She Poured Out Her Heart

by Jean Thompson

  “Why is that?” Jane asked, busy with navigating a left turn against traffic.

  “I don’t know, girls seem to fight over stuff more. They get jealous more. Stupid stuff. Whose hair is bigger. I guess that’s important to you all, I can’t figure it.”

  “That is not what women fight about. Women, OK? Not girls.”

  “Ah.” He shrugged. “You say potato, I say potahto.”

  The GPS was giving her a new set of directions, telling her to turn when she’d thought she was done with turning, and Patrick had begun some annoying explanation of how “girl” was really a compliment, a term of endearment, and most girls, excuse me, women, understood that, when he said, “Hey! Where you going? It’s right here.” And Jane stepped on the brakes in mid-turn and the next instant was hit from behind, hard, in a thudding crush of metal.

  Both of them jolted against the dash. The seat belts threw them back again. A moment of shock when Jane chose not to believe what had just happened. A horn was sounding, the driver of the car that had hit her laying on the horn in angry bleats. “Whoa, you all right?” Patrick asked, and she said she was, because nothing obvious was broken or bleeding, and he said he guessed he was all right too. “I didn’t mean, stop dead in your tracks, you know?”

  Jane reached up to fix the mirror, which her head must have knocked against. The view was unfamiliar because the red hood of another car now filled the back window. The driver, a pissed-off–looking young guy, was already out of the car, waving his arms and talking into a cell phone. At least he didn’t seem to be hurt. She supposed she would have to get out too. She opened her door.

  “Hold up,” Patrick said. “You should sit a minute. Breathe.”

  “I’m fine,” Jane said, unhooking her seat belt. She wasn’t quite fine, since her head seemed only loosely attached to her neck, but she thought she’d do.

  “How about you turn the engine off before you do anything else.”

  Good idea. She shut off the car and stepped out to the street, holding on to the roof for balance. “I’m sorry,” she said to the other driver. “How bad is it?”

  “What the fuck were you doing, huh?” He had one of those simple-minded haircuts, the sides shaved and the top all flopping curls. His car, a late-model red Mazda, appeared to be trying to mate with Jane’s Toyota, crawling up its back end. Jane couldn’t tell what her car looked like beneath it.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Yeah, being sorry doesn’t keep you from being stupid.” He was busy taking pictures with his phone. He wore a red T-shirt with a drawing of a skull wearing a bandana headband over long hair and sunglasses, pointing a gun. OUTLAW, it read, in block letters. “What’s your problem, huh, you drunk or something? You stopped in the middle of the fucking intersection!” He wasn’t very tall. He didn’t look much like an outlaw.

  “Sorry,” she said again, uselessly. “I wish you wouldn’t use that kind of language.”

  “Oh, sorry, heavens to Betsy!” he said, in a hateful, mincing voice. “You mean, fuck? Fuck fuck fuck fuckety fuck. Stupid bitch. You better have all kindsa insurance. I’m calling the cops.”

  “I have my insurance card,” Jane said, hoping that she really did have it. She kept it in her wallet but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it. She guessed she would have to call Eric too.

  “Screw your card. My whole front end’s messed up.” He tried to jiggle the Mazda’s bumper to free it, gave up, and kicked at Jane’s car. “What?” he said to Jane.

  “Nothing.” She had been staring at his hair and turned away, embarrassed. Why would anybody want to look like that?

  Traffic clogged behind them as people saw what had happened and had to stop and back up.

  There was more horn honking. A small crowd had assembled for the purposes of admiring the wreck and trading opinions. Jane turned away from them. She felt tears starting in her eyes from helpless, stupid weakness.

  “Hey Richie.” Patrick had squeezed himself out of the car door. “What the hell, man?”

  “Oh, hey Pat.” Richie did a confused double-take.

  “What’s the big hairy deal? Be nice to the lady. There’s a reason they call them accidents.”

  “Why’d she stop, huh?” Richie said, less furious now, but unwilling to give up his grievance. “Stopped cold. Don’t say she didn’t.”

  “Well you hit her from behind. That’s not so good.”

  Some shut-down part of Jane’s mind flickered back to life. She recalled that this was true, it was not, generally, a good thing to hit somebody from behind.

  “It still run?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t even move it. It’s all hung the fuck up, see?” Richie said, slapping at the hood. “Ow.”

  “The bumpers are locked. Help me lift it off. Hey!” he called into the crowd of onlookers. He seemed to know a number of them.

  Patrick took off his leather jacket and tossed it into the Toyota’s front seat. They conferred together, then some of them began pushing and bouncing on Jane’s trunk, while Patrick and the others tried to lift the Mazda’s front end. They made a great deal of grunting and heaving noise, broke off, conferred again, and tried once more. The rest of the crowd cheered and shouted their suggestions. Patrick’s jaw clenched with effort. Metal scraped against metal. It was as if she had blundered into some terrifying ceremony of men, who roared and swore and sweated and strained and egged each other on.

  A police cruiser drove up, its blue lights revolving. An officer got out and made his way over to the two joined cars. He was one of those slow-walking policemen. The men working on the cars sounded more urgent now, hoarser. “Chrissake, wait till I . . . You got it? All right, PUSH!”

  Finally there was a metallic groan. The Mazda bounced loose and its front wheels landed on the pavement. A cheer went up. Richie started the Mazda and revved the engine. Jane went to see what the Toyota looked like.

  It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. A deep, V-shaped crumple to one side of the license plate and some long scrapes across the length of her trunk. Patrick joined her, breathing hard and looking pleased. His face was red and his shirt was tracked with sweat. The veins stood out on his throat and forearms. It occurred to Jane for the first time that this was what people meant when they said they were “pumped up.” They meant it entirely literally. The extent of her ignorance about ordinary things still amazed her. “Tires seem OK,” Patrick told her. “You might want to get the suspension checked.”

  “Thanks,” Jane said, although that seemed inadequate, given all the muscular effort that had gone into the production. “I mean, thanks to everybody. I wouldn’t have known what to do.”

  “Ah, it was kind of fun,” he said modestly, and Jane understood that this was true. They had all enjoyed the chance to hurl themselves against heavy objects and work their will on them.

  Richie and the police officer stood a little distance away, talking. Richie had worked himself up again and was waving his arms around.

  “Uh oh, here comes trouble,” Patrick said in a jolly tone, as the police officer left Richie and approached them. Jane felt twitchy and nervous, the way she always was around police, even when she was being the most blameless of citizens.

  “This your car?” he asked her. One of those silly questions that you still had to answer. Jane said that it was. “You know you aren’t supposed to move anything at an accident scene, right?”

  “I’ve never been in an accident before,” Jane said. The officer gave her a brief, sizing-up glance. She hoped she looked as pitiful as she felt.

  “Oh come on, Dougie,” Patrick said. “We were just trying to clear the way for traffic. Anyway, it was my idea, give her a break.”

  Did Patrick know everybody? He was a bartender, he probably did. The policeman did not look like a Dougie. He was middle-aged, square-faced, with small, staring blue e
yes. Maybe he was one of the cops Bonnie knew. She didn’t want to think about Bonnie right now.

  Officer Dougie asked Jane for her license and insurance card. She handed them over and he went back to his patrol car with them. Richie backed the Mazda up against the curb. He popped the hood and some of the men who had helped push gathered around to lean over the engine. “I think I need to sit down,” Jane said. Some adrenaline that had propped her up until now was draining out of her. She felt hollow, shaky.

  “Sure, hey, let me pull your car over to one side, OK? Then you can wait there. Don’t worry about these guys, I’ll talk to them.”

  These guys, Dougie and Richie. Was everybody here called by a kid’s nickname? Jane watched Patrick start her car, move it to the side of the street. Even at such a short distance, he drove the way he walked, with a swagger. He got out and opened the door for her. “There you be. Rest easy, now. Don’t worry about Dougie, he’s a peach. The worst part’s over.”

  Was it? (And what, if anything, about Dougie suggested peach?) She still had to get herself home and decide what to tell Eric (“I was giving one of Bonnie’s lovers a ride home when . . .”), file an insurance claim, get the car repaired. Oh, and fix dinner. She hoped the GPS hadn’t gone haywire, since she still had no idea where she was. Some welter of bars and check cashing stores and Thai restaurants and signs offering tattoos, phone cards, credit counseling, and everyone but her with purposeful, important places to go. She watched in the rearview mirror as Patrick, Richie, and Dougie conferred on the sidewalk, Patrick acting as her representative, she guessed. They spoke their own language of hierarchy and casual violence, they understood the ways in which the world worked, its machinery of laws and money and power. Wasn’t this always how it went for her? Wasn’t she always excluded by her own fear and weakness? Sitting and waiting while men decided what would be done to her, for her, on her behalf. And she let it happen. It was as if she had never before really noticed, or found this remarkable.

  After a time, Patrick came back to the car and climbed into the passenger seat. “So here’s the deal, Dougie’s going to write up an accident report, but nobody gets a ticket. Which is so very, very good. You and Richie get to fight it out with your insurance companies.” He waited for Jane to say something.

  “Thank you,” she said, since he was that pleased with himself, and she guessed he really had saved her from at least one layer of trouble. “That’s great.” She was noticing all the things about him that were alien, male: his sweat smell, his enormous hands, the creased, mysterious territory of his crotch. She said, as if this followed from their conversation, “I’ve never trusted men. Never understood them. My whole life.”

  “Yeah?” He had no idea what she was talking about. And why should he? “Well, a lot of guys, they’re the same way. About girls. Women,” he corrected. “No clue. All right, you know not to tell anybody you stopped. OK? He just hit you.”

  “Bonnie’s sleeping with my husband. So she and I had a, what did you call it, a dustup too.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not kidding.”

  She felt him staring at her. “When, like, now?”

  “Probably not right this minute.” If only because Eric had the children with him.

  “But, wow.” He contemplated this in silence. “For how long?”

  “A while.”

  He was busy asking himself his own questions. “Good old Bonnie,” he said, finally. “She does get around.”

  “Doesn’t she though.”

  “So, I have to ask, not that it’s really my business, but why is it you were taking her cookies?”

  “Because I felt . . . bad. There was a scene. I said some things.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  “No, I should have handled it differently.”

  “You were upset,” Patrick suggested. “Sure. Finding out a thing like that.”

  “I already knew. I told them to go ahead. That neither of them mattered that much to me.”

  Patrick nodded, making a visible effort to understand.

  Jane said, “But it wasn’t really true. Not for her. Him, maybe. We have kids. You don’t want to rock the boat.”

  “That’s messed up.”

  Jane said yes, it was. She looked behind her to where Dougie was still sitting in his squad car, taking his sweet time about the paperwork. What happened if they had an actual, serious accident, would they move any faster? Richie had taken himself off already in a blast of acceleration.

  Patrick said, “Hey, do you think I could have the rest of those cookies?”

  Jane retrieved the upended basket and handed it over. Patrick ate with one hand cupped beneath his mouth to catch the crumbs. Once he’d swallowed he said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your husband like?”

  “He’s very smart. He’s a doctor, a surgeon. People like him, he’s fun to be around.”

  “A doctor.” He shook his head, marveling. “Now that’s something the likes of me could never do. He’s not so much fun for you though, huh.”

  “No,” Jane said. “Not lately. Not for a long time.” She looked behind her again. No Dougie. No one paying them any attention. “Would you do something for me? One more thing?”

  “I kind of have to get ready for work.”

  “Oh, sure. Never mind.”

  “No, what?” Smiling, but already thinking of the next thing he had to do. Ready to move on.

  “Would you let me kiss you?” Instantly and horribly embarrassed. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Never mind.”

  “Wow. I wasn’t expecting that one.” He was looking at her with more interest now. “I mean, no one ever comes right out and asks. That’s so cute.”

  “Never mind,” Jane said again, feeling both shamed and irritated. He could have just said no. “Forget I—”

  He leaned over and wrapped around her, lifting her out of her seat, and then he was on her, his big face pinning hers down, his mouth working on hers as if it wanted something, wanted something, insistent but soft, and then he drew away and set her back again.

  “Oh.” She touched her mouth. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They both laughed and looked away. Then they both spoke at the same time.

  “I hope that was—”

  “I wanted to—”

  “You first,” Patrick told her.

  “I don’t know anybody like you.” She didn’t want to say, anybody as sexually healthy as you seem to be, so she said, “It’s great the way you jump right in and take charge of things. Thanks for helping me out.”

  “Hey, no problem.” He seemed relieved that there might be no more to it than gratitude. “Yeah, it’s my neighborhood, so I know these guys. Of course.”

  Of course, she would not have been in his neighborhood to begin with if she had not been taking him home. “Well, I appreciate it.” She wanted to kiss him again.

  “Yeah, I’ve been here four years? Three. One year I lived in Lakeview, I thought that was really far north. My whole family’s back in Bridgeport. They think I moved to Alaska or someplace. It’s like they have their feet in cement. Don’t get me wrong, I love em to death. I just don’t need to see them every morn, noon, and night.”

  Hadn’t Bonnie said something about his family? Something about them living next door to the Daleys, back when the Daleys had lived in an ordinary house. Patrick said, “I actually do think about moving to Alaska. First I need to take a trip there. Check it out. Like, a camping trip.”

  Jane agreed that a camping trip in Alaska would be a real adventure. Bears, Patrick said. They had actual, real bears. You had to watch out for them. He seemed energized by the idea of bears, of going up against one. There was a movie, it had Brad Pitt in it, and at the end he went off into the woods and fought bears. Did she know that one? Jane
did not. The movie had not been in Alaska but it was someplace wild like that. Patrick said, “There’s times I think I’d be better off where life is just, you know, the basics. Food, shelter. Survival. I mean, I’m a city boy born and bred, but I get these flashes. Like, maybe I’m supposed to live some other way. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Jane said. “And you have to pay attention to feelings like that.” It seemed that once she decided to make a man into a mindless sex object, he started confiding his heart’s desires.

  “Ah well.” Patrick raised one hand and let it fall, dismissively. “Alaska, what would I do there anyway? All I have on me is a strong back and a weak mind.”

  His brogue, Jane noted, grew stronger whenever he said something self-disparaging. “Don’t give up on it,” she said. “Why shouldn’t you go there? Who says you shouldn’t?” In her side mirror she saw Officer Dougie approaching with papers in hand. “Here comes your friend.”

  “He’s not exactly a friend. It’s more like, professional courtesy.”

  Jane rolled down her window and Dougie handed back her license and insurance. He went through the accident report with her. He still looked like he would have liked to arrest her for something. Jane did not have to appear in court. She should notify her insurer. Here was the file number they would ask for. Here was the time, date, location. She should call her insurer without delay. She should be careful about making sudden stops unless it was necessary to avoid hitting a pedestrian or another vehicle. Did she understand that?

  Jane said that she did. Dougie leaned down to put his head in the window. “Pat. Keep your nose clean.”

  Patrick gave him a mock-salute. “Yessir, Officer sir, and thank you for your service.”

  Dougie shook his head and walked back to his cruiser. Patrick said, “I could tell you stories about that guy. He knows I could.”

  Jane decided not to ask. She started the engine. Patrick gathered up his jacket and opened his door but didn’t get out. “Thanks for the ride. Sorry about your car.”

  “It’s all right. It’s actually my husband’s car. I don’t mind it getting knocked around.”