He told me to put my foot on the brake, and then turn the key and step by step, because I was so busy listening, he tricked me into sitting behind the wheel of a car with its engine humming.
“Now isn’t this easy?” he said. “Okay, very slowly, ease your foot up on the brake.”
No, it wasn’t easy, and when I did what he said the car lurched forward and I panicked and jammed the brake pedal to the floor and threw us against our seatbelts.
Macbeth kept up the “that’s better” lies between muttered oaths. He also completely ignored his promise to honor my ten minute limit.
An exhausted half hour later, when I’d sunk from loud screaming to soft blubbering and moaning, he finally agreed I could stop the car. And the lesson. We’d circled the lot about a million times. I could make the damn car go forward and stop and start and turn, but reverse was so impossible that even Macbeth agreed to let reverse go for another day.
Fat chance I’d ever get into a car with him again but I let him dream.
“That wasn’t bad,” he said, after we changed places and he was back behind the wheel. “You just need to focus, April. Don’t let your mind wander. Nothing to be afraid of. See how stupid your nightmare was? A car isn’t hard to control. You aren’t going to run head-on into anyone on a sunny day on a dry road.”
And then, while my head continued to ache, he gave me another long lecture about wet roads and snow and ice, as though I would ever be driving over the mountains.
Could have told him to get real. Waste of breath. Macbeth always was real. If he couldn’t see it, touch it, hear it, and probably the need to smell was in there, too, it didn’t exist.
Fortunately the day was, by that time, dark. Car lights reflected off every wet surface. He didn’t expect me to do anything other than sink down into the passenger seat on the way home. Must have drifted off. Next thing I knew he was shaking my shoulder.
“Okay, sleeping beauty, we’re home.”
I stumbled out of the car, followed him up the walk and into the house, and I must have dreamed again because in my mind I heard Laurence’s lying voice saying he wanted to marry me.
Had I ever been as dumb as all that, clinging to a lying bastard? Oh. Right. Same bastard, different name. And a lifetime later still using the same line about calling me soon.
There was a difference, though, wasn’t there? Laurence’s wife was his excuse until she died. Then he was free, and he still said he loved Millie, but at the same time, he was dumping her. Graham’s wife was his excuse and she was alive, he wasn’t free, and he was dumping me.
Did Graham even have a wife?
“Careful there,” Macbeth said and caught my arm to steady me when I tripped on the door sill. “You look zonked, babe. You only drove for thirty minutes. Now you’ll blame me for wearing you out.”
“You bet,” I mumbled and then I added, “Go home and shut up.”
He laughed at me, pushed me toward the couch, said something about goodnight, see you later, and was gone. And there I was in a dark empty apartment with nothing to do but ask myself questions about Graham.
Okay, so the apartment wasn’t dark because of course Macbeth had turned on all the lights before he left, but it might as well have been dark. I couldn’t see past the doubts growing in my head.
Plus this. What really happened to Millie Pedersen?
CHAPTER 18
“You’re turning into that revolving door thing in Evita,” I told Tom when he stopped by to flake out on the couch and to tell me all his troubles. Like he expected me to have answers.
“Not intentionally. And anyway, it’s all your fault.”
Pushing his curls back from his forehead, I said, “No, it’s your eyes. Women drown in your eyes.”
“I could flash a wedding ring and stop all that.”
Was that why Graham didn’t wear a wedding ring? I said, “Who are you going to marry?”
“That’s a problem. I guess I haven’t met a keeper. If they’re not breaking up with me, I’m trying to break up with them. I need to get out of town for a week.”
His latest girlfriend was Sandra. We’d met at the Mexican restaurant and from the first glance I knew old Tommy was in big trouble. She had “wanna get married” written all over her, plus a five year plan in her eyes. Engagement ring, fancy wedding, buy a house, and by year five the second baby should be on the way.
Why she hooked on to Tom was a puzzle, but maybe he hadn’t explained his inadequate salary.
“Sandra’s stalking you?”
He shrugged, looked embarrassed. “Stalking I could handle. She’s getting buddy buddy with my mother.”
As Tom lived with his parents, I could kind of understand his mother’s motivation. It probably ran more along the lines of hoping he would move out than of wanting a daughter-in-law to move in.
“And she phones every half hour.”
“Let the voice mail get it.”
“Not my cell. She phones the house. Mom answers.”
“Got no solution for that one.”
“I do,” he said and told me his crazy plan. “We could take off a week, fly back to that town in Minnesota you’re always talking about and see what we can dig up.”
“You and me?”
“Why not? Cyd and Macbeth can’t get time off work. But you don’t have that problem and I need to get out of town.”
“What, Sandra has a brother with a shotgun?”
Tom groaned. “I could face a shotgun. It’s Sandra I can’t take any more.”
“Have you told her that?”
He threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. “What, tell her that I don’t ever want to see her again? Is there a nice way to do that?”
“You’ve broken up with women before.”
Probably I was being a little bit mean because of course I understood the problem. I’d been through it with guys. Breaking up stinks because there’s always one half of a couple who doesn’t want to break up, clings, thinks talking things out will solve the problem.
As though he read my mind, he said, “She keeps saying she wants to talk. What’s to say? It’s not like we had a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, you did,” I said, because I knew him so well. “She understood that every time you said you loved her, you meant it. And you understood that those are just words you say when you’re making out.”
He stared at me, those dark eyes wide, and then he sighed. “Yeah, I suppose. Something like that. So, let’s go research this Millie mystery.”
A research project, Tom to the core. Never mind that it was my life and my fantasy and my problem, he was ready to apply his anthropology excavation skills.
“Sure, maybe we can find her bones and dig her up,” I said.
“Huh?”
“We’re both broke,” I pointed out.
“Oh that,” he said so offhand that I thought his insanity was showing. “Macbeth has enough frequent flyer miles for you and me.”
“And he’s offered to give them to you. What a sweetheart.” I was joking.
Apparently Tom wasn’t. “Yes, he said for me to use them.”
“Why?”
Tom kind of avoided looking at me, played with the pillow fringe instead. “First, they have to be used this month. And second, Mac’s worried about you.”
“Did he tell you he dragged me to a parking lot and forced me to drive his car?”
“Yeah, he said something about that. But what’s got him worried is, he thinks you’re missing the line between reality and wherever.”
“Because I couldn’t put the car in reverse?”
“Because you’re still afraid to drive. He thinks you’re still having nightmares about the car crash. So we both agreed a trip to Minnesota might be good, let you take a look around, find out if there ever was this Millie person.”
“A mental health treatment for crazy April?”
He did his Tom thing, grinned, then reached for me and hugged me. Maybe I should have arg
ued, refused the offer, but what if the answers to a whole lot of questions were back in that little farm town?
Also, maybe if Graham phoned, and Cyd told him I was off on a trip, it would be like a slap up the side of the head for him, maybe wake him up, make him think about what he was losing if he lost me.
Back in my high school years I would have pulled a stunt like that to make a boyfriend jealous. Older and wiser, I knew it wouldn’t work with Graham. Either he loved me and we would find solutions, or he didn’t and I would cry myself to death.
“Okay, Tom. Probably be more fun than going to job interviews.”
“So nice to see a girl thrilled at the prospect of a trip with me.”
“Better you than Mac.” At least Tom wouldn’t trick me into driving a car.
Like Tom, I needed to get out of town. Unlike Tom, I wasn’t trying to break off an affair. And because he was Tom and we’d been friends forever, he didn’t ask. We’d been lovers sporadically but friends forever.
“We need to take heavy clothes,” he said.
“Flannel pajamas,” I said and he snickered.
CHAPTER 19
Heavy clothing was a brilliant plan. I borrowed Cyd’s down jacket plus a wool scarf that someone had sent her a couple of Christmases ago and was still in its gift box. From the back of a closet I dug out snow boots that I hadn’t worn in years.
And here I had thought Seattle was cold. Tommy and I came off the plane through the airport, all our gear stuffed into backpacks so we could avoid the luggage pickup, and followed the exit signs to Eskimo hell. I think they’re the folks who believe hell really is frozen over. Whoever.
My blood turned to ice in my veins. My muscles went into clench mode. I couldn’t move or breathe, except, I could see my breath so I must have been breathing.
A mist cloud came out of my mouth and hung in front of me until I managed to pull the hood of Cyd’s jacket half-closed across my face. I wrapped the scarf over that, leaving just enough room to peer out. Any second I expected ice cycles to form on my eyelashes. With Tom dragging me by my elbow, I managed to make it to the rented car Mac had reserved for us.
Sitting in the plane, I’d had no idea what was happening to the temperature. The plane had been stuffy and noisy, drinks lukewarm, food nonexistent, about what I expected.
We’d both had a sleepless night of tossing together necessities and then weeding out to keep our luggage small and light. On the plane we didn’t talk much because we were both in mild shock about the fast decision. Somehow trips are better when planned far in the future, I guess.
Neither Tom nor I think that far ahead, so when Mac said he could provide tickets, we kind of did a vague discussion about when.
“Any time is okay with me,” Tom had said.
I had a job interview for a job I didn’t want, so I said sure, tomorrow even, because both of us thought that wasn’t really possible.
Don’t reservations take time? But literal Macbeth snapped open his cellphone, marched into the next room, and ten minutes later came back to tell us we were on the redeye that left in four hours so be ready in two and he would drive us out.
Macbeth managed a swing-by of Tom’s place so Tom could run in, grab his backpack and his warmest coat.
“Get everything?” Mac asked when Tom returned to the car.
“Oh sure, even left a note on the fridge saying I was leaving and would phone in a day or two.”
On the plane we both drifted in and out of short naps, me only marginally uncomfortable, Tom with his knees folded up almost to his chin and one elbow in my ribs.
After we picked up the rental car at the Minneapolis airport, I kept saying, “Find the heater, turn on the heater,” my teeth chattering.
“It’s on. Give it a few minutes,” Tom said. “Watch the exit signs, oh never mind, I see it.”
When the heater kicked in, and I figured it was some kind of blast furnace to do the job in such a climate, I pushed my hood back and rubbed my face. Somewhere the sun was above the horizon but it wasn’t doing a lot for me. It reflected off of snowy roadsides and glittered on the windshield until we turned west and then it made a blur of the rear window.
Unlike Seattle, during its two days a year of snow, here the pavement was clear. Oh yeah, I suppose Minnesota towns actually own snowplows. If Seattle owns snowplows, they’re always busy up in the mountain passes to the east and somehow never make it to Seattle streets. Instead, the TV announcers spend all day, that two days a year, reading off lists of school closures and event cancellations.
“People actually live here, huh?” I said.
Tom squinted against the glare. “The name was Millie Pedersen, right? Do you get no clue from that?”
I yawned and slid down in my seat. “Big population of Scandinavians? So the Vikings felt right at home here. Hmmph. If this was my previous life, somewhere in transition my blood thinned.”
With my booted feet propped on my backpack, I dozed while Tom drove. When the car stopped, I woke. Every muscle protested. A whole lot of groaning accompanied my effort to straighten out and sit up.
Peering out the window, I saw we were parked on a narrow street lined with snow-topped cars and iced trees. A row of storefronts ran about a two block length, bookended between a couple of steepled churches and a park with a shivering bandstand. Beyond the small business district, tall old houses with peaked roofs and wide front porches huddled in the centers of huge lots, deep in snowdrifts.
“This is it. Millie Town,” Tom said. “Next stop?”
“Newspaper? Library? Motel with a hot shower?”
“I’ll opt for the last one,” he said, much to my relief.
He’d come along as a favor to me. Or maybe simply because he was bored. Or maybe he really did need to get out of town and easy reach of Sandra. Whatever, I appreciated his company and wanted to give him choices.
We pulled into what seemed to be the only gas station and were told there were three motels on the outskirts. Head south twenty minutes or some such instructions.
The attendant added, “We got a nice hotel downtown, one block over.”
Tom and I looked at each other. We knew Seattle hotel rates.
“Guess not,” I said, wondered if directions based on a twenty minute drive would really take us anywhere, and changed my mind. “Tom, we could at least ask.”
“Can’t charge for that,” he agreed.
The hotel was exactly where the gas station attendant had said it would be, a good omen. It looked nice from the outside, brick and wood, a lot newer than most of the stores, and like the streets, the parking lot was scraped clean.
A double entry kept out the cold. A second set of doors opened into a cozy lobby. Oversized chairs and couches faced a fireplace where the flames roared and I was ready to curl up on a couch forever.
Mac had given us our plane tickets, not his credit card. Okay, ask, I decided.
“Nice front room with two double beds, a street view or I can put you on the back for a little less, but, hon, the trains can get loud about midnight,” the desk clerk said.
“How much for a front room?” I asked, my elbows on the counter.
Standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, Tom said, “The front room sounds fine.”
Here in the backside of farmland, the rates were embarrassing, they were so low, and I had a fleeting doubt about what we’d find upstairs.
Key in hand, we trudged up the open flight of stairs on the far side of the lobby.
Tom said, “Would you be more comfortable with separate rooms? We could afford that.”
We had this long time understanding about sleeping arrangements, which put lovemaking out of bounds when either of us was involved with someone else. However, we’d never played that game in a hotel.
“She said there were two beds. Let’s see how small the room is,” I said, visualizing a narrow room with two twin beds against the wall and barely space to walk between them.
What we foun
d on the second floor was a large warm room with two double beds and lots of space, including dresser, TV, table and easy chairs. Add to that thick quilts, flouncy edges on everything, and a spotless bathroom. There were even baskets of all the fun little goodies in fancy packages, shampoo, moisturizer, shoe shine cloth, mending kit.
“Oh yeah, I can rough it here,” I told him. “At this price, I may move in permanently.”
“Local salaries probably match the prices. Hey, you hungry?”
And I was. We dumped our backpacks, cleaned up, added another layer of socks and sweaters and headed out in serious search of food. The search was serious. The food wasn’t. The hotel dining room was open for dinner only, hours away.
The downtown was about the size of a strip mall and included two bars where the food consisted of potato chips and peanuts. We went in to check. They both recommended the one coffee shop in town.
We found it. All it had to offer was a teenager behind the counter and a menu of day old apple pie. At least there was a microwave and the teenager knew how to heat the pie. That was pretty much her limit.
“Where’s the newspaper office?” Tom asked.
“What newspaper?”
“Ah, okay, how about a library, is there a library?”
“I think so,” she said.
Tom leaned across the counter and grinned at her, big brown eyes wide. “No newspaper, no library, is there a high school in this town?”
She didn’t crack a smile. “Of course there’s a high school. It’s kinda that direction.” She made a vague hand gesture toward the side wall.
We gulped down the pie and coffee and headed back out into the wicked cold. Tom collared the first adult passerby and got directions to the library which by some gift of fate was actually within walking distance and open. Its gray cement block Carnegie exterior took a solid stand against the cold, almost shouting, Go ahead and try to blow me down, Big Bad Wind.
We did a shortcut across a berm, big mistake, and left snow tracks up the cleared sidewalk. In unison we stood outside the door and stamped the snow off our boots before going in.
“This is an adventure,” Tom said, laughing.
My Deja Vu Lover Page 11