All We Know of Love

  The movie ended.

  “Will somebody get the lights?” the sub called out, and when the room lit up again, she acted surprised that there were only five kids left in the room. She kept shaking her head as she handed out the work-sheet questions.

  “To be completed in class today.”

  Lorraine looked down at the paper on her desk. What would happen to her next? Even if she skipped ahead, past telling her parents and grandparents, and friends, what would happen? She clicked the lead down into her mechanical pencil but didn’t write anything.

  The bell rang.

  “Everyone turn in your work sheets,” the sub called out loudly, as if she were still talking to an entire class. Lorraine wrote her name at the top of the paper and turned it in, completely blank.

  “Your what is leaving? Your bus?” Lorraine is talking to me, but I can barely hear her.

  My head is starting to hurt, as if I’ve had this horrible headache and I am only now just realizing it. I feel my heart start to tighten with fear, the little-kid kind of fear, where everything looms large.

  I am stuck here in . . . where am I?

  Lorraine tells me I am in Craigstown, Maryland. Where? Dear God. Now surely I am going to cry. Or throw up. I feel suddenly nauseous again, only more so.

  “What am I going to do?” I am asking no one in particular. I think I am shouting.

  “That was your bus?” Lorraine asks.

  “That was my bus.”

  “To Florida?” Now she is shouting as well.

  I nod.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Now we are both quiet. There are only a few other people in the diner. There is a man five stools down from me, and an older couple, a man and woman in a booth by the window, and they all seem interested in my dilemma, like they’ve got nothing better to do.

  They probably don’t.

  My mouth is opening and closing like a fish. My mind is clicking into place, sorting through my limited options.

  Giving up, calling my dad.

  Getting to the nearest bus station and buying another ticket.

  Money. I wouldn’t have enough to get home.

  Calling Adam?

  Ha. Good one.

  Giving up and calling my dad.

  Fainting.

  Fainting may turn out to be my best alternative after all. I can feel the blood rushing to my head, or away from it. My fingers are starting to tingle.

  “Maybe you can catch up to them,” Lorraine says, and we both look out the window at the traffic. The bus is stopped at an intersection about an eighth of a mile ahead. Red taillights blink on and off. I can see the entrance signs to Interstate 95 and for a long second I have an image of myself as one of those superheroes in cartoons who run really fast, a blur of color streaking behind.

  I look back at Lorraine.

  “I mean, get a ride or something,” she says. “Does the bus stop again?”

  The schedule.

  Yes, I think. The bus does stop. I remember. In New York City, New York. In Baltimore, Maryland. In Richmond —

  “Yes, in Baltimore,” I say quickly. “Is that near here?”

  Lorraine nods. “Sort of.”

  “Hey, Del. Ain’t you going to Baltimore?” the man beside me at the counter says out loud. He looks like something out of one of those save-the-farm movies. He is white, with a wrinkled face, dirty overalls, and a John Deere cap on his head. He is talking to the couple in the booth. He pronounces Baltimore as though it were only two syllables and with no T: Bal’more.

  The man in the booth doesn’t say anything but nods his head up and down, for an extended amount of time. I guess he is going to Baltimore.

  “That’s a bad neighborhood over there by the bus station,” the female half of the booth couple says. I am not sure who she is talking to, but my bus must surely be driving farther and farther away every second.

  “All the more reason for you and Del to drive the girl there,” Mr. John Deere says.

  “Suppose we could do that,” the woman agrees. “We have to go there anyway.”

  I look to Lorraine, since I’ve run out of people in the room who I can understand.

  “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Johnson,” Lorraine says slowly.

  Everything is looming large.

  Much too large. You feel all alone, like a little kid, only your mom is not coming to pick you up.

  My mother left a lot of times before she left for real. All those other times, I never realized what she was doing.

  But she was practicing.

  For a while, I thought there was something I could do to stop her; that it was my choice, my fault. The first time it happened we were in a big store. In my memory, I am in the child seat of a metal shopping cart. There are tall shelves and aisles like highways, one of those massive warehouse stores you have to be a member of to shop in.

  But that could be just a memory. I was not quite four years old.

  I wanted to get out of that cart in a bad way, kicking my legs, letting my feet fly up into my mother’s chest and stomach. Gripping the bar tightly until the top of my hands were red, then white. Screaming, probably saying something to the effect of Let me out.

  I want to get down.

  Down.

  I wanted to see something, something this moving shopping cart had passed by and hadn’t allowed me a good look at: a cartoon character on a cereal box, a colorful package of candy. I don’t remember anymore. What I do remember is the feeling of being wheeled away against my will, trapped and stuck. I started to lift my knees out of the cart anyway, with no sense of gravity or concept of height. I had no sense that I could get hurt.

  Because you can’t get hurt when you are with your mother.

  Stop, Natty.

  Sit still, please.

  Be good, my mother would have said quietly. She never yelled.

  I clearly remember the cold metal and the sense of frustration when I couldn’t get my legs out by myself. I needed to jiggle myself free, or make enough of a stink to be lifted out.

  Finally my mother let me down, and as soon as she did, I darted off down the aisle back toward the object of my desire, the cereal box or the candy. I looked back once, to see if she was right behind me. I froze at the sight of my mother turning the corner and heading away from me.

  And in an instant she was gone.

  I was old enough to realize that it was more logical for me to continue forward and speed around the top of the next aisle to see her again. This I did, the black-and-white tiles under my feet like a monstrous checkerboard. I quickly turned the corner, around the cookie display, but she wasn’t there.

  She wasn’t in this aisle. Or this one.

  Not this one. Not this one. Not this one.

  I was running as fast as I could. Fast. Running. The towers of boxes and colors blurring beside me. The checkout lines were miles long, crowded with strange faces and cart after cart after cart, all looking like ours.

  I was crying by that time. Hysterical. So much snot was running down my face, I could taste it, mixed salty with my crying. I didn’t care. I was blinded with pooling, seeping, drowning tears and the fear, the enormous out-of-control realization that I was truly lost.

  A woman who smelled like maple syrup picked me up, and the rest is a confusion of sights, people, an office, discussions, a loudspeaker. Someone gave me a drink of water. And then my mother was there.

  Here you go, little girl. See, I told you there was nothing to worry about. Here’s your mommy.

  My mother looked happy to see me but certainly calm.

  I remember thinking, She isn’t crying.

  The inside of the Johnsons’ truck smells like gasoline and wood. Beside me, in the back, an old gray army blanket is draped across the seat. It itches me when I lean on it. The dashboard is covered with what looks like invoices and receipts, and several old coffee-stained Styrofoam cups. I like it. I look out the window. I am riding in a car with total strangers. I have been wa
rned about this all my life.

  Only Mrs. Johnson seems to know how to speak.

  She is telling me about the time she went to New York City. The Big Apple, she calls it.

  She came up to see the lights at Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.

  Had I seen it? How lucky. Did I do all my Christmas shopping on Fifth Avenue?

  I think better than to tell her nobody shops on Fifth Avenue except for tourists, or that I’m Jewish and don’t have Christmas.

  What am I doing in this truck?

  I check my cell phone for calls. Voice message? Text? Nothing.

  What am I doing?

  Lorraine had assured me it was perfectly safe. She’s known the Johnsons all her life. She went to school with their kids and their cousins’ kids. Her husband works for a construction company and they just put a roof up for the Johnsons, just this last summer. But it was all pretty strange, since I didn’t know Lorraine either.

  We hugged good-bye, as if we were old friends.

  “You said the bus has an hour layover in Baltimore,” she told me. “Don’t worry. You have plenty of time.”

  “Thanks for helping me,” I told her.

  “I didn’t do anything. I mean, I wish I could. I’d drive you myself, but my car is in the shop, as usual.”

  I looked around and noticed that another waitress had come in at some point and was wiping the counter where I had been sitting.

  “That’s OK. That would be crazy. I think it’s pretty far . . . like half an hour, right?”

  Lorraine nodded. “Yeah, but it would be an adventure, right? I hardly leave here. I hardly never go anywhere.”

  “I suppose,” I said, smiling, and I got in with the Johnsons, who had pulled up outside Our Dog House.

  I didn’t realize I had forgotten my grilled cheese until I looked back and saw Lorraine waving with one hand, holding a paper bag in the other, but it was too late.

  “Put your seat belt on.”

  Mr. Johnson’s voice startles me. We’ve been driving for about ten minutes already, in total silence, but it is as if her husband’s voice awakens her, and Mrs. Johnson starts telling me about her aunt Judy, who tried out for the Rockettes herself.

  “What?” I say.

  “The Rockettes,” Mrs. Johnson says to me. “At Radio City.”

  “No, I mean . . . oh, sorry. My seat belt.”

  Mr. Johnson watches me in his rearview mirror as I reach around and pull up the floppy cloth seat belt. It takes me another minute to adjust it and snap it into place.

  Mr. Johnson doesn’t say another thing the rest of the ride, but his wife tells me about her younger brother, Troy, who married a girl from Troy, New York.

  Can you believe that one? They have three kids of their own and seven grandchildren.

  And now they all live in Buffalo.

  Have I ever been to Buffalo?

  How about Arizona? The Johnsons went to Arizona once to see the Grand Canyon.

  Adam never wore a seat belt.

  Never.

  And before Adam, I had never gotten into a car and not automatically fastened my seat belt. It was like second nature, just something I did. So at first, I didn’t even notice that Adam wasn’t wearing his. He let his wrist rest limply on the top of his steering wheel. His other arm, he draped on my shoulder. I felt like a princess. He leaned back, not like my father, who drove sitting straight up, eyes ahead. My dad kept two hands on the wheel most all the time, and if he only used one, at least it was with a firm grip.

  When Adam turned the car, he did it with only the palm of his hand, as if gripping the wheel was a sign of weakness, too much bother, or both.

  I melted.

  And the next time I got into the car with him, I reached for my seat belt and then stopped. I let it drop instead. Adam didn’t say anything. The car moved forward, and I tried to ignore the odd sensation of being unbelted, unencumbered. It felt uncomfortable, unsafe, wrong. But I persevered.

  And soon I liked it.

  I was free.

  Sometimes, Adam would lean over and kiss me while he was driving. His tongue probing my mouth.

  I hesitated.

  “You’re driving. Don’t.” I giggled.

  I’d never giggled before, had I? But I didn’t pull away. I didn’t get out of the car. I didn’t even reach over and snap my seat belt into place; this was dangerous. Instead, I leaned toward him as closely as I could, hoping this would enable him to still see the road. But all and all, I gave him the choice, the control. I turned over my free will to Adam Fishman, and it made me feel like a precious, fragile china doll.

  The problem was he didn’t quite see it the same, did he?

  I can still hear his male voice, urging, demanding. Give me your tongue. Let me feel your tongue, he’d whisper into my mouth. His torso stretched across the seat, his hand pressing against the back of my head, telling me what to do.

  And I would do it.

  Mr. Johnson spoke only one more time, as I was getting out of the backseat of their truck. He had pulled right in front of the bus station, nearly up on the curb so I would have only a few steps, walking directly through the glass doors and safely inside. Although, to tell the truth, the inside of the bus station didn’t look all that much better than the outside.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Mr. Johnson said. It was the same tone he used to tell me to put my seat belt on.

  It was a fatherly thing to say. I don’t think he meant anything in particular by it, but it suddenly struck me as funny. Stay out of trouble. Aren’t I in trouble already?

  Isn’t that what it used to be called, when a guy got a girl pregnant?

  He got her in trouble.

  As if she had very little to do with it, a passive bystander. Now she was in trouble, but he was not. He had only gotten her there; the rest was her problem.

  “I will,” I told him. “Thank you both so much for the ride.”

  Then just before I step inside, I look up at the sky. It is threateningly dark. I wonder if it snows down here, but it doesn’t feel cold enough. It is damp and chilly, and I begin to feel a low dull cramp, a pleasant heaviness that makes my heart quicken.

  The bathroom of the Baltimore bus station is disgusting. Beyond disgusting. Not only do I have three layers of toilet paper folded over the seat, but I am squatting with all my leg strength, while holding the stall door closed with one hand, since it seems to be missing a lock. Where the lock may have once been is a perfect circle, like the porthole of a ship, except that the only thing I can see out this window is a row of dirty sinks strewn with wet paper towels. I am holding on and trying to release at the same time.

  This takes so much effort that I almost don’t see it.

  Red.

  Like the swirl of color inside a marble.

  Blood.

  A swell of relief surges through my body as I stand up.

  I rub my belly, my womb, as if to thank her for forgiving my stupidity yet another month. Does this really make the fourth month in a row that I made unkept promises to myself? My immense gratitude and another set of renewed vows to take better care of myself last only long enough for me to realize that I suddenly have a great urge to call Adam.

  I want to call Adam.

  Just to let him know, I think.

  There is some logic in this, I rationalize instantaneously. The way you might scratch an itch that hasn’t yet registered in your mind as irritating.

  I need to hear his voice. And now I have something good to tell him. I’ll sound cheerful and upbeat. I’ll have good news. Good news for him.

  I got “it,” I can hear myself saying already. I rehearse my words in my mind, and I feel excited just thinking about it. I walk out into the lobby of the station, and I don’t even wait to find a more private spot to make my call.

  I check my cell phone for reception bars as I force out any thoughts that this is a bad idea, that if it doesn’t go well, I will feel wors
e than before I called. He could be busy, or uninterested. Or worse. Much worse.

  But of course, there is always a chance he’ll be wonderful and loving, and kind and concerned. And I will feel so much better.

  In this ridiculous debate, the desire to feel better wins out.

  I call.

  I can feel the excitement just pressing the buttons of his cell phone number.

  “Hello?” Adam answers on the first ring. I pretend he has been waiting for my call.

  “Hello,” I say back.

  “Natty?” As his voice moves through me, an image is formed. My brain races to put the scene together based on the background sounds, the tone, the exact words.

  Where is he? Is he alone?

  He is smiling. I can hear it in his voice — a warm summer rain that has just ended, revealing a wet and glistening world, and I know he would like the analogy.

  “Natalie.” He says it again, more softly. And I know he is alone. He wouldn’t talk like that in front of his friends.

  “Hi,” I say, lowering my voice. Trying to sound as intimate, as if I am not surrounded by transient, rushing, waiting, loud-talking, bus-traveling strangers. I walk around searching for a more private area, but still concentrating all of my attention on this conversation, hoping to steer it in the right direction.

  Then, suddenly, Adam isn’t saying anything.

  Are you there? I want to ask in a panic, but I know him. He is pausing, forcing my hand, forcing me to talk, to fill in the silence and betray myself as needy. It is like two people holding on to opposite ends of a rope.

  I hear nothing in the phone.

  In order to keep the line taut, one person has to keep pulling. Or the rope will fall. Why is it always me?

  But it is.

  “So where are you?” I ask, breaking into the anxious quiet, and giving myself away.

  “Home.” And he pauses again. I can feel the pull drawing me in, like air into a bell jar.

  “So what are you up to?” he asks.

  I realize Adam doesn’t even know I’ve left. He doesn’t know that I’m not in town, not in my home, not at Sarah’s, not with my dad. I am on the road, hours and hours away. He doesn’t know that I crossed the Mason-Dixon line over ninety minutes ago.