Page 21

Wendell Comstock hadn’t had this much fun since he was ten.

It had been several days since he’d made his initial purchases, but he’d returned to Choo-Choo’s Trains a few times since.

What he had accomplished in such a short time was, in his own estimation, pretty goddamn amazing.

His intention, as he’d told Edwin Nabler, had been to use his Ping-Pong table in the basement as the base for his model train

empire. He put down a roll of grass-like carpet, staple-gunned it into place, then assembled a large oval of track with two

sidings. With some sheets of black cardboard he created a street, which he lined with several assembled building kits. The

transformer was notched into a corner of the table, two wires running between it and the track, plus the cord that ran to

the wall outlet.

Wendell had been spending most of his time, once he had come home from work and shoveled dinner down his throat, in the basement.

It was, he soon realized, just what he had needed, because Wendell had been looking for more than something to entertain himself.

He had been looking for a refuge.

Things were not all that great on the home front. He and Nadine had been married almost ten years now, and whatever spark there’d been in this marriage had fizzled some time ago. The truth was, they were never really meant for each other. They’d gone out a few times while both attending Middlebury College, had a few drinks one night, and a few weeks later Nadine broke the news to him that she was pregnant. They were both from religious families, and even though it was the nineties, supposedly a time when young people felt liberated from so many social conventions, they felt under pressure to do the right thing and get hitched. Wendell left Middlebury before getting his degree and found a job in Lucknow. With financial help from Nadine’s parents—her father ran a savings and loan—they bought a house. They had two cars in the garage and an apple tree in the backyard. A perfect couple, about to embark on life’s great adventure. They had it all except for the picket fence out front.

And then, in her third month, Nadine lost the baby.

It was a devastating time for Wendell and Nadine. They were enveloped in a great sadness, but that gave way over time to resentment.

But, as it turned out, Wendell discovered that he enjoyed being a husband. There was a sense of fulfillment in having someone

to care for, in being part of a union. And if he didn’t love Nadine as deeply as he might have wished when they exchanged

vows, he was hopeful that in time he would.

If only Nadine had felt the same.

She had married this man because she was having his child, and now she wasn’t. She never said out loud what she was thinking.

That she wanted out. That she didn’t want to spend her life with this man if she didn’t have to. Some couples, desperate to

have a child, would have tried again, but Nadine didn’t want to do that. But what could she do? Her parents had bought them

this house. What would she say to them? She knew, at some level, she had disgraced them by getting pregnant, and to find a

way to escape this marriage now would only make things worse.

Nadine resigned herself to this life. She would go through the motions, make the best of it. But she didn’t have to love this man. She didn’t even have to like him. She believed that she could tolerate him. Where was it written that you were entitled to be happy?

Wendell gradually resigned himself to a similar conclusion. It wasn’t so much that he gave up on the idea of one day loving

Nadine. It was as though love had given up on him. While they shared quarters, while they slept in the same bed, they were

strangers to one another. They both went off to work in the morning and both came home at night. They each had their assigned

duties and stuck to them.

It was a life.

Nadine kept herself busy most evenings. If it wasn’t book club, it was a lecture series, or a Thai cooking class. Wendell

would plunk himself in front of the television, eating microwaved popcorn, picking something from his library of VHS tapes,

like Ghostbusters or Jurassic Park or the two Batman movies starring Michael Keaton. Movies Nadine had no appreciation for, movies she thought were, basically,

stupid.

He was, he believed, living with a low-level depression, although he had not been clinically diagnosed. And he was pretty

sure Nadine was, too.

Then came the trains. And the strangest, most wonderful thing happened.

Wendell had expected her to be, if not flat-out annoyed by his newfound interest, at the very least dismissive. You’re a grown man , he’d figured she would say. Am I married to a child?

But she turned out to be interested .

She eyed him curiously the night he took his new purchases to the basement. She perched herself on the top of the stairs,

out of sight, watching what he was up to. The second night, she came all the way down, pulled up a chair as he set about nailing

track down to the table.

“You know,” she said, “I don’t know whether I’ve ever told you this, but I had a dollhouse when I was little.”

“Did you?”

She nodded at the recollection.

“I loved it. Two stories, with gingerbread trim. A kitchen and living and dining rooms downstairs, two bedrooms, and a bathroom

upstairs, and a staircase. I must have spent a million hours imagining I lived inside it, and now I don’t even know what happened

to it. Sometime in my teens, long after I’d stopped playing with it, my mother must have gotten rid of it. It wasn’t like

some pink Barbie house. It looked so real, and the furniture was the most exquisitely detailed stuff. Armoires and love seats

and carpets and a little chandelier that hung over the dining room table. It had everything.”

“That sounds like so much fun,” her husband said.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, went up to the kitchen, and returned minutes later with a plate of saltine crackers and slices

of Cracker Barrel cheddar. While they were having their snack, Nadine offered to assemble one of the building kits.

Wendell was hesitant at first. “It’s okay,” Nadine said. “You want to do it yourself.”

“No, you know what? Go ahead.” He found a box containing all the pieces for a post office. “Do this one. It just snaps together,

I think. Doesn’t need any glue or paint.”

She had it built in twenty minutes. “Do you have any more?”

The third night, Wendell snuck down to the basement before dinner, making some last-minute preparations. Made sure all the

electrical connections were good, the engine and cars sitting properly on the track, the throttle plugged in and ready to

go. He went to the base of the stairs and called up: “ All aboard! ”

Nadine appeared at the top of the stairs. “It’s ready?”

“We are good to go.”

He gave her a thumbs-up and she came down the stairs at a gallop. In her enthusiasm, one foot got caught on the other and

she tripped.

She let out a scream as she embarked on a headlong plunge down the stairs.

But Wendell was there, and he bolted up the first two steps, held out his arms, and caught her. She flung her arms around

his neck.

“Oh my God,” she said, panting. “I could have broken my neck.”

Wendell’s heart was beating as furiously as hers. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. That was close.” And before she unwrapped her arms from around him, she looked into his eyes, put her lips to his,

and kissed him. Their stairway embrace lasted for several seconds until Nadine finally loosened her hold on him and said,

“Show me your engine, big boy.”

“Which one?” he replied.

They shared a giggle, then he took her hand and led her the rest of the way down the steps. She took a seat while he went

to the transformer and eased the throttle ahead.

The locomotive slowly began to move.

Chuff... chuff... chuff... chuff...

“I love the sound,” Nadine said.

As Wendell gave the engine more power, its huffing and puffing grew more hurried.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Wendell pressed a red button on the transformer.

Woowoo !

“A whistle!” Nadine said. “Does it make any other noises?”

Wendell smiled, pressed another button.

Dingdingding !

Nadine grinned. “I love the engine sound the most. That chuffchuffchuff . There’s something about it. It’s almost... soothing, you know?”

“I do,” he said as the train went around and around and around. He put his hand on the throttle and started to slow the train

down.

“No,” Nadine said, eyes locked on the train as it made its repetitive journey. “Make it go. Don’t let it stop.”

Wendell powered the train back to its original speed and looked with no small amount of wonder at how transfixed Nadine was.

They’d found something in common, something that brought them together. Something kind of silly , Wendell conceded to himself. Even he was willing to admit toy trains were an odd thing for them to bond over after all these

years, but what the hell. For the first time in years, he felt something unfamiliar.

He was happy .

Whenever Wendell was out, Nadine would slip downstairs, turn on the train, sit in the chair, and watch it go around. The times

they spent in the basement together were not enough for her. She wanted more. She couldn’t quite understand it, but she wanted

to listen to the train travel around its loop all the time. She would be upstairs, watching TV or sitting at the kitchen table

paying bills, when suddenly she would get up, go downstairs, turn on the transformer, and let ’er rip.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

The sound started boring into her brain, like the sound of a cicada on a hot summer’s day.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Just as she’d indicated to Wendell, it was a soothing sound. Intoxicating, even. Akin to some yoga-like mantra. When she listened

to it, her stresses evaporated. She was in the moment.

So when Wendell said he would be gone all of Sunday, that he’d promised to help a friend from college who was thinking of buying a new house and wanted Wendell to have a look at it, Nadine could not have been more excited. On Saturday, at the sidewalk sale, she had gone to the bakery and bought a couple of chocolate chip muffins at Len’s, and Sunday morning, moments after Wendell had departed, she made herself a pot of coffee.

Nadine felt an excitement unlike any she had ever felt before. And also, just a little guilty. It was like she was having

an affair. She was going to play with the trains alone . Without her husband.

Was this cheating? And if it was, so what?

She took her coffee and a muffin on a plate and descended the stairs to the basement. She checked that the transformer was

plugged in, turned it on, which brought up the headlight on the engine. Before turning the throttle, she leaned over so she

could look directly into the light.

She stared for several seconds, not blinking.

The light stared back.

A few more seconds passed before Nadine quietly said, “Okay.”

She cranked the throttle and the train began to move. She took her seat, had a sip of coffee, and nibbled on the muffin.

And watched.

And listened.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

The more she listened to the engine huffing and puffing, she started to hear something... else. It was like listening to

a song, where you think there are lyrics behind the lyrics. Hidden words. Or maybe, if you played the song backward, you’d pick up on something you’d never realized was

there.

Chuffchuffchuffchuffchuff

She pulled her chair up to the edge of the Ping-Pong table, her ear so close to the track that it seemed to tingle with electricity. She felt the train pushing air out of the way as it flew past her head.

Chuffchuffenoughchuffenoughchuffchuff

Wait, what was that?

She held her breath, not wanting even the sound of her own breathing to interfere with what she was trying to pick up on.

If she could have stopped her heart, she would have.

Chuffchuffenoughchuffenoughchuffchuff

Yes, there was definitely something there.

Chuffenoughchuffenoughchuffenough

It was becoming clearer. She took a breath, held it again.

Enoughchuffenoughchuffenoughenoughenough

Even clearer now. She felt a wave of expectation rush through her, as though she were on the brink of a great discovery. If

she were to have looked at a clock, she would have learned that she had been sitting down here for more than three hours.

Enoughisenoughisenoughisenoughisenoughisenough

And there it was.

Enough is enough.

She sat back up in the chair, nodding to herself. The words were a revelation. No, not a revelation.

They were a confirmation .

They told her everything she already knew to be true. She’d been living this lie for far too long. This was no life. How could

she continue such an existence? There came a time when you had to decide how much more you were willing to endure, how much

more you were going to take.

Enough was enough.

She got up from the chair and turned back the throttle. The locomotive came to a stop. She flipped a switch to turn off the trans former, disconnected the wires that led from it to the track, then unplugged the unit from the wall, looping the cord about it. She took up to the kitchen the coffee mug and the plate that was now littered with chocolate chip muffin crumbs, put them into the dishwasher, and, seeing that she had a pretty full load in there, filled the detergent dispenser with some powdered Calgonite, closed the door, and hit the on button.

She returned to the basement and found a short extension cord. She took it, as well as the unplugged transformer—which was

heavier than she expected it to be—to the second floor of the house. She set them on the bed, then went into the bathroom,

shoved the stopper into the bathtub drain, and turned on the taps.

She held her hand under the running water, adjusting the two knobs to get the temperature just right. She liked a hot bath,

but not too hot. Once she had the water flowing into the tub at the desired temperature, she returned to the bedroom and disrobed.

Naked, she went back into the bathroom, taking the extension cord and the transformer with her. She set them on the counter

next to the sink, then dipped her hand into the water to see how it felt.

Perfect. She turned off the taps, giving them both a good twist to make sure they would not drip.

Nadine knew the transformer cord would be too short for her purposes, which was why she had brought along the short extension.

She plugged it into an outlet by the sink, the one she used for her hair dryer and curling iron and toothbrush charger. Then

she plugged the transformer cord into its other end and set the transformer on the edge of the tub at the end close to the

taps.

She turned the transformer on, then turned the throttle to the maximum setting. It made a low-level buzzing noise. The red

light on top glowed brightly.

Nadine put one foot into the tub, then the other, then slowly lowered herself into the water. She stretched out, the water coming up to her neck.

The transformer continued to buzz.

Nadine raised her left leg out of the water and touched her big toe to the outer edge of the transformer.

“Enough is enough,” she said to herself, then nudged the transformer slowly to the edge until it tipped and dropped into the

water with a splash.