Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
The Other Platform
Arthur picked up the first drawing and held it by the corner. A green train ran along the bottom, with smoke coming out of both ends.
I remembered making it. I remembered the pencil stub and the bench. What I didn't remember was the waiting being a secret.
Dad used to come home on the Thursday evening train. After he died, I kept coming to the station at the same time. I knew what had happened to him. I also knew that if I stayed on the bench, I had somewhere to put the hour between school and supper. At home the hour had nowhere to go.
“I told her I was at the library,” I said.
“She knew. She asked me to keep the radiator on.”
Across from our table, I could see the far platform through the blue glass. There was a wooden bench there too, with iron arms curled like fiddleheads. Arthur said Mom sat at the far end with a thermos until my train came in. Then she drove home first and put supper on.
“Why didn't she come get me?”
“I asked her that,” he said. “She told me she'd come if you looked for her.”
I untied the string. There were six pictures of trains and one of our kitchen. In the kitchen picture I had drawn two chairs at the table and a third by the window. My mother had written the date in the margin, the way she did on school photographs. On the back she'd written, She came home hungry tonight.
My train was announced over the speaker. I watched three people get up and pull their cases toward the door.
“Can I leave the suitcase here until tomorrow?” I asked.
Arthur said he could keep it another forty years if he had to, but he'd prefer tomorrow.
I took the red coat and went outside. The first train drew up, and for a minute the windows made the far platform disappear. When it moved away again, I crossed the footbridge and sat where my mother used to sit.
I could see my old bench from there. I could see the clock too. The whole time I'd thought she was missing the hour, she'd known exactly how long it was.
