Train Man Continued

I make myself some macaroni and cheese. But I use real cheddar cheese instead of the powder stuff that comes with it. I also add more milk than it suggests, and less butter. I add some spices from the cabinet whose names I don’t know because they are so old that the titles have worn off. A pinch from the green bottle, a teaspoon of the blue bottle, and a tablespoon of the clear one. I also add some cinnamon, which is the only spice we have that is new, because mother likes it in her coffee. I know it is a strange ingredient for macaroni and cheese, but I add it anyways because I think it makes it taste good.

I sit down on the faded green couch and draw the deep green curtains closed. I turn on the TV and lift up a floorboard in the un-finished hardwood floor. That is where I keep my precious DVD. I know lots of boys my age with dirty movies filled with pictures that their mothers do not like, but I don’t like those movies much because they remind me of my mother, and to tell the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were in a few. No, that is not the movie that I keep under the floorboard. That is where I keep Sabrina. I put it in the player, and I begin to watch it from the beginning. My favorite character is Linus because I like the way he doesn’t seem so interested in love until Sabrina, and how she rocks his world. I love the way he keeps himself in denial about his feelings for her till the very end, when he truly sees the beauty she has brought into his life. I feel bad for Sabrina though, because she has to spend all that time confused about whom she loves, and who loves her, and where her life is going. I would never like to be confused like her. When I finish my macaroni and cheese, I fish some stale ice cream out of the freezer to eat while I finish the movie. I like to imagine what fun they would have had on the cruise if the movie had gone that far. But in the end, it’s really over and there is no more story at all. It’s all just ended, and it doesn’t go on. Someday I hope to get some other movies, but it took me a while to find the money to buy this one, and to get the courage to buy it. For some reason I always had the impression that it wasn’t the sort of movie I ever wanted anyone to ever to know I watched. Especially my father.

Father is not at all harsh, but he is not a good father. He isn’t around much, and when he is he spends most of his time talking about things I don’t understand. He is very wise, and intelligent. This is weird, because he drives trains. Well, technically I guess he is an engineer. But all he does is drive a train, right? Really, what skill does it take? Obviously not much for the kind of money he makes. But he is still very smart, and he goes on about things I attempt not to listen to, while mother sits enraptured, desperately trying to understand.

The train my father runs goes through Arizona, Nevada, California, and Texas. He once took me on it and explained what it did, and how it worked, and why it was important. But again, I tried not to listen. I don’t even know if those are the states it runs through. I really can’t remember. I don’t listen because I don’t want to understand, because then I might grow up and drive trains, and I don’t want to be a train man, because I don’t want to be anything like him. I know within my heart that there is something that I am desperately grasping at, something far more complicated and different than his life. But I have never been able to put my finger on exactly what it is. When I look at almost everyone around me, I just can’t find some thing in their lives, something that I desperately want in mine. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever find it, I mean, since I haven’t yet been able to determine what exactly it is. I remember though, one time I did see it. I don’t remember what it was, or when it was, but I remember the feeling more than I remember almost anything else in my life. It was amazing, as though everything suddenly fit. But it wasn’t like some missing puzzle piece from the picture of my life, that suddenly fit into place and made everything make sense, it was as if I had forever been missing the entire puzzle. This, I know, makes it worse. One can only be annoyed when a piece of a puzzle is missing. But there isn’t any feeling at all when the puzzle isn’t even there. Every once in a while I get a small flash of the puzzle, but it is really only a feeling and one really can’t build a life based on flashes of feelings.