Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  I looked down. He was right, of course. He was right, and I hated it. There was nothing at all I could say.

  “I could grill you, too, you know,” he said. “I could press you about your husband. About why you’re not with your kids. And about why the hell you’ve just shown up here out of the blue with like, a thousand bucks in cash rolled up in your bra, and about what the hell you’ve been doing for these past twenty-six years. But I haven’t. Because you’ve asked me not to.”

  I stood there in the street with my arms wrapped around myself, staring at him. It was warm and humid, yet for some reason I was shivering. I shook my head and leaned into him. Suddenly, I started to cry. Everything was just such a mess now. He put his arm around me and propped his chin on the top of my head. His chest shuddered. I heard him sniffle, too.

  “I mean, fuck, Donna. You saw the guys I work with. Most them are, like, half my age. I figure, if I’m lucky, I’ve got five, six years left. Then what? I’m the Zakkolator. I’m Spider-Man. Since when does Spider-Man need fucking yoga?”

  He bit his lip. “Sometimes, I think all I have to show for myself in the end is just a big-ass, flat-screen TV with surround sound.”

  I sniffled. “Zack, my husband cheated on me,” I said quietly. “And my kids both think I’m the world’s biggest embarrassment, this pathetic bad joke. My only so-called ‘personal achievement’ in twenty-six years? It was to ‘just say no’ to drinking. I’m an alcoholic, Zack. I’ve been in recovery exactly five years, six months, and eighteen days now. And it almost never, ever seems to get any easier.”

  He closed his eyes as if in physical pain. “Damn,” he whispered. “Donna, I’m so sorry.”

  We stood there for a while, just holding each other tightly, tighter than I could ever remember, staring out into the night. Our breathing synced.

  “I just kept thinking, okay, maybe my husband cheating on me was actually for some higher purpose, you know, like to get me back to you.” I shook my head. “Is that insane? But I kept thinking, could you and I maybe do better for ourselves together than apart? Now that we’re adults? You know, when we were back in Michigan, we were, like, amazing together. Telepathically connected. And in love. And the sex.”

  I turned and looked at him. Wiping his eyes with the base of his palms, he gazed at me, the muscle in his jaw twitching. Cupping my face in his palm, he gently brushed the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “You are still so beautiful, Donna,” he said hoarsely. “You were my first great love.” Leaning forward, he let his luxuriant mane of thinning hair fall forward into his face. “But what I really need to do right now is lie down. I have had way, way too much to drink.”

  Gingerly, I maneuvered him back into the Subaru. Immediately, he pushed the seat as far back as it would go and shut his eyes. I found his address in my phone and drove us slowly back toward Murfreesboro. I was surprised by how quickly Nashville dropped away into rural darkness. The car was quiet now, except for Zack’s strangled snoring. I kept glancing over, making sure he was okay as the lights from the highway slid across his supine form like inverse shadows. When we reached his apartment complex, I parked as close as I could to the entrance, went around to the passenger side, and gently woke him.

  “Ah, Bella. Belladonna,” he smiled, holding open his arms magnanimously. “Let’s dance. Let’s dance me into the shower, then dance me into bed.” Using me to support himself, he struggled out of the car and stood wavering in the parking lot. He shook his legs out, one then the other, as if doing the hokey-pokey, then twisted from side to side until his back cracked.

  “There we go. There we go, baby. Okay. I’m okay now. Just needed a little shut-eye. Fuck, Bella. I usually don’t drink this much. I was just nervous. Seeing you again. You are totally, totally right. We are soul mates, baby. And we can totally do this, now. Just start over. Or pick up right where we left off. I mean, fuck the rest of the world, right? Fuck it, man.” He put his arm around me and we walked to the lobby, zigzagging slightly. This was why I’d given up drinking; this had been me, too many nights to count. I didn’t miss any of this part at all. It was a critical reminder. Maybe—I didn’t know—could I drag him along to a meeting with me tomorrow, under the guise of moral support? Suddenly, I was just so tired.

  “What do you say we have a ménage à trois?” Zack pointed to himself, then jabbed his finger twice in my approximate direction. “The one of me with the two of you?” He started to laugh.

  “Oh, Zachary.” I shook my head.

  A man in an undershirt sat out on the stoop smoking. Inside the vestibule, two blond girls were slumped on the grimy love seat, staring sullenly into their phones. No one made a move to help me with the door. After I struggled to heave it open, however, one of the blonds leapt up.

  “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling and texting you all fucking night, you drunk-ass piece of shit.” She waved her phone. Zack jumped back with his hands up as if he were being robbed at gunpoint. “Whoa, whoa, Janine. What the hell?”

  “Don’t fucking ‘Janine, what the hell’ me. I drove almost three fucking hours and you couldn’t once pick up your fucking phone?”

  My hands went up to my mouth. Oh no, I thought. Oh, Donna, you idiot.

  She was clad in capris and a filmy white camisole that clung to her nipples and showed off the orangey sheen of her skin. Her blond hair was tousled. She was attractive in a junk-foody sort of way, shiny and sugary-looking and artificially colored. “Look who got suspended, Zachary. Look who’s been lying to me and cutting class for the past two weeks and shoplifting and selling pot to the ninth graders.”

  Curled shrimp-like and sullen on the love seat was a red-eyed blond girl in a peach hoodie and mauve short-shorts, her legs scabby with mosquito bites. She was fiddling with a pair of plastic headphones. She had a wounded look. An overstuffed pink backpack sat at her feet with a tiny gingham teddy bear hanging from its zipper. Beside it: a small, cheap suitcase. I recognized her instantly from the photo. “Hey, Dad,” she said almost inaudibly. “Janine, like, kidnapped me here. She’s in total psycho mode.”

  “You can’t fucking kidnap your own kid!” Janine shouted. “I told her, Zack, just like I’m telling you. I am fucking done. Do you hear me? D-U-N. I am not running a hotel or a juvie center, and I am not a fucking ATM. She can live down here with you now, for all I care.”

  “Nice spelling, Janine. It’s D-O-N-E, brainiac,” said Lexie.

  “You hear that? She calls me ‘Janine’!” She whirled around to Lexie. “I am your mother. I deserve a little fucking respect.”

  “Then Jesus. Stop being such a total bitch all the time. So what if I sold some brownies? You’re just pissed ’cause it was your pot. Jah-nine.”

  Wow. I looked from Lexie to Janine to Zack, the three of them, knotted in a cat’s cradle of history and genetics. So this was Zack’s ex. I tried to imagine him with her; them meeting, fucking passionately, having a kid together. Did he go with her for her sonograms, brush her hair back from her face as she sweated and heaved with morning sickness? Did they take out the garbage, pay the cable bill, order pizza together? Hamstrung between his ex-wife and his daughter, Zack looked suddenly trapped and ashen, slightly concave.

  He hiccuped. “Uh, Lexie. Try calling your mom, ‘Mom,’ okay?”

  Three hours’ worth of accumulated fury and recrimination from their drive down to Nashville was now being unleashed. Lexie and Janine both began yelling their case at once.

  “I wouldn’t even have to sell brownies if you paid me a fucking allowance like a normal person!”

  “I’d pay you a ‘fucking allowance’ if you’d put down your goddamn phone for five minutes and lift a finger around the house from time to time! I am a single parent, Lexie, and I am working three jobs—”

  “Oh my God, Mom! Why did you even bother to have kids, then? I didn’t ask to be born. I didn’t ask to come into this world.”

  “Listen, you lazy, ungrateful little piece of shit—”r />
  Zack waved his arms emphatically. “Hey, can everybody just chill for a minute?”

  “Oh, suddenly you’re the big peacemaker? Fucking Gandhi here. The guy who won’t even pay child support.”

  I hung back, hugely embarrassed. It was one thing to watch reality shows or Jerry Springer. But to bear witness to a family combusting in person? Unfortunately, there was simply no room for me to maneuver around them.

  “How many fucking times do I have to tell you, Janine?” Zack shouted. “The feds are garnishing my wages.”

  “Yeah, and whose fault is that, asshole? That’s what happens when you don’t pay your taxes for ten fucking years.”

  “Oh, like I should be subsidizing the fucking government? Is that what you want?”

  “Dad,” Lexie interrupted. “I want to live with you, okay. Evansville is, like postapocalyptic zombieland. We don’t even get Netflix.”

  “Oh? Now, you want to live with your father, Lexie?” Janine looked newly injured. “Well that’s just great, that’s just fucking great because we are finally in agreement here on something.”

  Picking up Lexie’s suitcase, she hurled it across the lobby. It hit the wall behind Zack and landed at my feet.

  “C’mon, Janine,” Zack said. “Seriously?”

  “Hey look,” I said finally. “I think I should maybe wait outside?” No one paid me the least bit of attention.

  “Here you go, precious. Go live with your father, then! You’ve got a whole new life ahead of you now—with his lies and his bullshit and his skanky girlfriends—why look, there’s even one right here. Look, Lexie, you’ve probably got yourself a brand-new fucking stepmother right here in the lobby. Me? I am just washing my hands of you.” Janine held up her hands and brushed them together exaggeratedly. “Washing. My. Hands.”

  Lexie looked alarmed.

  “Whoa. No. Hey.” I put up my palms like a traffic cop. “I’m just an innocent bystander here. If anything, Janine, I, of all people, think I understand what you’re—”

  Suddenly Janine pivoted around. Only then did my presence fully register with her. And too late, I realized my mistake. She was like a drunk at a bar, itching to pick a fight. If her initial target didn’t pan out, she’d just fix on the next one. In a flash, she was yelling, hot-breathed, in my face.

  “Oh. You understand me? You understand me? Who the fuck are you?”

  “Janine!” I heard Zack plead.

  Like an expert pitcher preparing a windup, she drew back her fist and slugged me.

  Chapter 14

  At two o’clock in the morning, the highway out of Nashville was a furrow of darkness glistening with fog. With almost no one else on the road, it felt quietly treacherous. I suspected I had no business driving, but thanks to Kid Rock’s fish fry, there wasn’t a motel room to be had in a forty-mile radius.

  “Well, according to these signs, I guess we’re heading to Memphis,” I said to Aggie. I’d belted the Rogue Dreadnought into the seat beside me like a passenger. I tried to concentrate on the white lines glowing beneath my headlights, but the Subaru kept seeming to fishtail. Furious whirlybirds of light bounced off my rearview mirror, redblueredblueredblue, growing closer and closer, until the interior of the car itself seemed to blaze with them. Only then did I hear the sirens.

  I jerked over onto the shoulder and switched off the ignition. A chorus of doors slammed; there appeared to be not one, but two—or was that three?—white SUVs pulling up behind me. Policemen in navy uniforms emerged quickly from the darkness on either side of my car. One of them held a long flashlight above his shoulder like a javelin, the other restrained a German shepherd on a leash. Clearly, I was being caught up in some sort of manhunt along Interstate 40; this was far too big a force for a simple traffic patrol. It was my second run-in with the police in three days, I realized. Even when I was drinking, I hadn’t had so many regular encounters with the law. It was a personal record.

  My heart grew almost arrhythmic as they approached. I had the general idea that Southern police forces didn’t take kindly to us Northerners—certainly, I’d seen news clips and documentary footage—not to mention the movie Mississippi Burning—and, okay, Deliverance—yes, I know, that was hardly the same as being stopped on I-40 in Tennessee, but somehow, my Michigander-Jewish brain lumped it together. I sat there gripping my steering wheel at ten-and-two, telling myself Yeah, okay, technically, you’re a Yankee and a Jew, but c’mon, you’re a middle-aged, suburban white woman in a Subaru—you are not who they’re looking for—and for the first time, I realized, shamefully, what my daughter had meant all those times about our “white privilege”—but still, overall, I hoped and assumed that being polite and charming and deferential would smooth over any cultural breaches long enough to win them over and they’d just wave me on. Besides, I had nothing to hide, I reminded myself proudly: I was not drunk.

  “Ma’am, you’ve been driving erratically, and we clocked you going thirteen miles above the speed limit.” An officer shined the flashlight directly into my face, then squinted at the paperwork I handed over. “Michigan, hmm? You’re pretty far from home to be driving around here so late at night.”

  I blinked up at him. He was a florid man with tiny features smushed together beneath a wide brow, a miniature face adrift in a fleshy pancake. His voice, with its Smokey Mountain twang, was as languid and sweet as syrup, and his nametag read “M. Petty.” Officer Petty? I suppressed the nervous urge to make some sort of quip.

  Officer Petty aimed his flashlight in my face again. I expected him to start writing me a ticket, but his expression changed suddenly. “Ma’am. Are you all right?”

  Reflexively, I touched my fingertips lightly to the left side of my face. I could feel the swelling, a dull, steady throb beneath the skin. The corner of my eye had already been turning purplish as I’d left the hotel. Janine could’ve been a welterweight. “Ma’am, have you been in a fight or an accident?”

  I shook my head, then nodded, then shook my head again. I was so relieved to hear concern in his voice. The only sound that came out was “Yuuuuhhhhhuuuunn.”

  “Is that a yes or a no, ma’am?”

  The officer cocked his head. “Did a stranger assault you, ma’am, or was it someone you know? Your husband or your boyfriend, ma’am? Because if this is a case of domestic violence—”

  I shook my head miserably. “My boyfriend’s wife punched me.” The instant I said this, I wished I hadn’t, because I realized just how trashy it sounded. Those six words suggested an entire trailer park’s worth of melodrama and bad judgment—and over the hood of my Subaru, the two officers exchanged a look, and the mood instantly switched back to one less generous.

  “I’m such a fool. I’m such a total moron,” I tried to explain, smiling ingratiatingly despite my tears. “I mean, good God, Officer. Who decides to meet their high school sweetheart over Facebook, right? It’s just that I loved him so much. I really did. He was my great— Since we were sixteen years old, but then he—”

  “Ma’am,” the officer said impatiently, “are you by any chance intoxicated?”

  I shook my head violently. “Oh, no. No sir, Officer. No, no. In fact, I haven’t had a drink in exactly five years, six months, and eighteen—whoops, no—it’s after midnight—nineteen days now.”

  Somehow, this answer only made me sound less sober, not more. Plus, I realized, my Subaru had a faint whiff of tequila left in it from Zack.

  Officer Petty presented me with a Breathalyzer. I took it willingly, and it revealed that there was absolutely no alcohol in my bloodstream.

  Just for good measure, Officer Petty ordered me to walk a straight line, follow his pen tip, touch my nose while balancing on one leg. I had done these tests before. I knew them like a dance; they were the drunkard’s version of the Macarena, the YMCA. When I mastered them, I had to contain my glee. But shivering there on the side of Interstate 40 at 2 a.m., clad in my leopard-print miniskirt and my Anthrax hoodie, with my eyeliner smudged and
a plummy bruise rising on my cheek—and a guitar case strapped into the passenger seat beside me like one of those inflatable dolls commuters used sometimes to cheat their way into the HOV lanes during rush hour—and my very Yankee license plates (MICHIGAN Great Lakes Splendor! Circa 2007)—I began to understand how maybe I looked like someone who should, in fact, be pulled over at 2 a.m.

  On the pebbled shoulder of the highway, the moist air smelled of wet soil and gasoline. I glanced back at the patrol SUVs. Dark letters set off against the white read 23RD JUDICIAL DISTRICT DRUG TASK FORCE. From the other side of my Subaru, I heard a dog yelp.

  “Ma’am,” Officer Petty addressed me, clearing his throat, “we have ‘probable cause’ to search your vehicle. Would you be so kind as to pop the trunk for us?”

  Nine boxes of shoes from the Designer Outlet tumbled out onto the roadside. With some effort, Officer Petty knelt on the ground behind the Subaru and carefully opened each one, probing them with his flashlight, unwrapping each shoe from its tissue nest, removing the clots of cardboard stuffed inside, his thick hands jamming deep into the toes of the metallic pumps and rhinestone kitten heels, feeling around. I felt myself sweating, my heart palpitating frantically.

  Officer Petty fixed his eyes on mine. “Nine pairs of new shoes? Any particular reason, ma’am?”

  “Um, I’m a woman?” I heard myself say. “And they were on sale?”

  I’d hoped this would reassure him, disarm him, help him pigeonhole me as nothing more than a ditsy shopaholic with a shoe fetish like a zillion other women he probably knew. But his attentions had already moved to my new purple suitcase. Dumping out the contents, he sifted through my sexy, unworn underwear and clothing I’d purchased so hopefully just two days before (some with the tags still on). He tapped the sides of the suitcase and ran his fingers along the zippers and seams, feeling for a false bottom or something stashed between the lining and the outer canvas. Then he spied the large carton shoved toward the back of the trunk. He pulled it forward and pushed open the cardboard flaps. I heard a clatter of metal. He glanced back at me. “Is there any particular reason, ma’am, why you’re traveling with a box full of tongs, strainers, knives, measuring spoons—and, what are these, ma’am? Are these meat thermometers? And kitchen scales?”