When, sixty miles up the road, a Neko Case song came on the radio, I sang along like I was trying out for The Voice. “Let this be a warning says the magpie to the morning. Don’t let this fading summer pass you by.”
I didn’t care that Beatrice could barely hit sixty-five miles per hour without overheating. I had time. The weight of my failed marriage had lifted and so had my spirits. In the rushing wind, my spider plant’s leaves were like green fingers, waving: Adios amigos!
“I will not let this fading summer pass me by, Spidey,” I said, and I didn’t even feel stupid for talking to the thing.
I was so happy that I didn’t notice my speedometer had crept up to nearly eighty. I didn’t notice the trucker motioning me to pull over. But I did hear the deep, bellowing honk of his horn. And I couldn’t miss the smoke that suddenly came pouring out from my hood.
Chapter 8
THE KID waiting by the fuel island at Atomic Gas and Auto took one look at my overheated car and ran off like he thought it might explode.
I grabbed my bag and plant and hustled to safety myself. A moment later, a man with close-cropped dark hair and high cheekbones, wearing a blue grease-stained jumpsuit, walked leisurely over to my car.
He waved away the billowing smoke. “You can stop hiding behind the trash can,” he said. “She’s not going to blow up.”
I wondered how he knew Beatrice was a she. I crept over, not entirely sure I could trust him about a potential explosion. The air smelled like gas and burned plastic.
He looked over his shoulder at the kid, who didn’t seem like he believed him either. “Taylor,” he called, “I need you to finish up on that oil change I was working on.”
The man—Josh, his name tag said—touched Beatrice’s hood thoughtfully. “This is a 1977 W123s, isn’t it.”
It wasn’t a question. I nodded.
“I was afraid of that,” he said. Then he popped open the hood and disappeared into the smoke.
“Why?” I asked. I could hear the panic in my voice.
“You’ve got a plastic radiator in here. Those things are famous for upper radiator neck failure.” He shut the hood and stood up again. “I’m guessing you’ve lost all your coolant and your aluminum core’s probably damaged. That means you’re looking at a replacement.”
I sucked in my breath. “The whole radiator?”
He grimaced in a way I could tell was meant to be sympathetic. “Or maybe the whole car,” he said.
And I felt, suddenly, as if I was disintegrating. If Beatrice was gone, then what? She was basically the only thing I had left.
I sank down to the curb and sat with my head cradled in my hands.
The mechanic put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “But you’re lucky, you know. If that radiator neck had popped all the way off, you might not even be here right now.”
I looked up at him. “I’m lucky I didn’t die, huh? That is seriously bottom-of-the-barrel luck,” I said.
He gave me a half smile. “Or else it’s the best kind of luck there is. It depends on how you look at it. Your personal philosophy, if you will.”
“What is this, Zen and the Art of Mercedes Maintenance?” I muttered.
The mechanic offered me his hand and pulled me up to standing.
“Let me get her into the bay and take a closer look,” he said. “Zelda’s is a good place to have a bite while you’re waiting.”
I turned in the direction he was pointing. Five hundred yards off, I could see a low white building, and then nothing but fields and trees for miles. Zelda’s was obviously the only place to get something to eat. “Okay,” I said weakly. “See you in—”
“An hour,” he said.
Inside the diner, a pretty red-haired waitress poured a coffee for me before I’d even sat down.
“You look like you could use it,” she said. “You all right?”
I shrugged. Was I? “My car might be a…” I waved my arm toward the garage. I couldn’t say the word goner, but that’s what I was thinking.
“Well if anyone can fix it, Josh can,” she said reassuringly. “He’s like an engine Einstein.”
I took a sip of the coffee. It wasn’t great, but at least it was strong. “I take it you know him.”
“We went to school together,” she said.
“Were you friends?” I asked, hoping conversation would keep me from complete despair.
She laughed. “We were more than friends,” she said. She pulled a cloth from the pocket of her apron and began wiping the counter. “But he was more than friends with a lot of girls.”
“Funny, I had a husband like that,” I said. My smile probably looked a bit grim.
She refilled my coffee though I’d only taken a couple of sips. And then, because I was the only customer, she sat down on a stool next to me. “You want to talk about it?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said. “You know, water under the bridge and all.”
“Some of my customers really like to talk,” she said. “You’d think I was their therapist, not their waitress.”
“You must hear good stories,” I said.
“Sure,” she said. “Good ones, bad ones—mostly boring ones, honestly. ‘No, Mr. Scharf, I don’t need a blow-by-blow account of you passing a kidney stone,’ you know?”
I laughed. “In fairness to Mr. Scharf, whoever he is, that story sounds more disgusting than boring.”
“True,” she admitted.
“So what’s your story?” I asked.
She looked quizzically at me. “What do you mean?”
“Like, what would you tell your therapist-waitress?” I asked.
She smiled then, and it just lit up her whole face. “Okay, I’ll tell you something,” she said. “Ten years ago I was a knockout. Hell, even five years ago I was still pretty hot.” She held up a warning hand. “Don’t bother telling me I still look great.”
“I was going to,” I admitted.
“So one day I won a makeover contest—you know, you mail in your picture, and the TV producers pick you to be on their show. So here I am, Kate Prior, the small-town waitress, getting flown to Los Angeles. They gave me hand-painted blond highlights and put so much makeup on my face it felt like spackling paste. When I walked out on stage, the women in the audience clapped and screamed. Suddenly I looked like Miss America! It was wild.” She shook her head and chuckled at the memory. “Later they took me to a really fancy party. I had agents in expensive suits on either side of me, pouring me Champagne and trying to sign me. They said they could build my brand, make me a household name. And I’m like, ‘Brand? What does that mean? I’m not a laundry detergent!’ But at the same time it was wonderful. You should have seen the shoes they gave me—they cost more than my car.”
“Mine, too, no doubt,” I said, and I felt a pang of sorrow for Beatrice.
Kate reached into a case and got us each a croissant. I’d never been in a restaurant where people just handed you things.
“So later I’m chatting with this great lady—she’s a movie producer—and some hot guy she’s with,” Kate went on. “And she says to him, ‘I want to get a picture with Kate.’ So I go to put my arm around her, and I’m smiling all big and proud, but then she gives me the camera. This was before selfies, so I’m really confused—until I turn around, and I see Kate Winslet right behind me. The producer doesn’t want a picture of me! She wants a picture of herself with Kate Winslet. And Kate Winslet knows this, and she’s laughing her British ass off. But I roll with it. I go, ‘One Kate at a time—get in line behind me, Limey.’ Even though, inside, I was dying.”
My mouth had fallen open. “And then what?” I asked.
Kate shrugged. “I went back to my hotel room, and my daughter was so freaked out by my new look that she hid under the bed.” She started laughing. “She wouldn’t come out until I washed off all my makeup and changed into my ratty old pj’s.”
“And then what happened,” I said.
“And then I flew home and came back to work at Zelda’s,” she said, shrugging. “By the way, do you want to hear about today’s specials?”
Later, when I asked if I could take her picture, Kate posed with one hand on her hip and the other on the handle of a coffee pot. Her smile was dazzling.
“Do you ever wish—,” I began.
Kate cut me off. “I wish a lot of things,” she said. She gazed out the diner window at the flat fields stretching far away. “But girl, I don’t wish I’d tried to become a brand. I’d rather be a real person, and a good mother. Like I believe I am.” Then she turned to me and grinned. “I do wish I still had those shoes, though.”
Chapter 9
I FELT a little better walking back to the gas station, and when Josh the mechanic came out to meet me with a smile on his face, I felt my spirits lift even higher.
“How’s Beatrice?” I asked eagerly.
“I can fix her in half a day,” he said.
“That’s amazing,” I cried.
“But the parts are going to take two weeks to get here,” he said, “and they’re going to cost an arm, a leg, and a kidney.”
The balloon of my happiness instantly popped. “You’re supposed to tell me that first,” I said. “To not get my hopes up.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I try to focus on the positive.”
We walked into the service station waiting area and I sat down on one of the vinyl chairs. Despite all the coffee, I felt exhausted.
Josh took a seat across from me. “I’m guessing you don’t want to wait. And that maybe you don’t need to spend a few thousand dollars on a car that”—he looked out the window at her—“that probably has two tires in the junkyard already.”
“Be gentle,” I cried. “That’s my life companion you’re talking about.”
“I’m not telling you to junk her. I’m just saying…”
“That I need a new car?”
Josh leaned forward and clasped his hands together, his expression earnest. “I get the sense you’re trying to go somewhere kind of far away. And I just don’t think she’ll be the lady to take you.”
I paused to let this sad news sink in. “So you’ve got a sweet ride you want to sell me?” I asked eventually—and skeptically.
He smiled. “I don’t know if I’d go that far. But I do have something that’ll get you where you’re going. Do you want to take a look?”
I didn’t, actually, but I was desperate, so I followed him around back of the garage. I just couldn’t wait two weeks for a repair.
Maybe this was a lesson for me: There’s always more to lose.
There were half a dozen cars parked in a small lot behind the shop, and most of them looked like they wouldn’t even turn on, let alone drive eight hundred miles.
“Really?” I said to Josh.
“Over here,” he said. Then he pointed to a small black van with a purple stripe along the side, and a bumper sticker that read MY OTHER CAR IS THE MILLENNIUM FALCON.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
“Only sixty-five thousand miles,” he said.
“And it’s cheap because it’s incredibly ugly?” I asked hopefully.
He laughed. “I think it’s a bargain. It’ll run for another ten years at least.”
I hope I don’t need it that long, I thought. “You think you’re going to cruise around in a Mercedes—and you end up in a minivan,” I said softly.
“Everything changes. Nothing remains without change,” Josh said, equally quietly.
“And now you’re going to quote Buddha,” I said, shaking my head. But at the same time, it made me feel better. “Promise to take good care of Beatrice,” I said. “Don’t put her back here with these losers.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“I’ll come back for her,” I said. I hope.
As I signed the paperwork to buy the van, a hollow ache in my guts, I asked, “Do you have a good story?”
Josh looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—is there some funny thing you like to tell people? Or something not funny. Whatever. Just a really good story.”
He gazed up at the ceiling fan, turning slowly in the August heat. Then he smiled at me, almost mischievously. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was a great mechanic. He was a happy guy. He had a nice house, a good truck, and a better dog. And then one day, a beautiful, dark-haired stranger came into his repair shop.”
I felt my cheeks flush. “Are you—”
He held up a hand. “Wait for it! Her car was a disaster—not even he, engine expert that he was, could fix it that day. But she didn’t really mind, because he was so handsome and charming. And when he asked her out on a date, she said yes.”
“And then?” I said. By now my cheeks were on fire.
“And then they had the best date of their lives,” he said.
“Wow,” I managed.
“And so then they had another amazing date. And not long after that date, he proposed. And she said yes again.” His smile was electric now.
And me? I didn’t know whether to be flattered or alarmed.
He leaned forward. “Do you want to see her picture?”
Finally, the truth dawned on me. “Oh my God,” I said.
“What?”
“It really happened! I thought you were making it up,” I admitted, laughing. “I thought it was about us.”
He laughed, too. “You’re beautiful, it’s true,” he said. “But I’m married. I just don’t wear the ring because I don’t like it getting greasy.”
Still laughing, I asked him to pose for a picture next to Beatrice. He said yes.
That way I could remember them both.
Chapter 10
BY THE time I pulled into the Starlight Motor Inn in Richmond, Indiana, I was farther west than I’d ever been before. (How a person could get to age thirty-six without crossing the Mississippi—I didn’t know, but I’d soon be able to cross that off my list.)
My room was tiny, but nicer than the motel’s flickering neon sign had led me to expect, with pale gray walls, a cute mini-kitchen, and a vase of fresh daisies on the dresser. I took a long hot shower, washing off the grit of the road, and lay down to close my eyes for a minute. The next thing I knew, I was being torn from the warm arms of sleep by the sound of my neighbors having loud, yowling sex.
Or else maybe the Starlight kept a roomful of feral cats next door—I couldn’t be sure. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock.
Disoriented and starving, I gathered loose change from various pockets and headed to the vending machines outside the motel office, where I bought myself Cheetos, Snickers, and a Diet Coke. I’d never been much of a cook, but this was taking not cooking to a whole new level.
Welcome to life on the road, I thought giddily, and bit into the Snickers. If only the vending machine sold earplugs, too.
The small motel pool glowed turquoise in the darkness, and so instead of going back to my room, I opened the creaky gate, slipped off my shoes, and dunked my bare feet into the cool water.
I washed down the Snickers with the soda and congratulated myself on getting this far on my solo journey. Obviously my circumstances weren’t glamorous—but I was having an adventure. And wasn’t that worth something?
As I sat there, reflecting, the rush of cars passing by on the highway began to remind me of the sound of the ocean. Soon I was overcome with longing for my island, my beach, my house—for all the things I didn’t have anymore.
I wondered what Josh the philosopher-mechanic would say to make me feel better: At least your van runs well, maybe, and something about how I ought to make something good out of something bad.
Easy for him to say.
But in a way, I was making something good—or at least I was trying to. I’d already gathered a handful of stories and photographs, and I was on my way to gather more. Maybe, just maybe, something would come of them.
The gate creaked open then,
and a woman came inside the pool area. She was wrapped in a blanket and bleary-eyed, her hair mussed. She sat down on one of the deck lounge chairs and heaved a big sigh.
I ignored her, in case she was one of the people I’d just heard going at it. TMI, you know?
But eventually she spoke. In a smoker’s voice, she asked, “Are you married?”
“No,” I said, leaving it at that.
“Good. Let me give you a piece of advice. Do not, under any circumstances, marry a man who snores.”
I laughed in surprise. “I have a history of not taking good advice. But that sounds reasonable.”
“It’s more than reasonable,” she said. “It’s crucial.”
“Like a deal breaker?” I said.
She looked at me as if I were crazy. “Of course! Do you think I want to be out here in the middle of the night on a lounge chair by some crappy pool, talking to some sad-looking lady?”
“I guess not,” I said. Thinking: Do I really look sad?
“I get no peace,” she said.
She was quiet for a while then. And in the darkness, by an anonymous motel and beside a total stranger, I felt more alone than I’d ever felt.
But it wasn’t sad. It just was.
When I looked over at her next, she was asleep.
And a few minutes later, she started to snore.
Welcome to life on the road.
Chapter 11
KAREN’S HOUSE was large and gracious, with a carefully landscaped yard and a gleaming Volvo parked in the driveway. As I climbed out of my ugly van, brushing crumbs from my clothes, I felt rumpled and underdressed.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. My friendship with Karen had always seemed unlikely to me, like one of those cross-species bonds people make videos about: a gazelle becoming best friends with a tortoise, for example.
Quick, beautiful, magnetic Karen—the gazelle, obviously—was now standing in the doorway, motioning me inside her Better Homes and Gardens Victorian.
“Hurry!” she called. “Sophie gets home from kindergarten in an hour and I’ve got news that she can’t hear.”