I have been waiting for you at the train station. For years. Listening to the electric noise the lines made. Listening to the announcements on the PA. Listening to the trains braking. Hoping you would be on the next one. But you never were.
I don't know if you still remember the first time you came here. You were four, maybe five. You looked excited, it was a whole new world. You still couldn't understand the language, and kept asking your mother, in a sweet French, what did the people say. You looked so much like her, and I bet you still do, both with red hair and blue eyes. I couldn't see a trace of your father in your face, and it made me sad, because you were the only thing left of him. I went to pick you and your mother up, to guide you around the town, the only surviving sibling of your father, the youngest of them all, only ten years older than you, yet I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I remember you, stumbling down the stairs of train, eager to meet the part of your family you didn't know. Eager for that summer of adventures, now that the war was finally over. You had never seen the sea before, and your cruise across the English Channel hadn't been exactly pleasant. But our beach received you gold and wide, our sea blue and calm. That summer you spent more time inside the water than you did outside. Your pale skin was soon covered in freckles, and your red hair gained blond highlights. You looked happy, as if you had never heard the sound of a bomb dropping. You helped me too, I was still a child in the end, but the death of all my brothers, all of them leaving widows and children behind, and two elderly and flailing parents, made me a woman ahead of time. When I was with you I could be carefree, a child again. I taught you English and you replied in childish French, by the end of summer we already had our own language made up of half-whispered secrets.
You'd return every summer. Screaming my name before the train had ever stopped. You grew fast, so fast. And I grew too, but the bond we had only became stronger, we used to joke that it was because we shared our first name, but it was stronger than that. You were my confident, and I was your guide. We talked about boys while tanning on the beach. Soon enough you had your own share of pretends.
Do you remember how I got married in summer so you could be my maid of honor? Remember that blue dress you wore? It went with your eyes. I hope you still keep it. You joked that our children would be like me and you. That they would have English brothers to visit.
Yet, something changed from one year to the other. The following year I was pregnant of my first child, Maria, but I still came to receive you. However, you were no longer excited to see me. All the boredom in the world was painted on your face, and you didn't do anything to hide it. You refused to speak English, and complained about every little thing in the town. You had recently moved to Paris and the city had gone to your head. You avoided the sea you had always loved, staying indoors most of the time, keeping your sickly appearance. We didn't even talk, every time I tried to approach you, you refused me. You left earlier that year, complaining about how the air of the sea made you sick. Your mother appologized concerned about you, and promised to return the following year. She did, but you never did.
I would go pick your mother up every year, hoping she wouldn't come alone. Hoping you would have changed your mind. But you never came. She would tell us how you had finished your studies in the Sorbonne, how you had married, and when you had your first child. She was proud of you, but she would never reply when we asked her why you never came. I always expected you to appear with your kids so they could play with mine. But you never did.
When your mother died, no one would tell us what the news where anymore. I still remember the telegram you sent to tell us about her death. The coldness behind it, as if we weren't family. What did we do that upset you so? And the letter you sent me, some years later, notifying me of your change of address just in case I needed to tell you something.
And I do. I need to tell you that even after your mother died, even after all these years, I still go to the train station looking for your train. Hoping to catch a glimpse of your red hair. Hoping to hear your voice calling out my name once again. The train station has changed a big deal after all these years, as I have, but for me it will still be the same train station.
My grandchildren think I'm crazy, most of my children think the same, but they're too polite to say it out loud. But I'm not crazy, I just want to see you once again before I die.
Hélène, please come back.
Yours,
Hellen.
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