The Longest Night

After her mother had left the room, Catherine dried her tears. It was the only time she had discussed her father with her mother, and she was surprised to find that it had gone so well. When Catherine was younger, the woman snapped at her in response to such questions. But now Catherine felt she knew everything she needed to know.

2:34 a.m.

She looked over her latest entry, then erased it all. She wanted something she could keep as her own.

As the sun was coming up once more, she went over the final touches of the prose. It read:

Chapter 26

Terra found her way down the steps of the subway. It was three o’clock in the morning. No one would be there. That she knew from experience. It was her sanctuary from misfortune, despite what had happened.

She looked to her feet as she walked down the escalator. Clunk. Clunk. Her fingers were numb with cold and she could barely feel them as she ran them over the rubber rails. Clunk. Clunk.

He’d been so casual on the answering machine like he’d called hundreds of times prior. Mom had kept him from her for months. Years. Telling him when Terra would be home and when it was safe to leave a message. Erasing the evidence. Why? A series of transactions she didn’t trust her daughter to be a part of? Her father, the man too elusive for her to have any business with. Years of careful planning cut down with one slip. Maybe her mother had never heard the message. Terra heard all she needed to.

She stepped off of the last step of the escalator and walked across the platform. Her head hung to her feet, watching them tread across the cold, grey cement. This place was so dreadful, so dank, but every bit of it told her of a world full of detail and wonderful complexity, every inch of it reminded her of Eric.

Not again.

She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes as she raised her head to the ceiling and stopped. Light from the lamps above made her see red from behind her eyelids. With her head tilted this way it was easy to stave off crying. Gravity pulls it away until you don’t feel anything anymore. Going, gone. She opened her mouth and exhaled slowly, opening her eyes. She looked straight again.

“Oh.”

Her lips parted and she inhaled quickly, as if she had just realized she was going to be in an accident. He stood in the middle of the platform, watching her.

He was probably thirty feet away but it may as well have been three inches. He was turned toward her, looking at her in such a way…she thought perhaps it was a mistake. She was imagining him. But, oh, how amazing it was to imagine.

When he stepped forward, his footfalls rang out as real as hers did. He came close enough for her to see the five o’clock shadow. Her fingers and toes were numb from something different than the cold now.

She had looked upon his face many times when she was sure he wasn’t looking, but she still felt as if she had never seen someone so handsome before every time she looked at him. He was a stranger, but she felt she knew him so well.

He stood very still. His hands were in his pockets but he withdrew them, twitching his fingers as if he was preparing to say something. Terra opened her mouth as well, but she closed it just as quickly.

“Hello,” he finally said.

“Hi.”

“Trains stopped a while ago.”

“Oh?” she said, feigning ignorance.

“I just read the schedule.”

She felt unbearable; her heart was racing in her chest, and she felt her cheeks and her eyes start to give her away.

“I just…well. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Neither of them moved.

Still looking away from him, she smiled to the floor and shifted her feet, preparing to turn away. But she stood still. She took in a breath of air, mustering her bravery, looked at him and forced a smile. She sighed a small laugh and turned for the escalators.

“I see you here,” he said, pausing as if choosing his words with care. “Every morning.”

If her heart was beating quickly before, it was thundering now. She turned back and tried to say something to fill the silence.

“I come here sometimes,” she said in a shaky voice, “when things are bad.”

“Bad?”

“I started just…sitting down here by myself in the middle of the night. Time to myself. To think on…things.” She looked across the platform. “I was almost mugged here.”

“What?”

“Over there,” she pointed to a nearby bench. “He was homeless.”

She dared a glance at his face, then turned towards the bench quickly, unsure of what she saw.

“What did you do?”

“I ran,” she said, pointing up at the escalators just behind him. “He tackled me on the stairs. There was a Safe Walk volunteer who heard me and came.”

He didn’t say anything.

“And over there,” she said, pointing to the bench closest to the opposite escalators, “I caught someone trying to kill herself. And when my aunt died…I stayed here all night.”

Of all the times she invented conversations in her head, it never came out like this. Now she was just nervous that she had revealed an inappropriate amount of information to someone who just wanted to tell her the trains weren’t running.

“And tonight?”

She stared at him as if she had just realized he was standing there, trying to decide whether the look on his face was real or if she was just imagining the sympathy there. “I never knew my father,” she said carefully, “but he’s been in contact with my mother this whole time.”

“I come here too. When things don’t exactly pan out.” After a moment, he continued. “I lost a case two moths ago.” Terra already knew what case it was; she could picture the article as if it was a famous painting of a historical battle. “A mother won custody of her daughter, even after the judge was shown the drug addiction she was battling. Inconsistent witness evidence ended it.”

He looked to his feet shaking his head with a small smile. “I come down here when I fail someone who needs me, and I think about things.”

Terra reminded herself to breathe. “How often do you come down here?”

“Too often.”

They held each other’s eyes for what seemed like too long. He then motioned to the bench between them, inviting her to sit. Her stomach leapt into her throat and she nodded, trying not to appear like a frightened animal. She moved towards the bench as he did (Is this real?) and sat down tentatively. They were quiet for a while, Terra watching the wall across from her, studying the ads as if she hadn’t known them word for word already.

“Your father,” he said. “Did he leave your mother?”

Terra studied her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“My wife left me for another man last year,” he said. “I never saw any signs that it was going to happen. I felt like I’d been missing everything in my life up until that point.”

She finally mustered the courage to look back at him. It was the closest they had ever been to each other. His eyes were green-grey.

“And so I left her the house and moved myself into an apartment downtown. I sold my car and started taking public transit, and then I started to face more failures in my career than I ever had before. I went through a small bout of depression. Saw a counsellor once, and then by a spur choice, I started coming down here just to think. Things started to pick up again, but I still felt like I’d lost something I’d never get back.”

His elbows were pitched on his knees, his hands loosely folded together. “I see you some mornings, down here. And I’ve wondered about you.”

He let it hang in the air, waiting to see if she would reply, but she did not. She could not.

“I see you standing in the same spot everyday.” He pointed. “Holding that paper in front of you and not reading it. I sometimes caught you looking at me, and…well. I noticed.”

When he looked at her, she had to look away. It was too much.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he said with a laugh, his smile lighting up his face. “I suppose… paying for someone to listen to me and find out how to reach my goals doesn’t do the trick. And I certainly don’t have any friends that I can talk to freely like this.”

“I don’t have any either.”

He glanced at her again, but this time he didn’t turn away quickly. “I have a confession to make, if you don’t mind hearing it.”

“I don’t.” Her voice wavered.

He turned back to his folded hands, running them over each other gently. “I mend a lot of families who are broken, I solve a lot of issues for people that they can’t, and I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished a thing in my life.”

How?“Why?”

His head dipped a little lower. “I can solve everyone else’s problems but I’ve never tried to figure out my own. I…screw so much up in my own life that I turn to others’ issues to forget about mine.”

It felt like a missing cog had just fallen into place.

“I don’t usually meet friends like this,” he said. “Would you…humour an old fool and come with me to find a coffee shop that might be open this late?”

He looked at her again, the loveliest smile on his face she had ever seen.

“Yes.”

“My name is Eric.”

“Terra.”

He smiled. “I know.”

The rising sunlight hit her computer screen, and looking over her words pensively – her own private fantasy – Catherine hit the save button.