Anywhere But Here

by Jenny Gardiner

  “You had your way,” Patsy croons on. “Now you must pay…”

  I take it as a good sign that she isn’t singing Stand By Your Man and I smile.

  I look over at my strange passenger, this handsome man-boy who seems for some bizarre reason as if I’ve known him way longer than ninety minutes, and wonder what exactly I’m doing. Yet all the while I know in my bones that whatever I decide at this point, it’s going to be the right move.

  “So, Randy Cunningham. Or should I say, Smoothie,” I say trying to fill dead air in the car. I give the underwire of my bra a good tug down; another nervous habit I’ve got. “Where to now?”

  Smoothie looks at me with mischief in his now-emerald eyes. “You got any place in mind?”

  “No, but I’m open to suggestions.”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I can feel a sort of rumbling, like the first signs of an earthquake, jarring up to the surface things I hadn’t felt in so long I don’t know if I ever felt them. It’s like some primordial thing, like how we all start out with gills in the embryonic phase; it’s something so familiar yet so foreign to me, It can’t be possible. Although maybe I’m like some long dormant volcano just now starting to rumble to life.

  Smoothie lowers his head at an angle and grins widely, baring those pearly whites and looking like a little boy about to tell his mama he just hit a baseball through the front window, hoping the charm offensive will keep him in good stead. “How does Niagara Falls sound?”

  I look at him in amazement. Is he serious? Niagara Falls? That’s several states away (I’d have to look on a map; I’m sure I have one because Richard made certain we have maps for all occasions in the glove compartment. I don’t suppose this was intended for me to impulsively drive off to Niagara Falls, however).

  “Niagara Falls? Are you for real?”

  The truth of the matter is I, Mary Kate Dupree, haven’t been out of Virginia but for one or two times. Ever. Once when Richard and I drove to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon. And once when I drove to some rural godforsaken town in the Pamlico River basin of North Carolina to meet my father’s new family.

  It must’ve been about five years into my marriage. When it was becoming obvious that Richard and I were never going to be blessed with a child of our own. My daddy had long since disappeared from my life; I heard rumors that he’d up and married that secretary of his. Lurline I think her name was.

  I’d gotten home from work and was just about to throw the pot roast into the oven—Richard had very specific intentions when it came to his dietary desires and he had designated Tuesday as pot roast day. If you want to know the rest of the week: Sunday launched it all with roast beef; Monday, stuffed chicken breasts; Wednesday, leftovers; Thursday, fish sticks with mashed potatoes; Friday, pork chops; and Saturday, well Saturday was leftovers night for the first three Saturdays of the month, and if we had enough money left over by the fourth Saturday after setting aside money for bills, we’d go to eat at the Ponderosa all-you-can-eat buffet. Once every four months when Richard had a little extra money in his expense account, we’d take in a fancy meal at the Old Mill Room, but this was really only for his enjoyment.

  I pulled into the driveway and stopped at the mailbox to retrieve whatever was waiting in there. I didn’t figure on much of anything but some advertisements, maybe a catalog or two and some bills.

  When I got into the house I set my purse down on the breakfast table and dropped the mail on the kitchen counter. It was then that I noticed the envelope: big, white, larger than the rest of them. All along the bottom edge were silhouettes of animals in pink: elephants, bunnies, bears, lions, ducklings. I remember thinking what a strange assortment of creatures, how it was sort of a predator’s parade.

  Curious, I pulled the envelope from the pile and grabbed my letter opener. This is another thing of Richard’s: the letter opener. However many times he hollered at me for leaving a raw edge on an envelope because I opened it with my fingers, I can’t begin to recount. But there came a time when I finally gave up opening them my way and started using his dumb letter opener.

  Richard even gave me my own; it has my initials engraved in it in gold: MKD. For all the years I’ve been with Richard I never got one piece of jewelry, and certainly nothing personalized in that nature. But I did get that letter opener. If I’d had much of a spine, I’d have probably plunged the damned thing into his heart years ago. But I hate violence and could never have done that, despite the temptation.

  I pulled out the enclosure and read the embossed card that was tied at the top with a decorative pink satin ribbon:

  Roses are Red,

  Violets are Blue,

  Sammy Lou Morris is being christened,

  And we wanted to invite you.

  Please join Lurline and Buddy as we celebrate the baptism of Samantha Louise on April first.

  I was speechless. My father had become a father? Again? Sweet Jesus, how is it that man, who failed so much the first time around, is getting a second chance, and I can’t even get the opportunity to mess it up just once? I thought at the time.

  There wasn’t even a phone number on the invitation, only an address. When Richard came home for dinner, I showed him the card.

  “What do you think of that?” I asked him, wanting him to be as insulted as I was.

  “So what?” he shrugged. “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. At least he’s still getting some.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, realizing just in time that whatever I could say would only generate hostility, so instead I exhaled and closed my lips.

  “You want to come to the thing with me?” I asked finally.

  “Now why would I want to go to something with your daddy and his new family?” Richard demanded, as if I’d asked him the stupidest question in the world. Though I was starting to think maybe I was the stupidest woman in the world to even bother asking him. Or to consider going myself. Instead I changed my tack.

  “Well, then, do you suppose you could figure out how I find this place?” Richard and his wealth of maps, I knew I could put them to use some day.

  Richard was all too happy to plot out my route, and send me off for three days of family fun and frolicking with my daddy and Lurline. And little Sammy Lou.

  Lord help us all.

  #

  “I do believe, Missus Mary Kate Doo-preeee, that you’re in need of a little rest and relaxation, and what better place to do that than the honeymoon capital of the world?” Smoothie grins his infectious grin at me and I can’t help but catch it like the communicable gesture it’s intended to be. “What say we take a leisurely drive headed north, and see what stops we may find along the way? Unless, of course, you’re in a hurry to get back home to Big ol’ Dick? Oh, and by the way, I’m still waiting to hear what picking up a hitchhiker has to do with Niagara Falls.”

  Smoothie certainly is smooth, I can tell. He knows exactly what button to press that will keep me intrigued enough to go along with the plan. Or lack thereof. Richard has a saying he likes to use that I suppose could apply here: slicker than cat shit. As in: That Smoothie is slicker than cat shit.

  Now, to be honest, I don’t think Smoothie is slicker than cat shit. I just think he’s smooth, that’s all. But my fingers can’t help but type the words as I tool down the highway: slicker than cat shit, slicker than cat shit, slicker than cat shit. And I know somewhere deep down, that if he is slicker than cat shit, well then I could sure think of things it would be worse to be slicker than.

  Chapter 6

  We’ve been driving for about three hours and still neither one of us has gotten into any real deep explanation as to how we both got here, together, bound for the US/Canadian border. I’d like to think that Smoothie will get around to telling me this when he’s good and ready. But I worry that I’m running at the mouth and he’s
just taking it all in and never gonna spill his own guts. Here I’ve been regaling him with my Sammy Lou story, and all about Richard and his anal-retentive meal plan, and so far no reciprocal stories.

  “So what happened when you went down to North Carolina?” he asks me with rapt attention. I don’t think I have ever experienced anything close to rapt attention where I am concerned. Hell, I hardly get noticed, is the truth of it. What with my curtain of mousy brown hair with the overlay of gray that sort of helps me to blend in even more with the background than ever before. Men tend to glance away from me like you would a woman covered in a burka. Out of sight out of mind I guess. Besides, I don’t really have any remarkable features, well, except maybe what Richard likes to call my rack.

  I suppose over the years that’s been about my biggest draw. And since I never did give birth to any kids, at least I can brag that mine still stand on their own, and I’m not sporting nipples the size of dessert plates or anything. I know, I’ve seen them like that, at the locker room at the Y. Those women whose distorted breasts look like alien creatures suspended southward from their bodies in a grotesque ratification of the vagaries of child-bearing. Although I admit I’d give up my rack in a heartbeat to have had a child.

  Truth is I have been virtually unable to stop talking since I picked up my new friend and I’m sort of enjoying the attention he’s giving me.

  “It was late when I finally got down to his place,” I say. “It was real dark down there. The peepers by the nearby creek were making that sound they make that makes you think that extraterrestrials have landed. Normally I like to listen to their odd chirp, because it reminds me that spring has finally returned, and spring always gives me hope. But this time those peepers just sort of gave me the creeps. I felt like I was indeed entering alien territory only I was the invading alien force, penetrating into my father’s happy family.

  “I hadn’t called to say I’d be coming. I don’t know why; I guess I figured that gave me an excuse to back out and it didn’t give them a chance to change their minds.

  “I rang the doorbell and as I listened to the peepers I could hear someone inside rushing to the door. When Lurline answered, I was sort of surprised to see her. Of course I knew my daddy had taken up with her before he left mama and me. But up until that moment, I had only known Lurline as my daddy’s buxom and naturally red-headed secretary and hadn’t quite gotten around to picturing her as the woman in his life.

  “But there she was, in sexy kitten heels with her heap of vermilion hair she was fluffing up with those dagger-like fingernails long enough to be used for gardening tools. She was holding that red-haired baby in her arms, and she looked at me, and looked over at my father, who I could see was lounging in his recliner watching some sports thing on the television.”

  I check over on Smoothie, who still seems interested in hearing my story. It makes me self-conscious to know this. I tug on my bra, straightening out the straps and rearranging myself as I often do. Stop tugging on your bra, stop tugging on your bra, stop tugging on your bra my fingers admonish.

  “‘Why, Mary Kate,’ Lurline said to me, squinting at me like she didn’t trust my motives for showing up on her doorstep. ‘What a surprise and a half to see you here!’

  “I supposed the element of surprise was all I had left with my father; maybe that’s why I sprung myself on them like a trap snapping on mouse’s tail.

  “’I could come back,’ I said right away, the first thing that came to my mind.

  “’Buddy,’ Lurline called to her husband—my father—in an agitated voice. ‘You just won’t believe who’s here.’

  My father yanked up his socks one at a time and hoisted himself out of the chair with obvious reluctance, his gaze glued to the television the whole time. When he got to the door and saw me up close, I think he was rendered speechless.

  “’Why, if it ain’t my little Mary Kate,’ he drawled. I glanced at him to see that his face was shadowed with a grizzle of gray beard growth, and his belly had overtaken his belt with a vengeance. ‘Where you been hiding, girl?’ He asked me this as if I was the one who had disappeared from everyone so long ago.

  “’Uh, here and there,’ I stammered, sounding like such a fool but not knowing what to say. As if I was the one hiding from him. ‘I, uh, got your invitation, and, uh, I thought I’d come meet your new family.’”

  My fingers were typing out dirty rotten bastard, dirty rotten bastard, dirty rotten bastard, betraying my real feelings only to me.

  “’Well, come on in, girl, have a seat, and meet your new baby sister,’ he urged, practically beaming at me. Spittle settled on his lower lip like the scummy backwash that remains on shore following weak waves. I think upon hearing that creature referred to as my sister, I felt a bit sick to my stomach.

  “I went into the house and I was formally introduced to Sammy Lou Who or whatever her name was. I knew I couldn’t be angry with her; she was an innocent victim of my father’s behavior, and Lurline’s for that matter. After all, Lurline certainly had some culpability in this matter; she’d set her sights on Norma Jane Morris’ husband when he was clearly already spoken for. For a minute, I felt a little sorry for my mama, until I remembered that she had it coming to her. My mother spent an inordinate amount of time trying to keep her house in order, but not enough time trying to keep her marriage in order too.

  “Over the next two hours, I watched my father google-eye himself to death over that little baby while I ate stale Triscuits with that squirt cheese on them that Lurline fixed for me with a slice of green olive on top. Lurline gushed on him and gushed on her and I felt as if I was in the middle of a Texas oil field, there was so much gushing going on. It became real clear that the apple of my daddy’s eye was another and that I had been invited simply to alleviate some sense of guilt, or to give me the great privilege of seeing how he got it right this time.

  “Lurline offered to fix up the guest bed for me, but I politely declined, telling her I had already gotten a hotel room for the night. We said our goodbyes and I said I’d be back the next day for the christening, but instead, got in my car and drove on home. I couldn’t think what else to do and I knew I didn’t have it in me to stick around and see how happy my father and his new family actually were, by contrast to how it had been with us. And to add insult to injury, here he was, demonstrating to the world that he still had it in him to make more babies, but my infertile self was just that much more barren armed with this knowledge.

  “When I got home it was approaching dawn. The Dickster knew when I sunk into the bed that I was there, but he didn’t ask me one question about things. Instead, when his alarm went off at six, he got up, made his usual noise, not trying to be quiet on my account, and left to go golfing as if nothing had happened. And I guess nothing had happened. To him.”

  “And did your father come calling after you?”

  Smoothie must be an optimist to even wonder this.

  I scrub my fingers through my hair, which is feeling pretty grimy by now. I realize I hadn’t washed it before I ran out to pick up Richard’s suits. Damn, what a way to make a first impression. I heave a sigh and glance at Smoothie.

  “What do you think?” I ask.

  “He got in the car the minute he realized that you weren’t going to be at the christening. Left Lurline and Susie Loo or whatever her name is and came after you and apologized for being such a shit and—”

  I laughed and hit him playfully. “Yeah, right. That’s the sequel. Suffice it to say he and I haven’t spoken since.”

  Smoothie grabbed my right hand and squeezed it like a dear friend might at a funeral. A squeeze of moral support. “Damn, Mary Kate. I’m sorry. He’s an asshole.”

  I fluttered my hand away to dismiss that notion. “My life has been filled with enough assholes for me to become a proctologist. I’m used to it.”

  “That d
oesn’t make it right.”

  “Right, wrong, whatever. It’s all I know, I guess. Oh, look, there’s a rest area up ahead. You wanna take a turn driving?” Subject successfully changed, we pull into the parking lot, take a few minutes to stretch and do the requisite pit stop, I buy two bags of Peanut M&M’s and lose fifty cents in the vending machine trying for a third, and then we head back to the road.

  Chapter 7

  It’s getting on dinnertime by the time we cross into West Virginia. We drive for another hour or so as the sun descends behind the cloak of shadowed mountains. I can’t believe I’ve lived in the state right next door my entire life but I’ve never seen this place before. My ears pop as we climb into the now-inky mountains. We enter into some town called Haneysville, so small it’s probably not even on a map. Wonder if old man Haney still presides over this place. From the looks of things, he must’ve run low on cash, because the town looks like it’s been forgotten since the Great Depression. Windows boarded up, unlit neon signs missing letters, cracked sidewalks and general disrepair on Main Street. This place brings to mind an old saying my father used to use: the town’s so small you can fart on the east end of town and they hear it on the west side. And it’d probably be the most exciting thing to happen here in a generation.

  We see a sign for Lubby’s Family Restaurant. What better place to eat than at a family restaurant, without any family.

  Smoothie guides the car into the last available parking space; it appears as if the entire town has come out for dinner if the capacity parking is any indication.

  I fluff my hair and apply my lipstick in the visor mirror with a tube I keep in my purse for fancy occasions and Smoothie gets out of the car and comes around to my side to open the door before I even reach for the handle.