Fanguella's Last Train Ride

Fanguella sat at the table across from Richard. She was remembering another trip, long ago that she had taken by train. After spending three years with her aunt in Montreal, her parents arranged for her to return to them. She had been nine. She believes now that her parents had never meant for her to have been gone so long, but that time had just flown into itself, passing one week into another, until they suddenly remembered that they had another little girl. Her parents were neither old nor young, nor especially rich or poor when they had had children. They were not addicted to drug, and they were not violent. They simply had no idea how to take care of their children. They got overwhelmed when Fanguella’s little sister was born when Fanguella was five, and when a brother was born two years later, Fanguella assumed that they simply grew accustomed to the chaos. Realizing that it would not eventually alleviate, they suddenly decided to take Fanguella back from her lengthy visit. Fanguella shook her head to pull herself back to the present, and she looked at Richard.
"That meant nothing to you. I know that. And it is ok." Fanguella had to say it. She wanted no lies, no false affection, especially right now when she was still feeling so vulnerable. Something about the train created a ruckus in her stomach. Bubbles, and a tightening, her mouth gone dry. This can't be happening to me. Not me, not now, but already she could feel her throat tightening over a lump, and her eyes well up. He's going to think it's about him and it is not. I just don't want to be alone, not again, not like the last time. Things are different now. I'm a grown woman. Independent, strong, alone but not lonely, and not desperate. But she was feeling desperate. Auntie Lorraina sending her away, and her mind screaming not again! Why won't anyone keep me! I'll be good I won’t cry, I won't ever cry again. I'll be good, I’ll listen. You won't have to nag me to cut my nails, I'll let you do it, and I won’t even complain. I'll let you read the paper in the morning without even talking. "Fanguella, really, aren't you exaggerating? You should be happy, your going back to be with your parents. You don't want to be with me.” But she had tears in her eyes. Fanguella felt a glimmer of hope. She fell into a fantasy at the time that Aunty Loraina wanted her to live with her, and her parents did too. That they wanted her all along, but her aunty wouldn't let them have her back. She took the train all by herself. She was nine. She had spent three years with her aunty, and she had been happy there. There was a little girl upstairs that she was sometimes friends with. An older girl, who would play with her when there weren't any other kids around to play with. "I just got my period the girl had told her proudly, pushing the little buds of her breasts out, talking loud enough for the boys at the skating rink to hear her. Fanguella had felt a mixture of awe and embarrassment. She felt worse then embarrassed on her train ride back to her parents. She felt mortified. She imagined herself being sent back in dishonor, like she was supposed to fill some unknown purpose, someone else’s void, or perhaps she was not the kind of little girl that people want to have around. Not her aunty, not her parents. And she fought even harder to keep the tears from falling. Instead, she felt sick to her stomach, her whole little body tight with fear and anticipation. The thought of her parents made her ache. She wished she too had something big to tell them, like that she was a woman now, and had her period and they had missed everything, they weren't there. They didn't come to visit when she got her tonsils out. They never came to get her when that first summer had finished.
When Fanguella had gotten home, she was welcomed warmly then simply forgotten. The new baby, whom she had first blamed for her rejection was now three years old, and a new baby had arrived while she had been gone. She felt as though her parents loved her in an absentminded way. A pat on the head while they ran off to work, to a party, to poker night. Frazzled, her mother came to depend on her more and more to care for the younger children. Fanguella came to feel that she had been called back to hold the fragments of their family together, it was her job to keep everything from falling apart. She complied for about a year, while she continued to hope to be noticed, loved and cared for. Her parents continued to fade in and out of the house, leaving her alone to baby-sit, yet still a child scared of the dark herself. Fanguella could feel a hard cornel begin to form inside her. Her body felt hard with it, unforgiving. She began to leave the baby to cry herself to sleep. She left the four year old hungry in the morning, until her father finally got up to feed her, all the while her mother in the background, “well where is Fanguella, can't she hear that her sisters’ hungry” It was then that the panic attacks had started. Won’t feed the kids, won’t change the baby, won’t baby sit. Will they throw her out now that she was of no use? They didn't throw her out, but she did get a lot less notice. Still there were still some times when her mother taught her how to play cards, and her father liked to read the newspaper to her. And life went on. But she could never forget their earlier betrayal. The horror of those train trips, always being sent away from someone. Even now, she wondered what has she left undone, what more was expected of her. Had she done something wrong, telling Richard not to lie to her? She fluctuated between that hard inner kernel that held her head up and kept her tone honest in that selfish uncaring way, but on this train ride now, she could feel that she had not always been that way, she could feel herself as the little girl she had been curling in upon herself, all her tender caring turning in upon herself, with a bitterness that made her honest but cruel. You’re dead little girl, she whispered inside her mind, go away and depend on no one. Not Richard, not Andrea for dying, not mom dad or aunty Loraina. Your hard, she told herself as she forced her chin up to look calmly into Richards eyes, and miraculously, she stopped her tears from falling.
"I prefer not to proscribe any meaning to anything right away, I usually like to digest an experience before providing commentary. Sometimes that means I'm dishonest in what I don't say. Can I apologize for that ahead of time and be done with it?" "Very cute" Fanguella managed to say. The lump in her throat had subsided. "I don't follow those rules though.” She continued. “ I'll come right out and say that at least for now, why not be cuddle companions, at least for this trip?" "Can that include a little sex on the side?" "Well, some cuddles, are closer then others” She smiled. This was good distraction. She could feel her breathing becoming slower; she had managed to distract herself out of her anxious state. She is rarely that lucky. "Do you know, I loved the feel of your lips around my cock." Richard started, whispering across the table, in his now famous phone sex voice. “I love your naked body” Fanguella started, but just then, Pierre who had finally gotten up enough nerve to enter the dinner car, was just passing their table and turned shocked eyes on her.
“Don't make fun, madam! You cannot blame me for my dreams, can you? I am afraid that I am already dreadfully mortified." He lowered his eyes, and Fanguella and Richard looked at each other; Richard trying not to laugh, Fanguella, struggling with a different emotion entirely, "You, mister are a completely disgusting pervert and should be reported! I had no idea that you would be so rude as to sit underneath our berth and listen in to our personal and private matters!" This time it was Pierre who looked shocked, "You mean to say that you were engaged in, you were, doing... In a public train! "He didn't seem to know what to say after that, and was in fact so shocked that his eyes bugged out and his face turned bright red, and all he could do was gape at them for a moment before rushing from where he stood, to the table that was farthest from them. Fanguella and Richard could no longer hold in the laughter. All the stories that came out from that exchange, of things assumed that were really unknown, became too much for them, and they laughed so uproariously that other patrons who were entering the dinner car looked at them strangely. “So much for talking dirty,” Richard said, glancing around the tiny dinner car. Anything they said would have been heard by any other patrons. Fanguella took that moment to bring up something about his club that she had been thinking about.