I stretch the skin of a lawyer over the girl who colored outside the lines. The longer I wear this skin, the longer it takes to peel off at the end of the day. Commuting into Boston, a forty-minute back-and-forth journey transforms little league coaches and PTA moms into financial brokers and corporate accountants. Few talk or nod, though all follow common courtesy—offer a seat for the elderly and pregnant women or squeeze against the wall to make room for boarding passengers.

On Friday evenings during Summer, everyone leaves the city early. My boss is a stickler about finishing out the week in her manner — early in and late out—which forces me to run to catch the last train, push through packed crowds awaiting different lines, and barely arrive at the gate as the engineer signals the last call mere moments before the doors pull shut and each engineer waves to another down the long row of rail cars.

I trip climbing aboard; my heel catches, scraping my knee against the step’s jagged metal edge, ripping skin to what feels like the bone. The car stinks of a discarded salami sandwich, milk curdled in the heat, and the thick, funky odor of sweaty bodies packed together. A thin stream of blood drips down my calf as I pass the familiar. The knitter who keenly watches people, not her needles, the one I’ve nicknamed Madame Defarge. The card players who race to secure the four seats facing each other across a table. Two men. Two women. Playing poker and sometimes joking about raising the stakes to strip poker. There are four women I call the ‘book club’ who read their paperbacks, reflecting literary taste — Harlan Cobin, Stephen King, Suzanne Collins, Anne Rice— a community of readers. Mid-car are the ‘sleepers’ categorized by head position. The ‘forward-nodders’ mouths seal shut as if guarding corporate secrets; the backward-hangers’ mouths open like chicks waiting to be fed, all exhausted by the weekly grind.

The floor rumbles as I journey down the aisle, keeping steady as the car jerks and twists by the rail yard and rattles over aging tracks. I take my seat and look through the window for the feral kittens outside the station, scampering near dishes filled by the rail crew. The lights flicker as the car heads down the track. Routine, yet I’m still caught off guard, as if expecting something different.

A 40-something woman across the aisle pulls a wad of tissues from her purse and hands them over.

“Nasty scrape,” she says, nodding toward my knee.

She speaks with an accent, British but could be Irish. I know not to ask since my trip to Dublin. My co-worker made the mistake of commenting to the cabbie something about the Irish being British, and the man pulled over and told us to get out despite the pouring rain. We hustled seven blocks to our meeting. Running in heels is never my preference; running at all is something I no longer do.

The bleeding stops. I sip the freshly squeezed lemonade I’d stopped for, which made me late. I dig into the paper sleeve of the pretzel, break off a sugary cinnamon chunk, and slip it into my mouth—a spoiler of dinner.
Ahead of me, a younger woman facing the window, her back turned, weeps in whispers, her shoulders rock to the rhythm of the wheels over tracks—the sleeve of her raincoat substitutes for tissues.
“Long ride ahead?” the woman across the aisle now asks.

“Six stops. I’ll be fine,” I say, again thanking her for the tissues.

Mama kept tissues in her purse, prepared for the runny nose or errant sneeze. I wonder if she’d been prepared for me. Born five weeks early, she said I couldn’t wait to get started, always two steps ahead, always in motion. Her idea of entertainment was sitting in her chair, knitting, or finishing the crossword puzzles my father started. She had a knack for creating something lovely from a ball of wool. I think of the knitted comforter draped across my sofa, which I’ll snuggle under with AC blasting while watching Netflix and eating Chinese takeout from around the corner.

A group of high schoolers from the private school jump on three stops before home. The surge of energy blasts across weary shoulders. They are whispers, giggles, hand-holding, shoving battles over seats, and sometimes they are whoops and whistles as two kiss.

“You remind me of my daughter,” the woman says, and though she smiles, her eyes say something different, an incongruity my legal mind finds compelling and is maybe why I ask the question.

“How’s she doing?”

The woman’s breathing slows, and she unfolds her story between pauses to breathe.

Took her off life support today. Car crash five months ago. No brain activity for weeks.

I slide into the empty seat next to the woman and take her hand. Her voice holds steady as she mixes laughter with daydreams of the what-might-have-been future of an over-eager 16-year-old in a hurry after passing her driver’s test as we ride the commuter rail almost to the end of the line. After departing, she stands outside my window and waves before disappearing into the crowded car lot.

I never saw the woman again on the train, never learned her name, and never had a chance to thank her for the courage she gave me to shed my pretend skin. Now, I listen to others, broken spirits awash with words, and guide them to their authentic skin beneath the layer they’ve learned to wear. Every day, except today, my once-a-year ride of the commuter line to honor the woman who led me down a different track.

Anne Anthony’s career spans the fields of social work, technical writing, and clinical law school education. She holds a Masters in Social Work from the University of Maryland and a Masters in Professional Writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She started writing in earnest once her youngest daughter left for college, and although sometimes sidetracked by life’s twists and turns, she persevered. Her gritty, tender, and amusing stories feature compelling but flawed characters who rise to reveal superhuman traits in ordinary life. She’s been published in BULL, The Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine, Flash Boulevard, Carolina Woman’s Magazine and elsewhere. Read more of Anne’s writing: linktr.ee/anchalastudio.