michael murray

On Thursday, Rachelle and I took the train from Toronto to Montreal. Unbeknownst to us, there was a special that day in which children could travel for just $10 each. As a result, our train was a kind of anarchy, full of unattended children, indolent parents, senior citizens and others secondary characters that had their driver’s licenses revoked for one reason or another. It was kind of like being in a narrow, store-less version of the Dufferin Mall, only hurtling through Ontario.

At any rate, the train was packed, and as there was no reserved seating, everybody was struggling to find a place to sit. I had a little fight with one woman (who was sitting directly across the narrow aisle from me) who had been trying to reserve the seat next to her for her luggage and two dolls, in spite of the obvious fact that the train was sold out.

Before our dispute escalated, a young girl of about 10 squeezed in and shared the seat with this woman’s luggage, thus establishing a kind of compromise. But still, I was far from satisfied and kept shooting the woman dirty looks.

She was probably in her mid-thirties, and she actually looked like Penelope Cruz, but I hated her guts. She was an evil Nazi who skinned cats. She wrote fan letters to Mel Gibson. She turned off her lights at Halloween and pretended she wasn’t home.

Anyway, the two dolls that she was traveling with were not beautiful or interesting dolls. They were ratty, balding things that looked like they’d been purchased at Value Village or snatched out of the mouth of a dog. One of them, the yellow one with the pink bonnet, she held on her lap like a child, while the other blue one sat looking at her from its perch in her backpack.

After a spell, the girl and her fell into conversation about these stupid dolls, named Benny and Jet. The woman showed the girl pictures and movies of the dolls she kept on her iPhone, and spoke of all the different outfits she dressed them in according to the seasons. And in no time at all, she began to speak in her doll voice—in insensible, high-pitched babble-- as she waved them about. It was utterly creepy, like a mental illness, and I couldn’t stop looking over.

The little girl’s three brothers, all younger than she was and eating Harvey’s hamburgers bought back at Union station, came over and crowded around, too. They were yelling and shouting questions, and the woman with the dolls got more and more excitable, too, feeling validated that a bunch of six years old were interested in her mania. The dolls were shrieking, the kids were shrieking, the burgers were dripping, and I was staring, my face a mixture of rage and horror.

The woman, aware that I, her enemy, was staring over, began to speak to me through her doll, Benny.

In a screechy voice, “Hey, Mister Mean, you have to turn that frown upside down!”

I looked directly into the doll’s dead eyes, “I just have a stern resting face,” I said.

“You mean fart face!” Benny responded.

All the little boys howled with laughter.

“Fart face, fart face!!” They chanted.

“He smells like an old chicken full of onions!” Benny screeched.

At this point, full of a kind of beautiful rage, I reached across the aisle and grabbed Jet, and with one hand on her throat and the other on the top of her head, I said, “Benny, if you say just one more word, I am going to rip her head right off.”

Three other passengers began to applaud my action, while the doll woman burst into tears and began to scream like the Dustin Hoffman character in Rain Man, and the boys continued to shout, “Fart face,” only this time with some admiration in their voices.

At this point, we were still three and a half hours from Montreal.