Last Train to Babylon

by Charlee Fam

  A robotic voice comes over the speaker.

  This is the train to Babylon. The next station is Forest Hills.

  Dusk settles in as we pass through Kew Gardens, and I start to get the thick feeling in my throat.

  I hear the guy punching tickets from somewhere behind me. I hold out mine without looking up, keep my eyes closed, and press my face against the warm window. Someone pulls open the bathroom door, and a sickly smell wafts its way over to where I sit: toilet-bowl cleaner and possibly vomit.

  “Seaport, right?”

  I look up and see a vaguely-familiar face standing over me—shiny, oil-streaked cheeks and a slouchy, shapeless body, wrapped in the traditional MTA garb. It’s meant to make him look dapper—respectable even—but there’s something so damn doofy about it all. I nod, hoping he just spotted my ticket from afar with his supersonic vision and is just confirming my final destination.

  “It’s Aubrey, isn’t it?”

  I have no idea who this guy is or how he knows my name.

  44

  “Oh. Hey! Oh my God, yeah. How’s it going?” I say with too much enthusiasm, hoping that if I dilute the conversation with enough words, he won’t realize I don’t actually know his name. His face comes into focus, and I think we could have gone to high school together. I can’t remember his name, but he may have been a year or two older, maybe even in my brother Marc’s grade, though we may have had a class together once.

  “Pretty good, actually. You know after all that stuff a few years ago, I cleaned up and finally started working for the MTA this year.”

  His name might be Frank or Gary. The lines around his mouth stretch into a too-wide grin, and I notice that his teeth are coated with a thin layer of fuzzy film. I can just tell he has bad breath—that mothball-y scent of rotting meat.

  “It’s great pay. Great job. Things are finally going really well for me,” he says.

  I have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, but I nod and smile and act super happy for the guy.

  “Oh hey,” he says, his face suddenly going all somber. “Sorry to hear about Rachel. You guys were close, right?”

  It catches me off guard. I didn’t expect him to say her name, to even know her name. Which I guess is a ridiculous thought. Of course he knew Rachel. Everybody knew Rachel. But just hearing it, hearing her name again, makes me feel weak, like my bones might dissolve, and I’ll just slide off the seat and melt into a puddle of warm piss on the floor.

  I swallow the sickly feeling back into my throat and push my shoulders back. “Thick as thieves,” I say. He tilts his head at me and yields a weak smile. I don’t really think he picks up on my tone.

  45

  Louis. I think his name is Louis.

  “So, I guess I’ll see you at the funeral, then, right?” I shrug, smile back at him, and avoid giving any real answer. “Hey,” he says. “The after-party is supposed to be pretty sweet. Everyone’s talking about it.”

  “After-party?” I say. “Of what? The funeral?” He smiles and shrugs. “You’re not serious,” I deadpan.

  “Yeah. So I guess you haven’t heard, then? It’s at O’Reilly’s. It’s sort of a memorial for Rachel. It’ll be like a high school reunion. Should be fun.”

  A little boy shrieks from a few rows behind us. A papery old man clears his throat. Frank or Gary or Louis finally punches my ticket. Click. Click. Click.

  I snatch the ticket from his pudgy fingers and slide it into my wallet. A high school reunion. A funeral. An after-party. Should be fun . . . eral.

  I DON’T FEEL like having Karen pick me up when I get to the station. It’s only a mile away, but the idea of sitting in the car with her, even for five minutes, makes me want to jump in front of the train.

  The air whistles through the cracked window of the cab, and the streetlights blur as we speed through the back roads toward home—my ex-home. I’m not used to taking cabs on Long Island. It’s different from the city. The driver seems to be in less of a hurry, and the car smells almost pleasant, like peppermint. I don’t mind it.

  46

  I chew on a handful of raw almonds—the closest thing to the register at the Penn Station Duane Reade. It’s all I’ve eaten since the hollowed-out half of a bagel from this morning. My stomach makes this horrific groaning sound, but I can’t even think about food.

  The front door is open when we roll into my driveway—my ex-driveway. The house looks different, but I can’t figure out why. Maybe new shrubbery. I reach into my wallet for my credit card.

  “Cash only,” the guy mumbles without turning around.

  “Seriously?” I say, pretending to scrounge around the bottom of my bag for cash I know I don’t have. Unlike Manhattan, a five-minute cab ride costs twenty bucks. “You could have said something,” I start, but then Karen comes trotting down the front pavement, her arms close to her chest, but her hands flailing, and I can’t help but think of a T. rex. She’s got a twenty-dollar bill in one hand and slips it to the driver. The perks of being back home. But so far I’m out eighteen dollars for the train ticket, and Karen’s out twenty for the taxi.

  How is a dead girl so effing expensive?

  “You look thin,” she almost sings it. It’s the first of her many comments, and I can’t help but feel a pang of self-satisfaction. She pulls me into her chest for one of those full-body hugs, and I keep my arms pinned stiff at my sides. I don’t do hugs. “You feel thin,” she emphasizes this time, grabbing me by the elbows.

  47

  My mother is blond, five-foot-eight with high cheekbones and a narrow frame—a height I never quite reached, and a body type I’ve still never been able to attain. Despite her obvious expectations, I never became a cheerleader. She signed me up when I was six, but I was clumsy and kind of a tomboy, not to mention suffering from undiagnosed ADHD. I have this memory of spinning around on a patch of grass and thrusting my tiny little body onto the ground while all of the good little cheerers were learning how to form the perfect pyramid. Karen stood off to the side, her thin lips pinched, assessing my grass stains, and realizing that her only daughter would never be that kind of girl.

  The scent of stale coffee and my mother’s Burberry perfume waft from my scarf. I notice her hair is straighter than usual today, sprayed into perfection, and I wonder if she spent extra time styling it just for me. Probably not, though.

  “Are you eating?” Karen asks as I follow her into the house, tripping over a brick on the way up the walkway. Her thin arms hang from her sleeves, her elbows all knobby and bones. It isn’t fair. Nobody ever asks her if she’s eating. She’s always been thin, doesn’t matter what she eats or how little she exercises. But of course I inherited my father’s short stature and wide frame. I have to work at it. I have to count calories and spend hours at the gym just to be considered cute, but kind of chubby.

  That’s it; the brick walkway is new.

  Karen’s arms swing to a stiff tune through the front hallway. “And why are you wearing gray?” she says, without turning around. “You look so pretty in colors.” There’s an open bottle of Cabernet on the counter, and I reach for a glass. A Yankee Candle flickers from the table—Midnight Storm or Harvest Moon—something strong and blue. “You know,” my mother says, not missing a beat, “your face looks swollen. You should stop drinking so much.” I roll my eyes. “You know, after college, it’s called alcoholism.”

  48

  I’m loosening the scarf from my neck, just enough to breathe, but not enough to expose the rash brewing beneath it, when she starts taking out leftovers and placing half-empty Tupperwares on the kitchen island.

  “I’ve got cheese. I can make you a grilled cheese. There’s salad. I can heat you up some soup.” I don’t give any indication that I’m hungry, but she keeps on laying out the contents of last week’s dinners. I sit on the bar stool and spin my wineglass.

  “I don’t eat cheese, Mom,” I say. “I’m lactose-intolerant, remember?”

  “Huh? Since when?�
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  “Two years,” I say, not counting the bagel and cream cheese I scarfed down earlier. I’ve been using the term “intolerant” loosely. Yes, for the past two years, I’ve been consciously avoiding dairy. And yes, I do get bloated and gassy when I eat it. But I make exceptions—and my bagel and cream cheese was an exception—even if I had to suffer through the throbbing cramp in my gut all day. And maybe if Karen acknowledged it, maybe if she had bothered to ask or show any interest in my dietary restrictions, I would have made an exception for her, too. But now I sort of feel like just being a bitch.

  She suddenly gets quiet, stops with the food, and puts her hand on my shoulder. She’s too close.

  “How are you doing?” She tilts her head to the side, in that awful pitying way one does when they want to know how you are doing.

  49

  “I’m fine. I told you,” I say. She breathes in real slow through her nose, something I’m sure her own shrink taught her to do, and I’m sure is a trick she passes on to her asshole students. She breathes out through pursed lips and cocks her head to the side, like she’s inviting me to spill my guts right here on the granite. I take a hard breath through my mouth. “Did you get your shit out of my room yet?”

  She looks at me for just a second, shakes her head, and starts to put the food back into the fridge. She’s slamming drawers shut now and snatches the block of cheddar from in front of me. “Don’t forget to call your father and tell him you’re home.” Her voice is cold, and I know her hospitality is over. I nod, even though I have no intention of calling him. I can only deal with one parent at a time this week.

  The television flashes from inside the den and some dramatic movie score blares through the surround sound speakers. I know it’s my brother Eli and his newest girlfriend cuddling on the couch under my grandmother’s knitted throw, and the thought nauseates me, so I take my wine and go straight to my room.

  Karen kept her promise and moved all of her files, folders, and papers off my bed and onto my treadmill. I wasn’t planning on any cardio anyway.

  The room smells like citrus and dust, and I can just picture my mom swiping over each shelf and each individual Precious Moments figurine with a dish towel—the dust settling onto the hardwood floor before she sweeps it under the bed and sprays each stale, unused pillow with watered-down Febreze.

  50

  My room looks almost exactly the same as it did when I left it last. A shirtless Johnny Depp poster still hangs crookedly over my bed. On the adjacent wall, there’s a Breakfast Club poster that I bought at the mall sophomore year. I’d only seen the movie once, but claimed it was my favorite film for the majority of high school.

  My white wicker dresser is topped with an assortment of Bath & Body Works sprays and a jewelry box that I haven’t opened in years, but I’m certain it’s filled with tangled and broken necklaces from Claire’s.

  I remove a black cotton dress from my closet and hang it behind my bedroom door, just in case. I haven’t worn it in years.

  Cute, but kind of chubby.

  But I feel like it would be appropriate to wear it, should I decide to pay my respects to Rachel. I still haven’t decided whether or not I’ll go to the funeral, but it’s a good excuse to get a week off from work, and at least it will save me days of nagging guilt from Karen if she thinks I’m actually here for the funeral.

  Danny’s called only once since I left for Seaport. He left a message, just to let me know that he respects my need for space, but if I change my mind, he’ll be on the next train. I listen to only half of the voice mail and hit delete.

  I can hear Karen shuffling in and out of rooms, opening and shutting doors, like she’s afraid I’ll forget she’s here. I swish the wine in my glass, and my gaze falls to the corkboard above my desk.

  51

  Rachel’s muddy-brown eyes burn into me from the photo across the room. We were at the beach in Montauk during our senior year—before everything went wrong. We’d driven the hour-plus just to sit on the sand, something we could have done ten minutes away at Jones Beach, but there was always something about Montauk that made it worth the drive.

  In the photo, we’re sprawled out across this purple jersey knit sheet that she kept in the back of her car. I’m flat on my back, with her head on my stomach. She’d held the camera over us to snap the photo. It was a selfie before there were selfies—before it became an official word in the Oxford Dictionary. We look awful. The glare was too strong, and half of my face had been cut out of the shot. I barely make eye contact with photo-Rachel, pluck the thumbtacks out of the board, and let the picture fall behind the desk.

  I reach for my wine again and feel silence out in the hall where Karen has just been stomping around. I lean into the door and know she’s there. I can hear her breathing, contemplating whether to knock or come in. So I jerk the door open, and she stands there, her mouth hung open in a guilty smile. I swing the door open more, sort of an invitation for her to enter. She ducks in, sits on the edge of my bed, and fingers the pale blue comforter. I try to act busy, opening and closing my desk drawers and shuffling through my mail.

  “So,” she says. “I thought we could talk about Rachel?” She’s using her guidance counselor voice, and I just know she’s prepared a speech.

  “What is there to talk about? I already told you.” I eye her in the mirror. She focuses on the comforter, sighs, like she’s about to say something, and then crosses her legs.

  I tear open a credit-card statement. Not that I ever even look at them—no point really.

  52

  “Did something happen with you two? I mean, I know it’s been years. But, Jesus, Aubrey, you’re being a little extreme for two people who just ‘fell out of touch.’” She bends her fingers to make air quotes. “Don’t you think?”

  “Nothing worth talking about,” I say, and I mean it.

  “She was your best friend!” Her voice squeaks, and I know she’s lost all control over this practiced voice. I feel my chest tighten as the seconds tick away, and I think of all the things I could say right now. But I decide it’s better to be vague.

  “She wasn’t a good person,” I say, mentally checking off all of the shitty things Rachel had ever done/said/thought. My face reddens and twists, and I know I need to keep my voice steady. Karen has no idea. And there’s no way she can ever know. It’s the kind of thing she’d need to talk about, the kind of situation she’s actually trained for—not the he-said, she-said bullshit of amateur bullying and catty middle-school cheerleaders. She’d cling to every word, and analyze my every move. She’d ask probing questions that I am in no way comfortable answering, and just the thought of it—just the thought of being treated like one of her pathetic students—makes me want to vomit. “I don’t know what world your warped little mind is living in,” I say, “where Rachel was this sweet little angel. She was not a nice person.” I can see my mom’s face start to furrow, like she might even cry, and I can’t take the silence. “She was a bitch.” She sighs again, holds her breath, and starts to refold the clothes from my suitcase.

  There’s another moment of silence. It’s so thick, I think I can reach out and squeeze it.

  53

  “So what’s new with you? How’s work?” she finally says, her voice shaky and distracted, and I can tell she’s still obsessing over Rachel.

  Karen had a baffling curiosity about Rachel’s love interests—and just her life in general—all the juicy girlie gossip, things I guess I’d never really talk to her about. I’m sure Karen was a slut in her day, too, so maybe that’s where the admiration stemmed from. But mostly, I think it was because Rachel was a cheerleader.

  “Work’s okay.”

  “Danny?”

  “Danny’s okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “I don’t know. He got an A on his midterm. Do you really want to hear about that?”

  “Law school isn’t easy. Good for him. Everything else okay? You know, with you two?”

 
“Mom.”

  “Sorry. Sorry,” she says. “I’ll leave you alone now.” She smiles, folds the last tank top on the bed, and stands up. “Well, let me know if you feel like talking.”

  54

  She closes the door behind her, and I realize that I’ve been holding my breath. I sit down in the spot she’d been sitting in, the down comforter still warm from her body. I knead the covers until my fingers start to ache, feeling the guilty twist of my stomach. It’s not like I want to be such a bitch. I wish I could be one of those girls—one of those fun-loving, carefree, open girls who giggle at everything and hug their mothers—the cheerleader kind of girl. The kind of girl who isn’t afraid to show emotion, to show gratefulness. It’s exhausting being this stiff, rigid empty shell of a human. I am appreciative. I am. I am fucking appreciative. But I can never say it. Even if I know that’s all Karen ever wants to hear. The words get stuck, tangled, and twisted like damp bed sheets wrapped around my neck, like a noose tightening with each breath.

  My phone starts to vibrate again from the nightstand. I grab it, noticing that another nail has chipped where I’ve been chewing at the cuticle. Assuming it’s Danny again, I’m about to forward it to voice mail, but stop when I see an unexpected phone number—Adam’s.

  I stare down at the BlackBerry buzzing in my palm. Why is he calling me? Adam’s number just sits there, and I wait for the phone to stop moving, but it just vibrates. What could he possibly want? To talk about Rachel? To offer his condolences? To see if I need a ride to the funeral? My heartbeat quickens, throbs really, from within my chest, and I wish I could just pound my fist against my sternum and make it stop. I can’t imagine why he would call, and at the same time I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t, yet the thought of occupying the same room as Adam and Rachel unhinges me. Even if she will be in a casket.

  The phone stops, and my heartbeat slows, and I hold the phone in my palm and stare, for maybe thirty seconds, until a message flashes on the screen: ONE NEW VOICE MAIL. TWO UNHEARD VOICE MAILS. I drop the phone onto the bed and fumble to my bag for another Xanax.