Chapter One
Don’t think about it now. Keep moving forward. Don’t think. For God’s sake, don’t think. Breath through it. Relax jaw muscles, breath slowly, deeply, let it out. Again. Push it out, away, let it go. Inhale, exhale, blink, relax. Now, unclench fists, take a step, that’s it. Another step. Another. Go, move, get through the door, don’t look up, keep moving one foot, then the other, outside, fresh air, sun on the shoulders, let the warmth soak in, stop shaking. Keep walking, head down, jaws, hands unclenched. End of the block, turn the corner, resist the urge to run. Where is the car? Don’t look around. There it is. Keys in right pocket, unlock the door, inside now. Sit for a minute. Don’t start the engine, just wait. Steering wheel feels cold. Cool against my forehead. Rest. Eyes closed against everything.
A long time later. It’s over now, surely. Sit up straight, you fucking coward, get the hell away from here before someone comes to find you. Concentrate on driving. Over, done, finished. There is nothing more to do. No one you can fail. Just drive. Why are there so many bars? On every corner, tucked in between crowed storefronts, squeezed in like cramped, dark holes, there’s another one, and here’s a parking space. Too easy, to stop, go in, get drunk and numb and sick and later, a hangover that focuses all attention on itself. Keep driving, damn you.
Hours later, I let the car drift slowly off the main road into a motel parking lot. It was growing mercifully dark, and the fuel tank was close to empty, good enough reasons to stop. Locking the car, I looked through the plate glass window at the clerks behind the counter of the office. Must be shift change. I waited while one cashed out, the other one holding her cash tray, patient, already sleepy. I suppose it’s a sleepy job, night clerking at a motel. I wasn’t sure I wanted a room. I wanted the safety and silence of the moving car, but it was out of gas. I didn’t want to be trapped inside a strange, rented room, with strange smells and impersonal furnishings. Nothing but a bed and a television and a phone. I handed over my credit card anyway, because I couldn’t remain standing in the lobby forever. Given a key, I left the too bright office to stand outside. I didn’t want to move the car. Didn’t want to open the door to number four on the end. Didn’t want to stare at the depressing drapes. I sat on the bed and examined my hands. They were no longer trembling, no longer curled into fists, but I could see the half moon marks my fingernails had made. The room carried the faint smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol, overlaid with strong cleaning agents and floral-scented air freshener. I lay on top of the bedspread and pulled the blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed over me. The too-tight skirt bit into my waist with the pantyhose aiding the constriction that made me aware of every breath. The suit jacket was too tight around my shoulders, the silk blouse underneath probably ruined. I lay awake until I could see the faint lightening that meant dawn.
I stopped at a service station, filled the tank, bought a five dollar, long sleeved tee shirt, removed the silk blouse and threw it in the garbage can in the rest room, pulled the jacket back on over the tee shirt, got a giant cup of coffee and settled back into the driver’s seat like it was home, all I knew, the only place where I belonged in the world. I had no idea where I was, but that wasn’t the point. No one knew where I was at this moment. I was outside anyone’s reach.
WalMart. Inside I bought jeans, sneakers, socks, a sweatshirt, underwear. Back at the same service station, I changed again in the restroom and disposed of the rest of the navy suit I had worn since early the previous day. I returned to the road, realizing as the sun came up that I was on the coastal road. I kept driving.
I followed the curve of the west coast of Florida. Stopped in Homosassa Springs, ate eggs and toast with more coffee, bought a case of bottled water at another WalMart, got back in the saddle, kept going. When it grew dark once again, I found another motel. This time I was fortified for the night with cigarettes and a bottle. I sat with my back against the headboard, stared at the windows, waiting for the lighter shading to begin to appear through the blinds. When the sun rose, I walked across the street to the beach and sat on the sand for a while. When people began to appear in swim suits, I got up, brushed off my butt, and re-crossed the street to sit in the Waffle House. Apparently, one couldn’t smoke in eating establishments in Florida any more. I sat with coffee, thought about more eggs, refused pancakes. The place on the other side of the street promised rooms to let by the week.
In an hour, I had moved in. My case of water sat on the counter beside the bottle I had yet to open. A carton of Marlboro Lights and a one pound package of Folgers coffee completed my store of groceries. I should buy stock in WalMart. My wardrobe had increased by two pairs of shorts, a handful of tee shirts and tank tops, more underwear. I had unloaded my laptop from the car, but it sat in its case. My cell phone was still in the car, turned off. I lit a cigarette and watched the scene on the beach.
It was sunny and hot. It took some time for me to move, to turn on the air. Maybe it was noon. The afternoon slid by, and I sat and smoked. When the sun began to sink, I went outside to sit and watch, taking a bottle of water and my cigarettes with me. I sat for a long time. I had never been on the beach at night. The swoosh of the waves was not soothing, nor was it mesmerizing, but it was constant, incessant. I was stiff when I rose from my cross-legged position and went back inside my cave. I found that the windows of my new home opened. The sea breeze blew the cigarette smoke out, let in the smells of salt and water and fish, and I went to bed.
I was angry to discover I had fallen asleep. The sun came up without me. It occurred to me to take a shower, so I did. I made coffee and sat beside my open window, Marlboros at my elbow, ashtray ready, coffee in a plastic cup, and began my surveillance of the beach once more. What day was this? Had it been two or three days since I walked away from Cathy’s funeral? That was the first time I had thought about it, I swear. I wondered if the rental car had one of those global positioning devices that helped police track stolen cars, then whether anyone would care enough to try that hard to find me. I should turn the car in. Maybe tomorrow. I couldn’t leave my station at the window just yet. It was all I had.
I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed on duty. Thoughts were beginning to creep in, and I had to be on guard against that. I let each day come and go, and eventually, gradually, I became aware that I was no longer hurting. I didn’t feel anything. That was good. Now I just had to make sure it stayed that way. I took no pride in the fact that I hadn’t used the whiskey to achieve this neutral state. The bottle was for when the force shield failed. The only thing I worried about was not upsetting whatever had caused it to drop into place, blanketing me in numbness. I kept to my routine, wondering when the urge to get back on the road would hit me. At first, it had been driving that had done it. Then, just sitting here, in the same spot, looking out the window, with water and cigarettes and coffee and the sun and the waves, the breeze and the night, that’s what kept it in place. I didn’t dare alter anything.
Feeling and thinking could slip back in without warning, so I kept on alert for twinges, kept checking to make sure. One morning, I took the laptop out and set it up on my table by the window, but I didn’t turn it on. I left it there for a day or two, let myself get used to having there. Nothing happened, so I opened it up. I played solitaire then, by the hour, eventually switching to Freecell. I didn’t go online, where any number of games were available. Opening up that kind of connection seemed dangerous.
I did get some paperback books on one of my trips to WalMart. I stayed away from fiction. That seemed unnecessarily risky. The first book I read was In Harm’s Way, written by Doug Stanton, about the fate of the USS Indianapolis at the end of World War Two. Then I reread it. I wound up reading that book nine or ten times. It’s hard to find nonfiction in paperback. I hadn’t realized. Then I discovered Louis L’Amour westerns. These were fiction, but safe.
I thought about opening up a blank document in WordPerfect, just to see if I could do it. I kept playing free cell, reading the same store of paperbacks over and over, sitting on the beach at night, drinking coffee and water, sitting at the window during the day. I think I gradually became desensitized to the computer. I didn’t feel danger radiating from its open face. One afternoon, I did it. I opened WordPerfect, stared at a blank page, and tentatively began writing. Nothing happened. My fingers still knew how to type. That part of my brain apparently still knew how to form sentences. I wrote a review of In Harm’s Way. Then a piece encompassing all of Louis L’Amour’s work. Then I began writing reviews of every book I’ve ever read.
I kept to my schedule, of course. Sitting on the beach every night, sitting at the window every day. Visiting WalMart. I became quite a shopper. I bought a computer desk, then some tools, and put the thing together. I didn’t move the laptop onto it though. It had to stay on the table by the window. It took me a couple of days to figure out that I could shove the little round table out of the way and replace it with the particle board desk I had assembled. That was a shaky afternoon, making that change. I sat on the bed for a couple of hours, watching, waiting to see if it would upset me. When it didn’t, I sat at the desk and rearranged my ashtray, cigarettes, water, and laptop. The easy chair I had been sitting in for so long no longer felt right, so I went back to WalMart and bought a desk chair, brought it home, put it together, and enjoyed rolling around on its wheels for a while. Fitting my ass into it, resting my elbows on the armrests, seeing how it felt.
The first thing I typed was the word "detached." That’s the last thing I remember, because the pain found me again then. It may have been a week, or a couple of days, but sometime later, I became aware again of something outside myself. I oened my eyes slowly; the room smelled different, felt smaller. I looked around, and there sat Trish, in my old easy chair, watching the television I had never even turned on. I was on the bed. My tee shirt smelled. I tried getting up and made it to the bathroom. I showered until the hot water was gone, didn’t scream when it turned cold. I brushed my teeth until my gums bled, put on clean shorts and a tank top, made coffee, and drank a whole bottle of water while it dripped. Trish had turned off the TV to watch me. With coffee, water, and cigarettes arranged just so before me, the touchstones to recreate the shield, I sat at the desk chair and looked at her.
"How long have you been here?" My voice sounded scratchy and old.
"A few hours." She got up then, opened a can of soup into a coffee cup, put it in the microwave. "You gonna be okay?"
I inhaled too deeply and coughed. "I was okay, then something happened."
The microwave pinged and she put the cup of soup in front of me with a spoon. "Do you know what day it is?"
"No." I looked at the yellowish chicken noodle soup, wondering how long it would take before the fat started to congeal on the top. "Want to go to the Waffle House for some eggs?"
"Yes. If you’ll eat."
I stood up on shaky legs. "I’ll eat. Come on."
The waitress knew me. She was shocked when I ordered food. Scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and juice. Trish had a burger and fries and a milkshake. I suppose she just wanted me to smell the food, hoping to stimulate my appetite. Trish was rail thin, an exercise fanatic, and hadn’t eaten that much food at one sitting in years. She nibbled on a fry, sucked on the shake, and watched intently as I swallowed a bite of toast.
She said, "You’ve been here the whole time? It’s been a month."
"Yes. I just drove."
"Cathy’s family asked if they could choose a headstone."
I didn’t flinch. I waited, but nothing seemed to happen. "They can do whatever they want."
"And they will, since you’ve deserted the field. What do you want?"
I drank the juice deliberately, draining the glass. "I don’t know yet."
Encouraged, though I didn’t understand why, she said, "Have you been writing at all?"
"No, not really."
"Do you want to go home? You can stay with me."
"Jean would kick my ass." Jean is Trish’s partner. She is always gruff and blunt and impatient with people who had delayed reactions. She is immediate and intense in her responses.
A brief smile moved Trish’s features, then disappeared. She looked worried and resolute. "Nobody gives a shit about Jean, certainly not you. Come home with me."
It seemed like a big thing to do. Their house was too close to ours. "Maybe I could stay here a few more days, now that I’m awake, sort of. See if I can write again, before I try anything else."
"I’ll stay with you then. Might as well enjoy the beach while I’m here."
Then I felt something: relief, gratitude, fear. "You don’t have to."
Trish leaned forward and touched my hand. "I could use a tan, don’t you think? It won’t be as bad as you think."
Besides being my editor, Trish was a friend and my therapist. All three roles gave her license to be bossy. "Beth, you’ll make it. You’ve had a break. Let reality seep back in at its own pace."
We finished eating, then I helped her get her things from the car. She changed into a bikini and was on the beach in ten minutes, without another word between us. I sat and watched her for quite a while. She had a runner’s lean form, and her blond hair seemed to lighten as I watched. Eventually she applied sun block and waded into the waves. I turned on the laptop and opened up my email. Most I deleted, one or two got answered. That wasn’t so hard.