Anywhere But Here

by Jenny Gardiner

  “Mr. Cunningham. That’s my father.”

  “Beg your pardon.” I reach up to smooth a stray piece of hair that’s fallen into my eyes. I reach across my guest’s rock solid thighs and grab my sunglasses from the glove compartment. I’m heading into the mid-day sun and it’s impairing my vision. “Oh, yeah, sure. Forgive me. Formality is a relic of my prim southern upbringing. Smoothie, then. So, have you been?”

  “Only seen it in pictures,” he says, sounding disappointed. “Is it more amazing in person?”

  I pause for a minute, remembering the splendor. “It is majestic. It’s the best word I came come up with to describe it. Simply majestic. One of those things in the world that makes you believe there is a God, because how else could such splendor exist?”

  “I’d love to see it some time.”

  “You have to. It’s something everyone has to see before they die.”

  Die. God I hope I’m not going to die at the hands of my handsome hitchhiker. I gulp.

  I pass by the exit for Staunton, Virginia and know I’ve gone much further than expected. I wonder if Richard is wondering yet where his suits are. I also wonder when Smoothie wants me to drop him off some place.

  “Tell me more about Niagara Falls,” Smoothie prompts me.

  I’m beginning to relax a little. I can tell this because my typing is becoming sporadic. No vim. No vigor. Not even a Smoothie. Instead, I type out the words SunTrust. SunTrust, SunTrust, SunTrust. As in bank. As in I am going to divert myself to SunTrust bank. Where I maintain my own secret savings account. Where I can obtain cash for an emergency. Without Richard ever even realizing it.

  I take the next exit off the highway, probably startling my guest. I return to the questioning. “SunTrust—I mean Niagara Falls. It’s amazing. You have to go to the Canadian side. The American side is tacky and dreadful and it’s like a bad carnival. But in Canada, it’s nature at its best. A lovely park, with a sprawling green lawn. Where you can lay down on the grass and think about your life and listen to the water’s thunder and not talk to a soul and, oh, the water. The sheer volume of it. You can’t imagine the amount of water, just pummeling down. So powerful. More powerful than God. It’s spectacular. And it curves. And it’s smooth. But rough—”

  “My kind of lady,” Smoothie interrupts with a rumble of a laugh.

  “Curvy and smooth but rough?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he sort of growls. “Exactly what I like. At least I thought so.”

  Flustered again, I begin to type in earnest. Curvy, smooth but rough, Curvy, smooth but rough, Curvy, smooth but rough, Curvy smooth but rough. Lions and tiger and bears, oh my! And then I resume my SunTrust Bank train of typing.

  “Uh, Mr. Smoothie—”

  “Smoothie?” he looks at me with that sort of “hello, are you dense?” look in his eyes and corrects me yet again. I think if he planned to kill me his patience would have run thin by now merely on my inability to use the man’s chosen name.

  “I stand corrected. Again.” I blush, because maybe I am really dense. “Do you mind if I swing into the bank?” I suppose that’s not such a great thing to ask a stranger you’ve just picked up along the side of the highway. After all, maybe this was his intention all along. Gain my confidence, and then lure me to the next available ATM machine, coax me into taking out cash, then bludgeon me to death and run off with my life’s savings. Well, I guess life’s savings aren’t quite possible, as they only allow a couple hundred bucks a day in ATM withdrawals. But that would be enough to buy a day’s worth of crystal meth I’m sure. I take a look at Smoothie, so tanned, and healthy and, well, built, and I know immediately that crystal meth isn’t in his repertoire.

  “I’ve got no place else to go.” He rolls the window down and angles his arm in the frame of it. The wind tousles his hair, and for a minute he looks so carefree I’m almost jealous. Until I catch a glimpse of that look in his eyes that tells me maybe he’s not void of his own ghosts. “So you were telling me about hitchhikers and Niagara Falls?”

  “Right. The connection. Sorry, I’m just a little distracted I guess.”

  I look over at him and the busybody in me wants so much to decipher that hint of regret in his eyes. I’m not particularly skilled at interpreting men’s emotions, so who knows? Maybe he’s just got a case of agita. A bit of gas could make you wince as much as anything else. At least I can be sure it’s nothing I’ve done to cause him a pained look like that. Hell, I don’t even know the man. I can’t have started causing him problems yet. I mean it took me years to really tick Richard off. At least I think it did. Maybe I always made him angry.

  I look over at Smoothie and see he’s still waiting for me to fill in the blanks, so I resume.

  “Anyhow, I saw a warning in a tourist brochure. It was very ominous: big skull and crossbones.” I hold my hands up wide for emphasis. “And it cautioned you never to look at the lip of the falls.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “They say it makes people want to jump in.”

  “Wow…” Smoothie looks over at me. His eyes are the turquoise of the falls, just near the lip. “Did it make you want to jump in?”

  I look at him like he’s certifiably crazy. “Of course not!”

  “Why not?” He says this in a way that makes me feel defensive. As if I should have jumped in or something.

  “Because I didn’t stare at it, that’s why. They told me not to.” Sheesh. Does he think I’m stupid or something?

  “Do you always do what people tell you to do?”

  Do not stare at the lip, do not stare at the lip, do not stare at the lip. “That’s a loaded question,” I respond, staring fleetingly into those mesmerizing aquamarine eyes, feeling a sense of gravitational pull, something that you shouldn’t ever really notice. Usually gravity just happens, doesn’t it?

  “Well, I just ask because I would think if a sign told me not to do something like that, that I’d just do it out of sheer curiosity, if not defiance.”

  I harrumph—a disagreeable throw-back to my mother, who was a masterful harrumpher.

  “Then it’s true?” he asks as I ease my car into the drive-through lane at the bank. I pull up to the window and fill out my withdrawal form. Eight thousand dollars. My nest egg. My rainy day fund. Stashed away ten dollars here, twenty dollars there. Just in case of emergency, I always told myself. I look up to the sky, the midday sun beating down, not a cloud to be found. It seems my rainy day has finally arrived. I write the amount on the withdrawal slip in small numbers as if the size of the number will lessen the magnitude of the action, insert the slip along with my driver’s license in the tube, place it in the holder, and watch it disappear into the mysterious chute.

  “You always do whatever Big Dick tells you to do?” I hear Smoothie pushing the question on me as I methodically enter my withdrawal amount in my savings passbook register. Which is sort of crazy, considering there’s now nothing left in it.

  I laugh without any amusement behind it. My fingers silently spell out Dick the dick, Dick the dick, Dick the dick as I ponder this question.

  I clear my throat. “Let’s just say that Richard has a way about him. It’s easier if I tow the party line.”

  I throw Smoothie a sharp look, letting him know I don’t want to discuss this further right now.

  “Mrs. Dupree, thank you very much,” I hear the bank teller announce over the loud speaker. With a whoosh my big, fat wad of cash is delivered through the vacuum tube like a baby through a birth canal. Quickly I grab the vessel containing my salvation, pull the thick envelope out and stuff it in my purse. Normally, I would have counted every last dollar in that envelope; that’s what Richard has trained me to do. You can never trust anyone with your money, Mary Kate, he always warned me. But I’m feeling defiant, plus I don’t want Smoothie to know I did exactly what I just did. Not
yet, anyway.

  Chapter 4

  My father was addicted to women. That is to women other than my mother. Now on some level I can’t say that I blame him. My mother was no charmer. She was old school: a classically southern woman who ran our household like a prison warden would a penitentiary, and quite miserly with her affections to boot.

  Our lives were run on her clock. My father and me, we were not allowed a hair out of place, a crumb on the table. Once my mother actually tore my blouse off my back when I was late for school because I had a stain on the front of it. The pearly white buttons rained down on the floor as I stood in the kitchen in only my bra and skirt, my blouse dangling from her powerful grip like a mouse in a cat’s paw. When you live under such an iron fist, you either learn to cooperate or you plot your escape.

  I don’t know if my father couldn’t find the room to breathe around her or if he just chose to seek his fresh air elsewhere.

  I always wished I’d had a brother or sister to give me a little comfort and keep me from being the only buffer between my folks, but my daddy used to say they didn’t have any more children because when they made me they broke the mold. There was a whole lot more breaking that went on around my house long after that mold must’ve cracked.

  But many a night the silent companionship of my sleep was interrupted by my father creeping into the house at three a.m., only to be intercepted by my angry mother who’d be waiting by the kitchen door with a wooden spoon and a bottle of sour mash.

  Let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a five-foot two-inch woman with an Southern accent as thick as swamp water and an outdated beehive hairdo stacked like a pile of flapjacks hollering and chasing after an oversexed middle-aged man with a guilt complex and a hint of L’Air du Temps trailing him. My mama would swing her wooden spoon at any part of his body with which she might make contact. On more than one occasion my mother drew blood, which to her must have felt a bit like striking oil in Oklahoma. Though her pay dirt was merely bitter retribution.

  My father gained emancipation on June 12, 1983. My high school graduation day. In the pictures I have from that day, I looked so pretty, my dark hair pulled back into a high ponytail. I had bangs like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. I loved Audrey Hepburn, to this day I try to emulate her practiced speech, her sophisticated air. Not like I succeed, but at least I try.

  My mother had allowed me to wear lipstick that day for the first time. Can you imagine? At the age of eighteen? I smiled happily at the photographer. And I was happy. I was inching my way toward adulthood and toward a freedom that I needed and wanted.

  When I got home from Marla Shifflett’s graduation party that night my father had already packed his bags, loaded up his brand new fire engine red Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Coupe and was backing out the gravel driveway. I was free, and now, apparently, so was he. Last I remember of the night was hearing the crunch of tire on stone and the release of pressurized carbonation as Mama hurled unopened beer cans and Idaho potatoes at that Delta 88 with such piss-poor aim that all she could hit were the nearby oak trees.

  I got a postcard three weeks later saying Daddy had taken up with his secretary and had moved into her apartment on the other end of town. He didn’t ask me to visit, or even mention he missed me.

  As I said, my mother was no treasure to be married to on a good day, and things took a precipitous turn after Daddy’s departure. Soon Mama developed the capacity to down quite a healthy amount of Jack Daniels each night. With my father gone, I guess my mother really needed a man around the house, and Jack was all she could find.

  Most nights I’d have to help my mother up the stairs to bed, the rank odor of fermentation permeating her pores to such a degree that I came to regard it as her perfume of sorts. No amount of Jean Nate bath splash could obscure those alcoholic vapors. But at least my mom still got to go to bed with a man each night. Even if this one had only infiltrated her blood stream, and not her psyche, as had my father.

  As luck would have it for Mama, I hadn’t set my sights too high professionally. No female in my family had ever entertained the notion of attending college, and in keeping with family tradition it hadn’t really ever crossed my mind either.

  So armed with my typing skills and a work ethic derived from a desire to stay away from my miserable mama as much as humanly possible, I went to work for Peabody Dental Supplies and Manufacturing. PDS&M operated out of a corrugated aluminum warehouse on the outskirts of town, right next to a rock quarry and thus subjected to frequent blasting that rattled the building from the roof to its concrete slab.

  Peabody Dental Supply was a fine enough place to work. I suppose typing up invoices and purchase orders and exchanging phone calls with dentists’ secretaries wasn’t so bad. I also got to sort through supplies such as bridges, crowns, amalgams, drill bits and instruments. It was fun trying to figure out all the gadgets and devices of torture that sprung from the bowels of Peabody Dental, sort of a grown-up Tiddlywinks. It wasn’t a bad job, I told myself. Really it wasn’t.

  I did find that there were certain days in which the clock moved a lot faster at work. And that was on the days the sales team gathered on-sight for meetings. I was probably the only employee anywhere in the entire country who actually looked forward to Monday mornings: first, because it saved me after a grueling weekend of my mama, and second, because that’s when the handsome and eligible salesmen assembled around the conference table beneath the grim fluorescent lighting at the warehouse. My only responsibility was to provide the donuts, make plenty of coffee and take copious notes. I don’t suppose it hurt that I wore my most form-fitting clothes on Mondays, either.

  #

  I learned from my parents. Or so I’d thought. I had no intention whatsoever of marrying a handsome man who would some day make a mockery of me by flaunting his sexual prowess with the other women in town. I wanted to find a sensible man who would make a good husband and be a good father to our children, God-willing we were blessed with them.

  In my mind, Richard was such a man. He held down a steady job. He was handsome enough but not overtly so: dark hair parted at the side and combed back smoothly most days. His eyes were dark, as dark as the deepest part of a lake. Down the road I would know to judge Richard’s moods by the shading in his eyes; the blacker they were, the more I stayed away. Deep water always is the most dangerous.

  The fact was Richard Dupree was regarded as a pretty decent catch by the rest of the ladies in the secretarial pool. I have to admit it was a source of pride that he took a shining to me above all those other women. I mean, I looked pretty good, but so did they. I felt especially lucky that he chose me over all those other girls.

  I guess it’s not a recipe for good things when one partner feels quite so fortunate to have been chosen by the other. It means we started out with an imbalance in the relationship, and like gangrene, this discrepancy eventually became something that festered dangerously due to lack of corrective remedy.

  Chapter 5

  I pull my car back onto the interstate and for lack of a notion about where to go, I just head northwest. I figure it’s as good a direction as any.

  I reach over to turn up the radio, only to realize that Rush is still blathering away. Amazing how far these AM radio stations will broadcast. I quickly switch to FM in time to hear Patsy Cline mournfully wailing out Who’s Sorry Now. I think of Thankless Richard, the one who programmed the damned country music station on the radio, still waiting on his business suits, checking his watch, wondering if he’s going to make his flight at the rate his sorry-ass slow-as-molasses-wife is going. I figure it’s time I make a quick phone call.

  I pull out my cell phone and put it on speaker. It’s a habit of mine; I always use the speakerphone when I drive. Something Richard makes me do (We can’t afford to have you putting dents in the car cause you’re not paying attention to the road, Mary Kate). I p
ut my finger to my lips so that Smoothie can see I need silence, and dial my number.

  Richard picks up immediately. “Where the hell’d you get off to, Mary Kate?” he growls into the car, his great booming voice breaking the spell that Smoothie had cast. The storm system has moved in. I begin to type widely scattered temper tantrums with a strong chance of hellraising over and over again.

  “Richard?” I holler as if I can’t hear him properly. “You’re breakin’ up, Richard. It’s Mary Kate. I’m sorry you’ll have to get your suits at the cleaners. I’m having a bit of tire trouble.”

  “Tire trouble?” he bellows. “Didn’t I tell you to get those tires rotated and checked last month?”

  Instinctually I nod my head obediently. “Yes, Richard, you did. And I did as you asked. I must’ve run over a nail or something. But everything’s okay. I’ve got some nice older fellow helping me out, and I’ll be fine.” I wink at Smoothie. “You just go on and get your suits on the way to the airport and I’ll see you when you get back next week.”

  “How the hell am I going to leave on a trip on an empty stomach, Mary Kate? You were supposed to fix me a meal when you got back.”

  I roll my eyes at Smoothie who seems amused at my husband’s loathsome demeanor. “I’m sorry Richard, I can’t seem to hear but every third word out of your mouth. You have a safe trip. We’ll talk when you get back!”

  “Mary Kate Dupree, do not hang up on me,” he warbles, but then as luck would have it, my cell drops him and Richard is gone from the atmosphere. You know how it can get sometimes when the wind whips up real hard and the temperature drops rapidly, the musty smell of ozone permeates the air, a brief but heavy rain shower falls, and then the air is crisp and cool? That’s how it feels now that Richard’s out of the picture. For the time being, anyhow.