Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  Not without giving him the one thing I was incapable of handing over.

  I thought of the conversation I’d had with my mother, about her and my father, and all the things she wished she’d talked to him about. There were words I wished I could say to Nick, too, but I was afraid—afraid that if I told him how I really felt, I’d lose him. Or worse, if I never said them, and we ended up in the same unhappy cage I’d seen my parents inhabit.

  I didn’t want that for either Nick or me. But I didn’t want to lose him, either. Instead, I said simply, “I miss you, Nick.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” was all he said back.

  My mother headed across the parking lot, waving a stack of postcards from the gift shop, all bearing the faces of fifties icons. “I have to go. My mother’s coming and you know her, she’ll want to hit the road immediately and she’ll freak if I’m on the phone while I drive. I’ll call you when we get through Indiana.”

  “I won’t be here.” A pause, a heartbeat. “I’m going out tonight.”

  “Again? You never go out two nights in a row.” Or at least, he didn’t without me.

  “Yeah, well, things are changing around here.” Then he hung up the phone and left me hanging in cell hell.

  The implied message—either I change, or he was going to do it without me. Or even worse, find someone willing to change with him. And here I was, a thousand miles away from being able to do anything about it.

  I stared at my phone, mad at him, mad at the entire situation.

  Reginald perked up when Ma got in the car, moving around on the seat, settling down only when she tickled him behind his ears and cooed at him. Once we were back on the road, she went on for ten minutes straight about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the only one listening was her pig.

  I drove, nodded my head at appropriate times and places, but all the while, my gut and my mind churned over Nick’s words, looking for an out, a way to make everyone happy.

  And came up empty.

  I was literally standing in the middle of a Robert Frost poem. Two roads in the woods, and either I took the one with Nick, or went on alone. Every time before, Alone Avenue had been the more attractive route. This time, though, I wavered, thinking of Nick on the beach in Mexico, scooping me up and striding into the water so that I wouldn’t have to step on the conch shells lining the island, a natural barrier to the pristine ocean beauty. He’d cut his foot, bled like a Red Cross donor, which set off some lady on the beach. She’d run screaming to the lifeguard, sure there were sharks in the water.

  The lifeguard, a kid fresh out of swim school, had panicked, and waved everyone out of the water. Nick and I tried to tell him there weren’t any sharks, but our Spanish was bad and his English was worse. Finally, we’d given up, and collapsed on the sand in a heap of laughter. Nick had showered me with kisses and a dusting of pure white sand, then, without a word, carried me back to the room, stripped me down, showered off every tiny grain, then made love to me until I forgot what country we were in.

  That was Nick’s specialty. Taking care. But every time, when we were done, I’d wake up in his arms, and panic would grip me as surely as Nick had an hour earlier. I’d bolt from the room, wander the beach alone, and make plans to fly out on the next plane.

  Before I relied on that care. Started to count on him being there tomorrow. And the day after that. Did exactly what he wanted me to do—make plans.

  Because I knew how easily people you depended on could take it all away, could wash that foundation out from under you, like the tide sucking the sand back into the ocean, greedily eating the very thing you’d been counting on building your life upon.

  “Hilary, you should have seen the Little Richard—” She stopped talking midsentence, and I turned to look at her. My mother shaded her eyes against the sun, even though she had her visor down. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I followed her gaze and squinted. No way. “On a highway? In broad daylight? On a Wednesday?”

  “We should stop.”

  “Or get someone else to. There are psychos on the highway. Don’t you ever watch horror movies?” I glanced in the rearview mirror. Not another car anywhere. Yet a second reason to hate the state of Ohio.

  “Hilary, we have to stop. We’re the only ones around for miles.”

  She was right, and truth be told, this was about as far from psycho as you could get. I traveled across the two empty lanes of highway and braked behind a Dodge minivan with its hatch up—

  And holding a fully geared up, ready-to-go bride sitting on the back, her dress hiked to her knees, baby’s breath sticking out of her blonde hair like trees gone wild, and her veil clutched in one wadded up ball.

  “Whatever happened to her, it’s not a happy ending,” I said.

  “You think?”

  We shared a laugh, the same one we’d shared over coffee. And for just a second, I felt that bridge between myself and my mother again.

  I got out of the Mustang, my mother doing the same, and together we approached the weepy bride. “Do you need some help?”

  She looked up, mascara running down her face in squiggly black rivers. Her blue eyes were red rimmed, looking like an ocean at sunset. “What I need is a lawyer. A divorce lawyer.”

  “But didn’t you just—” I gestured toward the dress. The veil. The obvious signs of a wedding.

  “I can’t be married to him. I just can’t.” She dabbed at her face with the veil, but being made out of tulle, it didn’t do much more than leave a tiny basket-weave imprint of mascara on her face. “He said, and did, such awful things.”

  Ma settled on the carpeted edge of the van beside the bride. She laid her hand on the girl’s. “What could he have done that was so terrible?”

  “I can’t even talk about it. If I do, I’ll…I’ll…” She inhaled, a jerk of a sob, “cry again.”

  And she did exactly that, blotching and crying, her whole body shaking with the effort, the shoulder ruffles on her dress doing a backup pity concert.

  I looked at my mother, giving her the “let’s go and get away from the crazy lady” glare, but Ma ignored me. She just went on patting the girl’s hand and there-thereing her.

  It took a few minutes, and nearly the entire mini package of Kleenex from my mother’s purse, but the bride-not-to-be finally stopped crying. “Why don’t you start with your name?” Ma said. “It’s always easier when everyone’s introduced, don’t you think?” She pivoted on the edge of the van and thrust out her hand. “I’m Rosemary Delaney, from Dorchester, Massachusetts. And this is my daughter, Hilary.” Ma gestured toward me, apparently not realizing that now this insane woman on the side of the road knew our names.

  She could track us down, sell us Mary Kay or something. I did not need that. “Ma, we should go. We have a lot—”

  “I’m Sally Wilson, well, Carmichael now, I guess.” One corner of her mouth turned up in a watered down smile. “From Sandusky.”

  “Well, Sally Wilson Carmichael from Sandusky, why don’t you come have some lunch with us and tell us all about what went wrong?”

  And just like that, we ended up at a Cracker Barrel with a bride, listening to her sob story over a couple of plates of mashed potatoes and meatloaf.

  Sally Wilson Carmichael had married Michael Carmichael that morning in a quickie courthouse ceremony in one of those small Ohio towns with a name that ended in Ville and didn’t stay on my mental map. She’d known him since seventh grade when his family had moved to town and his father started working at the steel factory. They’d become sweethearts in freshman year, gone to both the junior and senior proms together, and except for one two-week period the summer after graduation when he’d gone to visit his uncle in Oregon, been inseparable.

  He’d proposed the day of her twentieth birthday, and though they had planned on waiting for a year to have a “proper” bells-and-whistles wedding, Sally and Michael had rushed off the minute she had a dress, he had a ring and they could get a blood test.

/>   “We were in love,” she said and blushed—actually blushed.

  For a split second, I envied Sally that certainty about how she felt. She had that Hollywood love, the kind they wrote about in romance novels. When I’d been five and playing with Barbie dolls, I’d imagined that kind of love for myself, but then I’d grown up and gotten real.

  Still, a part of me still held on to that fairy-tale notion, dusting it off every once in a while, before my better senses returned to remind me marriage wasn’t some happy Disney-palooza where everyone sang and danced through their days, but rather a box that sucked your spirit dry.

  I’d tried to explain this to Nick, but he’d just hugged me and told me I worried too much.

  “I think true love is wonderful.” Ma gave Sally a smile, then ordered a round of fudge cobbler for all of us.

  The waitress deposited three dishes of brownies topped with vanilla ice cream before us. If she found it strange to be serving a woman in a wedding gown flanked by another in a dark and dour business suit and one in scruffy jeans and flip-flops, she didn’t show it. The other diners, however, did stare and whisper, and one little girl kept asking her parents if she could go talk to the fairy princess at the next table.

  I pushed the dish aside, my appetite for it gone a long time ago.

  “Don’t you want dessert, Hilary?” Ma asked.

  “I’ve had enough sugar already.”

  “There’s no sugar in meatloaf, dear.”

  I sent a glance in Sally’s direction. Thus far, all I’d heard was a nicely rehashed romance story. I half expected the directors of General Hospital to yell “Cut”, run in and redo Sally’s makeup for the reunion scene, just before Michael rushed in with a secret baby or a case of amnesia. “We need to get back on the road, Ma.”

  “No. We need to help Sally get her life on track, fix things with Michael.”

  “I’m sure she’ll work it out with him. Whatever there is to work out.” Thus far, I hadn’t heard a single complaint about the groom.

  Sally shook her head at the same time she shoveled in a forkful of brownie, which resulted in a brown smear on her pink lips. “I can’t go back to him.”

  “Why?” I threw up my hands. “All I’ve heard is thirty minutes of perfection. He’s the football captain. Love of your life, yada, yada, yada. What could he have done that was so awful that you had to run away from your own wedding in a minivan?”

  Sally pointed the fork at me, its tines accusatory and almost lethal. “That was exactly it. The minivan.”

  I waited for her to explain, but she sat there, wide-eyed, expectant. Like I should get it instantly. “You left your new husband over a Dodge Caravan?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t have a husband.”

  “Hilary is a spinster,” my mother said, spitting out the word like a watermelon seed.

  “Ma.”

  “What else do you call an unmarried woman at your age? You passed young lady a long time ago. And I can’t exactly call Nick a boyfriend. He’s forty, for God’s sake.”

  “Can we not have this conversation now? Or ever?”

  “At least Sally got married,” my mother said, then dug into her cobbler. She went on eating her dessert, one tiny bite at a time, smiling at Sally, who had clearly done her life all right, even if she had done it a little too early and a little too impetuously.

  Then she struck up a conversation with Sally about keeping house, sharing tips as if she were Martha Stewart, the two of them chatting happily about everything from cooking a pot roast to ironing curtains. Before the ice cream was gone, they had bonded like conjoined twins.

  That left me, the unmarried spinster failure daughter, sitting on the outside, and for the first time, wishing I was part of that inner circle.

  “Why is the minivan such an issue?” I asked. “I mean, it’s just a van.”

  “Just a van? Don’t you get it?” Sally cried, so loud, even the little girl next to us turned around in alarm, her mouth in a wide little O. Her mother drew her close and pointed at her fries, trying to redirect the toddler’s attention. Probably a wise move. “A minivan screams stay-at-home mom, take care of the kids. Have no life of your own. I’m not even old enough to drink yet.”

  Probably shouldn’t have gotten married, I thought, but kept that to myself. I wondered about a country that set age limits on driving, voting and drinking, yet allowed marriage at eighteen. Wasn’t a gold ring a bigger deal than popping the top on a can of Bud?

  “He gave me the minivan this morning, after we got married. Had it waiting outside the courthouse with a big red bow on it. He thought I’d like it.” Sally started sniffling again. I looked around the restaurant. We were already a traveling circus. I didn’t want to make it worse by adding in a dramatic performance. I shoved a napkin at her, but she ignored it. “I wanted a sports car. An SUV. A motorcycle. Anything but a-a-a Mommy bus!”

  Again, the little girl looked at us, but her mother wagged a French fry in her direction.

  “Well, dear, maybe Michael is just pragmatic,” Ma said. “Thinking of your future.”

  Sally pouted. “Maybe. He is smart that way. But still…a minivan?”

  “He could have bought you a bus,” I pointed out. “Look at the Partridge family.”

  My mother shot me a not-helping look, but Sally laughed. “Okay, yeah, that would have been way worse.”

  “Excuse me, girls, but I have to go to the ladies’ room.” Ma got up, slowly, then made her way to the restroom. I watched her go, her steps measured, and worried anew over her.

  “Hilary,” Sally said, drawing me back to the table. She covered her hand with mine, clearly considering us best buds now. Sally was clearly one of those voted “Most Likely” kind of people. “How do you know if a man is the right one?”

  I laughed. “I am totally the wrong woman to ask that question.”

  She cocked her head, studying me. She’d gone to the restroom when we’d arrived, splashed some water on her face, cleaned up the worst of the mascara damage, and plucked the baby’s breath from her hair. Except for the white gown, she looked almost normal. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

  “Well…I…” Had I?

  I’d never thought about that subject, not really. I’d been in infatuation before, a dozen times. That particular emotion had caused me to make numerous stupid choices. But in love?

  Those words put me into Sally’s world, the very planet I avoided orbiting. With Nick, I’d been circling that solar system, but not quite bumped into it, because actually falling in love would mean trusting him with my whole heart—

  And then going to the next step. The leaving-my-clothes-in-his-apartment, moving-in-with-him step. I’d done that once with Nick, and it had been a major mistake. Before Nick, I’d almost gotten married once before, and thankfully come to my senses just in time.

  But in love…also known as open-heart-surgery vulnerable? No way. Not me. I’d rather run the Boston Marathon naked.

  “No, not really,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m of the marriage is a prison club.” I gave her a little smile, then drummed my fingers on the table, wishing my mother would hurry back. For the first time ever, I missed Reginald and wanted to get back in the car and on the road.

  “I think love can be really freeing,” Sally said on a dreamy, read-too-many-fairy-tales sigh.

  “Five minutes ago you were ready to file for divorce over a minivan.”

  Sally plopped her chin into her hands. “I know. But maybe, it’s just because I was so nervous. Getting married is scary as h-e-double hockey sticks,” she said, gesturing toward the miniature ears still watching our entire conversation.

  “You can say that again.”

  “But when I think about Michael, I think about how much he loves me and how excited I am about waking up as Mrs. Michael Carmichael tomorrow. And the next tomorrow. And the one after that.”

  I looked at Sally, at the in
credibly happy smile on her face, and no longer wanted to puke.

  Suddenly, I envied her in a way I had never envied anyone before. Sally was in some elite club I couldn’t gain access to. She glowed, with some knowledge I didn’t have.

  If I married Nick, would I look like that? Would we have that happy ending?

  Or would we end up like my parents? Essentially two strangers, one locked away in a room, hiding a sorrow too deep to share?

  “Hey, Hilary, is your mother okay?” Sally asked.

  I glanced across the restaurant and watched my mother make her way through the crowded room, her movements seeming slower than before.

  Images of my mother, struggling to get in and out of my low-seated Mustang came to mind and guilt pricked at my conscience. Every stop we made seemed harder on her, more labor-intensive. We’d gone from stopping every four hours, to every three, to every two.

  The Mustang sat in the parking lot, cherry-red, gleaming in the sunshine. My baby. I’d saved for so long to buy it, working night after night, coming home smelling like beer and stale nuts, stuffing my stash of hard-earned ones into an old pretzel jar, with a picture of the car taped to the front. I’d put up with rude drunks, leering old men, complaining women who thought their burgers were undercooked. I’d worked every Friday and Saturday night for a year straight, had gone without cable and didn’t even take a vacation, just to get that car.

  I’d dreamed of a Mustang ever since I’d learned to make the Vroom-Vroom sound. It was my pride and joy, the one treasure I owned.

  I looked at Sally, at the car, then at my mother.

  An idea came to mind, but I pushed it away. There was no way I was giving my car to an emotionally unstable girl in a wedding dress who wasn’t even legally old enough to have champagne. And especially not in exchange for a Mommy bus.

  “I need to make a phone call,” Sally said, and got up, her dress almost a lethal weapon every time she moved, white ruffles pinging against chairs and coats, legs and shoes.