Of course, not finishing had always been my plan. Maybe it was hers too.
I dropped the kids off at their dad Mike’s house. Not much longer of this. Maddie would soon be the shuttle service, as she kept reminding me, her driver’s test just days away.
Mike asked if I wanted to come in for a drink. His eyes looked bloodshot like he’d been crying. I felt suddenly possessive of the grief like it belonged only to me. I willingly forget that she was the one who prodded him into asking me out in the first place. Now M’s gone and so is our marriage.
I wondered if I’d overstayed my welcome on this planet too but then I noticed the sunset painting the sky behind him and I thought I could probably stand to see a few more of those.
I turned down his offer and went home to finish off a bottle of wine by myself. The thing about your best friend dying before her time is that the grief doesn’t hit you all at once. It settles into your cells and explodes out when you least expect it. I knew Mike was crying for M, but it had been 31 days. Maybe he was crying for me. I was looking a lot like a homeless person these days. No offense to homeless people.
My self-indulgence and wallowing felt very much like I was a character in the movie The Big Chill but without all the fun friends. I have two friends. M and The Player to Be Named Later.
The messages from the vulturerazzi have slowed down. Those first few days after her death it was nonstop. And thanks to the Interwebs, acquaintances could see when I was online and messaged me like I was their drug dealer and they were running low on their stash. Mike tried to convince me that they cared about me but it always felt like they just wanted sordid details of the how and why behind her death.
I’m sure they felt I was hiding something. But Luke was the one who saw her every day and he said he didn’t notice anything. Luke is the kind of guy who notices when you get a haircut or part it on the other side so if he was clueless there wasn’t much hope for me to have the answers.
But it did eat at me. Why end a perfect life? All the grapes in the Sonoma Valley hadn’t been able to answer that question for me. And trust me, I had tried so many I was fairly certain it would only be a matter of time before California would run out of wine in my price range.
But now I drink alone when I’m not putting on that happy, proud mom face. I remember that line from St. Elmo’s Fire, “I never expected to feel so old at 23.” Or something like that. I’m now 22 years past that.
Half way into my bottle of cabernet, I wished they’d make a sequel to that movie so I would know how to feel right now. I looked at the last drop of wine in my glass and cursed the fact that they don’t offer delivery service in my area. I guess I could’ve Ubered to the store and picked up a bottle but it seemed like too much trouble when I could just go to bed. As I looked at the wine sludge swirling around the bottom of the bottle, I thought about how Mike said he’d never drink that. It was poison. I didn’t know if he meant wine in general at the time, or that last sweet drop. Even then, I didn’t care enough to ask.
Relationships are such a disappointment. The more we experience them, the more we know, and the more we know, the less dateable we become. My recently departed friend and I had thought briefly about starting an online dating site that rated people by “bags” instead of compatibility stars. I would be a 4-bag girl. I had two kids, an ex, and a fear of commitment. My friend would’ve been a 1-bagger with a desire to avoid all types of responsibility.
We figured there was only one place on the map where we could start such a business--Cape Disappointment. It was perfect except for the fact that it was a park and not an actual city with a mailing address. I’m pretty sure they won’t let you run a business out of a state park address. But who wouldn’t want to join a dating site based in Cape Disappointment? It was just too good of a name.
Funny that it was a stop on the Lewis & Clark expedition. Thousands of miles over uplifting terrain names and then toward the end of their journey they get to Cape Disappointment. If I didn’t read so much about history, I might’ve guessed Lewis named it after realizing the adventure of his life was over. Lewis never was right after that trip. His life ended disappointingly early too.
Cape Disappointment.
No location fit the end of M’s life better. That’s where she needed to be, or rather her ashes of whatever part I had. And there was only one way to get her there. I would go see Luke. He was right. Maybe we could put it all together.
Then maybe I could get some peace that didn’t come with sludge at the bottom and a throbbing headache the next day.
It was time for M and I to go on a road trip.
Life Is a Highway...with lousy pit stops.
Everyone expects me to have a nervous breakdown so it comes as no surprise that Mike agreed to take the kids without me having to beg. He agreed to it right away as if he apparently wanted me to leave the state as soon as possible. Mike even offered to take the cat and didn’t change his mind when it barfed up a fur ball in his girlfriend’s purse.
Two responsibilities down.
I spent the next few hours looking at Google maps and Roadtrippers trying to find the most exciting route. If this is going to be M’s last road trip, it’s up to me to show her a good time. After all, she is never going to see 45 or 50.
We had planned to celebrate our 40th birthday renting a boat and sailing around the Bahamas but I didn’t have the money and she felt fat that year. So we put it off.
WEDNESDAY
Carpe diem. Eat the cake. Buy the shoes. Screw the assholes.
M’s journal has been even less of a help than Luke had conveyed to me. I wasn’t sure if she was messing with us one last time or copying down bad country song lyrics. I made a mental note to start Googling the phrases at some indeterminate time in the future when I felt up to it.
Next, instead of packing I made a list of all the things my friend will never do or see. I pretended like it was part of me trying to figure out the route but it’s just an excuse to consume more wine, which I promptly add to the list of things she’ll never do again.
✽✽✽
265. She’ll never enjoy a glass of cab again.
266. She’ll never have a hangover again.
267. She’ll never visit a vineyard again and feel obligated to buy a $26 bottle of wine that sells for $9 in the grocery store.
268. She’ll never get inappropriately drunk and text an ex.
269. She’ll never post a drunk picture to Facebook again.
270. She’ll never have a nice cheese with that wine.
✽✽✽
I gave up on the wine entries. And tabled the list for now.
I moved onto thinking about all the people who came in contact with her that last week of her life. Do they all know she’s dead? What about the grocery clerk who bagged her groceries? Yes, she bought groceries right before she died. They were still on the counter in the paper bags. She always requested paper bags because she didn’t want plastic bags in the landfills. She was conscientious like that.
On the other hand, I always ask them to double-bag the plastic ones. I don’t really see what double bagging does but it gave me more bags to scoop the kitty litter into.
I thought about hunting down that grocery bagger in her small Texas town on my way out west to tell him, not because I think he’ll care or even know her, but to tell him that she is gone. A woman he sold groceries to was here one minute and gone the next. Maybe he’d do something different in his own life that night.
But I don’t even know if there was a bagger. Maybe just some sweet old lady checker and I imagined how sad she’d be when I told her. Maybe we’d go out to lunch because maybe she just lost her best friend too. Perhaps last week. People are always dying.
I wonder how many people I’ve barely noticed this week as I go about my business who have died since I saw them. This comes from the same morbid place that wonders how many people are dying at that moment each time I pass a hospital. Sometimes I look up at a window
and try to see if I can make out a spirit leaving. For the record, I have yet to see one.
Right at this moment someone you know could be dying. How long will it take you to find out? If your person dies in a traffic accident, when will you know? It took Luke about two hours to tell me. I wasn’t an “in case of emergency” person. Still two hours is pretty good.
So let’s sit here and wait. How long will it take? Will they think to call you or will it take someone else who knew them to think of you? Will they come to the door if there’s been an accident?
I woke up the next morning with that question still unanswered. I thought about Googling it but the idea of seeing the answer reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode where thinking about things makes them happen. And I didn’t want anyone at my door.
By mid-morning I’d decided I should just plan the trip in bits, every night deciding what I’d see the next day and not spend a long time fretting over an itinerary. Not that I fret. That sounds so dainty. More like I worry. I got anxiety about the trip. It’s too vast. Too big. Too much for me to think about.
I wanted to call my best friend and have her talk me off the ledge. I look around for my phone and find it between the couch cushions. I scroll through my contacts and find her still there. Her number is still on page one of my recent contacts. I didn’t even have to scroll. So she can’t be dead. She’s right there.
Right there.
People always say that when someone dies. “Oh my God. I can’t believe it. I just talked to her.” That’s what I thought when Luke called me. It didn’t seem real. I was in the middle of laundry. Nothing bad happens when you’re doing laundry. The world is on hold.
Plus, I thought I would’ve felt a disturbance in the force, ya know? Your best friend dies and life doesn’t feel any different? It should. The world should’ve felt lighter with one less soul in it. Especially when I’d spent so many years knowing her and yet she left this world without me even feeling like something was wrong.
I looked down at me phone and had that familiar incomplete ache like something was missing. When I felt this way I usually reached out to M but she was scratched off the list. Could I call Walsy? Maybe text. It was pretty early where he was.
Hey
Not the best word ever written in the history of texts but it was a beginning. I stared at the phone looking for the little speech dots to show he was typing. Nothing.
Been thinking about you.
There. That should pique his interest.
Nothing. I glanced at the clock. 8 a.m. his time. Can’t expect he’d respond.
The hollowness hurts. I wondered if it could be indigestion or pancreatic cancer. My father’s coworker burped a lot. It annoyed his wife for months and finally she made him talk to a doctor. After tons of tests, they found stage four pancreatic cancer. There’s no stage five.
I hit the button for my dad.
“Hello?” he sounded a little frightened.
“Dad.”
“Sara.”
Silence except for his breathing. He had always been a heavy mouth breather so heavy it would wake me out of a sleep when he would come into my room as a teenager after his shift was over. He’d watch me sleep, or at least that’s what he thought I was doing. I would lay there with my eyes closed and listen to his breathing, softer on the inhale, crashing on the exit like waves. Sometimes he’d sit there for a minute, other times what seemed like hours. Eventually he’d get the sniffles and leave the room. At the time, I thought he was allergic to something in my room. Looking back, he was probably crying. He was just a young dad who had lost his only love and was stuck with a nice parting gift he didn’t understand.
“What are you up to today?”
My throat and nose burned like I had taken in a carbonated drink down the wrong pipe so the word “today” came out in too many syllables.
“Uh, don’t know. Fishing. Probably fishing.”
I nodded but my father didn’t fish. He drank in a bathtub-sized aluminum skiff he had found by someone’s curb on trash day several years ago. His voice sounded heavy with liquor, his tongue still asleep and too big for his mouth.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He agreed.
I listened again to his breathing. Surely I had told him about M but now I couldn’t remember doing it. When had I last talked to him? He never called me so I had to have called him but had I since her death? I was overtaken with a strong urge to tell him everything even if I already had. I could feel the torrent of tears about to flow and I had to get the words out before that happened.
“Dad---”
“Kitten, I gotta---” he said at the same time. We both exhaled at the awkwardness of our stilted conversation.
“Oh sorry. You go.” It sounded like he had to tell me something important.
“Naw. You.”
“I insist, dad.”
I pulled my leg up under me and settled in.
“Okay. Well then...I have some beans on the stove.”
The man ate beans for breakfast every morning. He swore by their fiber content and they helped him keep his grocery budget down to about $25 a week.
I imagined him pacing as he said those words, his home phone cord only stretching so far.
“Got it. I’ll wait. Go ahead,” My nose burned.
“No, I mean I have to eat them.”
“Oh. Okay. Well eat and then call me back.”
Fat tears landed in my lap and I pressed my lips together willing myself to stop the childish behavior.
“I’ll miss fishing time if I call you now.”
For the first time in the conversation I couldn’t hear his breathing. Was he holding his breath or had he put down the phone? I wanted to cry out “daddy” but my throat choked off my ability to talk. I needed to tell him about my friend. I need him to help me make sense of my new world. I wanted to be a little girl again hearing his breathing in my room at night. But that was not my life. Not now.
“So, those beans are burning.” he offered and I nodded giving him his escape route.
“Okay. No. Go. Of course.” I choked out in single syllables hoping he wouldn’t hear my desperation. It was too late for that. I didn’t want him to feel obligated to talk to me. Even if he changed his mind, he’d spend the entire conversation worried about his beans, assuming there were any. So I let him go because that was the easiest thing to do.
✽✽✽
By noon, I decided my plan of figuring out where I would go just for the night wasn’t working out so well. It was too late to leave. It would be getting dark soon. Maybe eight hours from now. So I decided getting a good night’s sleep was more important since tomorrow would be a long drive. I pulled my car into the garage so Mike would think I was gone if he drove by and tried to bring the cat back.
No reason to wait until it gets dark to sleep. Three o’clock is a perfectly good time to turn in if you’re tired. Your body is telling you that it needs the rest. I didn’t even bother to make the bed. I slept right on the pee-stained mattress, memories from toddler days. The picture frame and I were leaving the next day anyway.
The clink of my next door neighbor’s beer bottles woke me up. It was dark and while it felt like it should be morning, I recognized we were still a long ways off. Roger sits out there on his porch every night since his wife left. Other than the bottles landing harder on the glass top with each successive one, he’s really very quiet. When I’m out there, he pretends not to see me, just keeps his eyes focused on the road as if he wants to be the first one to spot her coming back.
But he needn’t worry about that. If she came back, we’d hear her before we could see her and she’d come back with a lengthy list of things for him to do as if he had been derelict in his duties since she left. She’d start rattling off that list before her high-heeled pump even hit that crack in the sidewalk she was always yelling about. He told her, in a very respectful tone, that the city had to fix that or they’d fine him for doing the work himself. The
n she would call him that special little pet name, Imba Seal.
Ain’t love grand?
I didn’t hear Roger go inside but I saw the backlight go off and knew that meant it was time for bed. Again.
Now if Roger was a logical man, he’d know he was better off without Missy but he’d married late and young. Worst kind. He married late and she was young. She was also working-class eye candy. And much prettier than he was, even with her extra weight.
I understood love a lot better when I was younger. Love is like an airplane. When you’re a kid and you ask your parents who don’t remember the whole concept of thrust and lift how a plane flies and they tell you “magic.” And you’re happy. And you never think about it crashing because it’s magic and magic lasts indefinitely.
And then you take physics and study more science and you realize it’s not magic that keeps it in the air but a fine set of calculations and speed that cause air to move rapidly over the wings, throwing the air downwards, generating an upward force or lift, and it’s that very thing that overcomes its own weight and the power of gravity pushing it downwards. And you’re paralyzed by your knowledge because now you know how impossible it is.
A happy marriage is equally impossible. Something about wind shear and vertical drop.
She’s standing at an altar. She’s crying. I’m telling her that she shouldn’t go. It’s a bad idea. I’ve talked her off the ledge a hundred times over our 27-year friendship but this one is different. She’s not listening. I’m not making headway. She’s not agreeing to anything. She keeps crying like a baby with loud wails but few tears and a crooked mouth that looks like twisted metal.
I know that if she leaves something terrible will happen. I dig deep into my college psychology class knowledge and try to pull out anything I remember about persuasion and manipulation. I try it all. She shakes her head. The room is red and she’s gone.
West of You Page 2
