A Visit to the Iniquities of Our Father

“Devil’s Hole, next stop.”

She had woken up to order champagne. She pulled out a cigarette.

“You got a lighter?”

"I don’t think you can smoke in here, Jenny.”

She kept it just between her lips, drooping, like how they do in movies. Her large eyes rolled upward and settled into a blank stare out the window. She got up silently. He watched her walk down the aisle to a man sitting by a woman. Jenny murmured and curved her body in pleasing ways. A small flame flicked on as she leaned over the man. An ember burned at her mouth as she breathed in. She sauntered back, “He had one.” She puffed the smoke toward him as she sat down, “How did you get me on here anyway?”

“You won’t get on a plane.”

“No, I mean how did I get here? Where are we going?"

“Jenny, cut that out. You walked onto the train yourself. You know where we’re going. They just announced the stop.”

She looked into his eyes for a moment, chillingly lucid and focused, and he could believe she didn’t know. She had willed to forget many things. As her eyes swept back to the window, he felt like she was smirking at him. “You’re so gullible, Charlie.”

“Fine, you don’t want to tell me. That’s okay. I’ve been brought to plenty of places by you, not knowing how or why. So how’s that little girl of yours, Charlie?”

“I’d rather not talk about her right now.”

Jenny had a sixth sense for hurting him. She mocked him now in the one spot that was not calloused over by constant and early abuse. He had once been hopeful that his little girl wouldn’t turn out anything like Jenny, but she was 15 now. It was painful to see them so similar of expression. Oh God, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, he would say to himself in moments alone.

“Seems like you don’t want to talk about anything,” the cigarette was between her fingers, and she laid them palm down on the table that separated them, looking at him but past him.

“We just don’t want to talk about the same things right now.”

“That’s not new.”

“Ma’am, you can’t smoke in here,” the waiter placed her champagne on the table.

“It’s done,” she took a last puff and dropped it into a half empty water bottle. She picked the champagne up delicately by the stem.

“Do you want to hear how mom is doing?”

“Lynn is not my mom.”

Charlie was quiet, like how he got when anyone raised their voice at him.

“I can say it. My mom ran out. I never had a mom. That’s what me and my therapist have been working on. So if you want to tell me how your mom is doing, go for it,” she quaffed the last of her champagne, “These glasses are small, huh, Charlie? I should get another. I’ll get you one this time.” Did she wink at him as she got up?

It was Charlie’s card down for the tab. He just nodded as she went up to the bar. The train moved over a rough part of track and the glasses behind the counter rattled and tinkled. Jenny tripped walking back to the table.

“What are we celebrating, Charlie-boy?”

Charlie looked at his hand holding the glass. He was sad. She was glowing. Maybe, for her, this funeral was a celebration.

“You make the toast, Charlie!”

She could see he was upset. He knew she could. He suddenly became spiteful and vindictive.

“To the summers we slept together in the tent, drunk on stolen Fireball,” his grin was wicked. Her face fell. Her eyes grew intense and murderous.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He stared her down as he chugged the entire glass of champagne. He’d forgotten how good it felt to be mean, even taboo, when you’re backed into a corner. She slammed her glass on the table, some sloshed over the edge onto her hand. They were silent. The train let out a long whistle—it sounded like a kid screaming. The resonance changed abruptly as they entered a tunnel, a gulp to force back the feeling. The lights flickered. Charlie thought that Jenny was laughing and making faces at him in the brief seconds of darkness.

The lights came back on. They were out of the tunnel. The sky was still gray, the fields green and empty for miles. Charlie looked up from the swirls of spilled champagne on the table. The man and the woman at the other booth were gone. He and Jenny were the last two people in the dining car. Even the waiter and bartender seemed to have stepped out.

Alone together, Charlie’s voice softened. His eyebrows puckered like a puppy’s, deeply sad and young, like he had been once, “Lynn is not doing okay. It was traumatic. Dad—”

Jenny held up her hand. Her fingers were curved gently like a child’s in sleep. She was looking into his eyes again, but hers were no longer murderous, distant, or mocking. Her eyes were helpless, how she used to look at him when she was a little girl. She twirled her hand deliberately in the air, a slow-motion conductor directing to a crescendo. Charlie couldn’t say a word.

The train whistle howled; her hand dropped.

“That was our stop, Jenny. They skipped over our stop,” Charlie pressed his hands and face to the window. He stared out as the platform and parking lot receded. He could see his mom, their siblings and half-siblings standing there in a long line, waiting for them, like a picture from years ago. Was his grandmother standing at her shoulders and her father at hers and his father at his? Did they stand that way, stretching without pause to the troubled horizon?

“This train doesn’t stop, Charlie.”