My husband told our fifteen-year-old over dinner that my job was “a costume and a hole punch,” and four days later he came strolling down a train platform with a woman half his age hooked on his elbow. He thought I was home folding towels. I was the one in the doorway of his sleeper car, holding out my hand for his ticket.
He’d paid for that sleeper with 41,200 points I spent three years saving, so Jazmin and I could ride out to my mother’s before her hip surgery in the spring.
Delano laughed when I took the job.
I’d been home nineteen years, and at forty-four I put on a navy vest and learned the routes.
He called it my little railroad phase.
At his cousin’s barbecues he’d tell people I “played train lady” three days a week, and then he’d wait for the laugh.
He sold commercial flooring. Nice truck. Loud opinions about everybody’s tile.
Then one Sunday, over pork chops, Jazmin asked if she could ride along on one of my runs, just to see what I did all day.
Delano didn’t even look up from his plate.
“There’s nothing to see, Jaz. It’s a costume and a hole punch.”
Jazmin looked at me.
I passed the green beans.
That was Sunday.
Monday he told me about a flooring expo out of state, Thursday through Sunday, flying out early.
“Don’t text me during the day,” he said. “I’ll be on the floor the whole time.”
“Okay,” I said.
Tuesday night I pulled up the manifest for Thursday’s southbound sleeper, the way I do before every run, because I like knowing who’s in which room before they’re standing in front of me with three suitcases and a complaint.
Roomette 7.
GERBER, D.
GERBER, F.
I read those two lines maybe nine times.
Then I opened our rewards account on my phone. The password was still Jazmin’s birthday.
Zero points.
Redeemed Saturday, 11:52 p.m. That was the night he’d said he was stuck at the warehouse doing inventory.
Every deadhead ride home, every grocery run on that card, every time I said no to something for us so the number would grow. All of it.
He’d used my points to buy another woman my name.
I didn’t call him.
I didn’t call anybody.
Wednesday I asked Sherman, who’d been working trains since before Delano had a license, if he’d trade and work the sleepers with me Thursday instead of coach.
Sherman looked at me over his thermos. It had a duck sticker on it that his granddaughter put there in 2019, and he refused to scrape it off.
“Something I ought to know about?”
“Probably,” I said.
He nodded and didn’t ask again. That’s Sherman.
Thursday morning Delano packed in our bedroom with the door half shut.
He took the gray linen shirt. The one I bought him for our twentieth.
On his way out he kissed the side of my head like I was a dog he was fond of.
“Love you. Don’t wait up.”
“I never do,” I said.
He was already off the porch.
At 7:31 that evening I was on my step box at the door of the sleeper, vest buttoned, scanner hanging on its cord, wearing the same smile I give everybody.
“Evening. Room number? Watch the gap.”
A family with a cooler.
Two old men in matching windbreakers.
A woman with a cat carrier who needed to know whether the cat counted as luggage.
Then the gray linen shirt.
He was laughing at something on her phone. She was maybe thirty, dark ponytail, big sunglasses pushed up on her head, her arm threaded through his like they’d been married for years.
He was right at the foot of my box before he looked up.
He stopped.
His roller bag kept going and clipped her ankle.
“Ow. Babe,” she said. “What?”
Delano’s mouth opened. Nothing came out of it.
I held out my hand, same as I’d done four hundred times that week.
“Evening. Room number?”
She answered for both of them. She held her phone up to my scanner, all teeth.
“Roomette seven. We’re the Gerbers.”
The scanner beeped.
The little screen said GERBER, FRANCINE.
My name. My points. My husband.
I looked at her a long time. Then at him.
“Mrs. Gerber,” I said. “Francine?”
“That’s me,” she said, and squeezed his arm.
Delano finally found his voice.
“Fran. This isn’t what…”
“Sir, step back from the door, please,” I said.
She glanced from him to me, still smiling, like she was waiting for the joke.
I tapped the name tag pinned over my heart. White letters on navy.
“Ma’am, I’M FRANCINE GERBER. I’ve been her for twenty-one years.”
Her arm slid out of his.
Behind me Sherman stepped down out of the next vestibule, thermos and all, and just stood there.
Delano looked at my tag, then at Sherman, then up the platform, like there might be a different train.
“Fran. Not here.”
“Here’s where you bought it,” I said.
The woman with the cat carrier hadn’t moved. Neither had the family with the cooler.
I turned back to the girl in the sunglasses and held out my hand again.
“Before anybody boards this car,” I said, “I’m going to need to see some ID.”
The license
She looked at Delano first, like he’d know what the lady meant.
He was looking at my name tag.
“It’s a sleeper reservation, ma’am,” I said. “The name on the booking has to match a photo ID. Driver’s license is fine.”
She laughed a little and dug in her purse anyway. A wallet with a gold clasp. She slid the license out and held it up between two fingers, the way you’d show a bouncer.
HOLM, ERICA L.
An apartment number in Florissant. Born 1996. Organ donor.
I handed it back.
“This reservation is for Francine Gerber,” I said. “You’re not her. You can’t ride on it.”
“Babe,” she said to Delano. “Tell her.”
“Fran, come on. Let her on and we’ll figure it out at home.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. It’s my name.”
The board over the stairs said the southbound left at 7:45. It was 7:33. I had a car to load.
Erica looked at my tag again, then at the ring on my left hand, then at the one on his.
“He said you moved out in March,” she said.
The thermometer on the fridge
The rewards card came in the mail the week of my first paycheck.
Jazmin was twelve. She set the account up on the family iPad at the kitchen table while I read her the numbers off the card, and when it asked for a password she typed her own birthday without asking me, and I let her.
“Put Dad on it too,” she said.
Delano was at the counter eating cold chicken out of the container.
“I’m not putting my name on a train card, Jaz.”
So it was mine. Just mine. Account holder, Francine Gerber, one line on the screen.
That night she taped a sheet of printer paper to the fridge and drew a thermometer on it in black marker. Zero at the bottom. Forty thousand at the top. Above the top she wrote GRANDMA’S and drew a train that looked like a loaf of bread with wheels.
The iPad lived on the counter by the toaster after that, and it dinged every time points posted. Jazmin liked the ding. Once a month she’d pull up the balance and color the thermometer in with a red Sharpie, a little higher each time.
Delano called it the choo-choo chart.
I learned the rules of that card the way I learned the rules of the trains, by standing in front of people who didn’t know them. A man at Kirkwood cried at me one February because he’d missed the departure and wanted his points back. I had to tell him what orientation told me. A redemption can be canceled by the account holder right up until the train leaves the station, and every point comes home. Once it rolls, they’re gone.
I said that to a lot of people. I never thought about saying it to myself.
Then last fall my mother’s hip went. My mother is Karolina, seventy-six, and she’d fall down a flight of stairs before she’d let anybody drive her to the store. The surgeon said April. I said Jazmin and I would come the week before and stay through.
The thermometer crossed forty thousand in August. Jazmin colored the top in so hard the Sharpie went through the paper.
There’s one more rule I should say. We don’t touch our own phones on the platform during boarding. A man on my crew got written up for it in June. Ramirez, our supervisor, is a nice man who writes everybody up.
Now it was 7:34, and Erica Holm was waiting for me to say something about March.
Sherman
“That’s not what I said,” Delano said to her. “I said it was complicated.”
“You said she moved out.”
“I said it was over. It is over. It’s been over.”
He said all this to her and not to me, standing at the foot of my box with a roller bag between his feet. The family with the cooler went around them. The dad gave me his phone and kept his eyes down.
“Evening,” I said, and scanned it. “Room twelve. Watch the gap.”
Delano turned to Sherman.
“Sherm. Man. You know me.”
Sherman took a sip from his thermos.
“I know the rule,” he said. “Name on the reservation, name on the card. Or they don’t ride.”
“It’s my wife’s name. It’s a family account.”
“Then your wife can ride on it.”
Delano laughed the barbecue laugh, the one that waits for everybody else. Nobody else did.
So he did the thing I hadn’t planned for. He pulled out his own wallet and his own license.
GERBER, DELANO.
His half of Roomette 7 was real. The manifest said GERBER, D., and he was GERBER, D., and there’s no rule in the book that says a conductor can keep a man off a train because she’s married to him.
I scanned his phone. Green.
“Babe,” he said to Erica. “Buy a coach seat. I’ll come get you after Jefferson City.”
“With what?” she said.
He didn’t answer. He hauled the roller bag up past my box and into the vestibule, and the bag hit my shin on the way.
I’d kept her off my train. He got on anyway. That was my whole plan, and it had lasted about two minutes.
Every room on that car had been sold since the first week of October. I knew that because I’d read the manifest Tuesday, nine times.
From the door I could see straight down the corridor.
The door of Roomette 7 slid shut.
Roomette 7
Erica stood on the platform with her bag and her phone and typed something with both thumbs, fast.
The two old men in windbreakers boarded. The cat lady boarded, and the cat did count as luggage, and she took it well.
At 7:38 I told Sherman to keep the box and went up the corridor. Walking the rooms before departure is my job. Nobody could have said a thing about it.
I knocked on 7.
“Conductor.”
The curtain on the door glass moved. He opened it about a foot. He’d already taken his shoes off. The gray linen shirt was untucked.
“You want to do this here?” he said. “In your little vest? With your buddy out there?”
“I need to confirm the room.”
“It’s confirmed. You scanned it.” He leaned on the door frame. “I’ll be home Sunday. We’ll talk like adults. You’ll calm down by then. You always calm down.”
“Is anyone else traveling in this room tonight?”
“You know what, Fran, I’m not doing this. I’m not doing your little procedures. I came here to have four days without anybody’s opinions.”
He started to slide the door shut and then stopped it with his hand.
He looked at me the way he’d looked at Jazmin over the pork chops. Without lifting his head.
“And don’t make this about the kid,” he said. “Ask Jaz. She’s known since Saturday.”
7:41
There was nobody in the vestibule but me.
I could hear Sherman outside telling somebody the café car opened after Kirkwood.
I took my phone out of my vest pocket. The one we don’t touch on the platform. My hands were fine. I typed with my thumb.
Did you know about Thursday?
It was a school night. She’d be at the kitchen table with her chemistry. The three dots came up right away and stayed up a long time.
Then they came one after another, the way she texts, no capitals.
the ipad dinged saturday night
it said 41,200 redeemed. roomette 7. thursday southbound
i looked at your calendar on the fridge and it said sleepers thurs
i asked dad sunday morning what it was. he said it was a surprise for you and if i ruined it you wouldnt get to go to grandmas before her surgery
I read that one the way I’d read the manifest.
Sunday morning. Before the pork chops.
so at dinner i asked if i could ride along
i was going to say thursday. i was going to sit in that room so nobody could
he knew what i meant
im sorry mom i didnt know how to tell you without wrecking grandma
Out the vestibule window Erica was still on the platform, phone to her ear now, one hand on the handle of her bag.
The board said 7:41.
My thumb was on the reply and I hadn’t written anything yet when one more came in.
is it a surprise
The cancel button
I didn’t write her back yet.
I opened the rewards app. Jazmin’s birthday. Account holder, Francine Gerber.
Upcoming trips. Roomette 7, Thursday, southbound, two passengers.
Cancel redemption.
It asked if I was sure. It said points would be returned to the account holder.
I pressed it.
41,200.
Then I changed the password to something nobody in that house would ever guess, and I texted Jazmin two words.
Not anymore.
I put the phone back in my vest and picked up the scanner and walked to 7. On my screen the line for the room had gone gray. UNTICKETED.
I knocked.
“Conductor. I need to see your ticket, sir.”
He opened the door the whole way this time.
“You scanned my ticket.”
“That reservation’s been canceled by the account holder. You don’t have one.”
He looked at me like I’d told him the train ran on milk.
“You can’t cancel my ticket.”
“It’s my account.”
“It’s our money. Everything in that house is our money. Half of every one of those points is mine, you know that? That’s Missouri. That’s the law. You think you can stand there in a vest and…”
“The sleeper’s sold out,” I said. “I can sell you a coach seat.”
“I’ll call Ramirez. That’s his name, right? I’ll call him tonight and tell him you’re running some personal thing on company time, and you’ll be back home folding towels by Monday, and you know what, good. Good. That’s where you were happy.”
“Coach is eighty-nine dollars.”
“I’m not riding coach.”
“Then you’ll need to step off, sir. We leave in three minutes.”
He looked out his window. Erica was right there, maybe fifteen feet away, with her bag and her phone, looking up at the train. She saw him. She lifted her hand off the handle.
He reached up and pulled the shade down.
Then he took out his card.
“Coach,” he said. “Fine. Whatever.”
“Your daughter’s home,” I said.
“Then she’s got you.”
I ran the card. Seat 41. I walked him back through two cars to it, and he walked behind me carrying his own roller bag and his shoes in his other hand.
Before the doors closed I called Ramirez myself from the vestibule, on my own phone, on the platform.
“I’ve got my husband on my train,” I said. “He’s paying. And I used my phone during boarding.”
Ramirez didn’t say anything for a while.
“Is he going to be a problem?”
“No.”
“Then work the train,” he said. “Write it all down. You’re off sleepers when you get back. Sixty days.”
Sherman pulled up the box. Out the open door Erica was still standing where Delano had left her.
“What do I do?” she said to me.
“Stairs are at the end,” I said. “Watch your bag on the escalator.”
The doors closed at 7:45.
Somewhere past Kirkwood I wrote his seat check by hand, punched it twice, and tucked it over his head.
The second week of April
Delano’s truck has been at his cousin’s since November. His half of the closet is empty except for the gray linen shirt, which he left on the floor of seat 41, and which Sherman brought back to me folded on top of his thermos.
I worked coach November and December. Ramirez wrote me up, and he was nice about it.
The thermometer is still on the fridge. Jazmin never took it down. She drew a second one beside it, starting from zero.
On the second Thursday in April we stood on the platform with two suitcases and a bag of my mother’s crossword books. I had on jeans. No vest. No scanner.
Sherman was on the step box.
He looked at the two of us over his thermos and held out his hand, same as he’d done four hundred times that week.
“Evening,” he said. “Room number?”
Jazmin held her phone up to his scanner before I could.
It beeped. GERBER, FRANCINE. GERBER, JAZMIN.
“Roomette seven,” she said. “We’re the Gerbers.”
If somebody in your house ever called what you do for a living a costume, send this to the one who was watching anyway.
For more family secrets and public betrayals, read the pills under his truck seat and the gala where his secretary’s news found her and the husband who kept calling his wife’s sister’s husband without telling her. And for another chilling family twist, there’s the mother whose doorbell camera saw her daughter knocking.
