alright. But he spends. Part of the lifestyle of Double R. Like living in the wealthiest suburb in Westchester County.”

“His last name? You’re emancipated?”

“You probably work for him.”

Her face turned dark.

“Rich Rich. Sounds like a Batman character. Not in my Rolodex.”

“He left my mother for a belly dancer he met in Paris.”

“Where’d that leave you?”

“I go to the School for the Arts in Manhattan.”

“You commute?”

She shook her head.

“Live on campus.”

“Dormitory?”

She nodded.

“It’s not the weekend. Why are you going home?”

“That’s not my home.”

William noticed, as their conversation progressed, she seemed to grow more agitated. They paused speaking for a time. Teen emotions were quick, fluid. She had gone from open and edgy to defensive.

“I have to check in. They make me do it every other Monday.”

“They?”

“My probation officer.”

“Make you?”

“Yeah, clock in and out. Asshole calls it accountability.”

“Who’s the asshole?”

“Good question. Double R or Officer Smut. Take your pick. You can’t lose the bet.”

“Officer Smut? Do I want to know?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“He’s that bad?”

“He calls me ‘juicy.’”

“It’s the gum.”

Now she laughed.

“That’s what he said. You guys all open your hymnal to the same page?”

William sat back and again looked her over. Her eyes were kind but flared anger. She appeared to be bursting with high-spirited contradiction.

“He’s offended you?”

The girl stood up abruptly and walked to the end of the rail car. Despite their easy banter, William suspected he had gotten too personal. She hovered over Mannerless Man who looked at her as though she carried the chemical nerve agent, Novichok. At once he refocused on his laptop spreadsheet. After a moment she came back towards William, walking deliberately in rhythm with the train movement.

“Why do you take trains that go nowhere?”

“This train isn’t going nowhere. It’s going to Scarsdale.”

“I’m not getting off there.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going with you.” 

Two complete strangers travelling nowhere—together.

 “You’ll have to buy my ticket,” she said as they disembarked at Scarsdale. “My name is Sam.”

“Sam?”

“Don’t ever call me Samantha. If you get to know me better, and I’m in a good mood, you can call me Freck.”

 She pointed to her face.

“I’ll remember that, Sam. I’m William. I don’t respond to Will.”

She nodded. William considered holding out an arm to shake hands but thought better of it.

“You sure you shouldn’t get off here?”

Sam gave him a dirty look. William bought two tickets to Newport. No particular reason for that destination but he recalled the jazz festival and when he saw that city on the electronic timetable, it clicked.

 “Where we going?” Sam asked, tearing into a Snickers bar that William handed her.

 “Newport. Don’t you have to report to—Officer Smut? Isn’t there some kind of penalty if you don’t check in by a certain time?”

“Smut doesn’t care if I’m late.”

“Doesn’t care?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“He wants to pet my kitty kat.”

Sam gave him a defiant smile. William wanted to ask how she came to have a probation officer. Her answer conjured a vision.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? You’re that girl?”

“No. I read that a while back. Nice revenge move. Not my story. Smut is a wuss.”

“Why is he an asshole?”

Sam looked out the window. She didn’t want to answer. They rode on in silence. Newport was not close to Scarsdale and there were many stops in between. At one of them, not a quarter of the way, William motioned to Sam to stand and walk to the platform until the train was ready to depart again. They hadn’t spoken for over an hour. Sam appeared content. Her earlier agitation was gone and she looked at William almost kindly. 

“I don’t want to have a probation officer.”

“Who would?”

“I don’t have a probation officer.”

“Is that wishful thinking?”

“It’s a lie.”

Sam turned on her heel and walked back to their seats on the train. William watched her walk, then followed her.

“What’s a lie?”

“All of it.”

Sam tilted her head and looked into William’s face mock-sweetly.

“Who’s your favorite painter? Do you ever look at paintings?”

William thought for a moment.

“I don’t know. There are so many.”

“Pick one.”

She looked at him intently.

“You’re a painter?”

“I work at it.”

He thought of his last trip to Rome when he’d gone to the Galleria Borghese; Vienna and the Leopold Museum.

 “More modern: Egon Schiele. Nicole Eisenman. Otherwise, Carvaggio. Vermeer. Peter Brueghel the younger. Their color choices, the lighting.”

“Good answer. For that you can call me Freck.”

Sam laughed. She closed her eyes and abruptly fell asleep. She rested peacefully with eyes and mouth closed. William looked her over. She was indeed heavily freckled with brown pigmentation spots across her face, neck, and arms. William looked at the condition of her clothes and nails. Everything looked Zara, clean and fashionable. Aside from paint stains on two fingers, there was no obvious sign of her focus. Her large backpack was branded Black Ember. She woke after a few minutes and looked at William.

“I’m hungry.”

William pulled two protein bars from his traveling bag.

 “Here. These should hold you until we land somewhere.”

“I don’t want to land.”

 William was going to ask why, then thought better of it. He already knew that answer. Sam looked at him and poked him playfully in the shoulder.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why?” 

“I thought about it.”

“But you thought I’d lie to you.”

“I thought about that too.”

“So, which is it?”

William looked out the window. Cows. Poles. Signs. He had no answer.

 “My father’s name is not Richard Rich.” 

“Another lie.”

“I like to make conversation.”

“Make up conversation.”

“That too.”

“You like to hide.”

“You’re going to lecture me. About truth? About how adults don’t lie?”

“Nothing wrong with hiding. Like there’s nothing wrong with not knowing where you’re going.”

“You’re agreeable.” 

“I’m lost.” 

William now put his hand on her arm. After his wife died—she refused a heart operation, scared to undergo the sawed sternum procedure, despite his best efforts to persuade her, wanting to spare her life, not wanting to lose her—William had not touched another woman. He was going on with his life, moving on—the grief care coordinator at the funeral home dropped the phrase. That evening he went to a prayer service at the small church which held its gatherings at a local convention center. The minister, with whom he’d had conversations as his wife was dying, placed an avuncular hand on his shoulder and said, “You know you chose this. We all choose our reality.”

William never went back. Trains were simpler. They kept moving. There was always a short-term goal, a destination. No insipid explanations. He had money. Cashed in. Sold the house. It was worth over a million. He rented a one-bedroom apartment in Sayville near a natural foods grocery store and especially within walking distance of a train station. When his wife was alive, he relied on her to temper his extremes. He would fly off the handle in a rant and she would smile and—lighting a forbidden cigarette—back him off some tottering ledge. She had lawyerly logic and a calm, cooler demeanor. (She was a government prosecutor.) Reason was her go-to but regarding her health, she was filled with unreasoned assertions. He had pleaded for surgery but she knew her mind and it was made up: no one was going to saw her sternum.  William assumed the rhythms of their conversations and walks; he didn’t think about them. Before she died, during his wife’s last days, William grasped what he would be missing. He began reaching out, realizing that when she was gone, he had few deep friendships. Time, distance, illness, corporate reorganizations—all abetted his growing sense of isolation. It was this, as his wife was fading, that led him to seek out the minister of the civic center church. He had never heard of this denomination; his dying wife knew someone who went there. The service on Sundays was a song and a sermon. Books on a table at the back of the room: Gary Zukav, Caroline Myss, Ken Wilber. William was going to look into some of these and then the minister told him, a direct message, God’s mouth to her tympanum, that he chose his wife’s death. When? There was so much nonsense in the world. 

William was reflecting on that history when Sam interrupted his reverie.

“Lost. That’s good. It implies, doesn’t it, that we can be found.”

“Maybe. Or it implies that we choose being lost rather than the smug delusion of found.”

Sam smiled. 

“I might like that. Trains to nowhere. Stay lost instead of pretending that destinations matter more.”

William thought about that for a moment.

 “Do you want to vanish?”

 “No.”

 “Want to know why I ask?”

“Not really. Are you hungry?”

Sam looked at him eagerly. 

“You’re always hungry.”

 “Oh, yeah.”

“People pretend to know each other. They just see the same ruts their wheels turn in, day after day.”

“That’s depressing. Dinner. When do we land?”

“I thought you didn’t want to land.”

“I want dinner.”

William looked at his watch.

“If I were the conductor on this train, I would say we have about an hour before landfall.”

“You’re not the conductor.”

Sam’s eyes were dancing. She had a way of teasing and being insistent at the same time.

“If I buy you dinner, are you worried we’re on a date?”

Sam frowned.

“I’m not a worrier.”

William raised an eyebrow in skepticism.

“I don’t date. Such old-fashioned shit. We’re having a Stoppard table read and you go off-script, mouthing that ratty canard: a man and woman have dinner together—and it’s a date. I mean …”

“Stop there. I wanted to know if you’re paying attention.”

“You’re paying. I’m eating.”

“By the by … canard. Big word, I’m impressed.”

“I’m a big girl.”

They didn’t speak for another twenty minutes. Sam looked out the window at the passing scenery. Her look, far away, wistful.

“My father is in prison.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Lie?”

Sam paused, then looked directly at William.

“Truth. Sad.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So sometimes you … I dunno … just jump on trains?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Money. Isn’t your art school expensive?”

“The story is, he left a lot of money for my mother. Lord knows where that came from.”

Sam abruptly rose and walked to the back of the train. When she came back, they rode in silence. At Stonington, William tapped Sam on the tattooed biceps of her right arm.

“Do you find there’s too much of everything? You can’t piece it all together? You can’t keep up? Can’t fathom it all?”

“Yes. And yes. And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Why did you get on this train?”

“To meet you.”

“That sounds romantic.”

“I’m not romantic, I’m honest. When I’m not lying.”

William had a curious sensation. For the first time in years, since he watched his wife commit slow suicide, he was interested in another person, another life; he felt a spark, an ember of intrigue.

“What do you want to eat?”

“I’m easy. Didn’t you notice?”

“I notice everything happening fast. So many channels. So many subscriptions and paywalls. News feeds with blockers for subscriptions and paywalls. Movies that want to be video games. Then polar melts. And plagues. Turn them into a docudrama or podcast? Amusing TikTok or distressing news alert?”

He paused.

“You sound like a digital grumbler.”

“I am.”

“Your pants are too high.”

“Meaning?”

“Stop moaning. I like you better when you talk about trains. Or dinner.”

“Do you like steak?”

“Used to. I’m a veg now.”

“Vegan?”

“No, veg.”

William looked at her sclera. Clear. Clean.

“You don’t smoke.”

“Weed sometimes.”

“Why’d you go off meat?”

“A guy. Long story.”

“We’ve got time.”

“Not that much time.”

Sam looked out the window, then turned towards William and lightly ran her fingertips around his lips.

“Why’d you do that?”

“Lips tell stories. I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“I’ve heard of a decent vegetarian place in Newport. Root.”

“Fine.”

“Where will we sleep tonight?”

Sam yawned as though the mention of bedtime made her tire

“Right here. On the next train to nowhere.” 

“Somewhere. Trains go somewhere. I mean, these cities have names. Real people live there." 

“Somewhere, nowhere … what’s the difference?”

“The difference is who’s going. We make the nowhere, somewhere.”

Sam raised her eyebrows. Whatever.

William looked away. Had he voiced a minor discovery, or just a distinction? How did you know?

They would keep moving as though discoveries mattered. They had to eat soon.