There is something about frantically shielding yourself from a linebacker of a man throwing his body and belongings straight toward the quickest route of exit—which, in this case, is through you—that really puts a kick in your step at 5:00 a.m.
While newly arrived trains screech to a halt and yawn, tossing open their doors and throwing out their sleepy travelers, I cling to the handles of the two colossal, waist-high suitcases on either side of me and lug them another step forward. Meanwhile Linebacker Man with the desperate eyes and swinging suitcases is still coming at me, and with the bells of my elf slippers jingling in mockery at my situation, I jump backward as swiftly as I can.
The nearly empty coffee cup, which had hitherto been dangling between two spare fingers not devoted to suitcase handling, dances precariously, and I regrip it just in time.
He passes me with an inch to spare, then begins taking the stairs three at a time.
What could possibly be that important?
While my mind draws up a few imaginary scenarios, I turn back toward the Moynihan Train Hall station platform. My attention shifts, however, to an unmistakable tapping on my slippers. A drip-drip of what’s left of the weak, tawny coffee leaving spots on my new shoes.
“Shoot.” I let out an exasperated sigh.
“Willow? What’s happened now?” Elodie says, and I nearly jump remembering the Bluetooth in my ear.
“I spilled coffee on my slippers.”
“Oh, honey, no.”
Elodie is the best roommate anyone could ask for. Immigrated with her professor parents to Erwin, Tennessee, from Southern France at eleven, she is the perfect combination of quiet intellect and lemme-catch-that-chicken-for-dinner hillbilly. Throw in the fact that she moved to New York at eighteen for university, and she’s one great big concoction of refinement, empathy, and hard-hitting street smarts.
She bakes to self-soothe.
She clog dances at parties upon request.
She will crack her umbrella on the hood of a cab in stilettos in the rain while screaming, “Get off my back!” and in the next sentence slip her arm through your elbow when you’re feeling low and coo, “Oh, sweetie. How about I make you some of that shepherd’s pie you like so much?”
She glides through both life and work at the French patisserie with unwitting Audrey Hepburn-level ease, spunk, and charm. Throws terms of endearment at total strangers like confetti. And best of all, loves me at my best, and my worst.
And the past three days, I’ve been at my worst.
“Did you pack your tissues?” Elodie says in such a motherly tone I can’t help pursing my lips. “I told you to put those on the list.”
“I’m looking now.” I drop my purse onto the top of one suitcase and begin digging. It’s ridiculous to care so much about shoes, but just . . . well, since the Jonas conversation, anything can flip me like a coin these days.
Which is why Elodie’s concern for my shoes is comforting. She knows the Arrival Day shoes. She knows how much time and energy I’d spent finding the Arrival Day shoes. She knows just how much I’ve saved up from my less-than-affluent home health job to get the shoes. And she knows that no matter how ridiculous the emerald-green leather slippers and their near-constant jingling coming from the tips of the curlicue
toes are, how also terrifyingly little it takes to make me lapse into tears right now.
It’s pathetic, really.
I already wept on the way here spotting a rat beside an old Chinese takeout box, recalling the way I’d clung to Jonas the first time I’d seen one in the city.
Me. Just standing there on the curb at four thirty in the morning. My blinking Christmas tree sweater glowing in the dark as I stared longingly at a rat. Weeping.
I find an old receipt in my purse and commence wiping. The liquid-resistant thermal paper proves worthless from the start, and while Elodie continues to mother me, I switch to using my palm. “Okay,” she says, “it says here that if it starts to stain, you need to mix one part white vinegar with two parts water. Do you have any vinegar with you?”
I drop my head. “Sure, Elodie. There’s a vinegar kiosk right by the bathrooms.”
“Honey, I’ve got forty more baguettes to make before opening, and I’m juggling the miracle of internet research while up to my neck in dough. Productive words only, please. Did you at least find some tissues?”
I look down at my dripping palm. “More or less.”
And while Elodie carries on, traipsing down a long path of vinegar substitutes I may be able to wrangle from the dining car once aboard, I become aware of the travelers bustling by, all hugging their black purses and briefcases against their black winter coats, no doubt heading for a cup of coffee before driving themselves straight into the madness of New York City during Christmas. I am aware of how their gait slows as they pass me and my ensemble, and how their gazes drag. At least two follow with a sweep of the concrete floor around me, looking no doubt for some sort of hat or box detailing where to leave tips for the entertainer should she jump into performance.
Well. This is what I get for being early.
I must’ve sighed again, because the next moment Elodie is talking in my ear.
“You really should try to get some sleep when you’re on the train, Willow. You’re not doing yourself any favors going, going, going the past three days. I’m afraid if I let you off the phone, you’ll nod off and fall onto the tracks.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve arrived two hours early for a train you don’t even want to be on.”
“I took a nap yesterday.” I ignore the urge to yawn. “And anyway, I just couldn’t stand another minute staring at my ceiling. I needed to do something. I needed to go.”
Which is true. Whereas I’ve always been jittery before flying out to Mom’s, now I felt it more than ever. The day Jonas broke up with me, I just sort of stood there in a daze—wherever there happened to be. Well, and crying. Pretty much dehydrating
as a constant leaky faucet. But yesterday morning, day two of my new life single, I woke up with a start, and my legs itched to jump up and go. As though my body was trying to compensate for the fact that my mind had become stuck in quicksand, and it had decided overnight it was going to handle all the movement from now on.
So, I got busy.
Shampooed every piece of fabric in the apartment.
Washed every towel and sheet we had.
Went on a grocery shopping spree and bought fifty-six lemons, then proceeded to make lemon meringue pie for every resident in our building.
Ate half a lemon meringue pie.
Spent way too long in front of a pet store, considering buying a cat.
Decided the cat was a bad idea before traveling, and instead decided it’d be brilliant to learn how to crochet for the train ride.
Watched a dozen videos on how to crochet for the train ride, went to the yarn store and bought supplies, realized it didn’t really make much sense to give up two hundred dollars for the privilege of spending one hundred hours learning to crochet a subpar sweater when I could just pop down to Reminiscence consignment with a twenty-dollar bill, and hauled everything back to the store.
Packed.
Ate the other half of the lemon meringue pie.
Dressed to the nines in an explosion of Christmas cheer.
And now, here I am.
Ready for my two-week-long train ride across the country on The Christmas Express. And the only thing truly different about the reality of this moment versus what I’d dreamed it would look like all year is that, instead of holding one golden ticket to hand to some cheery conductor at precisely 7:12 a.m., I’m holding two. One for me. One for my boyfriend of seven years who met a waitress on the corner of 55th and 10th precisely three-and-a-half days ago and decided he was instantly in love. I don’t know how, given the depth of their conversation couldn’t have gone much further than, “Do you want your eggs sunny side up or scrambled?” but there it is.
So now, instead of traveling on the yuletide getaway I’d been dreaming about since I first clipped out the magazine ad about it four years ago, Jonas is driving down to the mountains of West Virginia, where his new love, Be-cky, and her family will share a holiday meal. While those in my family who haven’t heard the news continue to run bets on where Jonas was going to propose (would it be under the tree Christmas morning? Or something terribly romantic on the train beforehand?), I get the joy of preparing how to convincingly converse with a flippant smile. “Actually, and this is no big deal whatsoever, we broke up after all. Yes, even though he bought the train tickets. No, Aunt Elda, I don’t know what we should do with all the extra artichoke dip for the engagement party. I suppose, eat it.”
As for me, I’m spending two weeks on a trip marketed by Time and Leisure as, “The Most Romantic Getaway of the Season.” What Parade calls, “The Most Nostalgic Christmas Vacation You’ll Ever Experience.” Two weeks on a train full of doe-eyed
couples—alone.
Because that’s what you get when you have a nonrefundable ticket, a need to get home for Christmas, and a life on a tight budget. You get to be surrounded by couples mooning over heart-shaped marshmallows in their cocoa and ardently kissing under mistletoe. You get to be in purgatory.
“Well, at least you looked very nice this morning,” Elodie says. “Frankly, I’m a bit surprised you decided to dress up.”
“I’m trying to make up for the death I feel on the inside,” I reply, raising my voice to be heard as another train slides up to the platform.
Elodie’s right though. Aside from the dried tear streaks down both cheeks, I’m a far cry more pulled together today. Instead of the bird’s nest held together by grease and desperation that has accompanied me the past three days, my chestnut curls bounced buoyantly as I walked through town—as if they have tired of my emotional turmoil and have chosen to persist despite me. And I took extra pains with my mascara and liner this morning, which, at least before the great rat sighting, made my typically pale-green eyes sing in chorus with the blinking green bulbs of my Christmas sweater. And then, of course, there is the outfit: the cheery tree sweater, followed by a black corduroy skirt, black tights, and elf slippers.
“And I decided,” I continue, “if I have to break the rules by going alone, I might as well follow the recommended dress code on the welcome packet.”
“You didn’t break the rules,” Elodie counters. “Nobody is going to think that.”
There’s a long pause. I’m not going to argue with her. I know she’s right. Still, I can’t help feeling a bit guilty for being the train’s unintentional third wheel.
“Can I be honest with you, Willow?”
My brows rise. In our five years together as roommates, I can’t recall a moment where Elodie has been anything aside from honest.
“I find Jonas repulsive.”
“Well, of course we find him repulsive,” I shoot back. “That’s been the group cheer the past three days. Your job is to keep me supplied with macarons while telling me he’s a horrible person.”
“And if you recall I did pat your head and stuff your sobby little ungrateful face with meticulously baked macarons, and I did ask where he was so I could hound him down. But what I mean is not just despising him now after everything. I’m saying he’s repulsive. He’s always been repulsive. And your taste in men is an appalling enigma.”
A full minute passes in silence between us while a train whirs by, and all I can think to say when I speak again is, “How long have you thought this?”
“Five years.”
I laugh in disbelief. “There’s no way. You’ve hung out with him thousands of times over the past five years. Thousands. You threw
us a surprise anniversary party last year. He asked you to be the godmother for our children one day, and you hugged him and cried. You can’t be that good of a liar.”
“It’s chilling what I can achieve for the sake of my friends.”
My eyes widen. Yes. Yes, it was.
“Annnyway,” she says, her tone unnervingly brighter, “the point is, Jonas was selfish and weird about his stuff. You give to a fault. Jonas was boring. You, when you’re not drowning in despair at least, are a delight.”
I frown. “Thank you.”
“And Jonas, quite frankly, was a jerk who always knew he wouldn’t end up with you and strung you along far too long.”
I shake my head. “No. He loved me.”
“Yes, but he didn’t love you enough. And he knew that. And he waited until he had somebody else in the wings to let you go.”
“And lastly,” Elodie rushes on before I can reply, “and most importantly, ...
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