Christina's World: by Curtis Fincher

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Christina’s World

BY CURTIS FINCHER

It had been five weeks since the accident, and on this rainy morning, as with

many since that day, Christina made herself as small as she could against the right side of

her bed and tried not to cry. This was her life now, and to get all worked up over some

water falling down from the sky was more than silly: it was stupid. Still though, she

couldn’t help it. Had Joseph even noticed the rain that morning? Lying in bed with him,

listening to the drops fall against their roof, why hadn’t it occurred to her for the briefest

of moments that maybe it was this morning, after forty-two years of his sight and touch

and warmth, that everything would end? And if it had, if she had known, what would she

have done differently? How would she have held him? What would she have whispered?

These were the thoughts Christina increasingly found herself lost in, and she

knew it wasn’t healthy, but what else was there to think about? Her life was gone because

her life had been with Joseph. Without him there was no her. Forty-two years taken in a

single morning and replaced only with a fleshy hole in her chest that her breath had to

rattle and wheeze through every time she inhaled. The reality of it all, the finality of

everything… it just knocked the wind out of her: this was her life now. And it had been

ever since she answered the phone that rainy morning and learned that a train, of all

things, had hit and killed her husband and grandson.

The only explanation anybody could really come up with was that he must have

stalled. But on railroad tracks? He just happened to stall on railroad tracks? A train comes

up faster than you realize, they said. It’s only about ten seconds between when you can

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first see it down the line and when it’s right on top of you. Still, he just stayed on the

tracks? Could it have been suicide? No, of course not. Joseph loved life more than most.

And anyways, he’d never in a million worlds take Dylan with him; Christina was sure of

that if nothing else. He loved the boy dearly. But why didn’t he get out of the car? Was it

a heart attack? Could he not get his seatbelt off? Were his eyes wide or was his mind

elsewhere and at peace? Did he hear the sound of crushing metal from a life away? Had

he thought of her before it was too late?

There were so many questions. So many things she wanted to know, to ask him,

and the only answers she knew for sure was that her husband and grandson were dead

and that her daughter wouldn’t speak to her. Addison hadn’t even gone to Joseph’s

funeral. And Christina couldn’t really blame her. It was the boy. The boy made

everything so much more complicated. Why did Dylan have to be in that car? Christina

felt guilty that somewhere deep inside her she acknowledged Dylan’s death for what it

was: a wrench in the machine of what should have been a quiet and dignified death for

her husband. If an old man dies it’s sad; if a child dies it’s news. Dylan had meant the

local paper. Dylan had meant people talking. Dylan had meant she didn’t have a daughter

to help her through the death of her husband.

Christina had called Addison at work with the news as soon as she heard. Joseph

had been taking Dylan to school when it happened. Something he did every morning

since Addison needed to get the law firm early because Mr. Bloom, her boss, liked to

have his meetings and bagel with cream cheese and lox on his desk by the time he came

in at seven-thirty. So really, when Christina thought about it, the person truly at fault here

was Mr. Bloom. Or Joel, Dylan’s father and Addison’s ex-husband, who used to take

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Dylan in every day but now was now living on Long Island with an old high school

girlfriend he had become reacquainted with through the internet. When she called

Addison, Christina had tried as hard as she could to keep her voice from quivering, but

how many people had ever had to tell their daughter that both her son and father were

dead? She wished it were Joseph calling about her. She wished it were anything else.

Those first couple hours after the news all happened in slow motion.

“Addison, baby, are you there?”

“What’s wrong, Mom? What is it?”

“Addison, where are you right now?”

“Mom, tell me what’s going on. You’re freaking me out.”

When she did, there was silence, and then the line went dead. Suicide, Addison

was sure it was suicide. And she thought her dad was a sick fuck for deciding to take her

baby boy with him. The only contact Addison had made with her since the accident was a

letter she sent a week after Dylan’s funeral where Christina hadn’t even tried to approach

her. I hope you understand Mom, in many ways you are more responsible for what

happened than Dad is. I hope you understand that this was coming, and I hope that

someday you can admit that to yourself. Nothing was ever beautiful. Nothing was ever

perfect. The problem was how badly you always wanted it to be.

Christina remained in bed for another two hours until her alarm went off, lying on

her side as she watched a cold and dreary daylight slide through her linen curtains and fill

the room. When she got up, she moved slowly: first sitting up and sliding her legs off the

bed, then standing, then walking. Her feet looked small and wrinkled against the

hardwood underfoot. She took a long, very hot shower. She had been doing that a lot

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these days, and even with the knob all the way to the right, she couldn’t tell if the water

burnt her skin. After she dried off, she wrapped herself in a towel and walked back to her

bedroom, unwilling to look at the sags and specks that come with a body of age. She

dressed in front of a large oak dresser that had been a wedding present from her father.

Only a year or two ago Joseph had re-stained the wood and it now shined with a deep

brown luster. On the dresser was a large mirror with a matching frame, and while she

dressed Christina looked into her own eyes and spoke.

“Joseph, I know you think I’m crazy when I do this.” She sighed. “I just miss you

so much, and even though you’re watching me, you’re so far away. This makes me feel

closer to you. This reminds me of how close I still am to you.” She squeezed her eyes

closed. “Baby, speak. Don’t be afraid, please, don’t ever be afraid. You can tell me

anything.”

After she had put on a white knitted sweater and a pair of jeans, she opened the

top right dresser drawer and took out a dark green scarf. She raised it to her nose and

inhaled before wrapping it around her neck and knotting the front.

“Don’t laugh at me, silly.” She smiled and dabbed at her eyes. “I know it’s a

man’s scarf. But it’s yours.”

Christina was a music teacher at Westtown Day, a small private all-girls school

with stone buildings, close-cropped lawns, and a scenic overlook of Brandywine creek.

Since the accident, her better students had found her distant and uncritical. She rarely

made them warm up anymore, or repeat an entire song because one part was off, or do

anything of the sort that had made her such a frustrating but respected teacher. Today, she

chose one of the better girls to lead the group while she hummed along and closed her

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eyes. After most songs she would open them, look around the room, and offer in a tiny

voice, girls, that was very nice.

Her students couldn’t know this, but when Christina, or Mrs. Bernard as they

called her, shut her eyes, she was no longer in the choir room. Instead, she was with

Joseph and they were always under beautiful clear blue skies. She was nineteen and on

the Pennsylvania-Dutch farm she had grown up on, giddy with laughter watching a plane

she would later recognize as a P-40 come bouncing to a stop in their cow pasture. Joseph

had broken formation on a practice flight out from Annapolis and had come to see her.

She asked if he would get in trouble. Yes he had said, but when I was up there I decided I

couldn’t go another minute without proposing to you.

She was twenty-four and on a dock, trying to stand still enough to feel like an

adult while hundreds of girls wearing white gloves just like hers leaned over the railing

and stared at the ship, a behemoth of steel too high for her to see the deck. It had docked

an hour ago and it was taking so long, so very long to get the soldiers off. But then there

he was in his dull blue uniform, and somehow he had known just where she would be

waiting for him. He walked over, held the small of her back, and kissed her before either

of them could think to say a word. Her legs went limp but he held her up as though she

was weightless. She felt just like a girl from a poster.

She was laying in a golden field and the air smelled like fall. The hay beneath her

bristled and pricked her skin through the light dress she was wearing. She was looking

towards a house on top of a hill several hundred yards away. It was made of wood,

weathered gray, and she could see the front door was open. Somebody was home, she

was certain. She wanted to stand but her limbs felt heavy. The breeze was crisp and

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tickled her thighs and forearms; she looked down at her hands and tried to move her

fingers. She was… she was… she was in the choir room again and she couldn’t

remember what song they had been singing. Girls, she said, that was very nice.

Her appetite had decreased and she didn’t like eating lunch with the other teachers

anymore. They studied her when they thought she wouldn’t notice. She had taken to

eating an apple during lunch hour while walking the school’s grounds. Today, she tied

her scarf around her neck and walked slowly. The air was heavy and damp with cold but

it had stopped raining. She didn’t use the cobblestone paths, instead walking over the

grass and studying the droplets of water that seeped down and into the brown leather of

her shoes. When she bit into the apple, she removed it from her mouth delicately, careful

for the juice not to run onto her hand. When she got to its core, she walked up to the base

of a large oak tree. The leaves were beginning to fall and many were slicked flat against

the ground. Christina knelt down and used both hands to scoop out a shallow hole in the

crook of the tree’s base. She laid the core gently in the hole and then packed the wet dirt

over it, pressing down firmly when she was done.

Later, in the bathroom, she couldn’t get the dirt out from under her fingernails.

The fluorescent lighting overhead cast a shadow behind her. She held her own eyes in the

mirror.

“Joseph,” she whispered, glancing quickly towards the bathroom door. “They

treat me like I’m crazy, Joseph, but I know you can hear me, I know you can see me.

They don’t understand baby, but I know it right as rain.” She scrubbed her hands

furiously and picked at her nails with her front teeth. A tear fell down her cheek. “Honey,

please. I just want to hear your voice. I just want to understand.”

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When it was time to go home, Christina drove to the train tracks. She had not let

herself come here before, instead driving deliberately longer routes whenever she needed

to pass the tracks. Now, she felt that she had to, and when she pulled out of Westtown’s

parking lot she did not immediately understand the reason she turned left when her home

was to the right. It took her five minutes to realize where she was going, but when she

did, she did not turn around. When she arrived, she pulled her car off to the shoulder of

the road ten or fifteen feet short of the railroad, which was too old and rural to have a

crossing sign. She knew the area well, and had imagined this scene many times since the

accident, but it did not compare to her being here now. Pyle’s Ford was a thin two-lane

road that wound through and over the picturesque hills of Eastern Pennsylvania. It met

the track, which ran perpendicular to the road, at the cusp of a large and rolling valley.

Christina had always supposed the track was laid here because the crest between the hill

behind and the valley in front was the only level ground available, but she had never

noticed how pretty it was.

Some rain clouds had cleared as the day went on and in the late afternoon light the

view was beautiful. The hills beneath her were filled with grass and feed corn, vibrant in

their yellows and greens even from the distance. The fields faded into forest, and the

backdrop of falling leaves blurred together into vague and warm amber paint strokes. A

V-shaped flock of geese flew by overhead, their honks echoing into nothing as they

passed through the emptiness of the sky and into the horizon. The world; it was all so

gorgeous and overwhelmingly alive, but she also understood that it was brutally and

entirely indifferent to her existence and suffering. She took a deep breath of the heavy air.

This was life: this experience. Not her, not the world, but the interaction between the two.

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Christina walked out onto the tracks, bending down and feeling the chilled, wet touch of

the rusted iron. She looked up to the left and then to the right but saw only plies fading

out of sight in either direction: the track bent out and away from the valley on both sides,

obscuring sight after a hundred yards or so. She picked at the dirt underneath her

fingernail. Joseph would have loved this view.

“Dear, I’m right here. I feel you here too, I know you’re watching and listening.

Tell me what it was, tell me what to do. I only want to be close to you.”

She moved up the tracks slowly, tiptoeing over the gravel and balancing on one

ply at a time. She walked a couple feet off to her left and picked up a broken piece of

hard black plastic she saw lying on the ground. It was small and jagged, no more than

four or five inches in any direction.

“Is this a part of you? Is this a part of what happened here? Joseph, talk to me,

please, please, just talk to me. I need you. I can’t live without you because you’re me and

I’m you. Don’t you understand baby? I know you’re listening. I know because love is

stronger than death and flesh and mangled bones, and our love, honey, it was perfect. It

was from a fairy tale. And if you can hear me, well then, I’m willing to wait an eternity

for the answer. For you.”

The world was silent except for the breeze. And then, as though in response,

Christina heard the bellow of a train whistle in the distance. She took a step back onto the

track and squeezed the sharp edge of the plastic into the flesh of her palm. Nothing

moved, but Christina was sure that she could feel the vibration of the approaching train

resonating up her legs and into the pit of her stomach. She turned towards the whistle and

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shut her eyes. She held onto the plastic with both hands and pulled it in tightly against her

sternum. She felt her bangs flutter against her eyes in the wind.

She was fifty-seven and standing on the inside edge of a large ring of people

watching Joseph dance with Addison: her and Joel were getting married. Joseph was

smiling and resting his head against Addison’s shoulder; Addison had her head and right

hand against his chest. They both had their eyes closed and wore smiles of happy sorrow:

smiles of nostalgia and life itself, smiles of being so grateful for the blessing of true

beauty that it could make you cry but smiles that twisted your stomach with how sad it

was that all beauty on this earth must one day end. Christina realized tears streaked her

face. The music carried them lightly about the room, and when the song ended, Joseph

pulled Addison into him and whispered in her ear. The next song, wearing the same sad

smile, he would dance with Christina and tell her that she had given him all he ever

wanted from life.

She was thirty-two and had just come home from the grocery store. Joseph sat on

the sofa in the family room. It was three o’clock and he should have been at work. On the

coffee table in front of him stood an empty tumbler and an opened fifth of Maker’s. His

father, an abusive and spiteful alcoholic, had just died from lung cancer. Joseph’s lip was

upturned and trembling. He said that he couldn’t remember the last time he told his father

that he loved him. Christina said that she’d do absolutely whatever he needed to help him

through this. He walked over and kissed her forehead. His breath smelled of rye and

sweat. Just be you he said.

She was in the field. Night was falling against the golden grain around her,

making the ground below her hazy and indefinite. The air had chilled, and her hand

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reached out for the house on the hill. Her whole body felt heavy and molten. A light

shone through the open front door, broken by a man’s silhouette.

“Joseph,” she whispered.

A train whistle blasted through the air. The world shook. She was standing on the

tracks again and a train was rounding the corner in front of her and coming into sight. She

wondered if it could be the same one Joseph had seen. She started to count.

Ten.

A train comes up faster than you realize, they said.

Nine.

The engine grew in size as the train plowed closer. She couldn’t see the sides.

Eight.

She cringed and imagined what it would be like to be struck, and wondered at

exactly what point she would no longer be, technically, alive. She wondered if it

would hurt.

Seven.

She saw forty-two different years and the thousand mundane tasks that make up a

life together; she saw Joseph drive a car, cook a dinner, make love.

Six.

She saw the field, the light, the open door.

Five.

She felt weightless. The world felt empty.

Four.

She was light and sky.

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Three.

The whistle screamed.

Two.

She took a decisive step off of the track and angled her body parallel to the now

passing train. Her shoulders convulsed in and out on themselves, she gasped for

breath.

One.

Christina listened to screeching metal and felt the wind of the passing cars on her

face. She reached out with the piece of plastic and let it skim along the edge of a boxcar

before it caught an edge and was thrown from her hand. She stayed there, watching, until

the last boxcar trailed off into the distance. She lifted her scarf from around her neck and

pressed it against her face, taking deep and measured breaths. She stood off the side of

the track until her body stopped trembling, and watched as a line of shadow moved in

from the trees and across the fields, inch by inch, until finally the sun dropped below the

hills and she was under shadow too. Christina stayed there, waiting for an answer, until

night fell and she saw the last rays of sunlight fade from the night sky and scatter apart

into a thousand disparate, beautiful, and utterly perfect directions.

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