Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories

by Nancy Christie

  Finally, after she had hung up her coat, she would look around to make sure that all the items were where they belonged. And sometimes, if the day had been particularly stressful, she would even go back and check, just to make sure the door really was locked and the keys were there, where they belonged, that they hadn’t somehow disappeared from their appointed location.

  And yet, this morning, the hook was empty. No key ring hanging there. No keys on the floor. Or in her purse. Or in her jacket pocket. It took her nearly twenty-five minutes of increasingly anxious searching and feverish speculation (What if she had left them in the lock outside her door? Might someone even now be carefully, quietly turning the key, releasing the bolt, preparing to come in?) before she finally located them.

  “A place for everything and everything in its place,” her mother had drilled into her, and Charlotte had to admit that it made life so much easier when things were kept where they belonged. And, like so many of the strictures that narrated her life, Charlotte always followed her mother’s rules and admonitions to the letter.

  So how did her keys end up in the silverware drawer?

  “I don’t understand,” she kept saying, as she put the keys in her pocket and then compulsively patted the bulge, to make sure they were really there, that they hadn’t gone somewhere else. “I always hang them up. I do,” defending herself against an invisible accuser.

  Now her whole Saturday morning schedule was off—that carefully defined routine she had perfected over the years: leave home at 9:15 sharp, drive to the bank, the post office and the grocery store before returning home at exactly 11:45.

  Then, after allotting another 10 minutes to put away the few items she bought—a quart of organic milk, a loaf of whole grain bread, three kosher chicken breasts and one Spanish onion—she would make a peanut butter sandwich to eat exactly at noon. No jelly, though. Jelly was too unpredictable. It seeped out the sides, dripped off the corners, and in general, made such a mess that Charlotte had decided several years ago that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like jelly. A long time ago, it had been one of her secret pleasures. Jam and preserves, too. The way the syrupy liquid would gently envelop her tongue with sweetness and slip into the space between her teeth and the inside of her cheek. Sometimes, hours later, she used to slide the tip of her tongue into the corners of her mouth, seeking that last bit of fruity flavor.

  But that was when she used to buy it, eat it, enjoy it.

  She wasn’t sure when she had stopped or why. When she tried to remember, all that came to mind was her mother’s voice.

  “Sugar is bad for you. It will rot your teeth and upset your stomach and sit in your intestines and make all kinds of nasty bacteria.”

  Now, every time Charlotte passed the jam and jelly aisle, the words filled her mind the way the fruit used to fill her mouth. But instead of sweetness, there was only a bitter flavor.

  Of course, she would tell herself, her mother was only looking out for her, wanting to keep her safe and healthy. That was why, when Charlotte was a child, her mother made very bland but wholesome meals, why she dressed Charlotte in blouses buttoned to the neckline and skirts far too long to ever be considered stylish.

  And why she told Charlotte time and again that the best thing she could do to protect herself was to get a job doing something that would limit her contact with other people: be a file clerk, she would say, or work in a bookstore’s stockroom, unpacking carton and after carton and then shelving each book in its proper place.

  “That way, you won’t have to expose yourself to them, deal with them—their unreasonable needs, wants and demands”—their nasty emotions, is what she meant but never said. But Charlotte understood her mother’s meaning.

  And after all, she could hardly blame her since it was one of those nasty emotions that had led to Charlotte’s existence.

  “The bus was late and the street was deserted and before I knew it—” and there her mother would stop, never completing the story of Charlotte’s conception.

  But she didn’t need to. The blank line for the father’s name on Charlotte’s birth certificate told her everything she needed to know. And years later, it would be an equally nasty emotion that resulted in her mother’s death.

  The couple in the late model blue Olds had been arguing, according to the police report, and they never even saw her mother in the crosswalk. They hit her, just like that, and then kept on arguing, while the officers took their statements and the ambulance took her mother.

  Granted, her mother should not have been in the roadway—all the bystanders said that the flashing red hand on the sign clearly indicated that she should not have walked—but still, they should have seen her.

  It was so fast, so unexpected. And even though by then Charlotte was a grown woman—an adult with a job as a box maker in a warehouse, alone in her own section with stacks of cardboard sheets waiting to be assembled into cartons—her mother’s absence created a huge void in her carefully ordered life. She found herself focusing all her time and energies on constructing a barricade between herself and the world, finding her own little place and then staying there, doing everything she could to keep herself protected from the unexpected.

  But this time, despite all her efforts, the unexpected did occur, and by the time she closed and locked the door behind her (checking three times to make sure it really was closed, really was locked) and pulled her car out of the garage, nearly half an hour had passed.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t go to the bank today,” she said aloud, looking at her watch as she waited for the light to turn green. “That would give me a few extra minutes. But do I have enough money for groceries?”

  She started to reach into her purse (on the floor in front of the passenger seat, out of sight and reach of any would-be thief—not that the car window was ever open or the car door ever unlocked, even when parked in the locked garage) for her wallet, but just then, the light changed and the driver behind her impatiently honked his horn.

  Hurriedly, Charlotte stepped on the gas , but although the car engine roared, the vehicle itself never moved. She realized too late that she had forgotten to shift it back into drive. Her mother had taught her to always put the car in park, even when she was waiting at an intersection, “because your mind could wander and your foot could slip and then the car would go and then what would happen?”

  Something terrible, no doubt, something so bad that Charlotte could not even consider it. And so she never neglected to slide the shifter to “P” and then back to “D” before moving her foot from the brake pedal to the accelerator.

  Never, until today.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she kept saying (not that the driver could hear her), as she depressed the brake pedal and moved the gearshift, jerking forward and then stopping quickly because the light was now red again

  She sat there, ashamed, seeing the driver behind her make an obscene gesture, and then tried her best to breathe through the pounding of her heart while waiting for the light to change back to green.

  When it did, she moved through the intersection, not daring to look to her left as the man raced past her, not wanting to see his angry face. Her palms, sweaty from fear, kept sliding on the steering wheel, and Charlotte wanted so badly to wipe them on her pants (she never wore a skirt or dress because the wind might catch the hemline and blow it up her thighs before she could stop it), to get that cold wetness off her skin.

  But if she did that, if she took her hands, even one at a time, from the wheel, something bad might happen. She might lose control and crash into another car. She might need to use both hands to turn the wheel to avoid an upcoming vehicle or a bicyclist turning into the road or dog running across the street. She might get a cramp in the hand holding the wheel, and she would be unable to control the direction of the car.

  You never know what could happen.

  So she gripped the wheel even more firmly and watched the road with rigid a
ttention, eyes darting right-left-right-left, just in case something else might go wrong. And when she pulled into the bank parking lot and finally shut off the engine (triple-checking that the car was, in fact, in park), she released the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Then, finally, first one and then the other, she wiped her sweaty palms against her thighs.

  “I’m late,” looking at the car’s clock. “Maybe if I don’t go to the post office . . .”

  But what if something in her box required immediate attention—an unexpected bill that needed to be opened, documented and paid right away?

  Not that there should be because Charlotte was very careful about her expenses, writing each one down in a black ledger book, carefully noting the amount due, the date to pay it (always a week ahead, just in case), and finally, the check number, amount and date she discharged the debt.

  But still, she really should go—and by the time she made up her mind, another ten minutes had passed and now her schedule was off by almost three quarters of an hour.

  “Do you have some ID?” the teller asked, when Charlotte presented her check for cashing—$25, which should be just enough for this week’s groceries.

  It was the same question every week, but, unlike the other customers, Charlotte had always appreciated the woman’s commitment to caution and routine. After all, just because the check had her name on it, just because she looked the same as she had the week before and the week before that, and for all the past weeks and months and years since she had been coming to that branch, still you couldn’t be too careful. She might not be Charlotte at all but just some woman who looked like her, some woman who somehow had gotten into Charlotte’s purse and taken her bankbook just to steal $25.

  Of course, the only time the bankbook was in Charlotte’s purse was on Saturdays, because that was the only time she needed it in a public place.

  But still, anything might happen.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” her cheeks flushing red because she should have been ready for the question, should have had her wallet out so she could show the woman her driver’s license as soon as she asked for it. Now she would waste more precious minutes digging through her purse—even more minutes than she anticipated because, for some reason, she couldn’t find it.

  “It’s here. It’s always here,” she said, pushing aside her tissues and small flashlight (just in case the lights would go out wherever she might be) and pepper spray (“You never know when a mugger might try to get your money,” her mother had warned her time and again) and quarters for the meter in case there wasn’t a free parking space in the post office lot.

  “I can’t cash it without seeing some form of identification,” the teller said.

  Charlotte felt a quick burn of anger. The woman knew who she was. Charlotte always came to the same window and the same teller every Saturday. Just this once, couldn’t she make an exception? Charlotte needed the money if she was going to buy what was on her grocery list. And she had to do it today—not Sunday, because she never shopped on Sundays, and not during the week, because the route she followed to and from work took her in a different direction entirely and she couldn’t risk deviating from it in case she got lost and couldn’t find her way home.

  “I can’t find my wallet,” and she could feel the fear drenching her body, her palms once again slick with sweat. Her armpits, too, with rivulets of perspiration running under the sides of her bra.

  The teller pushed the check back across the counter to her. “If you find it, I’ll be happy to cash your check.”

  But she wouldn’t be happy at all, Charlotte suspected. As a matter of fact, she was probably hoping that Charlotte never found her wallet and would have to go through the long, laborious, time-consuming process of getting a new driver’s license.

  And Charlotte would have to explain to the officials that somehow she had lost her original one, at which point they would undoubtedly consider her careless or sloppy. Then she would have to fill out the forms and pay the fee—an unexpected expense that would completely disarrange her budget.

  Then the part Charlotte hated most: the vision test. She disliked putting her face in the same chin rest that everyone else used but was always too intimidated by the woman on the other side of the machine to clean the plastic with an antibacterial wipe. The clerk might be offended by the implication that her equipment was dirty. She might deliberately skew the test results so Charlotte would fail and not get her license.

  Then what would Charlotte do? How would she get to the store, the bank, and the post office? And what about work? She would be at the mercy of a bus service that was unreliable at best. She would be late punching in and probably lose her job. She would be unable to pay her rent, lose her home, end up on the street . . .

  “Ma’am, if you could step aside so I can wait on someone else . . .” and Charlotte realized she hadn’t moved, that the uncashed check was still there for her to pick up while she was lost in her thoughts, her fears, her imaginings.

  She grabbed the useless slip of paper, knocking over one of several little tchotchkes that were on the counter—a little beaver holding a sign saying “Thank you for banking on us!”—and turned, clumsily bumping into the man behind her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” she said and kept saying, as she pushed out the door. Once in her car, she dumped out the contents of her handbag, hoping that the wallet would be there, that for some reason, she had simply overlooked it in the bank.

  But it was gone. She had no money, no identification, nothing.

  “What should I do?” she said, as though there was someone else in the car who could give her instructions. But there wasn’t.

  At least, she didn’t think there was. After all, she had locked the car door—or had she? She didn’t remember unlocking it. What if she had left it open? What if, even now, someone were hiding in the back seat, waiting for her to leave the lot and go home and pull into her garage? And then, once the overhead door was down, he would come out from behind her and put a knife to her throat or a gun to her head and tell her what he wanted.

  Charlotte started to shake. It was possible. It was even probable that she had forgotten to lock the door. After all, look how many mistakes she had already made today! It would be just one more in a long line, one final mistake that would completely destroy her ordered world and her with it.

  She could look. She could open the door, and then quickly turn to see if someone were there and if he was, she could leap out of the car and run into the bank. But then, what if, when the bank personnel came out, he was gone? They would shake their heads and think she was crazy—a crazy woman who first lost her wallet and then claimed to see a stranger in her car.

  Or she could very slowly get out of the car and, without looking, without letting him know that she knew he was there, start walking—walking somewhere, anywhere, just walking away and leaving her car behind.

  But what if he wasn’t there? What if it was all in her head? How could she return to her car? She’d have to walk back to it—but what if she got lost?

  Almost without surprise, she saw it was close to 11. She had only 45 minutes left—not that she could do anything, except maybe go to the post office. That’s what she would do. She would go to the post office just like she did every Saturday and the man in the back seat would think she was going home and once she got there, she would go inside and stay until it closed at noon.

  And maybe he would grow tired of waiting for her and just leave. Maybe she should even casually leave the keys in the ignition, to make it easier for him. Maybe if he took the car, he wouldn’t care about Charlotte.

  She turned the key and started the car, and then carefully, slowly, backed out of the parking space and headed to the exit.

  Was that a rustle from the back? Did she feel a bump against her seat?

  Her palms slipped on the wheel, and she gripped it even more tightly, her knuckles showing white against her thin skin. The post office was just a few blocks away
and then she would be safe.

  But when Charlotte came to the intersection, she saw that the road to her right was blocked. Some kind of construction—orange barricades that kept her from turning down the street that led to her destination. One of the road workers was waving his hand, directing her to go the other way, but she couldn’t move.

  What if the road he was sending her on was blocked as well? Or what if she got lost, turned left instead of right, went up instead of down? What if she couldn’t find her way to the post office?

  Charlotte looked at her gas gauge, taking no comfort in the fact that it registered well past half-full. At the rate events were happening, she might be driving all day, using up precious fuel while the man in the seat behind her waited for her to run out of gas, out of energy, out of places of safety.

  And then he would kill her anyway.

  It was all her fault—“. . . all my fault,” she said aloud, not caring now if he heard her. She turned then, not the way the worker had pointed but just blindly, not caring where she went. It didn’t matter. For all the care she had taken, for all her attention to routine, to caution, she still found herself in danger. And it was all her fault. If she hadn’t misplaced her keys, if she hadn’t left her wallet somewhere, if she hadn’t had to sit through another light—if she had only been more cautious, more aware, more alert, none of this would have happened.

  “How many times have I told you to be careful!” and Charlotte answered her mother, “I know, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,” thinking at the same time that it wouldn’t happen again because she wouldn’t have another chance.

  No, she thought, as she drove down one unfamiliar street after another, this was it. This was the end. This was what came of not being careful, of not paying attention. Bad things happened. And then it was too late.

  She made one more turn, this one onto the bypass that circled the city. She had never been on it before but what did it matter? And as she accelerated up the entrance ramp, she wondered how many other places she had never been. Might her life have been different had she been less cautious and more adventurous? Or would the end have only come sooner?