The train shuddered as the conductor’s voice popped and bubbled over the intercom. A wave of watery coffee slopped over the edge of Charlie’s cup, spreading across the green linoleum table, wisps of steam twisting towards the ceiling. Charlie twisted his shrunken hands in his lap and gazed out the smeared window. The steady hiss of the train wheels slowed and faded away as they scraped to a stop. He fumbled for his cup, thick, dull fingernails squeaking against the foam. Back creaking, he reached above his head for his cracked leather suitcase. He smoothed his shirt, the linen fabric puckering around a brown stain near the collar. He scratched at it half-heartedly. As the muted chatter of the other passengers drifted away, Charlie put his hands on his thighs and stood up. His calloused hands scratched and scraped at the fabric. Transferring his suitcase to his left hand, he took a sip of coffee, the liquid lukewarm and metallic-tasting. Tiny ripples slid across the glassy surface, results of his quivering hands.
When Charlie stepped onto the pockmarked concrete of the train station, he noticed the chill, much colder than it had been inside the train. The thin skin on his bare arms was immediately covered with goose bumps. He reached for his coat, but noticed that everyone else around him was in jeans and tee shirts, and decided to go without. Charlie ran his hands through his sparse hair, no longer surprised by the sensation of his crumpled scalp brushing against his fingers. His grey eyes scanned the crowds, not pausing to rest on faces. He finally saw his glinting Toyota by the bathrooms. He checked his watch. Only an hour until the meeting.
At 65, he had planned to retire long ago, but what with Rosa’s medical bills, funeral expenses, he had fallen behind. He saw the way the boss looked at him, how his long time colleagues were gradually being replaced by young graduates with better technology skills and better work ethic. Rosa had always said that he was indispensable, but that was before… Charlie missed Rosa, an aching, pulsating pain that resonated somewhere below his collarbone, where his heart used to be. Her battle with cancer had been draining, but she hung on long after she was dead. Charlie could still remember the day he walked into their dim room, saw her laying there, cheeks pasty, lilac lips still.
The floor creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Rosa’s eyes, a beautiful green until the end, swept over him without pause, deep emeralds slipping over him, seeing nothing .He had to strain his eyes to see her thin chest rising and falling. Her body hung on for two weeks after that, but he knew that that was the day her soul left. He didn’t cry, not even at the funeral when he saw her lying in her coffin, gaunt face cakey with powder and blush.
Charlie jammed his key into the door lock, yanked open the door and sat down. The leather seat protested, creaking and groaning. He peeled out of the parking lot and turned left. It was his instinct to veer left again, the route he always took to work, but someone had once told him that the right fork would take him to the same place. He found himself turning down the road less traveled.
A grey fence leaned on one side of the road, threatening to collapse. The road was pale, yellow lines skipped down the middle. A house rose up in the distance, a smudge against the horizon. Charlie began almost imperceptibly slowing down. Stringy grass erupted from the corners of the foundation, ropy weeds pushed through the front deck’s wormy wood. The windows glinted weakly, their edges raw and jagged where they’d been broken. The door hung ajar, swinging lazily on one rusty hinge. The roof was sunken like a failed soufflé, grainy shingles poked out like stubborn teeth.
Rosa had tried to make soufflé once, but their cat Bandit had leapt on it and punctured its swollen golden crust. Rosa had been distraught, swore she would never bake again, but it was still the best soufflé Charlie had ever eaten.
He stopped the car in the middle of the road. Rosa would have liked the house, even the colorful graffiti on the front, a flush of neon that bloomed to the right of the door. She always swore that graffiti was as much an art as any painting in the Louvre, thought maybe she’d like to do some one day. A Big Wheel tricycle with plants deeply rooted in its frame stood static in the yard, the plastic warped from the sun. Charlie debated going into the house, exploring a little, but decided against it. He knew the house would remain dark and desolate, not light up like when Rosa would stomp inside. Rosa always wanted to go into every sunken house they drove past, claiming it was a piece of history. Sometimes she would joke about moving in.
“There’s a fixer-upper, perfect for us!” She would exclaim, like dilapidated houses were a game of I Spy. She loved I Spy. Charlie could almost hear her voice right then and there. He thought that those old structures were safety hazards and eyesores, but Rosa was stubborn, would just go in on her own if he refused. Of course he never let her go investigate alone, he had to go with her and make sure she was safe.
His cracked lips scraped apart to form a smile as he thought of Rosa scrambling over couches and boxes, in her floral dress and motorcycle boots, those black boots that she wore almost every day .The leather was cracked and oily, the buckles had lost their shine, and the soles squeaked as she trotted back in forth. He would plod behind her, head down, hands in pockets, going around boxes instead of over.
Rosa was everything that Charlie wasn’t, spontaneous and bubbly. He was a contemplative owl, she was an energetic sparrow, twittering her song to anyone who stopped long enough to listen. More often than not the houses were empty, no mystery or story to be found, but sometimes they found something that Rosa could twist and stretch enough into a clue or hint from the past. Once in a while they would come upon holey furniture covered in dusty plastic sheets, or old food in the kitchen, still-heavy bottles of Hershey’s Syrup and wine. Rosa always wanted to take everything they found home with them, but she only succeeded in persuading him once, when she found a musty cuckoo clock tucked behind a soggy cardboard box. The clock didn’t work, the cuckoo was missing, but Rosa had insisted, her lip pooching out so far, a bird could’ve perched on it. The clock had made the rest of the drive home with them, stinking up the car with the smell of mothballs and wet dirt.
Charlie smiled at the memory. He still had that cuckoo clock on the mantle at home. He’d polished it and given it a new pendulum, but years of neglect had left it back where it began, dull and forgotten. It stopped ticking the previous spring, the crooked second hand suddenly still, leaving a dense, concrete silence. After that, he never touched it again. Charlie thought he felt and a hand on his shoulder and looked to the side, but no one was there. The car smelled suddenly, inexplicably, of mothballs. A tear tumbled down his craggy cheek.
He sat there for a long time.