Ticket to Anywhere
The honorable Mrs. Henry James Compton, or Lillian to those who actually knew her, possessed a surname any person of means would be honored to receive, penned across an envelope. That used to be enough to secure a first-class ticket on any train, so she shouldn’t really have been in the car at all. But alas, the turn of the century approached, and now it was either a seat in her own compartment from New York City to Newport or a new dress for the coming ball. At least this way, her hard times would not be apparent to all of polite society.
The indignities of sharing the car came with some entertainment: Mrs. Compton examined the bride sitting in the row across from her over the top of her newspaper, half with pity and half with scorn. She recognized that the powder on the girl’s face had been applied to mask her complexion as the neck of a swan, but clearly, the time in the smoggy city air had countered some of its effects. Now the ruddy olive peeked through; the color suited to a peasant girl plucking grapes from a field in a village Mrs. Compton had never heard of.
It was clear without needing to speak of it that the bride had no husband, that certainly, there would be no husband. She’d come onto the train wide-eyed as a startled doe, looking as though she thought someone was going to vault through the door and spirit her away. The tension in her body did not ease until the train made its loud, grumbling start, at which point the bride seemed almost to deflate, sinking low into the layers of tulle that formed her full skirt.
The bride had no jewelry to speak of and conspicuously lacked a ring on her finger. Her gown poofed around her, making her look just a bit like a dancer stuck in an iced cake. Perhaps this was an unfair assessment since Mrs. Compton could hardly fault the dress: its trim was subtle, the cut fine even if the fabric was not particularly impressive. But then again, Mrs. Compton was wearing a bodice five years out of date and softened by time, so she couldn’t heft stones even in the safety of her mind.
Elio, the boy sitting a few rows behind the bride, was enraptured. She was no particular beauty, but there was no use telling him that. Something about the combination of the homesick direction his thoughts had taken in the past few days and the sight of her, like an archangel descended from the heavens, seemed like destiny if he’d ever seen it. It was the first time he’d ever been on a train. Soot caked the underside of Elio’s nails, and he recognized similar grime on the hands of the bride. More importantly, her skin was the same deep color as his own, and he could see she’d tanned in the pattern of lace gloves. He blushed deeply, thinking of such an intimate thought as the tight fit of fabric around her fingers, against her pulse. He distracted himself by noticing the chain disappearing into her collar. He knew instantly she wore the cross and felt somewhat proud of himself for being able to identify the good ones so easily. She had run away for a worthy reason; some explanation that was in line with God. Maybe she realized her fiancé was not the good Catholic she’d originally taken him for? In that case, she didn’t have to look farther than their shared native land. She and Elio didn’t come from the same village; perhaps she lived in Paesana, ten kilometers from his own Sanfront, but that mattered very little.
Daniel Graham, the conductor, came to punch the tickets of every passenger in the compartment, and he couldn’t help thinking that the bride was a bad sign. It was the beginning of what was sure to be an insufferably long day, and Daniel Graham was already bone-tired in a way no amount of sleep would fix. The knowledge that there would be no hot dinner awaiting him in his desolate kitchen when he arrived back home in sixteen hours only dimmed his mood further. The bride handed him the slip of paper wordlessly, and that was all he was supposed to interrogate, so he said nothing as he passed her. However, her veil had been thrown over her head, leaving her face in full relief: perilously untroubled. He pitied her would-be husband, wondering what type of woman left on the day of her wedding for Boston of all places. His own wife had made sure to blame the foul weather of the North as much as she did him when she packed her bags and left five months earlier. Women, he thought. They never will leave a good man standing.
Mrs. Compton examined the bride, trying to puzzle out her situation. Clearly, her betrothed had enough money to buy her a fairly nice wedding dress, and by the looks of her, this was the best she could ever hope to get. A banker, Mrs. Compton speculated. A banker who runs a small lending operation; it probably errs on the edge of legality, which explains… her. She nodded, watching as the girl wound stray curls around her fingers, staring aimlessly through the windows. She couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. When the bride adjusted her position in her seat, her skirts came up just enough that Mrs. Compton could see her left stocking was ripped nearly to the knee, the white somewhat sullied.
The bride retrieved a delicate cream pastry from its fine wrapping, relishing first the sensation of her fingers against the parchment, then the velvet glide of the cream in her mouth. She puckered her lips, her tongue running over them once, twice, and Elio thought he might combust.
Mrs. Compton wrinkled her nose in distaste. What a luxury. What a waste. Didn’t the bride realize youth was as short-lived as money? Of course not. Because she was still young, with all the necessary faults that qualified that descriptor. She did not pause to consider that, though it’s not fun, you have to hold yourself back from the pastries, the dresses, the pretty, frothy things that your husband won’t like to see on his monthly credit bill. For God’s sake, thought Mrs. Compton. First you have to get a husband! But the bride could not hear the silent rebuke of the older woman, and she basked in the swirl of the thick cream, the cinnamon-dusted apples, the flakes of pastry that settled on her white skirts.
What Mrs. Compton didn’t know was that the bride had thought short and hard about her options. She knew the value of money precisely because she had precious little of it. But once she’d pawned the fine white slippers at the corner shop and bought the train ticket, there had been just enough left over to purchase a luscious apple and cream pastry, to be enjoyed once the harsh outlines of New York City were already a blur behind her. She wrung every bit of sweetness she could from the tarte aux pommes (the name itself tasted like sugar), and was content that it had been worth every penny.
Elio watched the bride licking cream from her fingers and fantasized it was him she was going to marry. He pictured a small cathedral off the road to his grandmother’s house, saw the light shining through the stained glass to paint a mural across her face. His mind floated to their marital bed, tucked in new white sheets. He imagined undoing the buttons of her white dress one by one, but the daydream did not accelerate beyond this point. Once he had unfastened each of the tiny pearls from their loops, he only envisioned embracing her like a broken bird, the feel of her heartbeat against his chest an anchoring rhythm. At night, he would stare at the thatched ceiling of his family home, and be in a place where wine and his own language flowed freely. He could see it all right now, playing behind his eyes. He could stand up, approach her, and take her by the hand, saying, “Veni. Pensi di tornare a casa?” Don’t you want to go home? And she would respond, “Si. Ti sto aspettando da una vita.” I've been waiting for you all my life.
Daniel Graham only turned back once as he prepared to exit the train compartment and hop the dangerous intersection where one car linked to the other, and a person’s life was nothing against the rush of wind, coal dust, and noise. The bride blinked at him, and he avoided her dark eyes, his gaze traveling abruptly to the threadbare carpet. This was the only reason he noticed that her feet were entirely bare. She was in quite a hurry, he thought grimly, remembering the practical yet undeniably pretty shoes his wife had worn on their wedding day.
What Daniel Graham didn’t know was that the train was only the first step for the bride. After that, there would be a boat. Darker and more cramped than the first time around, for she’d been smaller then. Girls like her did not have the luxury of hoping for the best. She’d had a violent father, violent never to her, but to the space all around her, and she’d worried constantly that space would shrink, suffocating her and snuffing her out. That had been another life. But the body remembers what the mind forgets. When her betrothed raised his hand to strike her on the morning of her wedding, she acted first and thought later. She was on a train faster than she could say, “I do.”
Elio worked himself up for an hour, contemplating how exactly he should phrase the words that would change his life. Should he speak in English or Italian? Unfortunately, both were accented now, bastardized by the other, and his cheeks colored in shame. He wrung his palms together, watching the bride’s own hands, now empty, for her pastry was gone, and she had nothing else with her.
What Elio didn’t know was that the grime under the bride’s fingernails was blood; nothing more, nothing less. The costume of a runaway bride was so conspicuous that no one would think to question her. Besides, no one in that godforsaken city would care. She listlessly picked at the buttons on her cuffs, sending tremors through Elio’s body.
The bride felt the weight of the ring strung on her chain, the diluted gold somehow heavy at her neck. Perhaps it could secure her a new start. Perhaps not. Regardless, the bride watched the city transform into blue-gray swathes of shoreline, colder than any ocean she’d ever known.
What none of them knew was that she was not sorry: not for the lace she’d ruined, or for the knife she’d swung with all the strength her small body housed, or for that gurgling sound coming from the torn throat of a grown man. What they didn’t know is sometimes the worst option is the only one.
