Strange but True

by John Searles

  When will it be enough? Philip wonders as he gives up this business of scrubbing pots already and tosses the S.O.S. pad into the sink. When will she have yelled and screamed herself all out so that there is no anger left?

  He turns off the water, dries his hands on his pajama bottoms, then goes to the phone again. This time, he picks it up and calls 4–1–1. When the automated operator comes on the line, he asks for the number of Melissa Moody on Monk’s Hill Road. But the only listing for a Moody in Radnor is under the names Joseph and Margaret on Church Street. Her parents, Philip figures, and hangs up. Standing there in the middle of the dirty kitchen, he feels an acute sense of restlessness once more.

  His eyes go to the wooden key rack on the kitchen wall.

  Dangling from one hook is a slim silver key with a black grip attached to Ronnie’s bottle-opener key chain. Philip steps closer to the rack and stares at the tiny Mercedes symbol, a pie split three ways, etched into the silver. Before lifting the key from the hook, he waits a half minute more, willing the phone to ring, willing his mother’s Lexus to pull in the driveway. When neither of those things happen, he resigns himself to the obvious fact that she is not going to call back or come home of her own volition. And since God only knows what his mother is capable of, Philip decides to take the Mercedes, whether she likes it or not, and drive over there before she can do any more damage.

  He removes the skinny key from the hook and cups it in his palm, then makes his way to the family room where he begins searching for his wallet, which contains his driver’s license. Not since his first week in New York has Philip been behind the wheel of a car. He realized pretty quickly that the alternate-side-of-the-street-parking game was nothing but a royal pain in the ass that served to ruin a big chunk of each day. And since he didn’t need a car in the city anyway, he decided to get rid of it. Philip dialed up the Olive Garden and did his best to disguise his voice when that imbecile Walter answered. He asked to speak with Gumaro, and when his old pal came on the line, he said, “Oye, maricón. Es Philip. Come estás?”

  Gumaro laughed. “Bien, pendejo. Donde estás? Miami? Las Vegas?”

  “Nueve York.”

  “Ah, you are finally living the good life, my friend.”

  Philip remembers looking around the studio then at Donnelly Fiume’s dusty antique furniture and the mote of glue traps he strategically positioned around the Murphy bed on his second night there. The good life, he thought. If Gumaro only knew … Just then, Walter began grumbling in the background, and since Philip didn’t want to get Gumaro in trouble for staying on the phone too long, he came right to the point and asked if he wanted the car. “Te gustaria tener un auto nuevo? Mi Subaru?”

  “Quante costo?” Gumaro asked.

  “Nada.”

  “Nada?”

  “Sí. It’s yours for free if you want it.”

  “En serio?”

  “I’m serious, Gumaro.”

  A few days later they met and made the exchange, taking care of the necessary paperwork. And when Gumaro drove off a happy man down St. Mark’s Place, Philip felt freed from one more vestige of his life in Pennsylvania.

  Now, as he sorts through the mess of his belongings on and around the foldout bed, he wonders if he’ll be able to manage maneuvering his brother’s car with his leg in a cast. Since there is only one way to find out, Philip keeps searching until he spots his black leather wallet shoved inside one of his black leather shoes on the floor. He plucks out his driver’s license then slips off his pajama bottoms and tugs on the clothes he wears once a week for his trips to Dr. Kulvilkin’s office—a pair of jeans cut on one side so they fit over his cast and a giant wool sock that slides right over his toes. Then Philip pulls on the turtleneck he wore the night before, finger-combs his hair and heads out of the room. On the way, he glances up at that antique schoolhouse clock on the wall. The hands point to five-thirty, even though it’s somewhere around four. For an entire month now, the ceaseless ticking of this defective piece of junk has driven him crazy. Philip finally decides to do something about it. He pulls open the hinged wooden and glass face, reaches inside and grabs hold of the small pendulum, as though choking its neck, until the thing stops moving.

  The room is silent behind him when Philip leaves. He considers making one last stop in the bathroom, since all that coffee is going right through him. But he makes up his mind to hold it and keeps walking to the door that leads down to the garage. The biggest problem with wearing the cast is that he cannot bend his leg. For that reason, descending a simple set of stairs becomes an Olympic sport for Philip—never mind driving. He persists nonetheless, taking step after awkward step until he has lowered himself into the bowels of the house. From here, he moves quickly, limping through the narrow hallway cluttered with Ronnie’s and his forgotten ten-speeds, a collection of tennis rackets, a volleyball, an old Weber grill, as well as a long-deflated alligator raft they used to float on in the pool out back when they weren’t playing Marco Polo.

  When Philip reaches the garage, he runs his hand along the wall until he locates the switch inside. The bulb must be blown because nothing happens when he flicks it on. He tries a few more times before giving up. With only the hall light to see by, Philip steps inside and looks around at the snug canvas cover his mother must have bought to keep over the Mercedes. The other two bays are empty except for the Rorschach-style oil stains on the floor, a few dented paint cans, and a box marked CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

  He peels back the cover on the car and tosses it in the corner. As Philip sticks the key inside the door, he thinks of how ridiculous it is that his mother keeps it locked in the first place, just like Ronnie’s room upstairs. Once it is open, he puts his crutch in the back then gets situated in the driver’s seat. It takes some effort, but he finds a way to position his legs so that his right is stretched to the passenger side, while his left (the one free of the cast) is poised to man the gas and brake pedals. It is not an ideal setup, not even close, but he tells himself that Monk’s Hill Road is only so far away and he’ll just have to make do.

  Before pressing the button on the garage-door opener that’s clipped to the visor, Philip sits a moment longer inside that dark, sealed garage. He is thinking of a section in the biography he’s been reading, the part that came last, though he read it first. At the age of forty-five, after two unsuccessful suicide attempts, Anne Sexton finally succumbed to her demons. After pouring herself a glass of vodka, she went into the garage of her house at 14 Black Oak Road, started her red Cougar, turned up the radio, and listened as the exhaust fumes took her life. As Philip wonders what kind of courage, foolishness, and instability it must have taken to successfully follow through with an act like that, a few scattered lines from one of Anne’s poems drift back to him:

  Of course guitars will not play!

  The snakes will certainly not notice.

  New York City will not mind.

  Philip is sure that somewhere, some stuffy erudite scholar has a lofty interpretation of those lines, but he takes them to mean that she did not expect there to be a heaven and that the world would go on without her. It is much the same way he feels when he contemplates his own death and his brother’s too, though when it comes to an afterlife, Philip wishes he felt otherwise. He used to assume that atheists were comfortable, even smugly defiant, in their disbelief. Now that he is one, he realizes it is quite the contrary. In Philip’s case anyway, he wants to believe. He wants desperately to regain the wholehearted, unquestioning faith he had as a child. But after suffering from his own demons all these years as he carried the memory of his mother’s words wishing him dead, and after facing so many other cruelties and disappointments of the world, Philip has lost something he cannot get back. That something is his faith.

  Finally he forces himself to stop thinking about the last chapter in Anne Sexton’s story and all the related tangents to his own. Philip reaches up and presses his thumb against the button of the remote control. Above him, the belted
contraption lets out a cough then a low rumbling begins. The door lifts and sunlight streams inside. It comes gradually, like a time-lapse of daybreak, until the entire garage is filled with light.

  He starts the engine, shifts the car into reverse, and backs into the driveway. He pulls onto Turnber Lane, adjusting and readjusting his position in the seat as he tries to get used to working the pedals with his left foot. It is not unlike attempting to write with his opposite hand. Things go relatively smoothly until he encounters the first stop sign on the corner. Philip presses down on the brake with much more force than he intends to, and the Mercedes bucks and skids to a sudden stop. His body jerks forward into the steering wheel, then slams back into his seat. He looks around to be sure no one is watching. As usual, the lawns and sidewalks in front of the large houses in this neighborhood are deserted. For a fleeting moment, he considers simply turning around and going home. Making another pot of coffee. Switching on the TV. Opening his book to the very beginning, since that’s just about the only section he has left. But he has come this far, and there is still the prospect of his mother unleashing one of her trademark tirades on Melissa right now. So, however clumsily, Philip puts his foot to the gas pedal and keeps going.

  As he heads across town, moving well below the speed limit, the steering wheel feels too large in his hands. The tires seem to sway the slightest bit beneath him. The Mercedes is only a 1979 model, but it feels like a relic, especially compared to his mother’s Lexus. He has ridden in her car quite a bit these last four weeks as she begrudgingly shuttled him back and forth to Doctor Kulvilkin’s office, repeating ad nauseam that she didn’t like him, all because his name sounded like you know who’s.

  At the intersection of Matson Ford and Unkman Avenue, Philip makes the same mistake and puts too much pressure on the brakes. The car bucks to a quick stop again, and after he flies forward into the steering wheel then back in his seat, he decides to put on his seat belt. As he does, Philip looks in the rearview mirror to make sure the driver in the car behind him isn’t suffering from whiplash or giving him the finger. That’s when he notices a police car, two vehicles back, behind a station wagon and a minivan.

  “Shit,” he says as all that coffee he consumed splashes around his stomach.

  The light turns green. If Philip wants to take the most direct route, he should hang a right onto Unkman. But the sight of the police car has him nervous about messing up the turn, so he keeps going straight. This proves to be a mistake. The station wagon and minivan quickly weed themselves out, turning off one after another, until the cop car is directly behind him. Philip stares ahead and keeps going well past any direct route to Melissa’s house. When he finally reaches the intersection of Matson Ford and King of Prussia Road, he works up the courage and signals, then presses his foot to the brake as gently as possible. He is so careful not to apply too much pressure that he ends up taking the turn too fast. The police officer turns too.

  “Shit,” Philip says again.

  No lights come on and there is no signal for Philip to pull over, so he keeps driving. He cuts onto Blatts Farm Hill, doing his absolute best to navigate the hills and curves of this windy road. As he passes the stretch where his brother’s accident occurred, Philip doesn’t even glance out the window to see if that stump is still there or if the town finally had it ripped from the ground and taken away. Instead, he keeps his eyes focused straight ahead. When he arrives at Monk’s Hill Road, Melissa’s Corolla is parked up ahead; his mother’s Lexus is nowhere. Since the only driveway has a red truck parked in it, Philip signals and pulls to one side behind Melissa’s car, hoping the police officer will keep going. No such luck. The lights begin flashing. The car comes to a stop directly behind him.

  “Shit,” he says a third time.

  As he waits for the officer to get out and come to his window, Philip releases a breath and glances over at Melissa’s small house with the number 32 on the door. Beside her place is a slightly bigger house. And there in the back, at the edge of the woods, Philip notices a third. Together, they remind him of those roadside motel cabins he remembers seeing on their trip to Cape Cod with his grandparents so many years ago. He and Ronnie had begged to stay in one of those cabins instead of the inn, but his grandmother argued that they were too depressing. At the time they couldn’t understand what she meant, but now he gets it. When Philip looks in the side-view mirror, he sees the officer—a stocky black woman with aviator sunglasses—coming toward him. He rolls down the window and turns his head so that he is eye level with her swollen belly when she reaches the car. She’s pregnant, Philip realizes.

  “Did I do something wrong, officer?” he asks, mustering his most innocent voice.

  She lowers her sunglasses to the tip of her nose and tilts her long neck to one side in order to look at his crutch in the backseat. Then she leans forward to get a view of his broken leg stretched to passenger-side floor. “Driver’s license and registration, please.”

  Philip hands her his license immediately. But it takes some serious stretching to get into the glove compartment. When he finally manages it, he pulls out an envelope and flips through the forms inside. “I’m not sure which one it is,” he says.

  “The yellow one,” she tells him in a brusque, all-business tone.

  Philip hands her the paper. As she stares down at it, he puts on that innocent, friendly voice again and says, “Just like Fargo, huh?”

  The officer looks up at him over her sunglasses. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re pregnant. Just like that movie with the pregnant cop. It was on cable this morning. I watched some of it.”

  Her brown eyes stay fixed on him an extended moment. Finally, she says, “We’ve got a number of problems here, sir. First, you’ve been driving erratically ever since I spotted you back on Matson Ford. Second, your license expired two years ago. And third, probably your biggest offense of all, I’m not pregnant.”

  Philip’s eyes drop to her belly again. “Shit,” he says for the final time today.

  “That’s right. Now, why don’t you tell me what someone in your condition is doing operating a vehicle when it looks to me like you should be convalescing in bed?”

  He knows it is completely shameless of him, but Philip decides to play the pity card in a last-ditch effort to dig himself out of this mess. “I’m sorry,” he tells her. “It’s just that this is my brother’s old car. He died about five years ago in an accident back on Blatts Farm Hill.” Philip watches her face for some sign of recognition or softening but it stays as cold and blank as ever. He continues, “I’m home for the first time in years because I fell from a fourth-floor fire escape in New York City.” Still no reaction. “Anyway, I guess I found myself missing my brother. I thought being in this car again would make me feel closer to him.”

  “And you couldn’t feel closer to him parked in your driveway?”

  Philip doesn’t know what to say to that, and since she doesn’t seem willing to join his pity party, he tells her, “No. I couldn’t”

  “Why did you pull over just now?”

  He glances at Melissa’s motel cabin of a house and the two others clustered nearby, then at the cop’s stern face again. “My brother’s old girlfriend lives here. She was in the accident with him. I was coming by to see her.”

  The officer lifts her neck and squints at the three houses. Philip finds himself peeking over at her large stomach, wondering how he could have possibly made such a stupid mistake, when she asks, “Isn’t this Bill Erwin’s place?”

  “Who?”

  “Bill Erwin.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She is quiet as she continues squinting at the cottages.

  “Unless he lives in one of those others,” Philip adds.

  He waits for her to look back at him, but she keeps her eyes on those ramshackle houses, so different from the others here in Radnor. Finally, she stops staring and turns her attention to Philip once more. “Look. I can’t let you drive like this. D
o you think whoever you said you’re coming to visit can give you a ride home afterward?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “You answered that question awfully fast. I just hope you are telling me the truth, because if I catch you driving, I’m not going to be so nice next time.”

  Philip isn’t aware that she is being so nice this time. “I promise,” he says, wondering where his mother could possibly be if her car is not here. “I’ll be sure to get a ride.”

  When she sticks out his license and the registration, he lifts his hand through the window to retrieve them. But she doesn’t let go right away. Once she has his attention, the officer looks him squarely in the eyes and says, “Let me give you two pieces of advice, Mr. Chase. Number one: get your license renewed. Number two: never, as long as you live, ask or imply that a woman is pregnant. I don’t care if she’s in labor and you can see the baby’s head peeking out between her legs, the rule is: Do. Not. Ask. Get it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.”

  With that, she releases the license and registration and walks back to her car. Philip returns the yellow paper to the envelope and tosses it on the seat. Before making another move, he waits for her to drive away, but she sits inside her car a while, looking as though she is doing some sort of paperwork as those lights on her roof continue flashing. He glances over at the houses again, surprised that neither Melissa nor her neighbors have come to their doors to see what it going on. At long last, the officer turns off her lights and drives away down the road. Philip gives a friendly wave as she goes, but she does not wave back.

  Once her car is out of sight, he runs his hand along the rim of his turtleneck, feeling the wound beneath. According to Dr. Kulvilkin’s orders, Philip is supposed to put the bandages back on every morning after letting the wound breathe all night. But he is so tired of dealing with ointments and gauze and medical tape that he didn’t bother today. As best he can, Philip tries to put his faux pas with the police officer out of his mind so he can concentrate on what to do next. If his mother isn’t here, he doesn’t particularly want to go to the door. But he can’t drive home, now that old Jelly Belly is likely to be waiting around every turn. He takes out his cell and calls his mother’s number again. It goes straight to voice mail. He tries her at home too. The machine picks up. Since there doesn’t seem to be any other alternative, Philip surrenders to the moment and makes up his mind to knock on Melissa’s door. Who knows? Maybe she will tell him that his mother has already come and gone. After all, it has been almost an hour since she called, and it’s not like they would have passed each other on the roads, seeing as he traveled the most indirect route possible.