It came from my notebook: The train
The letter from your father leads you to a train. It's at a station you don't recognize, in a side of town you don't remember but at a platform that memory tells that you've seen somewhere before, maybe in a picture or a magazine.
You pack an overnight bag and smoke two cigarettes as you read the note twice over, analyzing the lazily looping script and the coffee rings crinkling the edges. Your father tells you he's sorry that he's left your mother but that he's gone away for good reason, to an address in Bakerfield where he's holed up. He wants to come, because you're his son and he loves you and when you're ready, you'll need to find him. There's much he must tell you.
You remind yourself your father is a liar. Then you remind yourself that your father is dead and drink a cup of black-tar coffee and you don't sleep, too busy rubbing the tired from your eyes to be tempted by the bed. Holding the letter, postmarked on the 16th, you tell yourself that you know better about things like this. In fact, you swear it, like you swore to your mother that you'd burn the damn thing when you found her crying in the kitchen, reading it twice with mascara running down her face.
"I'll fix it," you told her. "Whatever it is, I'll fix it."
"You have to destroy this," she said, clasping your arm like a bony vice. "Please. Just don't read it, whatever you do."
So maybe that makes you a liar, in your own way. Still you pack your bag and buy a train ticket, even though you swear you know better about that too, handing money to a heavy-set woman behind sweat-smudged glass. Her face is barely discernable from behind six months of handprints, except for dark plum-colored lipstick and eyes like a basset hound. You tell yourself not to expect anything and get on the six-thirty train headed east for Bakerfield. Before the train departs you leave a message on your mother's phone, explaining how you're going to go away for a bit. How you're going to get to the bottom of this and how you'll be home in a few days, and how she shouldn't worry, just take care, you love her.
When you hang up you pray that your lies don't choke you anymore than they already have.
