Amtrak
by Chad Simpson
She had liked her new husband's sternness, and the way he ran his hands over her body, noticed every inch of it, made her feel not invisible.
He traveled during the week, wore cufflinks, worked out in hotel gyms. On the weekends, they redecorated her house and tried to perfect a recipe for chicken Marsala.
Two months after the crash, after the train he was on collided with a flatbed tractor-trailer loaded with steel, he barely leaves the couch. He enjoys Happy Meals and has developed a fondness for Jim Carrey movies. Only his brain was injured—there is no apparent damage to him at all—but his face, when he brings a ketchup-laden French fry to it, or laughs, is unrecognizable to her.
She knows they are headed toward a moment when he will want to be told how they met, and fell in love, and she tries to remember that time. She tries to work out a story in her head she is certain she can believe.
He traveled during the week, wore cufflinks, worked out in hotel gyms. On the weekends, they redecorated her house and tried to perfect a recipe for chicken Marsala.
Two months after the crash, after the train he was on collided with a flatbed tractor-trailer loaded with steel, he barely leaves the couch. He enjoys Happy Meals and has developed a fondness for Jim Carrey movies. Only his brain was injured—there is no apparent damage to him at all—but his face, when he brings a ketchup-laden French fry to it, or laughs, is unrecognizable to her.
She knows they are headed toward a moment when he will want to be told how they met, and fell in love, and she tries to remember that time. She tries to work out a story in her head she is certain she can believe.
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Author's Note
When I was twenty-two, my boss's new husband suffered traumatic brain injury in a train accident. I eventually wrote this little story about that.
It was published last year in Blue Earth Review, but I've continued to tinker with it.
Other stories by Chad Simpson
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Oh this is the hardest way to lose someone. Beautifully told, Chad. Have you read the memoir "Three Dog Life" by Abigail Thomas? Her husband had also suffered a brain injury and the book's about how she coped with it. Very moving and well written.
Thanks, Kathy.
I haven't read that book by Thomas, but what I've read by her I've really liked. I should check it out.
This is complicated and worrisome, in a good way. Was he a kind man before the accident, is what I was thinking. The word "sternness" jangles the piece in line one. And the admission that she likes this. And then there's how the last line turns back in on her, back into the first line. Who made her feel invisible? What was her life? What is her life? This is going to be in my head now. I like it.
I really liked this...the hotel gyms, chicken marsala, happy meals. Such perfect details and a heartbreaking last paragraph.
Pia--Thanks for the comments. I'm worried maybe the story's set-up is a little off, though, based on what you had to say. What I was shooting for: He is kind and a little simple now, whereas he had been stern and more serious before, which she'd liked. Middle-age in general had her feeling invisible, and so I was hanging a lot on that "new" before husband, and probably not being clear enough.
Thanks, Lydia. I appreciate it.
So much and such a little piece. The efficiency and simplicity of language blow me away - because the emotion the reader feels are so complex. Wonderful.
A solid, tight little gem that stabs to the core of heartbreak. Really good stuff.
Douglas