Wrongful Reconciliation

by Peter Svenson

  “So your answer is no.”

  “My answer is, ‘This is an irrelevant question.’”

  Budge can see that she’ll brook no further discussion. Lost in private thought, they sit on the same boulder with their backs to each other. Ten minutes thus pass before they decide to start down.

  Contrary to conventional mountaineering wisdom, the downhill hike goes much easier—it takes them only three hours. With the drop in altitude, Budge feels his strength returning. He has no trouble keeping up with her pace, although she still stays well ahead on the trail. She will not let him precede her, no matter what.

  But this assertiveness of hers no longer bothers him, because it’s the same in all other areas of their relationship now, and he’s getting used to it. She wants to be first; she puts herself a step ahead. Whatever equality they shared in the old days, it didn’t work for her. Most likely, she felt herself trod upon by him, not a hundred times, but ten thousand times. She’s been reborn an individual second to none, and he has only himself to blame.

  All told, the hike up and down the mountain trail has taken almost eight hours. They’re back in the car with little daylight left, on whose heels comes an achingly serene dusk. Despite the hard feelings, he can’t suppress a certain exhilaration and sense of accomplishment—and he knows she must be experiencing the same. His legs may be rubbery but his spirit soars. He feels good about himself. He feels—dare he use the word?—superior.

  Sitting and driving now is pure relaxation. Twilit passage through Saratoga to Rawlins. Numerous motels with no vacancy—we’re arriving late without a reservation. At far end of Rawlins’s main drag, we locate a family-run place with its vacancy sign still lit. Take last room. Doorknob falls off, lamp is nonfunctional, but manager, a Mr. Patel, personally fixes both.

  Most of the restaurants are on the verge of closing for the night, but one steak place remains open. Though it has already divested itself of daily specials, it can offer a pair of frozen ribeyes with French-fries and canned peas. Budge eats everything that’s put before him, including the greasy biscuits that he normally wouldn’t allow in his digestive tract.

  I’ve never been so hungry! I could eat three of these crappy meals, and three crappy desserts too. Have you any idea how many calories I burned today? What I’m replacing here is only a drop in the bucket. I’M STILL HUNGRY!

  Later, in the motel room, it’s the usual routine—his side and her side, his towels and her towels, his articles and her articles on separate sides of the sink. They’ve got it down pat; they could cross any number of continents this way, he thinks. She showers first, emerges in her bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head, and then it’s his turn in the shampoo-scented steam chamber. The shower soothes his aching joints; he stands under its spray for a good fifteen minutes, figuring to give her time to complete her beauty routines and get into bed. Yet when he comes out of the bathroom, waist-wrapped in his own towel, she’s still puttering at the vanity.

  He heads straight for the covers, for long overdue prostration. He can’t even begin to think about breaking out his laptop to compose an e-mail. Shortly afterwards, his wife clicks off the light, but in the darkness, he’s aware of her coming over to stand beside his bed. She taps him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Thanks for hiking the mountain with me today,” she says.

  “Glad to oblige,” he mumbles. He has almost nodded off.

  “Would you like me to get in bed with you?”

  There are a number of reasons why this proposal is impossible. First, I’m bushed, and I don’t think I can sustain an erection. Second, if you’re intending to reward me, you’re spinning your wheels because my mind still rankles over the way you’ve been treating me. Third, don’t feel you have to do me any favors at this point, because I’m not about to do you any. Fourth, our previous sexual encounter was completely one-sided, and I can’t believe this one would be any different. Fifth, you don’t really mean what you’re saying; all you want is ego reinforcement, a nightcap, as it were, of my slavish devotion. Sixth, you’re setting me up for another put-down, but this time, babycakes, I won’t be your victim.

  “Save it for someone you care about,” Budge says, turning away.

  Chapter Twelve

  I-80 never looked better—empty, straight, wide-shouldered, with flanking views of antelope grazing. Creston Junction, Wamsutter, Table Rock, Bitter Creek—we’re gliding through cinematic western landscape, and I’m driving faster than the law allows. I decided last night that we shouldn’t drag out this trip any longer than necessary. Get to California, get it over with. Conveyed same to co-pilot this morning over breakfast, and what did she do? She rolled her eyes, told me not to be so uptight.

  In the passenger seat, his soon-to-be ex-wife is sipping coffee and studying the map.

  Maybe I am uptight. Maybe it’s not just the tossing and turning I did all night long, but my refusal to partake of sexual opportunity when it was handed to me on a silver platter (sorry Ed., that’s the best I can do on so little sleep). I was drifting off to snoozeland so peacefully, and whang! she stuck it right under my nose, like smelling salts, taunting me to action. Naturally, I couldn’t believe my ears (oops, mixed metaphors again), so the first thing that popped into my head was to turn her down.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, withdrawing from my bedside as quietly as she had come.

  I lay there wide awake, suffused with doubts and second thoughts. I could not for the life of me get to sleep. She always had that power over me: my restfulness was hers to grant or withhold. Tonight, my over-exercised body couldn’t get comfortable. Periodically I yawned and sighed, hoping that she might take pity on me and renew her offer, but there wasn’t a peep out of her—except for an occasional snore—until this morning, and then she acted like she had forgotten the whole incident. That’s when I pressed my case for driving as far and fast as we could today and tomorrow, and get to California sooner rather than later.

  “Look, here’s something that would be neat to do this morning,” she begins cheerfully.

  At the wheel, Budge cringes, fearing that she’ll propose another lengthy detour.

  “Let’s get off this boring Interstate,” she says. “Coming up on the right is a scenic loop we can make on our own, eighty miles or so that’ll take us north, then south paralleling the Green River.”

  “Eighty miles?”

  “Yes, two hours maybe. It’ll let us see more of Wyoming.”

  She pushes the map under his nose. Glancing at it, he fails to understand her logic.

  We’re rolling along so nicely, aiming straight for California. What makes her want to bump along a series of secondary roads heading off into the middle of nowhere? It’s subterfuge pure and simple. Whatever I want, she wants the opposite, and above all, she wants her own way.

  “We’re fresh and it’s still early,” he points out. “I thought the plan was to drive as far as we could, and not pull in late like we did last night.”

  “That was your plan, Budgie, not mine. I’d rather see the countryside up close. Besides, what’s wrong with pulling in late? We’ll be crossing another time zone, so we’ll gain an extra hour of daylight.”

  “But it’s so dicey finding a vacancy when it’s late.”

  “We’ll manage—you know we always find a place,” she counters.

  “Yeah, when we’re stressed-out and hungry.”

  “You sound like an old geezer with an early bedtime. Look at this as an opportunity to see a little more of Wyoming. We’re here, we might never make it back.”

  “Aw jeez,” he snorts in disgust, “What kind of argument is that?”

  “Well, what kind of an argument is yours?” she says, mocking him. “‘California or bust! Full speed ahead!’”

  The more we bicker, the more I see it as an elemental male/female divergence of opinion. I’m for the shortest distance, she’s for the roundabout route. I’m for simplicity, she’s for complexity. Meanwhile, we’re mak
ing splendid time and the scenery is superlative (I don’t use that adjective lightly). Why can’t we just keep going straight?

  Reliance—the junction she wants us to take—is coming up. Will I be magnanimous and let her have her way, or will I zip past? Already, I can detect a slippage in her mood; she’s looking away from me and her features have set into a frown. I used to hate it when our differences went down to the wire like this—when I was supposed to prove I was a good guy by caving in.

  But cave in he does, and with a sigh of dissaproval, veers the car onto highway 191 north. For the first five miles past Pilot Butte it is indeed scenic—although no more so than I-80 has been all along—but then it turns into a pot-holed two-laner bisecting dun rangeland. The signage, even the fencing disappears, and what’s more, the traffic builds up. RVs and trailers are lumbering toward campgrounds in the Tetons far ahead to the north.

  This detour is asinine—precious time wasted, quarter of a tank of gas consumed, and above all, needless attenuation of cockpit goodwill. In unfenced stock range areas, many carcasses—mostly antelope—attest to the danger of collision. I pull out to pass no fewer than thirty times. After two nerve-wracking hours of this, we rejoin I-80 west, but mood in car has turned acid.

  Budge is so infuriated that he can’t hold it in. He lashes out at his co-pilot for choosing a route that, for their purposes, wasn’t worth the ink it was printed on the map with. She in turn accuses him of erratic driving and tailgating. Between further expressions of criticism and condemnation, the silence lengthens. Without saying so, they’re both implying that they’d be happier traveling solo.

  We stop for a picnic lunch at Bear River State Park, near the western edge of Wyoming. Beside the table, a few buffalo graze in a fenced paddock. They’re fascinating to look at—umber and shaggy—but all the same, I pity them, relegated to this small plot of grassland by the Bureau of Tourism. And I pity myself, to be so lonely in the company of a person I am still wedded to. We chew our sandwiches without conversation. Before I’m finished, she strolls off to “have a look around.” I know what she’s thinking and she undoubtedly knows what I’m thinking, but we’re so out of synch that the possibility of concord seems as remote as the distant mountains. Even on full stomachs we can’t make up—it’s that bad.

  Crossing into Utah, Budge relinquishes the wheel at the Echo Canyon Welcome Center, writes a few lines in his journal, and proceeds to fall asleep.

  My duties as conscious co-pilot no longer seem necessary, so I’ll drift off for a spell. If she falls asleep at the wheel, well, it has been an interesting life, and I don’t particularly care to know the terminal details …

  An hour later, approaching Salt Lake City, he’s jarred awake by sharp braking and the screech of the Acura’s tires.

  “Sorry,” she says. “That stupid jerk cut in front of me.”

  Assessing the situation, Budge commiserates. “Look at that idiot! He’s swerving past the guy ahead now.”

  “Yeah, he’s a road hazard.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Where are the cops when you need them?”

  “You can say that again.”

  This was how many standoffs between us were resolved. Something dreadful would suddenly crop up, something we could jointly lash out at. Supportively, we’d clamber aboard the negative bandwagon together—and give the object of our wrath pure hell. It sounded almost comical at times, the way we’d righteously explode. We were the spitting image of solidarity; you’d never think there was a rift between us. But as the perceived affront wore off or passed beyond, the old antipathy easily returned. It is no exaggeration to say that lovingkindness was on hair-trigger alert during much of the latter part of the marriage.

  They swing through downtown Salt Lake City mainly to gawk at the scrubbed, sanitized quiddity of the place. Cruising by the Mormon Temple, Tabernacle, and Office Building, they concur that something on the subliminal level tells them they would never feel comfortable here. Once again, this temporary unity of thought extends their truce. They drive out of the city and enter the strange landscape of salt littorals followed by the yellowish alkaline desert—a long stretch of flatness against a faraway backdrop of rugged purple peaks.

  They pass by the Bonneville Salt Flats and continue westward across the Nevada line. At Wendover, Budge’s companion insists on stopping at a tourist bureau for an official Nevada state map, but it’s well after 6 p.m. and the bureau is closed. Next door is a monument to the flight crew of Enola Gay, replete with an uninspired inscription attributed to President Harry Truman.

  “Blank stone would have spoken more eloquently,” his wife asserts.

  “Oh, come now,” he chides. “Harry Truman was a great man.”

  “Oh yeah? Says who?”

  It’s not an auspicious beginning, because their political differences have often led them into hot water. This time, though, Budge makes no rebuttal and preserves the shaky truce. Back on the highway, billboards advertise casinos. Budge repeatedly offers to take over at the wheel but is rebuffed. He then suggests, as genteelly as he can, that they stop for the night at this little town or that, but all exits, how soever enticing, are vetoed by the driver. She wants to keep moving.

  Subdued but defiant, she pilots us another seventy miles or so to Elko, a small casino-oriented city. She has her mind set on a fancy motel with a swimming pool, but settles for a modest, pool-less place called Caravan. All this is accomplished with zero input from me. She is behaving as if I’m no longer present.

  Once they’ve checked in and gotten something to eat, however, she asks him to accompany her on a walk along the main drag, Idaho Street. Elko is a busy place on Saturday night, its neon signage just beginning to glow. Out of curiosity, Budge suggests that they step inside a casino named Stockman’s to observe the smoke-filled, hope-filled purgatory of stool-sitting concentration.

  I’ve watched it on cruise ships, I’ve watched it in bingo halls. People in its grip lose all perspective—but maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe the chance jackpot gladdens the heart like nothing else.

  At any rate, it’s not for me. Yet something compels me to stand there and observe the gamblers until she tugs at my sleeve and leads me outdoors. She’s disgusted by the cigarette smoke; she expresses amazement that I, vocable avoider of secondhand carcinogens, would want to remain in that foul environment for even a few seconds.

  “Hey, it’s research,” protests Budge, piqued to be dragged away. “This is the kind of scene we writers need to experience. More and more of these places are cropping up. Pretty soon, the whole world will be gambling.”

  “Well, I won’t,” she hisses. “And on your income, you shouldn’t either!”

  The blow lands squarely on Budge’s conscience. Once again, she’s struck where it hurts, as if he didn’t already feel penurious enough.

  “I’m not gambling. I’m observing,” he says defiantly.

  “Okay, okay. But it stinks in there, and you know it!”

  “Aw heck, it’s not that bad.”

  “You’re lying, Budgie. I know how you feel about secondhand smoke.”

  Caught in his own trap, he offers no rebuttal. She knows him too well.

  “C’mon, let’s keep moving,” she urges.

  “What’s the big rush?” he asks.

  “Oh for Chrissake, go back inside the casino! I don’t give a damn where you go. I’m taking a walk in the fresh air. See you later.”

  She turns on her heels and stomps off.

  “Wait! Wait for me!” I want to shout after her, but I don’t. I don’t open my mouth, I don’t even watch her walk away. I’m paralyzed and unable to act in my own best interest. This is the schism I’ve been fearing all along. She’s not only my wife, but my ride—and my plane ticket back east—and I’m letting her escape. Or perhaps I’m the one who’s escaping.

  For a few seconds, Budge stands rooted to the sidewalk, weighing his options. He doesn’t really care about catching up with he
r. He doesn’t really care about ‘researching’ in the casino either. He starts walking down a cross street where the street lamps are few and the sidewalk narrows with untrimmed vegetation. Behind the parked cars and pale flickering windows, Elko’s silent majority has settled in for the night. Randomly, he turns another corner, and another, until he realizes that he’s heading once again toward Idaho Street and its tawdry wattage. Strolling past a used car dealership, he briefly considers maxing out his credit card for something he could drive off the lot. Something cheap but reliable. Tonight, why not?

  And then, beside the dealership, he notices the bus station—a glorified shack with a faded hound logo above its window. Through the plate glass, he sees the bare-bones waiting room with five or six people sitting around, a scene worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Budge pushes open the door and goes up to the ticket counter. An aging blonde, with the role of security inspector added to her manifold duties, eyes him up and down.

  “How can I help you, darlin’?” she asks.

  “One way to Boston, Massachusetts, please.”

  Pure inspiration made me say Boston. A sudden notion to cover my ass. That’s where Matty thinks I am, so that’s where I’ll be. When I get to Boston I’ll call her collect. If she ever checks her phone bill, she’ll know I was telling the truth.

  “Luck run out?” the agent inquires as she punches at a computer to calculate his fare.

  “You could say that,” he replies.

  “Triple-A, AARP?” she asks.

  “Both,” he says, but makes no move to present evidence, both of which he doesn’t have.

  “That’ll be $120.50,” she says.

  He fishes in his wallet for his credit card. Averse as he is to using it, he’s prepared to run up this debt, which he knows, even with the Boston-to-Annapolis fare added later, will be far cheaper than buying—and titling and insuring—a used car.

  “We got a bus pullin’ out at 1:40 a.m.”.

  “I’ll be on it,” he says.

  She completes the transaction, handing him his ticket, credit card, and receipt.