My clothes are at the dry cleaners. I’m not sure why, but my entire wardrobe is at the dry cleaners. I’m excavating my now empty closet, and I’m going to be late to work in fifteen minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a dry cleaner. A twenty-something intern isn’t exactly constitutive of someone who can afford something like that. A small folded stack of clothes sits at the back of my closet, on the middle cubby of a three-leveled shelf I didn’t realize existed until just now.
My late father’s well-worn black band sweatshirt from that one 70’s rock band he’d always sing along to on the radio. I hadn’t so much as looked at it since it arrived at my doorstep in a plastic bag. A pair of white shorts sits below. I reach out for them, and I hesitate for a moment when my fingertips brush the man-made softness of his sweatshirt, somehow releasing the last of his cologne locked into the fabric. I turn away from the clothes, catching a glimpse of my body in the mirror, where the clothes seem to have made their way onto me. The stretched out head hole of the crewneck falling off one of my shoulders, the sleeves going past my hands the same way that’d make him laugh when I stole it from him. I’m rubbing my thumb over the hole in the cuff of the sleeve. The same one I wore in at the hospital at his bedside. The ridged stitching is rough against my skin, just as rough as the memories feel as they seem to be spinning around me, a double helix faded at the flickering ceiling light of my closet.
They spin and spin, along with the room, until the universe decides to give me a break. Everything freezes around me, still shots of a bond suspended mid-air like the photographs of an undeveloped life. I see the now present gap in place of the closet doorway and I’m moving toward it, only to find myself in the kitchen. The shoe rack by the front door is empty and the clock on my microwave says three hours have passed somehow, and the minutes seem to go up by the millisecond. I stride across the room, too late to care about shoes anymore. The keys hanging on the wall are in my hand, and I’m through the door of my apartment. The rough, brown bristles of my double sided welcome mat digging into the bare soles of my feet, reading the word goodbye at me as I fumble with the keys that don’t seem to fit into my door lock anymore.
I don’t seem to care that much, now that I find myself halfway down my street, watching as the bright sunlight moves through the canopy of the trees lining the sidewalk. The warm breeze of the summer meets my back, perfectly complemented by the heat of the pale gray concrete underneath my feet. The street is empty, a strange lull in the usual company of the neighborhood in early June. Lemonade stands seem to be packed up, garden hoses wrapped and put away, bikes parked on their respective driveways. The only sign of life seems to be me, the trees, and a dark moving shape at the end of the street, fast approaching, seemingly speeding up. A strong breeze now pushing against my back, propelling me forwards. The dark shape has revealed itself to be a black dog, absorbing the fragmented sunlight as it approaches, staring me dead in the eyes.
Something around me feels different, but I can’t peel my eyes off the dog wandering down the street. The wind seems to swirl around me, the warm, nostalgic feeling from before now replaced with a sharp coldness, my father’s scent rushing past my nose once again as my heart thuds in my chest. The black dog strides past me on the street, head turned as if it is watching me, and a resounding chill passes over me with the newfound cloud cover above my head. Every hair on my body is standing up as I turn my own head now, catching a glimpse of the white car now hurling itself down the road as I finally set my eyes back onto the dog.
I find myself following him back down the street, until he pauses. Two paws over the ledge of the sidewalk, the dog stares at me as it crosses over into the street. My feet move without my brain, the black eyes of the dog keeping me in some sort of trance. In one breath, one foot hits the tar of the road. Then two. I’m following behind him, some sort of invisible tether connecting us, walking together until he stops. He’s sitting in the middle of the road, the two of us a still outline in the car’s fast approaching headlights. I’m using every ounce of strength to push him out of the way. He won’t move on. No amount of pushing or yelling gets him to. He doesn’t even leave at the prolonged warning of the horn. Nor does he leave when the bright light blinds us.
Pain. Exhaustion. My head is killing me, and there’s a ringing replaying in my head, a manifestation of the loud horn fluttering my eyes open. My face cringes and I shift slightly at the light hitting my eyes, sending a sharp but quick wave of pain through my body. Back pressed against the glass of a window, my legs are curled up in front of me, the skin exposed from my shorts brushing against the woven gray fabric of the two seats I’m laying across. There is a soft blanket outstretched over my legs, one that looks suspiciously identical to the baby blanket my mother had to pry out of my hands when she deemed I was too old for it, and the one I slept with every night after my dad passed. I stretch my legs outward across the chairs, like a cat lounging in front of their favorite window. I can feel the warmth of the sunlight coming in through the glass behind me, the golden warm tones of the sunset outside seemingly following me as we fly by it. I pull my knees towards my chest, resting my feet flat on the seat and I sit and listen to the rivets of the tracks as we pass over them for a moment, my head pressed back against the glass.
I let my fingertips trace the soft pink and blue hearts on the velvety fabric of the blanket, and eventually I find them running down the satiny trim around the sides to find the tag. I flip the blanket up to read the handwritten inscription I know better than the back of my hand, only for the usual three-word note to be replaced with a new one. It was still in my father’s handwriting, leaving only but one word this time. “Soon”. Soon? What the hell does that mean? I look around, frantically, as if I might somehow look up to see the wrinkles on his forehead I used to make fun of again before I toss the blanket off me, doing my best to stand up against the gentle movements of the train and shaky legs. I take a few steps forward, clinging to the tops of the row of chairs as I turn back and neatly begin folding the blanket on the chair, re-reading a word I hadn’t seen in that handwriting in so long. Forcing myself to stop ruminating, I turn in the empty train car, facing the windows on the opposing wall, and move closer to them.
Peering out, I see the vastness of the ocean, stretching from underneath and beyond the tracks of the train, as far as the eye can see. The waters are still, with calm, gentle waves that appear an almost dull gray shade, the only color coming from the rays of the sunset reflecting off the surface. A focal point, the waves meet the sky out towards the horizon, who knows how far away and blend together, a comforting union straight out of an oil painting.
I can feel the hard floor as I walk through the train car, eager to see what might be on the door at the end of the car. Muted cream with delicately ornate details in gold, I extend my hand outwards to the door, grasping the gilded knob and twisting what little I could before being met with the feeling of the locked door. I knocked and I called out, standing under the vent outpouring warm air and the nostalgic scent of vanilla, but was only met with the gentle hum of speed and machinery. Frustrated, I turn my back to the door, and begin to pace down the aisle of the train, before something stops me dead in my tracks.
Laughter. A wonderous, child-like laugh fills the car. I’m frozen, standing in the middle of the train, in front of the boarding doors, and laughter rings out in the once silent train car. I pick my head up, looking towards the speakers for some kind of answer, when what once was the sky and the ocean turn into a solid black. A soft glow emits from inside the train car itself, before the laughter sounds again, illuminating the sky outside with its cadence.
Looking out the large windows of the boarding doors, I watch as the environment transforms around me outside the train. Black turns to the dark navy blue walls and walnut floors of the kitchen in my childhood home. Sunrays come in through the bay window of the dining nook, where I see myself sitting, laughter alternating between my sister and I. The train is driving across the floor, fully encapsulated in the memory, past my dad as he walks pink and blue plastic bowls of spaghetti to the table. My sister is clapping her hands, excitedly bouncing up and down on the striped bench cushion beside me. I watch as my father sets the bowls down in front of us, the smile on his face pushing his wrinkles together as he dances around the kitchen to the same band on my sweatshirt now, giving us dinner and a show.
I’m frozen, half-way between both walls of the train, watching as we fly by and everything changes one again, to the green cover of the trees in our backyard, my voice echoing “higher” over and over, along with the creaks of metal as my father pushed me on the wooden swing set, and shrieks as I see him hide around the corner of our house, turning on the sprinklers as my sister and I stood over them in the heat of the summer. I watch as the sky darkens, and tiny bursts of golden-orange light float through the sky. A smoke column, from the red grill that sat on our patio arose, the potent smell of slightly-too charred hamburgers wafting through the air. Lemonade pitchers and bug nets adorn our slatted patio table, the four of us sitting around it in the dusk. They take off, and I’m not far behind them, in my father’s big sweatshirt and those always yellow jelly shoes, jumping through the grass, imprisoning any misfortune Junebug in my path, excitedly showing them off to my parents and sister behind me.
I feel the soft pitters of tears falling to my chest, darkening the fabric of the sweatshirt as I sit on the ground, feeling the woodgrain of the floor against my knees and feet. The train chugs along, now in the pale yellow, butterfly-adorned walls of my childhood bedroom. I’m tucked under my princess bedspread, my father’s face aglow in the light of my night light at the foot of my bed. I’m lying, wide-eyed as he’s telling me stories about the travels of his youth; retelling my favorite one, his trip to the Alps with his college roommates. I loved it so much, he’d framed a few of his film photos from his trip and gave them to me to put in my room. “Snowy white mountains,” he’d tell me, seemingly lost in the memory every time. “The most beautiful view of everything below, and you can go sledding, or you can make snow angels or we could have a snowball fight” he’d continue, leaning in as he talked and I giggled, imagining the snowy white mountain tops and the wet splotches on our coats from snowball impact. I listened to my younger self beg him to take her there, and him tell me he would, only if I fell asleep. I watched as I excitedly closed my eyes as he shut off the lights, too excited to fall asleep but imaginative enough to envision our future trip until I fell asleep.
My upper body swayed with the gentle movements of the train, my eyes unable to look away from the life replaying in front of me as my bedroom lit up once again, now a light teal blue and covered in posters of the mountains. I was sitting at my desk now, the built-in one my father had assembled in both my sister and I’s rooms once we started school. It was white once, but now the blue and red crayon scribbles of my youth laid underneath my middle-school pre-algebra homework. My father still sat at the foot of my bed, on my soccer-printed duvet, as he helped me figure out orders of operations and the social hierarchy of public school popularity. A blink of light flashes and we’re out on the front lawn, soccer goals set up on either side of us. We’re running back and forth, trying to fake each other out with a dribble. I sigh as he gets a goal and he cheers for mine, even if he let me make them.
I watch myself turn away from the goal, now dressed in the white and blue uniform of my high school’s soccer team, staring back at my father and family in the stands as my old teammates huddle behind me, flashy hardware in the middle. My dad’s there, holding a sign I deemed embarrassing at the time but now brings tears to my already damp eyes. I look on as the blue of my uniform became the blue of my prom dress, swishing at my feet as my father told me he reserved the right to my first dance. He pressed a pre-recorded track on our tiny digital keyboard, dancing me around the hardwood floors of our house on his toes like he did so long ago. The prom photos that haunted my mother’s Facebook flashed by in quick blinks, in sync with the flash of the camera in my mothers hand, capturing the moments in real time.
Hundreds of moments pass by as the train moves along. My father singing along to his favorite band in his red truck. Swimming in the neighborhood pool in the summer. My first car. The flowers my dad gave me after every event. The spot they take up in my freezer. My high school graduation. Packing my room up the summer of my senior year. The five-hour drive my family made with me to my college dorm, and the way my father and his college friend carried my mattress and ninety-percent of my boxes up those stairs. My father’s film photos on the wall. My parents sending me coffee money before every final. The shitty bar that confiscated all my friends and I’s fake IDs. Several times. Every call I made to my parents, and how my father promised a trip to the Alps once I graduated.
Things go dark for a longer moment this time, as the memory fades away and leaves me with the dim light of the train car, and the repetitive sounds of the train and my sniffly nose. Then I hear it. The ring in my ears that has haunted me for the past two years. The ringing of my old cell phone. The light from the screen fills the temporary void, as I watched it all over again. Two-fifty two in the morning, the screen read. Incoming call from mom, the pixels said. My stomach sank, and I laid back on the hard train floors, trying to do anything not to relive this moment. My ears began ringing again, a subconscious shield protecting against everything but my late-night scream of disbelief, the thud of my old phone hitting the carpeted floor, the muffled words of my ex-boyfriend through my heavy sobs. Even now, I could feel the same twist in my gut, the same burning in my lungs. My chest heaved in unison, the same way it did back then.
No more light appeared. The memories continued flooding around me, battering against the exterior of the train, just as dark a representation as my state of mind. The memories appeared as just as I hoped to forget them, in their excruciatingly detailed entirety, with an exception. A large black dog now remained at my side, play by play. He sat as I rubbed my thumb into the sleeve of my father’s sweatshirt, at his bedside, begging him to make it to the Alps with me. He sat as I stood on soggy ground, six feet above the person I loved most in the world. He walked on the stage with me at my college graduation, in front of me, as if he was dragging me along, straight to my mother’s somber eyes on the field afterwards, her own dog joining mine.
I eyed him, as my life continued to replay, watching as we followed each other, a twisted dance of sorts. I moved my own mattress. He laid on my chest. I took him on walks. He led me to treats. I put my father’s things in a box. He fetched them without reason. I watched, and I watched our dance, my toes being stepped on now, until there were no longer both of us. Just the black dog.
Everything else was white. I shook with the train and my own emotion, as I watched the dog run alongside the train, like a shadow in a headlight until I watched as the widows behind me flew past him, escaping my only companion. The speaker sounded yet again, but this time it was the voice of a man I’d never heard before. “Destination coming up soon. Please grab your personal items.” I pushed myself to a shaky stand. I traversed down the aisle, as I watched the scenery shift out the window. The solid white quickly escaped my view from the windows as I walked, being replaced with bright highlights and soft shadows of freshly fallen snow on the rocky ledge of the tracks. Standing in front of where I’d woken up I breathlessly looked out the window at the unraveling setting.
Snowy white mountain tops.
The most beautiful view of small slopes, the golden-pink sunset, trees, and ski towns, beginning to light up in the distance by their house lights.
The train began to slow as it approached a small building, crested with untouched snow and enveloped in dark, chocolatey brown wooden siding and a rocky foundation. I grabbed my blanket from below me, now sitting with a pair of red gloves and a dog-eared train ticket that hadn’t been there before. I quickly walked back up the aisle, to the double doors I’d spent the majority of the ride at. I ran my thumb over the puffed out words of the ticket. The Alps. The train finally lulled to a stop in front of the building, and with a soft ding the doors slid open. I bolted out, feet slamming against cold concrete, running through matching wood and rock archways, to the snowy parking lot lined with trees sat in front of me.
Where a car was waiting for me.
A red truck, blaring music I could recite the words to in my sleep, and a driver singing along with now-gray hair and forehead wrinkles.
