Sarah told me she’d recently heard on the radio that more people get divorced today because they’re living longer. That’s the only reason why. People are just living longer. If your hus-band’s dead at 28 you don’t have to worry about divorcing him at 40. Then we laughed at how wise we sounded and ate some more.
I finished up my plate and stopped, but Sarah ate eggs and then she ate sausage links and then she ate two pancakes and then she ate a fruit salad.
So eggs.
Sausage links.
Pancakes.
Syrup.
More eggs.
Fruit salad.
Then Sarah kept going back to my embarrassing dating story. She said dating was ridiculous and we fell in love just because the world told us to. It’s expected of us and maybe it was better to be alone so you don’t shit your pants in front of someone. I told her that maybe love was just chemicals released in our brains to make us pass on our genetic make-up. But then Sarah went back for another plate. We laughed about what a great eater she was and she ate a bowl of grits and a bowl of cereal and then more sausage.
A bowl of grits.
A bowl of cereal.
Sausage.
After she was done Sarah stretched her arms out and accidentally hit the woman sitting in the booth behind us with her hand. The woman turned around and Sarah apologized. I made a motion with my hand to the lady like Sarah had been drinking. We all laughed some more and then Sarah acted like she was still hungry.
She said, “I might get one of those cinnamon raisin buns.”
And then she ate that too.
We paid and we took off to drive back to her house where we could walk through the woods and hang out and talk. We drove and talked and she talked about how people become different people when they are with different people and the person we’re with is just a collection of the people who came before. She told me that she thought we are only a collection of other people’s ideas about us. We are all a we. I told her we sounded like a bunch of stoners and then I told her about my teaching and how hard things had been the past couple of years.
Then Sarah grew quiet. I was talking and she was listening, but she wasn’t saying anything back. It was like she was whispering inside, “I don’t need a bathroom. I don’t need a bathroom.” Then she took her hand and touched her stomach and she whispered, “O god.”
Just a few minutes later I heard her burp a soft burp. It’s the type of burp you think no one can hear but they always do. Then the voice she heard inside her head suddenly changed.
It was saying she needed a bathroom now.
So she gripped the door of the car and I drove along. Then Sarah calmly said, “Scott, I think I’m going to need to find a bathroom soon.” Then she giggled and told me she was sorry for making fun of me about my last date and this was her punishment.
I drove, I drove and asked, “Do you need me to pull over?”
She told me we were on the interstate. She couldn’t just stop in the middle of nowhere beside the interstate and squat. So I hit the gas and zipped down the mountain road with a mountain on one side and on the other side of the road a cliff.
Holy shit, a cliff.
I told her it’s fine. Don’t worry.
Then she snapped and said, “Will you please stop talking, Andrew?” I thought “Andrew?” Andrew was the name of the ex-boy-friend she told me about.
I didn’t know what to say but then Sarah said, “I know I just accidentally called you by the name of my ex-boyfriend but can I please apologize later?”
I stopped thinking about it and I kept driving. I didn’t think pretty people even used the bathroom. I thought about the Buddhist priest who spent his whole life writing one letter on what he knew about the human heart. He would leave it for those after his death and it would say nothing. I thought about monks and love.
So I pushed the gas and drove down Sandstone Mountain.
I started pulling in and out of the tractor trailers and through the smoke that was coming off their brakes. There wasn’t a gas station around.
I heard Sarah breathe deep and I whispered, “Hold on. Hold on.” There was the exit.
So I zipped and dodged and whipped around trucks whispering, “Hold on. You’re going to make it.”
And then Sarah said, “I don’t know.”
And then there was a fucking coal truck and then cows crossing.
Hurry up, coal truck. Hurry up, logging truck. Hurry up, you fucking bunch of cows.
And then there was more speed and the gravel road and then there was the dirt road and then the house and a bathroom. I stopped in front of her house.
Then she said, “Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok.” She popped open the car door and she took off running and I watched her run.
I just sat and watched her and I wondered if she was going to make it. I said, “I think she’s going to make it.” But I stopped talking and I just watched her run. I knew one thing for sure. None of us ever make it in the end.
PART TWO
I told Sarah I was going to live at Walmart until she changed her mind about the divorce. After I lived there a week, I decided that she wasn’t going to change her mind. So each day I sat and watched the buggy boys gather up the buggies and take them inside. I watched the people with handicapped stickers pull all the way up and park in front. I decided to call Sarah and check up on the kids.
I told her, “Well if you need me, you’ll know where to find me.” Then I shouted, “O god!” Sarah said, “What’s wrong?”
I told her, “O don’t worry. I think I just saw the biggest woman I’ve ever seen going into Walmart. I wish you could see her. Hold on. I’ll try to take a picture.”
But Sarah said, “Yeah, Barbara said she saw you in the Walmart parking lot. She asked me why you were there. It’s embarrassing people seeing you there, Scott.” She told me she needed to give me something and I knew what she meant. She wanted to give me some money for an apartment.
I told her I wasn’t going to take any of her blood money and she told me I would. I told her I wouldn’t and she told me I would. I told her no. This is where I live now. She told me no you don’t. Then I tried reciting a love poem for her but she told me I was drunk.
“I don’t need her goddamn blood money,” I repeated after we hung up. “She’s not even romantic. Won’t even let me recite poems to her?”
Then I sat in my car and looked out at the parking lot and said, “These are my people. This is West Virginia.” And they were. I watched the customers walking from their cars and into the store and when they came back to their cars their buggies were full of stuff. One buggy. Two buggies. Three buggies. Four.
They were shopping for groceries to take home and make their children grow. I sat in the car and drank my gin from a water bottle. Then when my bladder got full I went inside and peed. A white car pulled up at the end of the parking lot and just sat there. I decided to call the guy driving “Big Pimpin’” and when Big Pimpin’ parked it was always the same. He was a skinny looking little white dude who had dread locks. He sat in the white car and then a few minutes later another car pulled up. A redneck looking dude got out and walked over to the white car. I wondered if they ever tried reciting love poems to someone.
I watched the redneck dude lean inside the window. It looked like they were exchanging something and then the redneck dude got back in his car and drove away. Then Big Pimpin’ drove away. I waved at Big Pimpin’ but he didn’t wave back. It was okay. These were my people. But then just a few minutes later Big Pimpin’ pulled back up again. There was a girl inside the car with him now and she had dyed looking blonde hair and a skeleton face. They waited together and then a blue beat up van pulled up. The meth looking girl got out of the car. She was inside the van for about a half hour and then she got out and went back inside Big Pimpin’s car. She was trying to put her shoe back on. I sat and thought up my own review of Walmart I could post online. I watched them drive away and I wrote inside my head.
I highly recommend the Walmart parking lot for living in your car after a divorce. The cops don’t seem to bother you if you park close to the entrance. I did notice quite a bit of drug related activity at all hours of the day. There is obviously some prostitution going on in the parking lot as well. Yay life. 4 stars.
That night I watched people leaving and the lights glowed from the parking lot. I went inside and used the bathroom. I looked at CDs for about a half hour and then I came back out and moved my car to the other side of the parking lot so the cops wouldn’t give me hell. I noticed a text from Sarah that said, “We need to talk about getting you some money so you can get an apartment.”
I wrote back, “I’m not taking anything. And how come you won’t let me recite love poems to you? Seriously.”
She never texted back. So I leaned my chair all of the way back and I put my jacket over my head and I slept. I dreamed about people going inside and buying all of the things that made up their lives. I dreamed about the whole world becoming just one big parking lot and we were all living there thinking about what we could buy. The next day I woke up and someone was knocking on the window. It was Sarah and she was wanting to give me some money for an apartment. I unlocked the car doors and she walked around to the passenger side. There were people going inside the store again and there were some kids playing.
Sarah sat down in the passenger seat and said, “We have to talk. You have to get out of here and let me give you some money.”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and Sarah said, “Where do you go to the bathroom?” I pointed to the empty Gatorade bottle on the floor. And then I told her I went inside to use the bathroom a lot too. I snuck my toothbrush in each morning and brushed my teeth in the sink. I said, “And then when I get bored I go in and play the video games they have set up in the electronics section. It really helps to pass the time.”
I told her that I loved going inside after midnight and watching all of the people of the world shop. They were the people who the rest of the world didn’t want and they were the ones who didn’t belong anymore. They were the people with amputated arms and they were the people in wheelchairs and they were the people with face tattoos and scars. I was a scar too. I was a giant human scar. And then I felt serious and I said, “Walmart is more than a store. Walmart is a state of mind.”
We laughed and I started to rant.
I told her people always bitch about Walmart putting mom and pops out of business and killing the small businesses of our country. But who did the Mom and Pops put out of business? Who did they fuck over? They fucked over the blacksmiths, but you don’t hear the blacksmiths bitching. I told her I was on the side of the blacksmiths.
Then I told her about my dreams. I told her the whole world was going to be like this one day and the world was just going to be one giant parking lot and people would live to shop at Walmart and buy stuff. I was quiet for a second. “It’s going to happen. The people will come. And they will bow before it all.” Sarah finally had enough and she wasn’t letting me talk anymore.
She was watching a woman emptying out her buggy and said, “You would think that woman has enough beef jerky.” She looked at me and said, “Scott, I want to give you something. I don’t want you living here anymore.”
I was going to change the subject again or try reciting poems for her, but then I told her my life wasn’t just money to get an apartment. I told her I hoped I meant more than a little bit of money to make someone feel better. I told her I’d stay here for the rest of my life if I had to and I didn’t believe in the stories the world tells us to make people feel better about themselves. Then I told her I didn’t have enough money to get an apartment anyway.
Sarah said, “Well I have a way to fix that for you. I have a check for you.” She reached into her purse and pulled it out. She told me it was from part of our savings at the credit union and I told her she wasn’t going to buy my ass off so easy. I wasn’t just someone you could give money to and they’d shut the fuck up. Sarah tried to hand me the check but I wouldn’t take it. She told me it was 4,000 dollars and then she threw it on my lap. The check said, 4,000 dollars. So I did what life teaches you to do when someone wants to give you money. I shut the fuck up and I took it. I took it because my life was worth 4,000 dollars.
Finally, Sarah got out of the car without saying goodbye. I didn’t say thank you and she didn’t say you’re welcome and Sarah went and sat down in her car and then she drove away.
As she was driving away I felt the need to say something to her. I wanted to say how much she meant to me, how much fun we’d had and how that’s what no one ever talks about or can explain—the fun. And the fights too. We had the best fights and where did it go? Instead I just looked at the check and thought, “Sarah has such nice handwriting. Another reason I love her.”
I went to the bank and I deposited the check. Instead of going somewhere else I came back and sat in the Walmart parking lot and I watched the people go inside.
I watched them fill up the buggies and forget about all of their pain. I knew that all of the people would be coming soon and so I decided to join them and become one of them for a moment. I got out of my car and walked towards Walmart. It glowed in front of me like a temple. I walked and walked and then I saw Big Pimpin’. He sat for a few moments and then another car pulled up beside him. I watched him park and then I waved at him. This time instead of ignoring me like he usually did, Big Pimpin’ raised his hand up and then he nodded at me and said hello and we were friends now. So I went inside and saw the aisles rise like castles before me. And there was beef jerky, and almonds and chicken wings, pizza bites and cheese, all kinds of cheese, steak, pork chops, crackers and cereal. There was Fruity Pebbles and potato skins and soda, Mountain Lightning soda. And there was Red Bull, diet Red Bull, beer, light beer, dark beer, pistachios, juice boxes for kids, air mattresses to sleep on instead of beds. And there were CDs and there were DVDs, saline solution for my contacts, potato chips and dip for potato chips. I had 4,000 to spend and there were things here to keep me alive. And so I walked among the aisles. I thought about Sarah and her telling me to be quiet when I recited my poems and I thought, “What kind of damn person doesn’t like poems?” I could see outside in the parking lot and the people were coming for a coronation of some sort. And so I walked among them because these were my people and this was my kingdom. They would all be bowing soon. This was the new country we had made from the skeleton of the old one. And I was their king of beef jerky. I was their emperor of soda.
I finally found an apartment though. My name was Scott McClanahan and I wasn’t a fucking alcoholic. My name was Scott McClanahan and I had an apartment. On the day I moved all of my shit out of Sarah’s house I kept telling myself,
“No matter what happens today—just remember that you’re going to celebrate. No matter what happens today just remember that you’re going to drink a bunch of beer tonight.” So I walked all the way to the U-Haul place to pick up the truck. The cars and trucks whipped by me on the road as I walked and I watched my step and wondered if I should fall in the path of the trucks. I walked on the back road and there wasn’t even a sidewalk. If you would have seen me that day you would have said that’s the loneliest man in the world and it’s hard to believe but he had a mother once. It’s hard to believe but he had a father once too.
I picked up the U-Haul and drove to the house where I always parked and got out. There was a little boy who lived next door and who always used to talk to me and his name was Eddie. He came over and said, “Hey Mr. Scott. My Mom said you’re getting a divorce.”
I wanted to tell him, “Hey Eddie, your Mom told me you were adopted,” but I didn’t because I think he already knew he was adopted and had only come to live here a year or two before. That’s the problem with adopted kids who know they’re adopted. You can’t hold some secret surprise over their heads. I told Eddie it was true about the divorce and I told him I wouldn’t be seeing much of him anymore and Eddie
said that was too bad.
I walked down the front yard and behind the house. I knew Sarah had left the basement door to our house unlocked and all the boxes were inside. I thought, “That’s when you can tell when somebody wants a divorce—when they pack up your shit before you even get there.” I opened the basement door and said to myself, “No matter what happens today you can drink beer at a restaurant and it’ll be okay. You can drink beer at a restaurant and you’ll still feel like a living human.”
I picked up the first box and moved it into the truck. Then I took another box and moved it in the truck. I was sweating now like I always sweated because I was the greatest sweater in the world. Eddie told me that I sure did have a lot of books and I told Eddie that was true and then I told him that was the best thing about reading. You can always be somebody else. You can see the whole world from a ghost. Time travel and all that shit.
I moved a box and I moved another box. I did this for hours. The sweat popped and rolled down my skin and stained the boxes all wet. On one of my trips outside, Eddie asked me if I was sad and I told him I was trying not to think about it. I told him about my plan to drink that evening at a restaurant and feel alive. Eddie followed me and told me he didn’t think I should do that. He told me he didn’t drink because he was only six and then he told me he read the Bible. I wondered if Eddie’s mother was happy that she didn’t have to see me peeing out the back door anymore. I wanted to tell him that she caught me one night, but peeing out the back door was a god given right for every human being, and this is what god intended.
Of course, I don’t know what made me do it but I decided to go upstairs and leave Eddie behind. The day before, Sarah had asked me to stay downstairs when I moved my stuff out. She had taken the kids to her mother’s and I promised her I would stay away the day before, but for some reason I felt myself being drawn upstairs. I told myself, “Whatever you see up there just know you’re going to be okay and in a few hours you’ll still be alive.” I shot up the stairs and opened the basement door like always. I walked around and saw it all and there were pictures of Iris dressed up like a biker with a bicep tattoo. There were pictures of me holding Sam. There was the Buddha light switch which stuck out below the Buddha belly like a penis. I flipped the Buddha penis on and my steps echoed in the upstairs and the rooms seemed so empty and alone. I thought, “Why do houses seem so small that way? Is it because we are leaving them? Or is it because we have left them long ago?”
The Sarah Book Page 5