Driving With the Top Down

by Beth Harbison

Almost a full minute passed before either Colleen or Tamara spoke.

  Finally Tamara broke the silence. “So she’s super weird.”

  Colleen thought she should defend Bitty, respond with something adult and appropriate, but she didn’t know what to say. Bitty may as well be a stranger now. She didn’t know her anymore. She’d just given her her car and her trailer, ignoring the pit-of-the-stomach feeling that told her not to. She looked at Tamara, whom she was charged with taking care of, and gave a slow nod. “She wasn’t always.” And she sincerely, sincerely hoped there was nothing to worry about now.

  “Did something, like … happen to her?”

  Colleen shrugged. “Hard to say. I mean, she didn’t live through a massacre or anything. That I know of.” And no, she was pretty certain Bitty hadn’t literally lived through a massacre, but what had she endured? What was her life now that she had become such a narrow little spooked thing? Or had she always been that, except during some drunken, carefree college days when Colleen just happened to have known her?

  “You said she was your college best friend, though, right?” Tamara looked as if she were really trying to puzzle this out. “How come you guys aren’t friends anymore?”

  “Kind of hard to explain.” It really was, Colleen thought to herself. What happens to friendships that you thought at the time were going to last forever, but which fell away, all but unnoticed? “We just lost touch somewhere along the way. Moved in different directions.”

  “Did you know her husband, or did he come later?”

  “I met him a few times. He was a grad student doing some intern stuff when we were in our last semester.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Colleen tried to imagine how Tamara would envision Bitty’s husband. A tall, handsome Disney Gaston, or a meek Walter Mitty? “He was nice enough. Polite, anyway. Very wealthy, his family basically owned his hometown. Pretty smart. Not incredibly hot, but nice-looking, in a soap opera–actor sort of way. I think anyone would have said he was good husband material. A catch. And she came from a good family too, so they were a good pair. Suited, as they say.”

  “Then … why’s she running away?”

  “Running away?”

  “Yeah. I mean … right? Her story’s all over the place, she’s a rich lady with no credit cards, she got her car stolen but she’s not freaking out about it.… I mean … She’s obviously a total runaway right now.”

  As soon as Tamara had said it, Colleen wondered why that possibility hadn’t occurred to her. She had taken Bitty’s excuse at face value.

  To think of her—or any woman their age—“running away” just seemed crazy.

  She couldn’t buy it. “I don’t know that she’s running away. It just sounded like Lew made plans without her, so she wanted to do the same back at him. Keep him on his toes. I could understand that. The poor thing just must not have a lot of good friends she could confide in, or who could take off at a moment’s notice with her.”

  “Think there’s a reason for that?”

  “She lets very few people in. She’s got a guard up. She always has.”

  Tamara raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

  “Then you understand we shouldn’t push her on it.” Colleen watched her, unsure if she should ask more or let it go. Tamara clicked on her phone, and it became clear the moment was gone.

  The two of them got ready for bed, and then clicked on the TV. A rerun of Saturday Night Live was on.

  Colleen looked at her own phone. Bitty had been gone almost an hour. To the pharmacy down the block. That seemed like a long time.

  Tamara, evidently noticing it had been a while too, said, “Do you think you should call her or something? Seems weird it’s taking so long, right?”

  “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

  “Hopefully she didn’t steal your car and camper thing.”

  “Tamara! Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Just kidding.”

  Of course, Colleen was starting to have the same kind of thoughts. Which was dumb, because even though she didn’t know the inner workings of Bitty’s mind today, once upon a time, she had known her well, and she couldn’t imagine that her friend’s moral fiber had changed so much. “I’m sure everything’s fine. I just hope she didn’t get lost.”

  Colleen did know it was not like Bitty to get lost. She was a competent handler of things. If she was taking this long, it was on purpose.

  “If she did, she could ask directions.”

  “That’s right.”

  A little more time passed. Probably not much. But as soon as Colleen realized Bitty had been gone for too long, every minute seemed like an eternity, adding to the oddness and making her feel stranded. She had always hated going anywhere and being without her car in case she needed to leave, and now she was in some nothing town, miles from home, with no way out except to believe in someone she hadn’t known for more than a decade.

  When Colleen looked at the clock for perhaps the thousandth time, she felt Tamara’s gaze turn to her, hitting her cheek like a laser.

  “Why don’t you just call her?” Tamara asked. “If you’re embarrassed for her to know you don’t trust her, then just pretend you need tampons or something and ask her to pick them up.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Tamara pushed. “I’m sure she’d get why you’re like, ‘Hey, where’s my car?’”

  “I don’t have her number.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bitty

  Dear Stranger,

  So far, suicide isn’t working out very well. I had my plan in place, stopped for some good old comfort food at Henley’s as a good-bye—because, who cares? I figured I wouldn’t have time to get fat from it. If anything, it would just back up the illusion that my death was a tragic mistake—you’re the only one who knows better now—because the autopsy would reveal I was full of fried chicken, sweet potato fries, real vanilla Coke, and coconut cream pie.

  “She didn’t do this on purpose,” they’d say. “Look at this, she was clearly happy. No one kills themselves after Henley’s coconut cream pie!”

  But the best-laid plans … you know. Obviously I couldn’t go through with my plan, because, of all things, my car got stolen. Apparently, an old XJS isn’t that hard to hot-wire. People used to trust each other more and security systems weren’t built in till fairly recently. This is what I’ve learned from Googling it on my phone. But I have to point out, I did lock it. But I guess this Podunk town doesn’t see a lot of Jaguars driving through, so it was conspicuous. If anyone can hot-wire anything, it’s a bored country boy.

  So that was that. Car gone, and with it, the five thousand dollars I’d stored before in my safe at home. I have about $240 in my wallet now, which, to be honest, would have been enough anyway, since I wasn’t planning on being around that long, but it’s nice to know you have the resources to go out in style.

  Instead I ended up trapped in my college diner with no hope until—miracle or catastrophe?—Colleen Wilcox showed up. Colleen Bradley, now. Blast from the past. I could tell she didn’t recognize me at first, and when she made the offer to take me to Florida, she wasn’t really sure it was a good idea. Especially since I’m not all that fast on my feet as a liar, so she had to doubt my story about Lew being off with the boys.

  Even though that part is obviously true.

  Anyway.

  I wasn’t sure it was such a great idea either, but I can’t afford to sift through the quality of ideas right now. I was thinking Florida might be a good place to go down and rent a boat, drive out into the ocean, and just … disappear. Leave ’em wondering forever. That wasn’t the original plan, obviously, you know that already. I’m not into uncertainty and I’m sure not into pain, so I think the gun idea was the best. (They say women don’t shoot themselves, because they’re too vain, but at least there are no variables.)

  Now I need to rethink. I said I was going to Florida because I wanted to think of s
omeplace far enough away that they wouldn’t volunteer to just drop me off, but when they said they were going to Florida, well, it seemed like a good omen. I was watching Nancy Grace sometime ago when this woman had disappeared and they said she could be reduced to nothing but bone out in the Florida elements in just a matter of days. Under a week. I find that to be a plus. I don’t know you, so I don’t know if you’re squeamish about that kind of thing, but at least you’ll know now that I’m not. I like the whole “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” thing much more than, you know, traditional burial.

  The only thing I’m not so sure of is how I can spend the days necessary with Colleen and her niece, acting like everything’s normal, socializing, taking part in life, when I have already mentally checked out. This is a toughie.

  Right now, I’m sitting in this old rattletrap of a convertible of hers, complete with an embarrassing old trailer attached, with the heat blasting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the carbon monoxide got me. That’s not my plan, but, hey, if it happens, it happens and it means the car wasn’t safe for those two so, actually, my last act will be altruistic. Unfortunately, I feel fine. Everything around me is completely and utterly normal. I’m in the parking lot of CVS, watching a sprinkler spit at some little tomato plants in a house just a few yards away right now.

  I feel kind of bad because I asked Colleen if I could borrow her car to go to the drugstore, and now I’ve been gone—I don’t know—an hour or so. Maybe more. She’s probably wondering where I am, and if I’m the same Bitty she knew. Thinking she can’t trust me. She’s right, I guess. And the answer is no, I’m not the same Bitty she knew. I’m not the Bitty anyone knew, not even myself.

  I guess I’m no one now.

  Of course, you already know that. You’re holding the proof in your hand, this suicide letter written to Dear Stranger. How pathetic is that? If I heard this story on the news, I’d think it was one of the saddest things I’d ever heard. Maybe a letter like this floated up on some shore in a bottle or something, and some kid dropped his beach ball and opened it up hoping it was a treasure map and found, instead, that it was a middle-aged woman’s angsty ramblings. Maybe even attached to a name. “Authorities suspect the letter might have been written by Wilhelmina Camalier, the woman missing since June of last year, but the water damage is too great to definitively identify her writing.…”

  Or what she’s saying.

  I guess I won’t send this off to sea in a bottle, now that I think about it.

  Anyway, before the car debacle, I pigged out at Henley’s, and, let me tell you, that felt good! Best I’ve felt in ages, honestly. Let them know I died happy, will you? Okay, not happy, obviously, but I went on my own terms. Had peace of mind. Then I started writing to you and felt a real sense of purpose. Is that crazy? Well, of course, you’d have to say anything I said right now was crazy, wouldn’t you? I mean, facts being what they are. Or will be. But being there, alone, in that place where I’d spent so many good times before my marriage … it reminded me, somewhat, of who I am. Was. I can’t ever be her again, I’m too far down the rabbit hole to climb back up and have a normal life, but for a few random moments here and there, I could feel myself twisting deep inside, like a toddler beginning to wake from a nap.

  So when Colleen walked in—jeez! I just didn’t know what to make of it. At first she seemed like an echo or a memory, but memories don’t age. Not that she looks old or anything; she actually looks great. She has the face of a woman who hasn’t seen too many sleepless nights. No Botox, no fillers, a few lines, but the unmistakable mask of a woman who has seen mostly contentment, if not much excitement.

  Or maybe it’s just the bloom of the Well Fed. She’s as curvy as ever, with one of those old-fashioned hourglass bodies that would be criminal to call fat, and doesn’t seem to care what she eats as long as it tastes good. Same old Colleen.

  The girl was always there to pull me out from my slump, so leave it to her to magically arrive the night I decided to kill myself.

  Apparently, she’s going to antique auctions down the coast, picking up old furniture for a business she has. Made sense. Whenever I pictured Colleen, which I didn’t do often—it kind of hurt too much to think about “the old days”—I always imagined her covered in paint. In her baggy, torn-up jeans covered in sawdust and acrylic paints, the tips of her fingers stained from the alizarin crimson she painted with—the color that always looked bloodlike.

  So it made sense to me that she would still be doing something like that. Still working late into the night, hair in a ponytail, accidentally getting a pretty swipe of paint across her eyebrow.

  I wonder if she still paints. She “fixes things up” for some sort of antique store she has, she says, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s doing oils or sculpting anymore. That’s the kind of thing that, all too often, depends on the support of a spouse. I wonder what her marriage is like. I was invited to the wedding. I probably should have gone, but I didn’t.

  I was too caught up in my life. My life was supposed to have been new. Not just a new chapter in my life, but a new book entirely. Bitty’s Life, Volume 2: Wilhelmina. Back to my ridiculous given name, which most people cannot even take in when they look at it.

  Wilhelmina Camalier.

  But alas, my marriage, just like my death, didn’t go as I expected.

  Oh my God, an old man just knocked on the car window. Hang on, I’ll be back.

  I’m back.

  And that was unpleasant.

  First off, it wasn’t an old man, it was a wizened old woman who looked like a man. In fact, to be perfectly accurate, she looked exactly like the Mayor of Munchkinland—and that’s who she seemed to think she was, because she was trying to pull her stupid RV into the parking lot and said my camper was in the way. She had, like, twenty feet on either side of her, which she should have known because her ridiculous pink flamingo string lights lit the entire parking lot like the UFO landing gear in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but, nooo, she needed me to move.

  I would have argued, I swear I would have gone all Towanda on her, like Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes, but I don’t really know how good Colleen’s insurance is, or if it’s different coverage that doesn’t allow someone else to use your vehicle, or whatever.

  So I got out of the car, to point out how much room she had, and how little room I had to maneuver, and, honestly, the woman was like three foot nothing. I towered over her.

  But despite that, she started yelling at me! I mean profanities, flailing arms, the whole nine yards. I tried to speak quietly, because in normal situations, people respond faster and listen better if you are quieter, but in this case, she just bulldozed me. So I raised my voice—just to be heard, you understand—and then she raised hers (when you wouldn’t have thought that was possible), and all of a sudden, people filling their gas tanks at the station thirty yards away were looking over, and people were coming out of the food mart into the gas lanes to see what the commotion was.

  When I told her to please stop yelling, she screamed, “Don’t threaten me!” as if I’d pulled a gun on her.

  (Which I could have, if it weren’t for my car being stolen! More bad luck! I mean, what would I have had to lose? And what a satisfying moment that would have been!)

  Anyway, as you might imagine, the scene everyone thought they were witnessing was five-foot-seven-inch me towering over this tiny person, threatening her, frightening her. I don’t know, maybe some even called Child Protective Services. It was humiliating!

  So, just to end the nightmare, the little bitch got her way and I moved the car and trailer, only to hear this horrible screeching sound. So I got out and looked, and the bumper had gotten caught on the broken base of what must have been a parking lot light once and it was pulling off. So I lifted it up and over the damn cement base and pulled the trailer around, then pushed—well, sort of shoved—the bumper back into place.

  It seems to be okay now.

  Nevertheless, I’m
going to run into the pharmacy and get some Krazy Glue in addition to sleeping pills.

  I’m back again. So I glued the bumper in place, and if those old commercials with a guy hanging midair from his hard hat, held in place only by Krazy Glue, are any indication, the bumper should stay in place now.

  I have less confidence in the sleeping pills. I’m sorry, the NoSomnias, which I think is a pretty poor pun on “insomnia” and kind of sounds like it too, indicates “no sleep” but it was two bucks cheaper than the Tylenol PM, and I have to watch my dollars in case this doesn’t work. No telling how long that $222 (now) is going to have to last me.

  It’s tempting to take them all now, but the car is getting low on gas, and I can’t leave Colleen with a corpse and an empty tank. Talk about tacky.

  And I can’t do that to the kid either. Did I mention Colleen had this kid with her—this sullen girl—who is apparently her niece, her husband’s brother’s child, so no relation to apple-cheeked blond Colleen. She has dull, charcoal hair—dyed, of course—and skin so pale, it’s almost green. This time of year! When I was her age, I would have been out trying to get a Bain de Soliel tan but instead she’s on this road trip with a woman twice her age. She must be bored out of her skull.

  Too bad I’ll never know more of her story.

  Still, tempting as it is, I can’t do myself in in this car, right where they have to get back in and drive another thousand miles and back. The kid would freak out. I remember being her age. Weird thought: I’m alive now and maybe strike her as weird but not frightening. Not creepy. But the minute my life leaves me, I’m something else entirely.

  Better that I don’t do it in a space they have to keep regardless.

  So, what am I on now? Plan C? Got to keep thinking.

  Meanwhile, I guess I should put at least a few bucks’ worth of gas in the tank, considering the fact that I must have used up quite a bit sitting here writing with the engine running.

  I may be planning “the ultimate selfish act,” but I don’t want to be inconsiderate.