We were about halfway home and halfway through the night when the train came to a sudden stop. It wasn’t the standard and orderly kind of stop a train might make at the next station, but the impromptu, screeching kind that pushes the passengers hard against cutting edge of their seatbelts. Drinks and jackets fell to the floor, and as each car finally came to a standstill, we all began to whisper and stand up, looking for answers in every direction.
Had this happened on any other night, the general mood might not have been so dreadful and anxious. Making a journey by train on Christmas Eve doesn’t necessarily rank very high on most people’s list of hopes and dreams. Spending it on a stopped train ranks even lower, and lower still is sharing such misery with your pain-in-the-ass of a little sister.
“Why’d we stop?” she turned to ask me. “And what was that bumping noise?”
I looked at her and found that the joyous expression she had maintained all evening had now been replaced with genuine concern, that inexplicable expression one reserves only for those closest to them. Up until that point, she and I had managed to make the very best of our unwanted train ride from Los Angeles to San Diego, where we would arrive to stay with our father for the Christmas holiday. We passed a good deal of the time speculating about the reasons why our mother had suddenly decided to dump us on a train that evening while she drove to the same destination, which then lead to a lengthy discussion of what was to come under our father’s Christmas tree the following morning. And now here we were, stuck on this halted transit, two people whom had known each other for years yet still managed to be complete strangers.
For the majority of our childhoods, my sister Lindsay and I rarely did anything together. By the time she was born, I was three years old and had already learned to keep myself occupied and entertained in a neighborhood without many other children. I read my books, drew my pictures, and embarked on many an imaginary adventure in the hills and mountain trails surrounding our little yellow house. A few years later, our family moved to Lakeside, a rodeo town east of San Diego, where I was to start kindergarten at the end of the summer. Lindsay was then two years old and was getting her first taste of the wonders of the world around her. Our new neighborhood was far less rural, meaning that there were plenty of children to pick and choose your friends from. While I remained content to keep to myself in my independent exploits, my sister never hesitated to run around the house and neighborhood to see what everyone else was doing. She had no shame in relentlessly questioning someone to the point of sheer annoyance, and she was constantly sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. While I kept my bedroom tidy and organized, she made it a habit to come in and gloriously render my efforts obsolete. I would spend countless hours arranging my colored markers properly along my art easel, only to later discover Lindsay using every inch of her skin and even her tongue as a canvas.
It was pretty clear to anyone and everyone that Lindsay and I shared little more than a similar hair color and facial features, a comparison that only grew with age. I was quiet and kept only a handful of friends, while Lindsay went through them like tissue paper and always made sure that her opinions were clear to all. She played soccer on a number of youth teams, I played videogames on a number of consoles. And as the years went on, I would watched the other kids and their siblings interact like perfect angels, wondering how they could even stomach it.
As we waited for the train to get going again, Lindsay reached across me and pointed out the window. Just below our train car, a small gathering of police officers and firemen huddled, looking about and talking amongst themselves.
In addition to our perfectly opposed personalities, what also kept us apart was that we were never really forced to share the same space. We were both very lucky (or unlucky) in that we never had to share a bedroom. Mine was large, covered in an array of rock n’ roll posters, and had a sliding glass door that led almost directly to the deep end of our swimming pool. Lindsay’s was a former office that had been converted into a bedroom; a sort of makeshift storage room that was never quite right for living in, no matter how you dressed it up. Many of her young years were spent on her audible complaining that I had the superior room, and I held no hesitance in enjoying that sweeter end of her envy. That spacious, carpeted sanctuary was my own personal nirvana, and not just because of the numerous photographs of Kurt Cobain strewn about the hideous wallpaper. For thirteen years, this is where I could escape to and feel that I was one with the universe, comforted by the knowledge that I was taking advantage of something Lindsay could not. She was constantly remodeling and rearranging her own space, often filling the main hallway of the house with her abundance of belongings. But no matter what new picturesque design theme she attempted, it never seemed to subdue her frustration. The more she complained, the less I listened, and I was even happy to reach a certain level of unfamiliarity with her own voice. It gave me an arrogant confidence to feel that Lindsay and I would almost never speak except for birthdays and holidays, a type of relationship that an adult looks back upon with disdainful regret.
Lindsay and I leaned closer to the train window, watching as the firemen came back to the base of our car with tools and large plastic bags.
Once we had both entered our teenage years, our relationship as siblings only became more strained. For as long as I can remember, I have always shared my interests with others and without hesitation. Like my friends, I liked comic books and movies, particularly Star Wars, and was proud to let the world know of my relentless passion. My sister enjoyed trashy talk shows like Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake, but when anyone disagreed with her on the subject, she was quick to place the blame elsewhere.
“Oh, I don’t REALLY watch them,” she’d say in a panic. “But my brother does! All the time!”
When our high school years began, I transferred to a performing arts high school near the San Diego Bay, about thirty miles away from our home. My sister remained at the local public school, and with all of our recitals and soccer games going on, we might as well have not known each other at all. We attended each other’s special events but never willingly, showing just enough enthusiasm to not upset our parents or their new spouses. In recounting these times, I cannot recall a single verbal exchange between us, and I sometimes wonder if the sum of all our interactions from that time could fill even a brief conversation. Going to a different high school in a different town can feel like living in a foreign country, and it would be a fair guess to say that many of my schoolyard peers were not even aware that I had a sibling. And I suppose that on some level, neither did I.
Lindsay and I pressed our faces against the train window, trying to decipher what exactly was all over the front of the firemen’s uniforms. Some kind of liquid, maybe tar or gasoline. Suddenly, the train conductor came into our car, the situation spelled out all over his face.
It was late one night, almost two in the morning, when the phone rang in my college dorm room. Trying to wake suddenly while talking on the phone requires an inhumane amount of effort, and worse still is trying to do so while also trying to calm down your crying mother. It wasn’t typical for my mother to sound so helpless and emotionally wounded, that lowest level of personal destruction that less than a handful of people would ever have access to. We were on the phone for nearly three hours before she finally pulled herself together enough to tell me what had happened. Apparently, there had been trouble at home for some time, but she felt it was best not to worry me while I was busy at college. She and Lindsay had not been getting along. Regular arguments had escalated to fights, and when tensions became just too unbearable, my sister moved out of the house without warning. There didn’t seem to be any one particular problem. Rather, it was all of the problems, and we all began to consider the grim possibility that the only peaceful solution would be complete and lifelong silence. By the time that our conversation was finally winding down, the sun was coming up, though it had seemed that far more time had actually passed. I called my mother again that evening, and then the next, and the next. We spoke every evening for the period of a few months, and each night I sat on the floor of my dorm room, listening to all of the awful places my poor mother was forced to wallow in.
“I’ve failed,” she said to me on countless occasions. “Of all the things I knew could go wrong in my life, I never thought that I could ever fail as a parent.”
In listening to my mother, a divorced and single woman whom had soldiered through raising two children and was now completely alone in her three-bedroom house, I found myself cycling through my own range of unfamiliar emotions. I suppose I could have been angry at my sister for walking out, or that I could fall into a mess of tears like my mother. But instead, I felt a strange and overwhelming sense of responsibility. I had to make sure that my mother was taken care of, but the feeling didn’t stop there. I really had no idea what I was going to do, but I knew that somehow, someway, I was going to have to save my family. And of course, this meant that I was going to have to start all over again, from square one, with my sister.
Leaning forward in our seats, we saw that the train conductor had come before us to make an announcement. He opened his mouth to speak, but when he saw that two teenage children were among the group, he hesitated. Quietly, he decided to turn to the passengers nearest to him and whisper privately. Those passengers whispered to the next set passengers, and those to the next, and so forth until everyone on the train knew what was going on. Everyone, that is, except for me and my sister.
“So what’s the deal?” Lindsay said to the woman sitting across from us.
The woman looked at us with an unsteady breath, as if she were afraid of our very presence. Her bottom lip shook with increasing force, and while my sister continued to question her, it was clear that this woman would not be able to provide answers. I looked back out the window to see the firemen carrying the trash bags full of something back to their waiting vehicles. A flash of headlights filled the area for less than a second, just long enough to show that the liquid covering the firemen’s uniforms was a deep, dark red.
“It isn’t unusual around this time of year,” a fellow passenger would later tell me. “The holidays get some people so down, all they want to do is end their pain. End it for good.”
Think of me what you will, but I had a good amount of trouble understanding how anyone could honestly be depressed by the winter holidays. There were so many pretty decorations everywhere you looked, plenty of tasty things to feast upon, and the heaping bounty waiting for you under the festive pine tree in your living room. New toys were to be enjoyed for the very first time, while mom and dad would be preparing that very special breakfast while trying to get grandma on the phone. I tried to imagine experiencing this time of year as an adult, perhaps living alone in a cramped apartment with no heating and that awful shag carpeting. I imagined waking up alone on Christmas morning with no parents around anymore and no one to even call on the phone, having to muster up the will to sit quietly on the couch in hopes of maybe hearing the neighbor’s children embarking on the excitement of their new presents. With no one to spend the time with, one might not even bother decorating a tree, stringing up lights, or watching their favorite Christmas specials. Instead, the only reliable warmth would come from their last cup of stale coffee, the only thing this person would have to fight of the searing loneliness. Even worse, this person might actually have someone to call, someone who was perfectly capable of conversation but unable to make this one particular connection. As I was unable to even comprehend how someone might be able to survive such an existence, I began to understand the unbearable motivation that might drive a person to throw themselves in front of a speeding train of Christmas Eve.
After nearly four solid hours, the train resumed its journey and finally arrived in San Diego in the early hours of Christmas morning. Our father had been waiting for us all night, and was relieved to finally head home with the two people in his life that he dearly cherished spending the holidays with. As we drove to the house, I studied my father’s reflection in the rearview mirror. For the first time, I realized the amount of wrinkles under his eyes and how much whiter his hair had become. In a matter of years, he would be gone, along with my mother, and all I would have left in this world would be my pain-in-the-ass of a little sister. The eventual loss of our parents would be something that we would finally have in common, but it would thankfully not be the first. The trials and lessons of adulthood have somehow changed the two of us into something that more closely resembles a complete entity. We talk a few times a week about our jobs or lack thereof, or even about each other’s interests and aspirations. We’re not there yet, but we’re certainly on our way. My sister and I walking this winding road together, helping each other avoid the train tracks wherever they may be.
