The Red Car

by Marcy Dermansky

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You are welcome,” he said.

  I felt the grin spread across my face, from ear to ear. Like a Cheshire cat. I started to laugh. Jonathan Beene gazed back at me. “Why are you laughing?” he said.

  There, in front of me, was Judy’s red car, the car that had killed her. I did not know what I was supposed to do about that.

  “I feel happy,” I said.

  I took his hand, our fingers interlaced.

  “You were never happy in college,” he said.

  Jonathan Beene was smiling, smiling at me.

  That was the thing, I was starting to realize. I liked it, being happy.

  I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I WAS supposed to do next.

  “Huh, Judy?” I said.

  It was the middle of the night. Jonathan Beene was asleep in what was supposed to be my bedroom, Stella’s old room. He had wanted to sleep with me. I had said no. “I am married,” I said.

  “You are?”

  I appreciated the disappointment on his face. I appreciated how being married made this conversation easy for me. I did not have to hurt his feelings. I did not tell Jonathan about Diego or the other Lea. He didn’t need to know. I wondered what my life would be like, if I were to have sex with Jonathan Beene. Maybe I would be able to go back with him to his loft in Tribeca. My life would be significantly better. Somehow, that seemed wrong. Like prostitution. I also did not want to have sex with him. I was tired.

  Instead, I found a blanket, a pillow, and settled in on the couch. I wanted to sleep but I couldn’t sleep. I read Judy’s letter again. There was the part about money, how she had left me money. I wanted the money. I did not know how to kick Hans out of my apartment, our apartment, because he would have nowhere to go. The easiest solution seemed like leaving.

  “That’s running,” Judy said.

  But I didn’t want to live in that apartment anymore. Somehow, I had lived there for five years. Five years had passed. For five years, I had lived in an apartment on an ugly block with an auto repair shop on the corner, constantly tormented by the noise made in that shop. This summer, it had been the swimming pool in the yard, making me feel crazy. I wanted out.

  “Not running,” I said. Or maybe it was running. “So what?” I said.

  I had always admired people who went running. Runners. People who ran marathons. People who could run two miles. Even that seemed impossible. They seemed like better people than I was.

  “I am not judging,” Judy said.

  But she had been judging me all along.

  Her letter also asked me to go the bat mitzvah of her niece in Philadelphia. The date was coming up. “Philadelphia?” I said. “Really?”

  I fell asleep with the letter on my lap, my contact lenses still in. I woke up to Margaret sitting next to me, bright light streaming in from the windows. Margaret was wearing her professor clothes, her hair pulled back.

  She had put a cup of coffee on the coffee table for me. “Jonathan already left,” she said. “He wrote you a letter.” I saw the piece of paper, folded in half, next to my cup of coffee. “You can stay as long as you want,” she said. “I have to teach.”

  Yannick came out of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of cereal. He sat in the armchair. I liked it, this sense of camaraderie in their living room. It seemed like an episode of Friends. It had never felt this good before, living with roommates. Living with Hans.

  “Did you get lucky?” Yannick asked.

  “That is disgusting,” Margaret said. “And you know they slept in different rooms.”

  I carefully picked up my cup of coffee. Margaret had filled the mug to the rim.

  “He is worth a lot of money,” Yannick said.

  “That seems like a strange thing for an anthropologist to say,” I said. I sipped my coffee. It was good coffee. Strong. I could stay there, in Margaret’s house, she had said so. It was an appealing idea. Our life could be a sitcom. I would play the role of the wacky friend who came to visit and never left.

  “Anthropologists have to get by in this world,” Yannick said. “We can’t live on grant money alone.”

  “Well, maybe you can,” Margaret said.

  Yannick shrugged.

  “I am going to have to wing today’s lecture,” Margaret said. “I hate that. I drank too much last night. Again.”

  “Did you take any aspirin?” Yannick asked.

  “Two,” Margaret said. “My body is not forgiving me. I think I am going to make the students write in class.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I was just waking up, but it didn’t seem like I had a hangover. I felt great, somehow, fresh, clear.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” Margaret said.

  “But it is my fault,” I said.

  “I am not going to drink for a month,” Margaret said.

  “Or until dinner,” Yannick said.

  I looked at Margaret.

  “We do drink wine with dinner,” she said. “But I don’t get drunk. I won’t. I have too much work to do.”

  I thought about dinner. Margaret was a vegetarian. She used to make nice pastas. There was always cheese. The wine. The brownies. But I could not stay there, in her house. She had work to do. She had made a life for herself. It was a nice life. I envied it. I wondered what Jonathan Beene had written to me in his letter.

  “Another letter,” Judy said.

  Which was better than whatever was waiting for me in my email.

  “I am sorry you are behind,” I told Margaret again.

  Margaret shook her head. “I am a grown-up,” she said. “I make my own choices. We had fun.”

  “I should go, too,” I said. “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “I do,” I said. “I have things I need to do. You have been the greatest.”

  “Sweetie,” Margaret said.

  I got up from the couch. Margaret gave me the biggest, most wonderful hug.

  “You are going to be okay,” she said.

  I PUT THE KEYS IN JUDY’S red car.

  “Please don’t kill me,” I said.

  The obvious place to go was back to Diego’s condo in San Francisco. But when I got on the highway, I realized that I had taken the wrong ramp, going south instead of north. There was a large concrete divider in between the lanes. I felt a strange urge, as if coming from the red car, to go ahead and jump it. And I didn’t know why the red car would try to kill me, why Judy would send me out on this path if she was also trying to kill me.

  The thing to do was take the first exit, make a safe and legal U-turn, head back in the right direction, but I was in the middle lane, driving five miles over the speed limit the way my father once taught me. I was not speeding like Margaret. I was not going too slow. I was in control of the red car. I did not feel like I was in control of the red car. My hands were gripping the steering wheel, much too tight. I looked at my bent knuckles on my hands and realized I should be looking at the road. There were cars behind me, in front of me, on my left, on my right. I should not have been driving this red car on a crowded highway. I drove for over an hour, safe in the middle lane, willing myself to switch lanes. I no longer knew where I was going. It did not seem to matter. I pictured the hippie mechanic, picking up the car at a junkyard, shaking his head, wishing it would have worked out differently. He would have sold it for me. We would have slept together. It would not have been terrible sex. I would not be dead.

  “You are not dead, dummy,” Judy said.

  “Thanks, Judy,” I said.

  “You’ll see,” she answered.

  “See what?” I said.

  I saw a turnoff to Highway 1.

  I was able to make it.

  Something in my brain clicked. I knew this was a beautiful road, famous, but the choice turned out to be a bad one. Maybe the scenery was gorgeous but I couldn’t turn my head to look, because I had to concentrate on the twists and turns of the road, all too aware of another c
ar on my tail. It was a narrow highway.

  “Fuck off,” I said.

  I wanted to pull over to let the car pass me but I was too scared to pull over. I could not see the ocean, but I knew that it was there, at the bottom of the cliffs. I could imagine missing a turn, sailing off the road into the unknown like the black funeral car in Harold and Maude.

  My knuckles hurt. I was sitting up way too straight. My back hurt. It had never hurt before. I did not want to have a bad back. Hans’s back always, always hurt. A year ago, he had injured himself during a yoga class and I had not been sympathetic. I couldn’t explain why. He wasn’t easy to take care of when he was sick.

  I did not know where was I driving but I wanted to be done driving. It was a beautiful day, but the glare of the sun shone straight into my eyes, and I was blinking. Driving straight into the sun, I felt almost blind. I was driving blind on a twisty road in a red car with murderous impulses. The combination was bad. If this were a Haruki Murakami novel, at least I would be listening to the right music, a Beach Boys cassette or some old jazz, but I was too scared to take my hand off the wheel to turn on the radio.

  I saw a sign for a motel and I felt another click in my brain. The River Inn. My parents had gone there together, a long time ago. I could not remember the last time my parents had been on vacation, but I knew that they had been there. My mother loved this place. She had told me about wooden benches in the river, which in places was more like a gentle stream. You could sit on these benches, read a book, drink a lemonade and dangle your feet in the water. I still had a picture of my mother that she sent me, years ago, her hair long, wearing a magenta T-shirt and a pair of shorts, sitting on one of these wooden benches in the river at the River Inn, her feet in the water. It was one of the rare pictures of my mother, who did not like to be photographed. It was one of the rare times that she was smiling.

  I pulled into the driveway, the car crunching over a gravel path. The place did not look like much. It looked like a motel on the side of the road, nothing more. I went into the office, which was empty, and rang the bell. My hands were wet with sweat from gripping the steering wheel.

  A young Asian woman appeared from the back, rubbing her eyes. She had the straightest, blackest hair. The whitest skin. I thought of Snow White. She was almost too beautiful for this world. She was holding an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. She was wearing a pale pink sweatshirt.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I must have fallen asleep.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “Do you have a reservation?” she asked.

  I shook my head, sure that she would send me away. I felt disappointed, suddenly wanting to stay in this place where my mother had been happy. I did not want to be sent away.

  “Have some faith,” Judy said.

  The beautiful Asian girl squinted at the computer screen.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “There are a couple of rooms open. How many nights?”

  “One,” I said and then I paused. “Could I stay longer if I like it?”

  “Oh, you will like it here,” she said.

  Her straight hair formed a blanket in front of her face. I could not see her eyes. “Let’s start with one night and you can extend if you want to. Does that sound okay?”

  That sounded reasonable to me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Cash or credit?”

  Without thinking, I gave her my credit card. She pushed her hair behind her ears and I watched her begin to enter my information into the computer. And then it occurred to me, watching her, that Hans could find out where I was. He could call the credit card company, research my expenses. There was no reason for him to do that. That was what a husband would do when his wife went missing. Like the Julia Roberts movie that was always on cable, when she was still really young, where she cut off her hair and learned to swim, pretended to drown, swam to shore and went on to lead a new life in a small bucolic American town. All to escape her controlling, abusive husband.

  But I was not missing. I was not even on the run. I had a plane ticket, a return date. Maybe I was on a break? Was that what it was? Hans and I had not discussed it. I had not explained to him, for instance, that I did not want to talk to him while I was gone. How could he be expected to understand that?

  “Actually, could I pay cash?” I asked.

  “Of course,” the beautiful receptionist said. “I will still need to take down the information from your card, though,” she said. “For a security deposit. Just in case. I will also need a form of ID. I should have asked for that straightaway. I am a little bit tired. I was up all night, reading this book. Have you read it?”

  She held up her copy of Tender Is the Night.

  “Sure, I read it,” I said. “A long time ago.”

  “It’s really good,” the receptionist said.

  I opened my wallet and extracted a pile of twenties, the money Hans had considerately taken from the ATM after choking me. I instinctively reached for my neck, patted the soft skin and then my hair. I envied the hair of the receptionist. It felt good to have so much money in my wallet, but the room was more expensive than what I thought a motel on the side of the highway would cost. It would not last long. I could hear my mother the last time I was home, complaining about the rising price of produce in the supermarket. I wondered if the River Inn cost significantly less when she had come. If that was why she no longer took trips.

  “Don’t worry about money,” Judy said. “I told you that. Can you trust me?”

  I did not know. Could I trust her? She had left me money. I just had to go and claim it. But I did not want to go back to San Francisco.

  “Stay,” Judy said. “You are fine.”

  “My mother stayed here once,” I told the beautiful receptionist. “She loved it. I was driving by and I saw the sign for this place and so I pulled over. Completely on impulse. I had absolutely no idea that I would come here.”

  I regretted talking too much. I was nervous, I realized, checking into a motel where no one knew where I was. Where Hans did not know where I was. I didn’t like to remember that fight. Hans’s hands around my neck. I did not want to think about him. I didn’t want to have to answer his emails, pretend that everything was all right.

  “You’ll see after you check in,” the beautiful receptionist said, handwriting me a receipt she’d made using a black quill pen, dipped in ink. Surely, a ballpoint pen would be quicker, a computer receipt. I looked at her pretty hair and wondered how she came to be working here. Maybe she was an actress, training for a role. “It’s really spectacular here. Check into your room and come for brunch. You’ll see the view.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  The receptionist squinted at the computer screen. I thought we were done, but the information was not going through.

  “I didn’t fill in a required field,” she said. “I need to enter the make of your car and your license plate.”

  “I don’t know it,” I said. “Let me go check.”

  “Okay. I’ll go with you,” the receptionist said. “I need some air.”

  By now, I knew that I wanted this beautiful Asian receptionist to be my friend.

  “Is this yours?” she asked, pointing at Judy’s red car.

  “It was a gift,” I said.

  “It isn’t what I would have expected you to be driving.”

  The receptionist wrote my license plate number down on the back of her hand. It struck me as funny, like Lea from the apartment on Castro Street giving me her phone number. I looked down at the skin on my wrist. Her number was gone. It didn’t matter. I knew where she lived. The beautiful receptionist walked me to my room. If she had been a man, I might have found this creepy. Instead, I was grateful. My room was in a flat, unremarkable one-story building on the other side of the two-lane highway.

  “Come straight to the restaurant,” she said. “The kitchen is going to close soon.”

  “Brunch,” I said.

  “Coffee,” the rece
ptionist said, kindly, as if I did not understand the word. “Eggs. Toast. Homemade granola. French toast.”

  “Pancakes?” I asked her. I could not remember the last time I had eaten a pancake.

  “Delicious pancakes,” she said. “With fresh fruit and organic maple syrup.”

  I opened the door to my motel room. Again, it did not look like much. There was wood paneling on the walls, a framed photograph of sunflowers over the double bed. An armchair in the corner, a door that would open up to a bathroom.

  “The restaurant is across the highway. There are outdoor tables that look out onto the river.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “You have half an hour before the kitchen closes.”

  I stepped inside my room. Maybe I liked it after all. The place was mine. I did not have to share it with anyone else. I was worried that my new receptionist friend would follow me into my room.

  She left.

  THE MENU HAD TOO MANY choices. Six different kinds of toast. Omelets with goat cheese and varieties of mushrooms I had never heard of. I chose a table outside on the patio with a view of the river. It was beautiful. I ordered the pancakes because the Asian receptionist had told me she loved the pancakes. I asked for coffee.

  There I was.

  I did not understand how, geographically, there could be a river at Big Sur because I thought I was by the ocean. But the receptionist was right. I did love it there. It was like I had crossed the highway and been transported to another world. Blue sky. Tall grass. Wildflowers. Ducks. A mother duck with baby ducklings in the river, which was actually more like a bubbling brook. I could hear the pleasant tinkling of the water. I waited for my food, elbows on the table, my head on my hands, watching the water flow over the rocks. I looked out onto the wooden benches in the water, the benches my mother had loved, where she had let her picture be taken. My coffee came.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I wasn’t going to look at the waiter who took my order, but I felt a lingering presence. My pretty receptionist friend set down a red mug on the table, a small pitcher of cream. I noticed another red ceramic mug, also filled with coffee, on the tray. The patio was empty. I tried to remember what day it was.