Never Leaving

Lori Toppel

Word Count 2060

The aisle of the sleeper car was narrow. As I walked, I had one hand on the wall. The conductor pointed to my compartment; it contained a seat that pulled out into a bed, a toilet, and a four-inch square television that was playing Agent Cody, the kid's movie. I had packed a black dress for the funeral, although my father was still alive, a few casual clothes, and eight two-milligram Valiums. I had my laptop, an envelope of my father's writings, four issues of the New Yorker, and Wallace Stegner's, The Big Rock Candy Mountain. I opened to the first page: The train was rocking through the wide open country before Elsa was able to put off the misery of leaving ...

My husband was on the platform outside the compartment window. He waved and blew a kiss. I started to cry. He mouthed: What's the matter? I picked up all my belongings and rushed out to him. "I can't do it," I said. "I feel claustrophobic."

"Just calm down. Read your book."

The conductor approached me, a stocky man, his eyes magnified by thick glasses. "What's wrong, Miss?”

My husband said, “She’s nervous. It’s 9-11; it's everything."

"Dear, I'll take good care of you. We're leaving in two minutes, so we better get on board. Here, let me get that," he said, taking my bag. "My name's Paul."

I followed Paul back to my compartment. The loudspeaker crackled, and the conductor announced that the Silver Meteor, headed for Orlando, Florida, was about to leave Penn Station. It was September 11th, 2003.

I'd been trying to leave since September 5th. My husband said he'd fly down to Sarasota with me. Two girlfriends, whom I'd known for over thirty years, said they'd accompany me. My mother-in-law in Boca Raton offered to come up to New York and take me down. My mother advised: "Don't go. He wasn’t a very good father." They’d been divorced for years.

Whenever I flew as a child, my father sat with me and pulled me close to him. At five-foot-seven, he was my giant of knowledge. He’d sketch a diagram illustrating the basic forces that lifted an aircraft into the sky, promising the plane wouldn’t fall. He had a degree in aeronautical engineering, and I trusted him. When I became a mother, I developed a fear of flying.

The train rocked on the tracks. The city had dissolved into streaks of light outside the window. Where was that release Elsa was experiencing in the book?

I thought of my father’s wine cellar in the Manhattan apartment where I grew up from age ten to seventeen. A cedar-constructed system of racks, coddling his bottles of Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Margaux, and other French wines. I used to sit in there after he left my mother, inhaling the pungent wood. He was the antithesis of her. My mother was volatile.

Paul appeared at the open door. “You okay now?"

"Not really.” Behind him, in the compartment across from mine, I saw a woman poking through her bag.

"Dinner's in a half hour,” he said. “The dining car's two cars down."

My sister and I used to tag along when my father attended his Chaine des Rôtisseurs dinners. He had been a gourmet for most of his life, surrounded by close friends, but had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s six years earlier and was now in a coma. ("Don't parade me around if I get really sick. Christ, who would want that?")

In the dining car, the maître d' greeted me. "Are you alone?" I said yes. There were twelve tables, six on each side. Each one was covered with a white tablecloth, and more than half were taken. The maître d' told me the car was booked, but he could seat me at the last table on the right, where the woman I'd seen in the compartment across from mine was sitting with another woman. They were elegantly dressed, as if for church, and looked to be in their fifties.

One woman had shining eyes with curly cropped hair. Her tone was gentle. "Where are you headed? You look so sad, honey."

"To Sarasota. My father's dying."

"I'm going to a funeral, too, near Jacksonville. My cousin just passed, and I hate to fly. My son's leaving in the morning, and he'll still get there before me." She picked up the menu. "The food's good. Hungry?"

"A little. It's the first time I've taken the train to Florida. I don't like to fly either."

"And neither does Nelly here. This is Nelly, and I'm Grace. We've both taken this train before, and it's a long ride, that's for sure."

Nelly nodded in my direction. She wore a small navy hat with miniscule felt flowers sewn on its rim. In her stillness, she felt omniscient.

“Is it cancer?" Grace asked me.

"No, he has Alzheimer's."

“Oh, my...” She drank her wine and said to Nelly and me, "Do you want wine? You'll have to pay extra."

Nelly and I ordered sodas.

"I just had heart surgery and couldn't do a thing for months,” Grace said. “My husband died last year in a car accident. You think you have it tough. All I'm just saying is nothing’s easy. Nelly here's on her way to her sister-in-law’s funeral. It was cancer.”

Nelly finally spoke. "Wait 'til you get into bed. The rocking of the train will put you to sleep, and you'll sleep like a baby. Then you'll feel better."

Dinner came. I couldn't eat. The two women ate, their utensils moving up and down in slow strokes. Grace said the carrots were overcooked and asked me, "What's wrong with the chicken?"

"I'm just not hungry."

"You can take it back to your compartment for later; they'll wrap it up for you," she said.

The waiter came over. "You don't like the chicken? You want dessert?"

I glanced at the menu. "Vanilla ice cream, please."

After he served me the ice cream, I took a spoonful and stopped.

"Oh, oh, she can't eat the sweets. Poor thing," Grace said.

"Give me your hand," Nelly said, reaching for my hand under the table.

I took her soft and heavy hand, and I began to cry.

"It's okay," she whispered. Within a few seconds, she let go.

I got up. "I'm sorry for being such poor company. Thank you for listening."

Back in my compartment, I took a valium and shut my eyes. In eighteen hours, I’d be in Orlando, where I’d catch a bus for the four-hour ride to Sarasota. I heard a crackle and the announcement: "Philadelphia Station in five minutes. Philadelphia." I was surprised we were stopping so soon. I gathered my things. When Paul passed my compartment, I called out, "Excuse me. I'm going to get off here."

"Are you sure you want to do that?"

When the train doors opened, I hurried out. He followed me, talking fast as he thumbed through a stack of tickets. "Miss, let me give you your ticket back."

I thanked him and was left on the platform, holding my ticket and bag. I'd never been in the Philadelphia station before, yet I suddenly felt purposeful. The ticket area was empty, cast in a blue-grey light. The station clock stared at me from a far wall. It was almost ten. I walked over to the ticket counter.

"I'd like to get on the next train back to New York, and I'd like a refund for this ticket." I handed the agent my ticket.

“You can get your money back for the fare to Florida but not for the sleeper car, and that's four hundred dollars. That's not refundable,” he said. “Just let me get you a ticket to New York. The next train’s leaving in ten minutes. Track twelve."

The train was crowded, the passengers' voices snapped like crickets in my ear. I didn’t think about the ticket, the train, or my despair. I looked out the window.

From Penn Station, I took a taxi to Grand Central and then a train to Mount Kisco. A taxi took me home from there.

A day or two later, my sister in California flew down to Sarasota. "I'm only going once,” she said. “I won't go to the funeral. I want to see him alive. Maybe you’ll go to the funeral."

I called her after she arrived at the hospital, and she said, "My rabbi said Daddy can feel I'm here."

She had turned to our family’s faith with a new thirst. Why couldn’t I do that? I thought. We had a hand-blown glass figure of a rabbi in a glass cabinet at home, which frequently rotated on the shelf. I recall wishing I could attribute its dance to a spiritual element and not to my sons’ stomping upstairs, causing the shelf to vibrate. I asked my sister to read a letter I’d just written to my father. I faxed it to the hospital, and, later, she called to say she had read it to him. “It was very moving. The nurse pinned it on his headboard.”

From September 12th to the 18th, I waited for my father to die. I lit a candle every night and read from the journal he’d kept while stationed in the Philippines during World War II. On September 19th, at 7:30 am, my father’s wife called. "Your father passed in the middle of the night. I was with him."

"Thank you," I said and told her I’d fly down for the funeral.

My husband booked a flight for September 22nd, but that morning, I didn't leave my bed. I called my aunt in Boca Raton; she and my uncle were leaving for Sarasota in an hour. I told her about the train, the flight, and asked if I could fax my letter so she could read it at the service.

Later, my uncle called me. He was my father’s younger brother, and I had always gotten along with him. "The service was wonderful,” he said, “and I wanted you to know your letter was the high point. You reminded me of things your father used to do that I'd forgotten, and I was in tears.” He never questioned why I hadn’t made it down there.

A week later, my husband came into my office to ask me something, and I said, "Do you think less of me?" He’d glimpsed into the dark rooms of my mind, I thought.

"What do you mean?"

"Because of what I've done or haven’t."

"Not at all."

I decided I’d honor my father at home and called a Jewish scholar who had promised to tutor my sons in Hebrew after we had left our temple. I invited fourteen girlfriends, who insulated me with their laughter. The scholar tried to describe my father, but he got the name of his college wrong and turned him into a war hero when he’d been an officer. "It's important we be there for our relatives when they’re helpless, as people with Alzheimer's are, and as Lori was there for her father," the scholar concluded.

Shame shot through me, and my husband sensed my discomfort. "I want to thank everyone for helping Lori through these past few weeks,” he said. “You've been remarkable friends. Although she didn't make it to Florida, at least she got to see the Philadelphia station, which I hear is very nice."

I got up, holding the letter I’d written. I couldn’t read it. My sons leaned into me, one on either side. All this time, I'd been asking for everyone's advice, help, even permission, and I realized all I had wanted was to talk to the father I'd already lost years earlier.

One October morning, I was alone in the kitchen, making coffee, when I felt something stir around me. The day was windy, and I shut the deck door I’d left open an inch and stared at the few leaves twitching on the trees. I thought of my father, and in that moment, my sense of self commingled with who he had been. I touched my arm; my skin was warm; his skin was warm. As I sipped my coffee, I felt him close by, angling his head as he used to do whenever he was pleased. He had come to me.

Lori is the author of the novella The Word Next to the One I Want, the collaborative memoir Still Here Thinking of You, and the novel Three Children. Her stories and essays have appeared in literary journals including Inkwell Journal, The Antioch Review, and The Del Sol Review. Toppel, the mother of twin sons, grew up in Puerto Rico and lives in New York with her husband. More at loritoppel.com.