Last Train to Babylon

by Charlee Fam

  iii

  v

  Dedication

  For Marv

  vi

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Two

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgments

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the author

  About the book

  Read on

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Prologue

  THE RAIN ASSAULTS my car in the far corner of the empty train station lot, and the wipers dance to a furious beat, so awkwardly out of sync with everything else.

  Smoke streams off the end of the lit cigarette. It’s balanced against the car’s ashtray—masking the scent of three-year-old air freshener—vanilla and sandalwood. I don’t smoke it, but I crave the thick mist spreading beneath my ribs, filling my lungs—filling the space where you hollowed me gutless.

  I look up at the brick building and think of jumping. I imagine myself standing tall, arms outstretched, feet perched against the edge.

  And a voice comes through the station speakers: “The last train to Babylon is operating on time.”

  The train rumbles overhead, and the wipers dance to a furious beat.

  My knees are pinned between my chest and the oversized steering wheel.

  And smoke streams off the end of the cigarette.

  2

  I have this memory of summer camp when I was six, maybe seven. There are other kids, but I can never place faces. We’re all clad in these baggy tie-dyed T-shirts that say LAKE WALTER ROCKIN’ SUMMER ’95, or something equally lame.

  We are seated at a picnic table under a rusted tin roof. Construction paper is scattered carelessly—red, yellow, black. Blue, green, orange. It’s impossible to find a whole piece. They’re all cut up and butchered with those awful, awkward left-handed scissors—safety scissors.

  A little boy spills a tube of blue glitter. I may have gotten some in my eye.

  I am making a house out of Popsicle sticks. I think I used too much glue.

  I always use too much glue.

  My knees press against the vibrating steering wheel. And the wipers dance to a furious beat. And the smoke streams. The car sits in park—a stagnant machine—shaking and rumbling.

  “The one fifty-three to Babylon is operating on time.”

  3

  Rain pelts beneath the bright lights—tall giraffelike lights. No one sees me. And the windshield wipers dance. And the smoke. And I feel you still, the rough pads of your fingers, your Cheshire grin, as you devour me. Piece. By. Piece. And your hair is like soft down, and I think you must condition and this surprises me. Something your mother must have taught you. And then I remember that your mother is dead. And I feel sorry. I feel sorry for your dead mother. And the windshield wipers dance and the smoke streams and the engine screams and I am building a house out of Popsicle sticks and you devour me and maybe it’s the weed but I think I’m about to split and you tell me to relax and you tell me to shut up and your friend is trying to sleep and I tell you to stop to stop to stop and I wonder if your friend can hear and I wonder what your dead mother thinks now and you tell me to shut up and the wipers dance and the smoke streams and your hand muffles my silent screams and I realize there is not much more I can do here but wait it out and you devour me. Piece. By. Piece. And the windshield wipers and the smoke and your friend clears his throat and I try to fill the space where you hollowed me gutless and I try to ignore this world we’ve created, and your power to destroy, our power to create, and the wipers dance to a furious beat and the smoke streams off the end of a lit cigarette and your friend clears his throat and I’m building a house out of Popsicle sticks.

  5

  Part One

  6

  7

  Chapter 1

  Friday, October 10, 2014. 3:53 A.M.

  IT FEELS LIKE someone scraped out my sinuses and poured Clorox up my nose. Everything is damp and warm, and my temples pound against the empty, sterile feeling inside my head. The window is open, and I can hear the rain clicking against the metal screen. I can smell it, too—rain, antiseptic, and latex. I guess this is what it smells like when you wake up in a hospital.

  My eyes open for just a second then fall back shut. I blink twice and I can’t tell if my contacts are still in. Everything is blurry except for the white walls and a metal bedpan hovering next to my face.

  A woman clears her throat near the door.

  “Hi there.” The voice hits me, and it’s like everything inside my head aches again. “How are you feeling, Aubrey?”

  8

  The sound bounces off the hollow walls of my skull, and I have to squint across the room to see her. She offers a small wave and stands up.

  “My name is Laura.” Her voice is slow, and she enunciates every word. She steps toward my bedside, like she expects me to shake her hand, but there’s an IV shooting clear, cold fluid through my veins, so I couldn’t move even if I did feel the need to be polite.

  “Hi?” I say. My voice cracks. She wears a pale green sweater and jeans. Her hair falls into blond ringlets around her face, and bounces off her shoulders as she moves toward me. Maybe it’s just the hair, but she has this spring in her step that makes her seem inappropriately chipper. I already don’t like her.

  At first I think she’s not much older than I am, maybe late twenties, very early thirties—but when she speaks, her voice has this slow, sensible tone, the kind that only comes when you’re hovering somewhere around forty.

  “You’re at the hospital, Aubrey,” she says. I don’t like how she keeps saying my name, like it’s supposed to make me feel more at ease. “I work here. I’m a social worker—or a therapist.” There’s a brief moment of silence, and she takes another step toward me. “But I like ‘therapist’ better. Sounds less official.” I think she smiles, but I still can’t see very well.

  “I know where I am,” I say. She sits back down in a metal chair by the door. “But why am I here?”

  “Do you remember what happened last night?” She’s holding a clipboard on her lap.

  9

  I want to tell her no. I want to say, No, Laura. I obviously don’t remember what happened tonight or else I wouldn’t be asking, would I? But instead, I stay quiet, squeeze my eyes shut and try to force out some sliver of memory. I take a breath and close my eyes again. It’s not much, but pieces of the night start to come back to me like shards of glass—a snapshot, a sound, a smell. Broken pieces, but nothing I can really hold on to.


  I remember O’Reilly’s—walking in, and then I see Eric Robbins in his mint-green tie, spinning his bottle of Bud on the bar. I think I see Adam coming at me, and the air feels thick and opaque, coming down around me, but then it’s just rain. It’s just rain, smoke, windshield wipers, and hot whiskey breath splattered over my bare lap.

  But I don’t tell Laura any of this.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I don’t remember anything. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “Don’t be sorry.” She scoots a few feet closer. The metal chair screeches against the tile floor. I wince.

  I still can’t figure out how the hell I ended up here, so I play dumb and wait for her to fill me in. I wonder for a second if maybe I’ve killed someone, crashed my car, run over a small child. But I think I’d be handcuffed to the bed if that were the case. At least that’s what happens on Law & Order.

  And then panic sweeps through me, and I think maybe I did something desperate. Maybe I threw myself down over the railroad tracks, or something awful and cliché like that. But I dismiss the thought almost as swiftly as it comes, and the panic quiets inside me. I’m way too practical to inconvenience a trainful of people, most of whom I’m probably acquainted with in one way or another.

  That’s the thing about Long Island. You can’t even jump in front of a train without knowing at least ten people on board.

  10

  I want to know why I’m here. Well, part of me does. Part of me just wants to bury my face into the starchy pillow and forget I ever came back to this twisted shit hole of a town. But Laura just smiles, all smug, like she’s waiting for me to ask—like it’s all part of the process.

  “Are my parents here?” I ask. I’m dreading having to face Karen, but half expecting her to be out in the hallway as we speak, pressing her ear up against the thick wooden door, waiting for her cue. It’s also possible that no one called her. I’m twenty-three and I think there’s got to be some sort of patient confidentiality law, something that says I’m allowed to fuck up once and no one will call my mother. But I’m not really sure how this whole hospital thing works. Despite my questionable choices over the past five years, this is a first.

  “Your mother was here, but she went home for the night,” Laura says. “She thought it would be best that we have a chance to speak in private before she sees you.”

  Of course she would think that. I reach up and rub the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. Karen is a school shrink herself—technically a guidance counselor, but whatever, same thing. She knows how it works; whether you’re an eighth-grade wrist cutter, all torn up over cyberbullying and bulimia, or you’re like me—a seemingly well-adjusted twentysomething in the midst of a bender/a breakdown/whatever-is-happening-but-I’m-too-afraid-to-ask. I’m sorry, but nobody, thirteen or twenty-three, wants to divulge her deepest, darkest secrets to her mother. Mothers only complicate things with their messy emotions.

  11

  Karen also happens to be a middle-school cheerleading coach, and her attempts at emotional guidance are always accompanied by way too much pep and hurrah! for my taste.

  But Karen is smarter than I give her credit for. She knows I’ll never talk to her, really talk to her. I’ve never been the type to open up and cry on her shoulder. Not like my brothers. They were always the weepy, whiny, cuddly type. Real mama’s boys. But the gene for basic human compassion seems to have been lost on me—or at least that’s what Karen quips when I pull away from a hug or avert eye contact during a serious conversation. She knows I’m way more likely to confide in some random therapist lurking in my hospital room—strictly business.

  My head feels fuzzy, and my eyes start to cloud over again. “I was wearing contacts,” I say, too low, as I start to think that maybe they’ve rolled to the back of my head or dissolved, just dissolved into my eyes. She stares at me, totally unconcerned. There’s an arrogant silence between us, so I start to speak again, even though I can feel her judging, assessing, taking mental notes on my mental state. “I’m not supposed to sleep with my contacts . . .” I say. My voice trails off, and there’s a sort of tingling in my chest—tingling but heavy. Like my body could either float off or sink like a stone at any moment. She’s still watching me, and the tingling starts to spread up through my throat. I don’t know what this feeling is but I don’t like it. For a second I think it’s whatever drug they’re pumping into me, maybe even a bad hangover. I’m trying to find words; I’m trying to think of anything to say—anything that makes me sound less like a patient and more like normal-calm-casual Aubrey.

  12

  I start to rub at my eyes and sit up in the bed, tugging at the IV. “How long have I been here?”

  Laura smiles, like her facial expressions have any impact on my level of calmness right now. “Don’t worry about your contacts,” she says. But I am worried, and the fact that she’s telling me how to feel loses her some serious points.

  The rain pounds harder against the metal screen.

  For the first time, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. My hair is a mess—a complete shit show—tangled and frizzed out in every direction. My lips are swollen and cracked, and all I can think is that I’ve got a little bit of a Girl, Interrupted thing going on. I can’t quite pull off hot and crazy like Angelina, but I’m close. Pretty fucking close.

  A slow, impish grin starts to slide across my face.

  “What’s so funny?” Laura says, with a confused smile, an attempt, I think, to mirror my amusement, like she’s waiting for the punch line.

  “Nothing,” I say. “I just—I just look the part is all.”

  “What part?” She gets all serious again. She’s a tough crowd, this one. I’m trying to read her. And I know she thinks she’s reading me. I’m ninety percent sure I know what she’s thinking and I’m seventy-five percent sure that she’s wrong.

  “I’m not crazy,” I say. I don’t mean to say it out loud. But it sort of just slides off my tongue.

  “No one’s saying that you are.”

  “Then why am I here?” I can feel my voice start to shake, so I stop with the questions and start to twist the bed sheet in my hands.

  13

  “You had a lot of alcohol in your system,” she says, resting her clipboard on her lap again.

  I wait for her to continue—to get into the details. To tell me how bad I fucked up. But she just stares at me. Like this should be enough to take in. And it still doesn’t answer any questions. Of course I had a lot of alcohol in my system. I usually have a lot of alcohol in my system, but that’s never been enough to land me in a hospital with a social worker camped out at the foot of my bed.

  “Do you remember what upset you tonight, Aubrey?”

  I shrug, and I hate that she says my name at the end of the question, like I’m not the only other person in the room.

  Why so cryptic, Laura? I want to say. Why can’t you just say it?

  “Were you upset about Rachel? Losing a friend can be extremely traumatic. Your mom told me the funeral was today.”

  And here it is. I should have known this was coming. Of course my mother would share this key piece of information. I should have planned for it. Well played, Laura. Well played.

  “She wasn’t my friend. We haven’t spoken in years.” I lie. It’s all I can say. I think it’s enough. I think she even believes it—at least for now. Laura just smiles and leans back in her chair.

  For some reason, I think of Adam again, but push the thought down almost as quickly as it comes. I’ve learned to compartmentalize, over the years. Rachel or Adam, I don’t have the energy or space in my head right now to handle Rachel and Adam, so I slouch back down into the bed and close my eyes.

  14

  “What’s upsetting you, Aubrey?” She says my name again, and I want to say, I don’t know, Laura. I don’t know what’s upsetting me, Laura, but it’s not Adam, and it’s definitely not Rachel, but I don’t say that. Because if I claim to know what’s no
t upsetting me, then I must know what is, and I’m just not ready to go there yet. I don’t even know this woman, so I’ll spare her all the gory details.

  She offers a sympathetic shrug and says, “Maybe that’s enough for tonight.”

  15

  Chapter 2

  Five days earlier. Sunday, October 5, 2014.

  I’M STILL IN my gym clothes when I get the call from Karen. Danny had left ten minutes before to get coffee and bagels.

  “Aubrey?” My mother’s voice is shaky and slow with sympathy that I cannot be bothered to emulate.

  “Yeah,” I say, standing in front of the bathroom mirror. It’s where I take most of my calls. It’s the only private room in the apartment.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yup.”

  “You haven’t said anything.”

  “What’s there to say?”

  “She was your best friend.”

  “She was not my best friend.”

  We both breathe on the line. I hear my mother’s brain churning, desperate to evoke some sort of emotion from me.

  16

  “Well, I hope you decide to come home. It’s the right thing,” she says. I take a deep breath and blow hard into the phone. It is the right thing. I know that. It’s obviously the right thing. But since when has the right thing been a thing with Rachel? I can practically hear my mother shaking her head on the other side of the line, wondering, pleading where she went wrong with her cold, hard little girl.

  “Aubrey,” she starts again, and I take another obnoxiously loud breath so that she knows I’m reaching my limit. “Fine,” she says. “But let me know what you decide. I’ve been using your room as an office.”

  I know she never sees students outside of school property, and she’s most likely just using my room as some sort of filing cabinet—a safe space to sort through her notes and referrals; but I still have this disturbing vision of pimply thirteen-year-old boys parading in and out of my childhood bedroom before going home and jerking off to the memory of my unmade bed and white wicker furniture.