The Weekend

In this short story, a sister talks about her plans for the weekend with her sister as her train travels to the station. This story is about a VERY tough situation the main character has to face and refuses to do so. It's not an easy story, so prepare yourself for the surprise at the end that changes everything.

Transcript

Hello,

This is A.

Le Fay of Sylvanosity and I'll be reading The Weekend,

A story I wrote.

Before we start I'd like to invite you to relax,

Center yourself,

Release your thoughts as if they could travel on the wind.

Open your mind to take this journey with a character named Gillian.

The Weekend by A.

Le Fay.

Gillian sat perched on the edge of the train station bench,

Ready to stand at the sound of the approaching train.

She tried to ignore the elderly couple next to her as the woman knitted with a click-clack echo of voice and needle and the old man read the newspaper aloud like everyone around wanted to hear the news.

Gillian gripped her phone,

Closed her eyes,

Remembering the last time she spoke to her sister Hannah.

The bursts of excitement,

The smiles and happy wrinkles under the eyes she could hear in the laughter.

In that spark of sound and emotion she had to call even if Hannah's train would arrive in 20 minutes.

I know,

I know,

But I just couldn't wait to talk to you.

I had to call.

Laughter.

Don't make fun of me.

I mean when was the last time it was just the Sibley sisters for the entire weekend?

No kids,

No husbands,

Ex or otherwise.

They'd had it all planned out.

A massage at Ooh La La,

Mani-pedis,

Then a slow giggle-filled gossip-riddled crawl through downtown.

Not since your going-away party when you took the job in Madison,

Gillian thought,

But she shouted,

Forever.

The man sitting next to her bristled as if they sat in a library,

But he kept his face buried in that depressing paper with the front page article about the arraignment of the driver responsible for the crash on I-94 that took three lives at the beginning of the week.

Why would they take a picture of a deadly collision and put it there where everyone would be forced to look at it for days on end?

That old man and his gory newspaper weren't going to spoil her mood.

Gillian knew how to make a mood float.

She asked,

Hannah,

Doesn't this remind you of the weekend we gave Good Girl Gone Bad a try?

Walking out and studying for finals and tubing down the Ashton River?

The old man cleared his throat and his approval.

Gillian wondered,

Who was this guy?

The morality police?

Oh,

Don't embarrass me.

When did Hannah start to sound so old?

Gillian forced the idea off her head and recalled,

It was hilarious.

Your pants nagging on that overhanging branch,

You clinging to it like a treed coon as your tube floated on down the river,

You screaming for the sixth back that went with it?

Gillian shook her head,

Saying almost to herself,

But I stayed in my tube.

I always stayed,

She thought,

Rubbing paint flakes off the old bench that had sat in the same place since she arrived in this town,

Holding Hannah's hand.

They'd stepped off the train still wearing the dresses Granny Morgan picked out for them to wear to their parents' funeral.

Didn't seem right to feel like that bench screwed into the train platform.

But Gillian had been in place,

In this place,

For decades.

She took over the book,

Bookshop when Granny Morgan's eyes grew too old to read the spines to find a book for a customer.

Gillian moved into Granny's house to make sure she took her medicine and slept rather than walk the rooms at night,

Worrying about her girls.

Gillian even got married at the backyard.

Are you listening to me?

Sorry,

Hannah,

I got lost in a memory of the wedding.

Gillian laughed.

You were convinced torn newspaper would be great bird-safe confetti and it rained.

You spent hours hosing down the yard to get rid of it.

The old man leaned toward his wife,

Saying,

It's a shame I'm telling you,

A mother and two children dying in that crash.

Damn drunk driver,

He deserves to go to jail.

Gillian flinched,

Recalling news clip after news clip about that horrid crash like her mind had started flipping channels.

She needed to focus,

Put her mind on better things.

Then she remembered turning over a rock as she redid the begonia bed on Monday,

Finding little bits of dried brittle newsprint on the underside of that fist-sized stone that rested on another rock.

Those little bits had lasted a decade,

Longer than that doomed marriage.

Rubbing her eyes with one hand,

Gillian sighed,

Saying,

At least Dan paid for an entire week of summer camp on Birch Lake.

I swear those twins have gills.

This is a special occasion.

Time for the two of us,

The old man humph'd.

Gillian turned away from him and his bad attitude.

That's right,

The Sibley sisters together again,

Ready to face the world.

Remember our first gymnastics meet?

We were going to rack up gold medals.

That's right,

Just us.

What was the name of that judge for the floor routine?

Oh yeah,

Mrs.

Penning with her red hair and cheeks that made her look like a middle-aged Annie who'd fallen into Miss Hannigan's bad habits.

Her and her pissy 8.

75.

I swear she stole your blue.

The old man said,

I'm just saying it's a sad thing to lose family.

Yeah,

You wanted the blue.

Blue,

Gillian whispered,

Feeling a little chilly.

I remember how blue your lips looked that night.

We tried to swim across the river.

We never thought it'd get down into the 50s that night,

But you still wanted to try.

You fool.

When you went under and I reached for you,

It felt like I was trolling the whole ocean,

But I found you,

Pulled you to shore,

Pumped you like I was trying to inflate an old raft until you puked river water,

Sputtering.

Thank you,

With lips so blue it scared me.

Let's just focus on what this weekend is about.

Right,

Gillian stood,

Turning away from the bench.

But do you ever think about it?

I mean,

If that judge had given you a score to match the perfect floor routine of yours,

And I held my concentration through the parallel bars,

I would have stuck that landing instead of breaking my ankle.

We could have gone to sectionals,

Maybe even nationals.

Who knows where we would be at this moment?

The old man folded his paper,

Finally hiding that hideous picture of the crash,

And said to his wife on the other side of him,

You're right,

This is our anniversary,

Not a time to dwell on the death of a mother and her two children.

He patted her knee,

Saying,

Let's focus on us.

The wife smiled,

Sounding just like Hannah,

As she said,

Yes,

Just us.

They held hands.

Somehow it seemed to push Gillian towards the edge of the platform as a train pulled into the station.

She forced a laugh.

Well,

You're here,

I better go.

Hanging up,

She stepped towards the engine,

Feeling the pull of its momentum.

The platform filled as passengers filed out.

Why did she have to time her steps so perfectly?

Who could find a single soul in this crowd?

The conductor stepped up to the cargo car that stuck out like a torn nail in front of all those passenger cars.

When he pulled down the latch in front of her,

Gillian felt the chill of jumping into that river at night,

The sliding doors sounding like the rapids they didn't expect to hit,

The ropes that tied it down like the floating branch that snared Hannah,

The casket as black and glassy as the waves in moonlight.

The gray caskets beside their mothers seemed too small to serve their purpose,

Looking more like they should be rocks at the river's edge they could use to pull themselves to safety.

Jill,

Hannah's husband said her name so closely she realized he stood beside her,

But she couldn't look at him,

Standing alone on that platform.

This was supposed to be a spouse-free weekend.

Gillian?

When she turned,

She felt as if she'd emerged from that river,

Her muscles so tired they shook as she fell to the shore and into his arms,

Saying,

She's gone.

I know that this story is hard and it talks about truths that are hard to accept and that there are so many things in our lives that we wish we could close our eyes or make a call to change it,

To go back to a time when what we miss most was still with us.

And sometimes it helps to have those imaginary times,

But other times our hearts are breaking,

Our minds stretch to remember those we love but have lost.

When those times overtake us,

We need to acknowledge those feelings,

Work our way through them,

And accept this person is gone.

But the truth is,

When we share stories of their life with those who never had a chance to meet them,

Our loved ones live on,

And they certainly live on in us,

In all the things they taught us,

In all the things they told us,

In all the things we did together.

So let's celebrate those we've loved and lost by telling their stories.

Thank you for sharing this story with me.

This has been Eilefé of Sylvanosity.