by Rio Youers
Because she was close enough now to see that the man wasn’t only familiar.
The man was Bob.
“Oh!” she said again, feeling suddenly dizzy, like the car was nothing she could control. For what seemed like the duration of a single photo taken, the Skylark was aimed directly at the young man, thumbing, until his eyes got wide and he leaped back, out of the way. But Evelyn had the car on the road before it got close to him, had it under control as she came level with him, as she stared, as she passed, as he looked to her pleadingly, needing a ride, no baggage with him, just his dark jeans and leather coat and a strange sense of urgency that bothered her more than the fact that he was still only twenty-five years old.
Bob.
Young Bob.
Then he was in the rearview mirror, still watching her, no doubt because she was a passing driver who had expressed interest in his predicament.
Or maybe he recognized her, too?
Evelyn slammed on the brakes, then pulled off to the shoulder. She was at least a hundred yards past him and didn’t think she should be driving. She wished she had Sherry or Mark, wished she was sitting between them or even sitting in a chair secured to the wall in the back of the U-Haul. What she really wanted was to be back home, sitting in the recliner she’d sat in countless lonely nights, her back to the window she once stared out of, waiting for a man who looked just like the hitcher to come home, to explain himself, to say anything that would make sense of the sudden inexplicable way he’d left.
Without a word.
The hitcher had given her a real scare. And now the hitcher was trotting toward the Skylark. She watched him grow bigger, a look of insane confusion on her face, mouth open, her lower jaw drawn back, her eyes neither wide nor wet but laser locked on the rearview mirror.
He was coming fast now. He had something of a grateful smile, but he seemed to sense she wasn’t fully decided. Maybe it was because she hadn’t gotten out of the car and officially invited him. Maybe it was the way she’d stopped. Or maybe it was because everyone in the entire world outside her car could sense the truth that, while the car itself wasn’t experiencing a breakdown, the driver inside it was.
“Bob?”
Oh, God. To say his name, as the man came up along the shoulder. The man didn’t only look the spitting image of Bob on the day Bob left, but he moved like him, too.
“Bob,” she said again, as cars passed on her left, getting on the highway, on the way to their jobs, their travels, with what looked like no anxiety and no loss. The man was now level with the trunk, then the back door on the passenger side, then the passenger door itself, then the open window.
“Thanks,” he said, bending at the waist, looking her directly in the eye. There was a flash of what could’ve been recognition, a slight tilt of his head. Then it was gone. “Were you stopping for me? I couldn’t tell.”
Evelyn hadn’t realized how hard she was gripping the wheel. As if she were in a perpetual near-wreck. As if for the last minute or so she’d experienced something that should have been a mere fraction of a second, if only for the sanity of the person living it.
“For you?” she heard herself say. It wasn’t any good, her voice. Sounded like a dog, perhaps, or a cat. Something not as sophisticated in speech as a woman.
The man inched back from the car.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just looking to get a ride out of town. If you’re–”
“Is that it?” Evelyn said. Again, a flash of recognition. But Evelyn could only imagine how crazed she looked, how meek, and how interesting, too, to a man who thought, subconsciously, she might look familiar. “Just a ride out of town?”
He made it sound so . . . simple.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m heading–”
“Get in.”
He stared a moment. Looked up the road. Like there might be a better option than Evelyn in this life for him.
But he opened the door and got in. And Evelyn, trembling, pulled from the shoulder at last and joined the flow of every day traffic heading west.
***
She had a hard time looking at him and also a hard time not. He was on edge; a child would’ve been able to tell that much. The way he fidgeted and adjusted himself in the seat, the way he looked out the window then the windshield, the window then the windshield. She caught him checking the passenger side mirror many times, as if making sure the life he was leaving wasn’t trailing him out of town.
“So,” Bob said. “Where are you going?”
“What’s your name?” Evelyn asked. She already knew it. But she had to hear it. Driving in the slow lane, cars whizzing past her on the left, she had to hear him say it.
“I’m Bob.”
“Oh.”
That one syllable again. As if she’d just been told she had an incurable disorder. As if she’d been physically hurt.
“Are you okay?” Bob asked.
Now Evelyn did look at him. And the expression she flashed him caused him to look to see if the car door was locked. If there was even a handle on the inside.
“You, Bob, are wondering if I’m okay?”
A car merged closely ahead of them. Too close for Bob’s comfort.
“I didn’t mean to ask something personal,” he said. “I was just making small talk.”
“You mean you don’t really wanna know if I’m okay?”
“Hey, I didn’t mean that, either. Look, if you wanna–”
“I’m driving because my husband left me thirty-one years ago and I’m attempting, today, to start a new life.”
Silence. Heavy. Deep and dark.
“Oh,” Bob said. And his one syllable had none of the horror or surprise of hers. Rather, he sounded concerned, the way people do when a coincidence feels a little too big. Then, anxiously, “So where are you going to start this new life?”
“Ha!” Evelyn couldn’t resist. Had to release a bark of frustrated laughter. What she really wanted to do was go off like a hyena, turn to face him and open her mouth as wide as it would go and laugh until her throat was hoarse and her eyes popped out of her head. What she really wanted to do was bite him, hit him, kick him against the passenger door until it swung open and he went tumbling into traffic. But she managed to say, “Denver,” instead.
After considering her response, he said, “Really? That’s great. I’m heading west, too.”
“You are?” Evelyn felt as if a single shovelful of dirt had fallen into one of the many holes that had long marred the lawn of her life. “Is that your entire plan?”
“Yeah,” Bob said, moving so that he was leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. When he spoke again, he sounded eager. “I’ve always wanted to see the west.”
But you have, Evelyn wanted to say. You’ve seen farther than the west. You’ve seen Hawaii.
“And what’s out west?” she asked, holding back emotions she couldn’t fathom the size of.
He’s going to say a woman is out there. A true love. The one. He’s going to say something that’s going to make you crazy, that’s going to make you slam on the brakes hard enough for his head to crack against the windshield..
“Nothing really,” he said. “Just . . . something new.” Then, after a pause, “Like you’re doing, I suppose.”
“I see.”
Oh how Evelyn wanted to strangle him. How dare he equate his abandoning her to her dealing, finally, with his abandonment?
“And are you leaving anybody . . . behind?” she asked. Outside, the sun had gotten visibly higher and the Detroit skyline was firmly in the rearview. She was on the road now. With Bob. And she’d just asked him if he’d left her.
“Anybody?” He seemed to sink deep into thought, unselfconsciously, as if he assumed anybody who would pick up a hitchhiker would also understand ponderous silence. “Yes. A wife.”
Evelyn couldn’t not look at him. Did she see shame there?
“A wife.”
“Yes.”
“And does she know y
ou’re heading . . . west?”
They were far enough outside Detroit now that the traffic had mostly cleared. The sun was higher, but the spring air hadn’t gone warm yet. Evelyn touched the chest pocket of her puffy jacket, as if she might find a cigarette there.
“Need one?”
Bob was holding one out to her. She reached for it and stopped. Really? Was she going to accept anything at all from this man? On the day he left her?
In his eyes she saw he was oblivious. A man with no real plan and no explanation.
She took the smoke. He lit it.
“Thank you.”
Thank you. Oh how black those two words felt coming out of her, sent his way.
“She asked a lot of questions,” Bob said, lighting one of his own.
“Oh?”
“Like . . . I couldn’t do anything without her asking questions.”
“About what?”
“About . . . everything really. When are we gonna have dinner. When are we gonna go to bed. When are we gonna wake up? She’s just . . . full of questions. And I didn’t have answers all the time. Felt like I was being interrogated.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Well, no. I’m not.”
“You couldn’t answer simple questions like what time you’d like to eat? You’re leaving your wife because of that?”
Bob took a drag, blew it out the window.
“Did I say I was leaving my wife?”
“Well, you’re talking about her like she’s in the past.”
“Am I?” Then, “I guess I am.”
Evelyn felt a flare of unmanageable rage.
“That’s what you’re doing. I know.”
“Well . . . I don’t know exactly.”
“But your wife is back home. Probably just waking up. Wondering where you went?”
“Hey, if I’ve hit a sore spot, I’m sorry. I didn’t say I was leaving . . . Christ, that sounds so . . . mean.”
“It is mean! It’s about the meanest thing a man can do! Why not tell her?”
She was yelling now.
“Jeez! I did. In . . . so many words.”
“Not enough words, Bob.” The Skylark was roaring now. “No matter how many words you told her, you needed to say a few more.”
Silence then. Smoking. Bob reached for the radio and stopped. Evelyn watched his hand come near the dial and she imagined snapping his fingers straight off. Imagined smoking them, ashing them out the window. This piece of shit was acting like nobody was going to get hurt.
They drove without speaking for some time. Hours, it seemed, though Evelyn couldn’t be bothered with checking the clock. The way she felt, it was as if she’d driven into a pool of amber. As if the car and herself and her shit one-time husband were stuck the way mosquitoes get stuck.
In time.
“Coming up on Chicago sooner than later,” Bob said. “You could drop me off there.”
“Why there? You got a girlfriend there?”
“What? No. I just . . . ”
“Why there?”
“It just seems like you’re angry with me, ma’am.”
Ma’am.
“Do I look familiar to you, Bob?”
This after so much silence. Right back into it again.
“No. I’m sorry. Should you?”
“Ha!”
“Look. You can drop me off here.”
“No.” Evelyn refused to say the word sorry, but there were other ways to keep him in the car. “I worked with you is all.”
“We worked together?”
“Yep. At Miller’s on Grand.”
“You . . . you worked at Miller’s?”
No, she hadn’t. But she knew Bob had. She also knew he paid about as much attention to his coworkers at that trashy themed restaurant as he did his wife the day he left her.
“I worked in accounting. In the back offices.”
“Holy cow,” Bob said. There was relief in his voice. As if, by affirming this link, Evelyn had both made sense of her (to him) odd behavior and reduced the sense (for him) of being driven into oblivion by a stranger. “I had no idea. Well . . . that’s great.”
“Yes. It is.” She smiled coldly his way. “Small world, isn’t it? Coincidences at every entrance ramp.”
Bob smiled. She wondered what she ever saw in that smile. So young. So . . . dumb.
“Well I’m glad to hear that,” he said.
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s just . . . for a minute there it seemed like you . . . ”
“I what?”
“Like you were asking a lot of questions.”
Evelyn looked steadfast to the road ahead. She gripped the wheel hard and the Skylark continued, closing in on the middle of southern Michigan, the sun not quite yet directly above them, but not yet ready to sink below the horizon either. No closure on this day. Not yet.
***
They got gas just before leaving Michigan. Evelyn was surprised when Bob said he’d pump it. Didn’t think he had it in him. She also wouldn’t let him, told him to go on and get a coffee or whatever he wanted to do inside. She would pump her own gas, thank you. Had done so for the better part of three decades.
She watched him walk into the station, that same silly gait he’d always had. Only, when they were twenty-five years old (when she was twenty-five; Bob still was or was again), that walk made her laugh. Made her smile. She recalled thinking it was sexy even, or, at the very least, his own. But now, with the smell of gasoline on her fingers (she’d spilled some, watching him), and a cool northern wind against her jacket, she realized the man looked small. Incredibly small. In gait, in body, in mind. Everything about him. Was she sure he was even twenty-five? He didn’t look old enough to carry a driver’s license. Did he know how to drive? Did he know how to do anything at all?
She watched as he didn’t hold the door open for the older woman who entered the station behind him.
“Just a jerk in love with himself.”
This felt true. So true. As if she needed any more proof that Bob was a selfish man, watching him interact with others, or not interact, was enough to make her fume. She saw him behind the glass, walking a food aisle. How much money did he have on him? Could he have much? She couldn’t remember the specific details from that day. What time they’d gone to bed the night before. The weather. How much money he’d taken. She remembered it was some. But enough to cross the country and to expect to start a new life?
“Well,” she said. “He must’ve.”
Yes. He must’ve started anew. Unless, of course, something had happened to him on the way.
She didn’t think something had. She’d searched everywhere online for that obituary. And the note he’d left her that morning (this morning, for him) made it so the police looked at her with the same sympathetic faces her friends did, and left them with no reason to file a missing persons report.
Evelyn,
What can I say? I gotta go.
Bob.
“Hey,” Bob said. Evelyn was torn from her revelry. The gas tank had long been full, the pump no longer pumping. He had a bottle of soda in one hand, bread in the other. “I haven’t asked your name yet.”
“You haven’t?” she said. “I hadn’t noticed.” But of course, she had. “It’s Eve . . . it’s Eve.”
“Like Adam and . . . ?”
“No,” Evelyn said, pulling the pump from the Skylark. “Like Eve all by herself. No Adam in sight.”
***
Night came quick as Evelyn drove in deep silence, attempting to make sense of the man beside her. Surely her mind was breaking apart at the seams. Surely Bob wasn’t asleep beside her in the passenger seat. And surely the last thing he’d said before snoring was not, Let me know when we’re west.
Even now he was taking her entirely for granted. Even now, thirty-one years later, he was assuming she could handle whatever work there was to do on her own. Like driving across the country. Like starting his new lif
e for him.
They were deep into Iowa when she realized that, despite years of unanswered questions, she really didn’t have that many to ask him. She’d already asked where to and why. What more was there to wonder at? The good thing about having three decades on the piece of shit was that she now knew what mattered to her and what didn’t. The dense cruelty beside her didn’t have a clue. She understood now, by just being near him, that he didn’t know why or where any more than she did.
“Fuckin A,” she said, reaching across the car and pulling the cigarettes from his coat pocket. He didn’t seem to notice. Not even when she took the lighter from the palm of one of his hands.
She rolled down the window and lit up and thought about the life Bob had led, no, the life he was about to lead. Would he get a job at another themed restaurant? Move up to management? Meet an equally dull woman? Have a baby? Prior to today it was real easy to imagine him in a large, warm, comfortable home, taking holiday photos with a real smile on his face, surrounded by an unfathomably happy wife and kids. It had been too easy to imagine him eating warm meals, sleeping in a warm bed, constantly laughing, always good. But now, able to look at him and hear his voice again, why . . . he just looked . . .
“Ordinary,” Evelyn said.
But a question lurked, one she hadn’t asked him yet. She looked right, thought about tapping his shoulder, thought about shoving him out of the car, but saw her opportunity to wake him in the middle of the road.
A half a rubber tire, the kind of thing any decent driver knew to avoid. But Evelyn aimed the Skylark just shy of straight at it, with a mind to run it over.
It worked better than she’d expected, as Bob was lifted up out of his seat and smacked his head against the roof. He opened his eyes quick, brought his hands in front of his face, and squealed.
“What’s going on?!” he yelled.
Evelyn laughed. Oh, to have Bob in the car with her, to be able to do things to him.
“Bump in the road,” she said.
Bob looked out the back window, out the side, then to Evelyn.
“Wow. Woke me straight up.” Then, “How goes it?”
