As I watched Luke in the car from behind the pharmacy cash register, I wondered who M had been with him. And what was the truest M? What had changed in her as a result of his influence and chemical reaction?
From two thousand miles away, my guess was that M was her most real and vulnerable with Luke. Theirs was probably the one relationship in which he took nothing from her and yet he lost everything. She took his love, dog, father’s antique car, and probably hope.
But we each have our own struggles and challenges. What makes one person’s challenges enough to risk being worm bait? You’re in such pain that being dead, with no definitive proof of the afterlife, is better than living with an adoring boyfriend.
People will tell me it’s not about the boyfriend and they’re right. It’s not his fault, just his problem. He is marked for life now. If he is ever able to put himself out there and date, and if he’s ever able to find someone he really likes...and these are both big ifs, the size of the Grand Canyon kind of ifs, and if she feels the same way about him...every time he wants to say no to buying her tampons or wants to call her crazy, he’ll catch himself. He’ll never be able to express his true emotions because he’ll be afraid of what that will do to her. Will she leave him too? Will he find her hanging from a doorframe or laying on the floor frothing at the mouth?
Unless we fix our relationship problems, we’re bound to repeat them. And M stole that chance from Luke. Whatever it is about him that attracts people like M will keep happening until he can fix it and with M out of the picture, how can he?
I was weak under Mike. I wanted safety and I mistook that for stability. I wanted his organization and “rules following” personality because I wanted someone who would never leave. And I thought he was that person.
Instead I was bored by it and the boredom drove me to ignore him and ignoring him brought in the chemical equation accelerator, Cynamon. It seems so clear now, like I could write it in a lab book. And like those lab equations, that always seemed so pointless because the instructor knew exactly how they’d turn out, and there was no new mystery to discover...my story seemed a boring one. Played out and tired.
M would’ve argued with me that I didn’t drive Mike into the arms of another woman, and maybe I didn’t, but I certainly didn’t show any interest when it happened. Even now I don’t want him, not really. I want the comfort of him wanting me. But our chemical reaction has long since fizzled.
I see so clearly what happened between me and Mike now. But what happened to M? I know now what the accelerator was but I guess I’ll never know the missing protons and neutrons. Was she born different than everyone else with a less tenuous hold on this world? Or had she fought a secret war that all of us were quick to write off as simple adult ennui? We all have problems, right? But what made hers so acute that there were no other options? These are things I can’t find the answer to in an unemptied trash can.
Here comes your hero
We walk in silence to the exact spot of impact as best as we can tell from the report. I expect to see countless bouquets of withered flowers and sun-faded teddy bears like you see on the news after mass shootings. But the place is like any other stretch of train tracks. Just a few weeds poking up through the gravel. The metal is hot to the touch. I prove it by reaching down and then cursing my idiocy.
I try to picture the wreckage in my head. I wonder if there was anything left of her aside from red pulp. I imagine there wasn’t since she was driving straight for the train at the time of collision. I’m reminded of how she closed every one of our conversations over the telephone over the past twenty-some years, “keep it in the middle of the road.”
I wished she hadn’t. If only the dog had jumped on her, distracting her from her ultimate goal. If only a call had come in at that minute to make her reconsider. If only she had seen the lights, and heard the roar, and thought about the people who needed her.
There is no remnant of her life on these tracks but that doesn’t stop me from investigating the culverts on either side of them for a Stand By Me hidden body or maybe even a stylish shoe, her collection being a point of pride for her. But my quick search reveals nothing and Luke’s gaze weighs on me.
We failed her and we both know this, making it a bonding experience like being the only two survivors of a massive tragedy. But it’s also a repelling one because to look at one another is to see and admit that we were powerless to keep her here.
We continued to walk up the metal highway, which feels like its own heat source. I asked Luke why the farmers just leave their corn to die on the stalk around here. The corn stalks are taller than I am and come up to the tracks much the same way the Munchkins bid Dorothy farewell as she ventured to Oz. Of course, I stink at analogies because Munchkins are short, not like these spindly creatures.
“It’s not dying. It’s drying. This is feed corn for animal food, plastics, and fuel.”
I glanced at him sideways not sure if he was teasing a Yankee or not. He stepped off the tracks and motioned for me to follow.
The darkness of the shade-pulled diner was difficult to adjust to after our walk in the scorching sun. As we entered the booth he said something to the waitress that turned out to be two frosty mugs of Dr. Pepper.
I’m pretty sure as he stared at his lip print on the glass that he knew I’d be announcing my departure. There wasn’t much more I could do here and to look at each other was far too painful. We were different sides of her, our intimacy with her complementary. He shared the physicality and crushing love that every couple worries is overwhelming yet transient. I was the constant friendship, not fleeting but occasionally annoying. Together we saw every side of her except the one that caused her to drive head-on into a train. Yet, that was the side we saw when we looked at one another. It was the specter that always stood between us.
I knew then as I sat across from him that we couldn’t be friends. We’d always be grabbing for the same half deflated life preserver in a churning, angry ocean. That same drowning pain would eventually lead us to one too many drinks and an uncomfortable morning after. And then we would know for sure that there was no way to be friends. We had traveled as far as we could with one another but before I left, I owed him the truth of what I knew.
And life is grand
I remember M’s sayings now, long after I’ve forgotten anything but her most insistent laugh, the one she used when she was playing up the ridiculous hilarity of something. Her day-to-day laugh is gone from my memory, likely replaced by something completely meaningless like a jingle for Alka-seltzer.
Phrases like:
That’s a bad motorbike
You don’t not buy a dog ‘cause it’s gonna die
Redorkulous
And her love of all movie quotes, even the kind that most women don’t care for. “You’re killin’ me Smalls” and “Re-he-heally.”
I know that I think about her twenty times a day like when I see a bird that seems out of place for the environment or when I hear a woman belittling her man in public. M would always say, “get that woman a sharp knife. It’s a more humane way to castrate someone.”
But apart from things, and songs, words, and movies, the memories of what we did together are quickly evaporating and I realize it’s my anger over what she’s done that has stolen these moments from me. Because to think of her is to remember she is gone and I prefer not to think about that. I would rather consider her a bad friend who ignored my birthday this year than come to grips with the contents of that baggie in my front seat.
Luke and I are both in denial. He’s keeping her around by leaving everything exactly the way it was when she left. I imagine it was really Travis who put the groceries away, or more likely threw them away as they rotted on the counter. Everything else was the same...her clothes, her makeup, her dead flowers on the bedside table, her rope that turned out to be a little too fragile to get the job done, even her positive pregnancy test was still in the barn bathroom trash.
I didn’t
want to tell Luke that she took his car, dog, love, and child from him but in the end it seemed like it had to be said. I wasn’t sure he’d ever get around to emptying that can anyway. I also asked him about Total Eclipse of the Heart. He said it was Travis’ favorite song and when he wasn’t singing it he was playing it. He also admitted M was the only one who ever indulged Travis in his playing it over and over, until she didn’t. He said one day she just snapped at him. That song was never allowed in the house again. First it seemed to make her angry when he teased her with it and then it made her sad. Once it came on during a movie they were watching and she left the room. He thought she was just going to the bathroom. When she didn’t come back he found her in the bedroom in tears when he asked her about it she blamed a migraine.
I asked Luke if this happened after the party. He told me he thought it had. Originally, I hadn’t planned on telling him about my hunch with Travis but now it seemed necessary. I wasn’t sure just how far things had gone with him but the pregnancy and the teary reaction to the song, not to mention it in her diary crossed out weren’t something I wanted to hold onto any longer. Luke could continue to think of me as crazy if he wanted to but I figured he deserved to have the full story as I saw it.
I figured I’d let the brothers sort it out after M and I left. But as nonchalant as that sounds, to this day I still look at the online news in his area checking for Luke in the crime section.
Luke took the news like a man raised on Eastwood flicks would, stoic and unflinching but something in his eyes changed. I saw him as an old man, living alone, rocking on the porch, a dog at his feet. His gaze fixed on yet another cornfield as if he expected something to return to him from it.
But it never would and there was nothing I could do to reverse that. I didn’t go back to the house with him that night. We said our goodbyes at that diner that shook every time a train went by.
I imagine he went home that night and cried the deep bellowing of a man who had lost it all, spread out on their bed face down, wishing he had never met her, never loved her. But he would never do what she had because he knew the heart-stopping pain of getting left behind. He understood the burning of the eyes that no cold water could wash out, the strangling lump in the throat that no whiskey could wash away. He knew what it felt like to hurt to the point that death would be a sweet release but a coward’s way out and he wouldn’t make someone else feel that. Somehow I sensed that the almost presence of a baby would make him forget to follow up on the Travis hunch. I hoped so at least.
Luke would never get over it but he would be okay in the most minimal of senses. From now on, his life and every event in it would be charted and measured against whether it happened before he knew of his child or after. That much I was sure of because I don’t think it occurred to him that M’s pregnancy test result could’ve been caused by anyone other than him. I hoped that was true too.
I don’t know what would cause my best friend to be so frightened of becoming a mother that she would see no other way to deal with the pain and situation then by terminating her pregnancy in the most brutal of ways. I know she never believed she had what it took to be a mother, had no intention of proving herself wrong. But why not an abortion? Why not just terminate the pregnancy and be more careful for the next few years until she lapsed quietly into menopause. Why end everything and why the dog? I guess I should’ve asked how Travis felt about the dog.
I can only assume that M saw no way out. She didn’t want to be a mom but she knew if she told Luke he’d want the baby. Maybe she wasn’t sure whose it was and that pained her beyond belief. Maybe she could no longer stand to look at Travis and maybe she knew there was no way to have a life with Luke without Travis around unless she told Luke what happened.
I don’t know the answers to any of these things and the more time passes, the more questions I have. For now, they’ll have to wait. Maybe someday I can ask her and maybe someday she’ll tell me.
I imagine this secret, or secrets, grew unbearable. Waking up every morning next to him and seeing that scruffy boyish face, knowing he would’ve wanted a baby more than anything probably became harder each day. I’m guessing the pain of looking at his unknowing face, after having killed a part of him, or a part of them, wasn’t a recipe for a happy life together and she just couldn’t do it. Maybe she felt she couldn’t end the one piece of proof that they existed and loved one another or the one piece of proof that something terrible had come between them. Maybe she just hadn’t taken her medicine that morning and the whole world felt like it was closing in. Maybe she had heard me yell at Henry, my voice cracking so near to tears because deep down I realized he wouldn’t be phased if I left like my mother did. Maybe she heard my exhaustion. Maybe I painted the wrong picture of motherhood. Maybe having been friends with me for over twenty years and witnessing what my mother’s departure had done to me, maybe she was afraid of ruining the life of another human being. Maybe she thought it would be better to squash it before it became cognizant of pain and could experience something that would strip away his ability to trust anyone if she left. Maybe she did it out of spite or anger or devastation.
I asked that little Jessup creature for forgiveness because maybe if I had known or hadn’t been so self consumed, I would’ve noticed something was wrong and maybe she could’ve held on for the nine months it would’ve taken to see if she or he resembled Luke.
“I’m sorry, little cells. I should’ve known.”
Then I turned to the baggie riding co-pilot with me and choked out “I’m sorry to you too, M.”
My eyes burned and my chest felt tight. The anger fell away.
As we head toward the Pacific, listening to the music of our life when we were cool and carefree, I reflect on just how recent it seems. Camper Von Beethoven, the Pixies, the Trashcan Sinatras were the soundtrack of our beginning. I remembered how I loved these songs just yesterday and tomorrow I’ll be old. And that too will be a blink. And then I’ll be even older...should a train not get in the way of my living another day.
How Can i believe that Timeclock of the heart?
M and I were enjoying the park view of an old railroad bridge. I was wondering if she could still appreciate the beauty of a train or old tracks when my phone buzzed. I cursed my low battery when I flipped the case open to answer.
“Hey.” I was aware that seeing his name on my phone brought a smile to me face.
“How are you?”
“Very busy feeling sorry for myself.”
“Well, that’s okay. You’ve been going through a lot lately.”
I nod as if Walsey can see me.
“Thank you.” I offer.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
I slide off the hood and listen to the deep pop sound it makes as it restores the dent that was my body on it a minute earlier. “You never pressure me. Why?”
“Would that work if I did?” he asked.
I laugh and say “no” with all the authority of a toddler.
“Well...then. You have your answer.”
I wanted to tell him that I no longer hated M but to explain how it happened and the pieces behind it seemed exhausting.
“Sunshine, what’s going on? Where are you?”
“Why do you call me Sunshine? I’m anything but.”
He laughs but I press on.
“No, seriously? It’s not like I’m always happy. In fact, I hardly ever am. I mope around. I never call my kids because I can’t bear to hear them uninterested in talking to me and I’m watching this girl getting ready to jump off a bridge.”
“Whoa, what?”
“Bridge jumping. It’s a thing.”
“I know it’s a thing but is she doing it as a sport or….”
“Sport, I guess. Assuming her guide knows how to tie knots.”
I expected a laugh but got only silence.
“I feel like maybe I should come meet you. Why don’t you get a hotel room tonight and I’ll drive ov
er. I’m only nine hours away.”
“No, that’s not necessary. I want to get farther up the road. If I can read a map, I’m only tenish hours away from the cape. If I knock out five more today, M can see the Pacific Ocean tomorrow.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Yep, totally.” I looked at the bridge and the girl was gone. No one was screaming so I guessed it was okay. I walked to the edge of the point so I could make sure and I saw a small dot with four appendages bouncing softly.
I didn’t know if he had been talking for a while or not but when I finally heard his voice he seemed insistent and concerned.
“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”
“Totally.”
“I’m serious Sara. I don’t like the way you sound.”
“Nobody likes the way I sound.” I mumble.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow night, then?”
“Good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise.”
“Seriously Sara. Come on. I care about you.”
His words made me bristle. So many people had cared about me over the years and at this moment as I watched the girl dangle, I couldn’t think of one person who stayed.
This is the day your life will surely change
After Mike’s mom left and after he went back to work, I was left alone with Maddie. We were back in Massachusetts by then; the fertilizer business not being as big a deal as Mike originally anticipated and we wanted to be closer to family.
Tiny baby Maddie had a ridiculously flat forehead and constantly churning mouth. She spent hours in my arms staring up at me as if she expected me to do something to entertain her. But I had nothing. She rarely cried. She just watched.
At that time M, who was then living in Boston and going by Madeline, pronounced Mad-lenn “like the French,” came over to see me. She would regale me with stories of how different Atlanta and Boston were before we lost contact over a mountain of diapers or some other unknowable reason..
West of You Page 25
