1/8th of an inch.
That’s all that stood between being alive and dying. Once the crack reached that depth, the design could no longer hold. That was it. A half of a quarter of an inch. The depth of something slightly less than the height of two quarters stacked.
I walked to the monument and stared at the bricks carved with the victims' names. It’s so unfair that just ten days before Christmas an eighth of an inch deep crack killed 46 people. Eyebar #330 brought down an entire bridge (aside from its pylons) in the time it took for a commercial break to play on the TV. 46 people perished for no reason outside of bad timing. The bridge was there and then it wasn’t.
Did the guy delivering papers to the other side of the river on his last day working for a publisher before he took off to California to become a cartoonist think his death was fair? What about the truck driver who was making his last trip? He had bought a farm (no bad death jokes please, have some respect) and was planning on trading in life on the road for rows of crops. What did he think as he felt the earth give way? Or maybe we could ask the taxi driver who wasn’t scheduled to drive that day but had picked up a passenger because his co-worker couldn’t. Maybe we could ask him how it felt to end his life with someone he didn’t know in his backseat.
Sometimes it’s those good deeds we do or those moments when we’re so desperate for a change that we agree when our neighbor stops by and asks us if we want to ride into town. We don’t have to but we do.
We don’t have to drop to our deaths, but we do.
I dreamt of M last night. She was living with Brad Pitt, and for those of you who want to know he really is as pretty in person as he appears in Thelma and Louise. But she kept doing things to make him mad. She knew he was a neat freak and she left sweaty exercise clothes everywhere. She knew he liked healthy dinners and she left him cold McDonald’s. When he was around, she was always on the phone.
I was visiting her and everything she did seemed to invite him to toss her out. But he didn’t. He simply clenched his jaw and righted anything she had made wrong.
But she wasn’t happy.
She was never happy in any of the dreams I had of her.
I tried calling Walsey. While M looked at me from the bench. Was she wondering why I hadn’t stopped her or was she wondering how different her thoughts were facing a train as the bridge victims’ thoughts were plummeting into a frigid river? Death awaited them both.
They used to be radio DJs. Then they were disc jockeys. What are they now? Button pressers? Not sure but one of them announced this morning that a new study shows that people suffering from depression are more likely to use “I” and “me” more often than people who are just hunky dory. Duh, people who are depressed are wrapped up in themselves. If they weren’t, they would see how much other people’s lives sucked too.
Like me.
So my best friend offs herself and I’m the only one who thinks it wasn’t an accident and everyone’s looking at me with these sad eyes like if they talk to me like a real human being, I’ll jump off a cliff.
And that’s another thing I’ll never forgive her for. I used to joke about suicide. Don’t pretend you’ve never done it. We drop kill and kill ourselves language all over the place. “That test killed me.” “If I don’t get asked to the prom, I’ll just die.” I used to say all that kind of stuff without thinking. Now everytime I do, it’s no longer funny. Because as little and stupid as those things are, there are people who do themselves in for that reason while there are people who lose both legs and their arms and they go on living.
Depressed people suck. I suck. Therefore...I must be depressed.
But people will have you believe it’s not their fault. It’s a mental health issue. It’s not. It’s a boredom issue. Do you think peasants in the 1200s had time to be depressed? The king could ride up, or their lord for that matter, and off them or their family based on a whim or a misunderstanding. No trial. No compensation. Peasants woke up every morning not knowing if they’d see the next one. Do you think they had time to be depressed?
Heck, no. They were busy trying to find things to eat, pull their weight at home and in the field, and make their lord happy so he wouldn’t kill them.
These are the things that went through my head as I drove through Tennessee to see Rock City. This country is full of a lot of breathtaking and miraculous things. And then there’s the not so special stuff that comprises most of the place. But this trip was about seeing all the zany, inexplicable stuff.
I’m doing this in her honor because the most inexplicable thing I will ever know is why she killed herself, why she ended her life, why she gave it all away, bought the farm, offed herself, left us all.
I’ve said it a million different ways and it never makes sense. She had a boyfriend who adored her, the kind who brings home flowers for no reason. And seriously when I say no reason I don’t mean like what appears to be “no reason” to the woman receiving them but deep down the reason is that he just banged his secretary and feels guilty. And he thinks if he brings home flowers as a romantic gesture she won’t notice he’s showering right when he gets home when he normally doesn’t. That’s not Luke. He’s not capable of two women at once, in any capacity. He’s one of those hound dogs who only has one owner.
Her family loved her. She never knew a stranger. She was just starting to get some attention again for her fashion and jewelry line in that crazy town she lived in. She just got a mouthful of old dental work replaced and her boobs done.
And she was coming to see me because she thought I was depressed over Mike’s impending engagement, which he has yet to tell me about. But I know it’s coming.
Who offs themselves with that much going for them? I should be offing myself. But I can’t. I’m too chicken. What if there isn’t anything else? What if this is all we have before we become worm food? Then a crappy life, which she did not have, is better than the cold, dark, airless existence of nothing.
I wonder if M has ceased to exist. What if there is no afterlife, no spark, soul or energy that lives on?
I drove past an abandoned home too far gone for even a rehab expert. It’s just a pile of sticks held together by memories, a few rusty nails, and vines. On the part of the barn’s roof that still remains you can barely see the faded “Mail Pouch Tobacco” ad that was so popular in this part of the country. Someone lived here once but they’re long gone.
I wanted to pull my car over and sit on the dilapidated porch but I was afraid if I did, I’d disappear too.
Why can’t you remember the exact moment of falling asleep? You can wake up and know you’ve been asleep. You can remember dreams but you can never feel that crossover point. Guess that’s what death’s like. One minute you’re aware of being very much alive and slogging through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and then...then what?
What if this is all there is?
When you’re driving you have a lot of time to think. Sure, you sing. You roll down your windows and belt out your favorite songs because there’s no one there to keep you awake through conversation. You read billboards of how Jesus saves and abortion is murder.
Seeing as how it was now the sleepy part of the afternoon, I figured I would reach out to the kids for some excitement. Maddie’s phone went straight to voicemail. Henry picked up his phone and then must’ve gotten busy with Call of Duty because all I could hear was gun fire and “Yes! Here we go! Yes! Dude!”
So I called Mike.
“Hey there, stranger.” Mike always sounded so sexy on the phone. Not at all like he was in person.
“Hi.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. It’s awkward when the man you’ve spent half a lifetime sleeping with is about to propose to his girlfriend. Although, he wouldn’t tell me. Up until now, I had this grand illusion that he would come to me, like I was the bride’s father and ask my permission or at least let me know when to expect it. I thought I could be like Barbara Streisand in the Way We Were and congratulat
e him on his “lovely” girl. But I couldn’t. My stomach had been in knots since Henry told me he saw his dad at the mall looking at rings. He had said it like I knew but it never occured to me. Sure, they might live together but men don’t normally marry women named Cynamon. That kind of relationship usually ends at a tip.
“When are you coming home?”
There it was. Fair enough question since he was doing it all while I was gone but still another thing I hadn’t thought of.
“How are the kids?”
“Good. Fine.”
I nodded as if he could see me.
I watched the “See Rock City” painted barn blow by as if in a wind storm and I glanced at my speedometer. Way too fast.
“Where are you?”
“See Rock City.”
“Where?”
“Sorry, Rock City. Headed to Fairyland and Lover’s Leap.”
He waited.
“Are you in a place where you can pull over?”
“Ahhh…” I glanced around. Just highway. All highway. There was a rest stop quickly approaching on my right. I had enough time to drop my speed and exit.
“Nope, nothing around and lots of traffic. Probably shouldn’t even be talking on the phone.”
“Well, there’s something I want to tell you before you hear about it from someone else.”
“Yeah, that sounds good. Just can’t right now.”
“Okay, well it’s not about the kids. They’re fine. Everyone’s fine. It’s not something bad...not really. I mean it isn’t. When are you stopping for the night?”
“After Lover’s Leap. Trying to see the sunset there.”
“Then maybe you can call?”
“I can try. Not sure. This has been a rough trip on me and you know...cell coverage.”
Okay, so I was playing the dead friend card a little too hard at this point but I just couldn’t hear him say those words. I didn’t want to be married to him but I didn’t exactly want to hear that he’s marrying her either. He’s not supposed to marry the rebound girl. My children aren’t supposed to have a second mother named after a misspelled spice.
Marrying her will mean I no longer have a special place as his one and only wife. There will always be her, the more recent one. I will soon be a ghost in his life, the first wife. The starter model.
I stared at my hands on the steering wheel, my father’s hands, rough with age. When did that transformation occur?
“I get it. Yeah, totally. Cell phones.”
A truck rushed up my left side and honked a quick, short happy honk. I wondered what I did. Maybe I just looked that distraught.
“You’re finally getting to see Rock City?”
“Not there yet.”
My family and I have a joke that I never get to see any of my “bucket list.” I wanted to go to the ruins of Chichen Itza when you could still climb it. Mike and I went the first year we were married. I got a combination of Montezuma’s revenge and heat stroke. Needless to say I didn’t climb any pyramids on that trip. Then there was the Hoover Dam. I went to Vegas six or seven times with Mike and something always came up--flat tire, morning sickness, sex. We used to have a lot of sex when we were first married and I’m ashamed to say the free time at his first sales meeting was spent in between the satin sheets of the Austin Powers-esque round bed.
Then there was the Grand Canyon. We made the trip out there only to be turned away at the entrance due to overcrowding. How can a National Park the size of the Grand Canyon be too full? Once the Alamo was closed for rehab. Oldest building in Texas being dusted off?
When it comes to vacations or road trips, I am a dark cloud of bad luck. Not that blowing off a desired travel site for sex is bad luck, just bad thinking. I’m awash in bad luck and bad decision making.
“Call me when you can. This is important Sara.”
“Yeppers.”
I nearly ate the back end of that happy truck that had passed me a few minutes before. He never called me by my real name. It was always Sary. I felt the Mountain Dew I had guzzled that morning sloshing around.
As I hung up with him I apologized to M just in case I ended up losing the Dew all over her plastic bag. I reached over and double checked the seal. She could probably forgive me splashing some antifreeze-colored liquid on her baggie but I was pretty sure she would not take too kindly to getting barfed up soda in the ash and spending eternity smelling like a diabetic nightmare.
I was alive and I enjoyed the silence
I’m not sure if you can see seven states from Rocky City but it is the type of view that makes you feel like you’ve gotten a glimpse of heaven or that you’re about to die. It’s very high and astonishingly easy to fall to your death. I mean sure, there’s an iron bar keeping you from running full speed into oblivion but you could hurdle it or duck under if you were so inclined. I was inclined for a split second but figured there was a good chance I’d change my mind on the way down and that would be a bad ending.
I’d wanted to see Rock City ever since I’d read about it in American Gods by Neil Gaiman. At least, I’m pretty sure it was mentioned there but when they did the TV series they rerouted them as if Chattanooga was not a desirable place to set a television series finale. Then again, maybe I just got my details wrong. It’s in that vast middle-ish section of the country that I know little about. I guess that’s part of the reason M and I are taking the slow route instead of flying in comfort.
What does she care? She chucked comfort out the window when she did what she did. Let her sweat in that little plastic baggie with the windows rolled up in my car. What did I think they’d steal anyway? My dead BFF in powder form? Well, part of her anyway. I mean all of her is in powder but as I explained earlier, I only have some.
There’s a waterfall in Rock City, which isn’t a city at all, by the way. It was a housing development back when developments first started. But it seems not a whole lot of people saw the value in moving out to nowhere on top of a very high perch. Maybe they were afraid their house would slide right off the mountain.
People can be afraid of the strangest things. Instead of worrying about how their life isn’t worth anything and they’re not living up to their potential, they’re worried about whether their new haircut makes their face look too fat.
I told M that just a day before she killed herself. My face looked fat...and wrinkled. Like that was the extent of my worries in life. She doesn’t even have a face now.
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#280 she will never spend another penny on zit or wrinkle cream and then not wonder why it didn’t work the moment she put it on.
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I stood on Lover’s Leap (yes, seriously) and contemplated calling Mike like he asked me to but I just wasn’t ready to hear those words.
I thought about the kids and how I should miss them more. I thought about what Cricket had said about me leaving and how she couldn’t do that. Then I thought about what would happen if M and I never came back. Not that she was coming back, but what if I stayed out west? Cynamon could raise the kids as her own. Maddie was a built-in babysitter. I suppose Henry could’ve been too if she and Mike decided to add to the number of his progeny.
This was the first time I was actually glad he had gone through with the vasectomy. He hadn’t given me a choice in the matter. He took an afternoon off and told me what had happened when his buddy dropped him off at our house. At first I thought he was moving slowly because of a golf injury.
When he told me what he had done and asked for ice, I raged. He told me I had no claim to his sperm. It was, after all, “his” body. So I threw a bag of ice on “his” nuts.
Even if he was right about them being his, it would’ve been nice if he had consulted me instead of just doing it when I was in the midst of dealing with my own postpartum issues.
When I hurled that bag of ice at him and it hit squarely where I intended, we both seemed to think it was best if I took a little break. A month’s vacation to get things in orde
r was how he had explained it after he could stand up again. It wasn’t so bad.
I felt just like a Hollywood starlet being hospitalized for not being able to deal with my life. It was all very chic and I was surrounded by many pampered princesses. It was more like a retreat than a sanitarium. I’m not even sure they let you use that word anymore. But you sure as hell can’t say insane asylum. They frown on stuff like that. Believe me. You know...those people who tell us how to think? For me, that’s Oprah. And Oprah has told me many times, there’s no shame in mental illness. But my mental illness was only temporary. Cured. Fixed. Hormonal.
“A thing you did,” M used to say. “Like the guys you used to ‘try on’ back in the day. Not something you’d choose permanently.”
She was always my rock. The one who had a firm grip on reality. So why was she the one who decided Oprah wasn’t right and there is shame to admitting you need help? I can’t think about that right now.
Anyway, getting back to the history of Rock City. With her husband’s investment struggling, the brilliant wife -- I don’t remember her name so let’s just call her “the smart one” -- came up with an idea to attract people to this giant rock and suicidal precipice, which she aptly dedicated to love. She called this place Fairyland and set about making a huge rock garden.
Now for any of us who have been married a long time, we know just what this is. This is a project a middle-aged woman takes on because her husband is no longer interesting. But it was lucrative nonetheless.
And now there I was. Paying money to see it and wondering how nice it would be to be able to live in a time when you can name a housing development Fairyland and not get in trouble with the Supreme Court.
You shut your cradle of love
We’re all framed by who we surround ourselves with. Come spring, my Henry is a catcher. Part of what a catcher does for a pitcher is frame those questionable pitches, the ones that could easily be balls or strikes, just a centimeter difference. When the ump can’t tell, he might look at where the catcher’s hand is and from that, the ump will decide to call it a strike zone or ball. A catcher with a lousy stance can cost a pitcher a few strikes and in a game that can come down to separating the winners from the losers.
West of You Page 11
