Ash Wednesday

by Ethan Hawke

  “Would you please roll up your window?” I asked. The wind was spinning my hair in erratic circles and slapping me across the face.

  “I don’t want any beliefs.” He mimicked my voice. “I call bullshit on that.” He struggled with one arm to crank up the window, still steering with the other as we barreled ahead at 80 miles an hour. “This baby dies and I still believe in love. I don’t know why any of us are born. I don’t know what the point of me living and dying is. But you gotta be accountable to something, and you are fuckin’ accountable to me. We’re pack animals. I need you and I love you!” He slammed his fist against the dashboard.

  I flinched, turning my head away from him into the cool glass of the passenger-side window.

  “Something has to mean something even if we have to make it up. Let’s make it up: I love you; you love me. Let’s stick with it. Let’s take it across the goddamn goal line. OK?” Jimmy stared over at me, taking his eyes off the road for what seemed like a full minute. “Look at you, all arrogant and disapproving over there. You’re disappointed in me, huh? You think I’m not disappointed? You think I like you all the time? I don’t. You up there on your high wagon, focusing on all the shit I’m not. Well, guess what? You’re not a lot of things either. And I think you don’t respect me because I love you. ’Cause you think only a dimwit motherfucker like me would chase after you like a puppy dog.” He started panting like a spaniel. “I’ll tell you this right now: Sure as shit, I’m the best man you’ll ever know. You want the dream, I’m your ticket. Pour water on me and I’ll grow. Sit there and worry about yourself and keep a little tally about all the things that are wrong in your life, and you’ll stay miserable.”

  “Please watch where you’re going,” I said, in as noncombative a tone as I could muster. He ignored me.

  “Maybe this baby was conceived to bring us together and it doesn’t need to do anything else. Bad shit is gonna happen. Listen to this: I’ll say it. I’m gonna have affairs. I’ll tell you that right now. As far as that goes, I got a cock and balls in my pocket, and baby they were meant to burn. We spend fifty years together and some shit’s gonna go down. But you can’t stop fighting. You can’t let go. Take your shoes off. Stay awhile.”

  I couldn’t even look at him. There was a raving maniac in the car. He started imitating me again: “Oh, he was some guy. Oh, my first husband. . . . Oh, my second husband, he was a real prick.” Right then if I had had a knife I would’ve stabbed him in the chest.

  “One little trial; we can handle this. The world is mean,” he went on. “I used to spend all this time walking around trying to convince everybody that I’m a good person, but I’m not good. I’m childish. I want everything my way. I want you to be the way I want you to be. Frankly, I want you to be exactly like me. I think the whole world should be exactly like me! I am manipulative as hell. I feel sorry for myself, I’m two-faced, I talk shit about people I actually like. I am not a good person and I don’t want to be, screw that, but I’m not bad either.” He was wagging his finger like a third-grade schoolmarm chastising a kid, and then he snapped his hand into a clasped fist. “I want to be a wolf and I want you to be in my pack and if this baby dies I’ll nurse you back to health and if this baby is born I’ll cut the friggin’ cord and you’re supposed to have my back. We’re not alone. That’s the idea; isn’t it a relief?” He paused. “Would you look at me?” He banged repeatedly on the ceiling of the car.

  “No, I don’t want to,” I said. I couldn’t even listen to him. He was talking but I didn’t know who he was talking to. “I want you to look where you’re going.”

  “I know where I’m going. I’m going STRAIGHT AHEAD.”

  “Please just slow down.”

  He seemed to be only speeding up.

  “Listen to me and the words I say to you now.” He spoke deliberately. “You get what you give in this world. I know you think I’m a walking bag of clichés, but the reason clichés are true is that none of us is unique, all right? Our experiences are not in the least bit fuckin’ exclusive.” We whipped past a sign marking the city limits of Houston. “There are like eighty thousand women right now, worried that they’re losing their babies. And you know what? Some of them will and some of them won’t, and one of the lucky babies that does get born will be an ax murderer. A couple of months ago you weren’t even sure you wanted this baby; now it’s gonna ruin your life if you lose it. Bullshit.”

  It was then that the police car appeared behind us.

  “Oh, my God” was all I could say, staring at the spinning lights in the passenger-side mirror.

  “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Jimmy went on. We pulled over and sat in silence as the Nova cooled and rattled.

  “I hated our wedding,” I said out loud. I hadn’t ever thought that before, but at that moment I felt somehow that marriage was responsible for all this misery.

  “Shut up about the wedding,” Jimmy said, not looking at me. “The wedding was tits, OK? It was the best time you ever had in your life.”

  The officers seemed to be taking an hour, most likely running our license plate through a computer. Every thirty seconds or so another car would rush by us on the highway, sending a shiver through our seats and my nerves.

  “Has this thing been inspected?” I asked, referring to the Nova.

  There was a long silence. I tried to see the cops’ movements through my side-view mirror.

  “What do you mean you hated our wedding?” he finally asked.

  “It was lousy,” I said, drained of emotion. “I wanted a big wedding outdoors with a band. I wanted to look pretty and not be pregnant.”

  “You looked pretty.”

  “I didn’t want it to be in a church. I don’t even believe in God.”

  “Yes, you do. Don’t say that, it pisses me off.”

  “OK,” I said to myself. I turned and looked outside at the dry plains. Little bits of garbage and high mangy-looking grass surrounded us. Houston loomed large in the distance.

  Without warning, Jimmy launched into another tirade, mimicking me in a mock-serious childish whiny tone. ” ‘I don’t believe in God. There’s no reason for anything. It’s all just stinky. I don’t care if there’s mountains or deserts or rain or snow—there’s no point to it. There just happens to be oxygen for me to breathe, that just happens to be created by the sun hitting the trees, which just happen to be made from the minerals in the earth that just happen to be made by my decomposing ancestors. But there’s no reason. Oh, sure, there’s a moon that comes out to light the sky after the sun sets, but who cares? There’s no purpose, there’s just me and my pooh-pooh unhappiness. Oh, boo-hoo, there’s no reason for seals and sharks and eagles and cows, it’s just all a big coinky-dinky. Just me and my black hole.’ ”

  “You are such an asshole,” I said. I was furious. “You punched a guy. We’re on our way to the hospital and you punched a guy. What are you, ten? I have to take care of everything. We’re trying to get to a decent physician and you’re going two hundred miles an hour in a car that isn’t safe at thirty-five. No, I don’t believe in anything, least of all you.”

  We looked at each other across the seats of the Nova, and at that instant there might as well have been an ocean and ten thousand years between us. I hadn’t imagined I could ever feel so distant from him. I didn’t even recognize his face.

  “Look at you: You’re completely irresponsible. You know that?” I continued. The police were still sitting in their car behind us with their lights spinning. “Who’s gonna take care of me? I’m pregnant, Jimmy.” I was not so much angry anymore as I was just thinking out loud.

  Jimmy shook his head. “I’ll take care of you. You make it sound like I’m not trying.”

  “I’m always sitting in urine, Jimmy, do you know that? I’m pregnant, and I wake up in the morning—not that I ever sleep—and I go to the bathroom, which I do ten hundred times a day
, and every time I sit in a puddle of your urine.”

  “Listen, I will never do that again, OK? I promise.” He cut his hand through the air, making a giant dramatic gesture. “I swear to God I will never pee on the seat again. Is that cool? Can we stop talking about that?” Then, more quietly, as an aside to himself he added, “I gotta get you to a doctor.” He turned impatiently around to get a better view of the cops.

  “Well, you’re doing a great job.” It was like I was somebody else and I just said everything I thought. “You know, we just stopped for gas and you didn’t even ask me if I wanted anything to drink. Some orange juice, some water, anything. It didn’t occur to you to think, Hey, maybe she’s thirsty?”

  “I got a shitload of Gatorade in the backseat. You want some? Would you care for a glass, your highness?”

  “It’s warm, and I DON’T LIKE GATORADE,” I said, and started crying. Hot salty tears were streaming down my face. “I want to call my father,” I said out loud. I thought I would like my father to beat Jimmy up.

  “You gotta tell me,” Jimmy said, putting on this overly sincere, sensitive voice. “You gotta ask. You gotta say, ‘Hey, I want some water,’ and I’ll get it, but I can’t read your mind.”

  “I have to tell you everything: to shave, to brush your teeth, to take a bath, to wash your hair. How do you think you’ll be able to take care of a baby? You don’t take care of anything.” I said this through streams of tears.

  “Oh, for crying out loud. I gotta get you to a doctor.” Jimmy scowled.

  Just then a female cop with short curly reddish-brown hair appeared at the driver’s-side window, with another cop, a tall skinny male, lingering behind the taillights. Jimmy rolled down his window.

  “License and registration,” she said, her hands placed confidently on her hips.

  “Listen, my wife here is pregnant and we’re experiencing some complications and we’re a little desperate to get to the hospital in Houston.”

  “Why Houston?”

  The question seemed to baffle Jimmy. “I don’t know, that’s just where we’re going. We were at another hospital, but we figured Houston would have the best one. Christy’s family lives in Houston.” He gestured lamely toward my section of the car. The busted nose in the center of his face wasn’t helping our cause.

  “First give me your license and registration,” she said, with no discernible level of empathy.

  “Yeah, right. Hold on.” Jimmy dug into his wallet, lifting up his butt awkwardly and reaching behind him. Then he leaned over and dug into the glove box. As he opened it I was the first one to see the small pistol Jimmy keeps there. Still wrapped in a brown leather holster, it plopped dumbly onto my lap.

  Both officers started shouting “Gun, gun, gun!” as they pulled out their firearms and pointed one at each of us. Jimmy raised his hands in surrender but I just sat still, dumb to the world. I couldn’t even move my arms. I hated Jimmy. I had no idea when I married him how painful it would be to be defined by someone else.

  “That’s a registered firearm,” Jimmy said quietly, in a peaceful passive tone. “I have a carry permit. I am Staff Sergeant James S. Heartsock of the U.S. Army. There is no need to be alarmed. We will comply with full efficiency.”

  “Oh, God.” Listening to Jimmy talk like an army goomba made me want to puke. I have nothing to do with this person, I wanted to say to the officers, but my mouth was dry.

  “Step out of the car,” the female said, while her partner reached inside the Nova, opening the door and seizing the pistol from my lap. Eventually we both stepped out. I don’t know how I did it, I wasn’t aware of controlling my limbs at all. We looked like a couple of delinquent deadbeat kids, Jim with his broken nose and wild manic eyes and me with my pregnant round face, worn and stained from crying.

  “I know who you are, Staff Sergeant James Heartsock. I also know from my computer that there is a warrant out for your arrest back in the state of New York. Do you know anything about that? You are listed as AWOL, sir.” Obviously they’d run our plates. That must have been what had taken them so long.

  Jimmy paused momentarily as he registered this information. “My lieutenant is the biggest fuckin’ asshole, ma’am. He knows I just got married, and he knows we’re expecting a baby. I’m on leave. I’ve got a letter to the colonel.”

  “I don’t like it when people curse at me, sir. I would appreciate it if you would refrain.” She spoke in a cool detached voice.

  If I hadn’t lost the baby yet, the pounding fear in my gut was sure to kill it. I looked across the top of the Nova at Jimmy. I hadn’t slept in a long time, and I’ve never been so terrified in all my life.

  Jimmy and I were placed in the back of the squad car with Grace the cat mewing like she was in heat from inside her gray plastic carrying case. He did have a permit for the gun, in the state of New York. Eventually we were driven away, leaving the Nova alone on the side of I-10. Watching the car grow smaller against the flat barren Texas landscape, I hoped I would never lay eyes on that vehicle again. Jimmy had voiced more concern to the police as to the status and future of that vehicle than he ever had for my pregnancy. They told us they’d drop Jimmy off at the station and take me on to the hospital, while a tow truck driver would impound the car until his release.

  “I’m really sorry,” Jimmy whispered to me in the back of the squad car, his face swollen and blotchy red from holding in tears. “I’m really sorry.” I sat there frozen. After a brief silence, in a voice barely audible to myself, I started speaking.

  “Listen to what the lady said: You are AWOL. You don’t know what you’re doing. I hear the things you say to me when you adopt this Boy Scout I-believe-in-love-let’s-stick-it-out attitude, but I don’t believe you. They’re words you learned, it’s an attitude you’ve copped, but it’s not true, it’s not in your heart. You say the right things because you want to be on the right side, but you don’t back it up with your actions. You’re not ready for this responsibility. Either you don’t want anyone to be angry with you, or you don’t want to be the one to blame. I see it in your eyes all the time, your anger, your doubts about me. You give me these pep talks like a high school football coach, but you’re only trying to convince yourself. You never wanted to have this baby. This wasn’t your choice. You should go home, clear your head, sort your mind out. This trip, our marriage—it’s been too fast. I’ll have the baby or I won’t, we’ll take it one step at a time. I’ll call you when things get settled down, after I talk to the doctors, but you should go home and sort things out.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” he whispered back to me. The police car was moving steadily ahead without the lights, no siren, just carrying us forward. “You think I’d go home? You think I’d leave you now?”

  “I want you to. You’re AWOL, Jimmy. I feel it in the way you touch me. Since the day after we got married you’re like half a person with all that doubt you’re carrying around.” This was true. He’d rarely seemed present since the wedding. I’d catch him looking over at me as if I were a foreign object; then, as quickly as I’d met his eyes, his face would snap back into a smile. “The way you laughed at me in that hospital, like this was my fault, like it had nothing to do with you.”

  “Just ’cause I act like an asshole sometimes doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

  “You act like love is a decision you made and then it’s over.”

  “It is a decision,” he said, in a volume just above a breath. The police in front of us appeared oblivious to our conversation. “You split up with me and a few years from now you’ll meet somebody else and fall in love. The exact same thing that happened with us will happen again. You guys’ll be all over each other for about a year, give or take six months, and you’ll start to see he’s got problems just like me, only, you know, a slightly altered variety, and you’ll start to think just like you are right now about how disappointing this poor sa
p is, only you’ll be older and most likely you’ll be a touch more accepting and forgiving and you’ll think, God, why didn’t I just stick it out with Jimmy? If I had I’d be somewhere new instead of the exact same spot.”

  “Where does this sunny mister self-help boy come from, huh? Keep a positive attitude.” I had raised my voice by accident but immediately brought the volume back down. “You can’t just make up an attitude, it has to be true.”

  “Yeah, you can. I’m happy. It’s a decision.” Jimmy was starting to speak in a normal tone, not caring whether the cops overheard us or not.

  “You don’t seem happy.”

  “I’m not happy right now.”

  “Well, why don’t you decide to be?”

  “Fuck you, OK?”

  “Watch your language back there,” the female cop said into her rearview mirror. Again we were silent.

  “Go home, Jimmy, I give you permission. It’s my fault. Everything is my fault. Get your life in order and I’ll get mine in order, and then we’ll figure out what to do.”

  My body, my voice, my eyes—none of them were doing what I wanted. Couldn’t he see my hands were shaking? Couldn’t he see the muscles along my spine tighten and compress into steel cables? One part of me wanted him just to disappear; I couldn’t be responsible for him. Then there was another part of me outside myself observing him and able to see and feel how hard he was trying. The cat continued to mew. My head splintered with grief. People can mean so well and want the same end results and still miss each other by such a cavernous margin. When we fell in love it was like I could only see the gorgeous top part of Jim, but now with the introduction of adversity I could only see his ugly pulsing sinewy underside. I knew they were both true, but I could never see them both at the same time.