by Greg Enslen
He shook his head. How come when he wanted to be left alone, somebody always wanted to talk to him, to bother him? What, did he have a sign taped onto his forehead that said “please annoy me to death?”
“No, I’m just passing through.” All he wanted was to eat and leave. Food, and a little coffee, and then some rest, that’s all. Not a lot of stupid questions. And why was she staring at him? “Can you take my order, please? “ he said, the words coming out a little sharper than he wanted, but only a little.
She rolled her eyes and pulled out her order book, flipping it to the next blank check with an over-handed wrist move that reminded David strongly of Captain Kirk flipping open one of those communicators on the old Star Trek show. “Sure, hun. What can I get you?”
He ordered, but the whole time he was ordering, he could feel her eyes on him. What? What did she want? It was starting to tick him off. When he finished he looked up at her, and she was still looking at him, even as her pen finished scribbling down the last of his order.
Finally, after a long moment of staring, his temper got the better of him. Usually he kept his temper under control better, but tonight, with Bethany‘s book and the weather and the crowded counter, it got away from him. “What are you looking at?”
She backed away from the counter and let out a little laugh, putting her hand to her chest. “My, you are in a testy mood, aren’t you, son? Didn’t your mother teach you better manners?”
He lowered his head a little, ashamed that he had snapped like that. She was a nice lady, and here he was, making an ass of himself. He’d only been taking out his anger on her.
“My mother never taught me anything. She died giving birth to me,” he said, his voice considerably lower this time. He had no idea why he would tell a total stranger something like that, especially one that had only succeeded in annoying him, but the words were out before he realized what he was saying.
She stepped back up to the counter, patting David on one arm. “Aw, I’m sorry son. Nobody should have to grow up without a mother.” She looked at his order slip again, double-checking to make sure the order was right. “I’ll be right back with your order.”
She turned and hurried off, and after a few seconds, he could hear her in the back, giving orders to the cooks to hurry his order. It made him smile, hearing that nice lady with the DORIS pin doting over him, looking out for him, even though he’d been an ass to her.
People were pretty nice all over, if you really thought about it. There were bad people out there, that was for sure, and there were some bad people even back in Liberty, but for the most part, people were nice all over.
Like Liberty. There were all kinds of nice people back there. Bethany, Abe Foreman, his roommate, old Mrs. Denners that ran the drugstore downtown. They all had always been nice to him, always had a nice word for him. And his Aunt, even when she was in a poor mood and half in the bag, she was still family. Even as aggravating as she was, it was a hell of a lot better than nobody or nothing at all to care about.
Bethany. Just the thought of her reminded him of the long, carefree afternoons they had spent together at the video store, back when they had just been falling for each other. He remembered the playful banter back and forth, the play-arguing and the teasing that so often accompany the early stages of a romantic relationship.
Once, they had had an entire play-argument over Billy Joel and who was a bigger fan. David liked the more heavy stuff, his favorite bands being Rush and Metallica, and on the other side of the musical coin, Bethany was a huge fan of the golden oldies and the Motown sound: CD’s from Ben E. King, Sam Cooke, Elvis and The Temptations were among her collection. But neither one of them was too firmly planted in their own musical areas to not expand their interests, and they shared an appreciation for Billy Joel. But she liked his older stuff, like the songs off of ‘Stranger’ and ‘Glass Houses’, whereas David argued for the newer, more rock-oriented material off of ‘The Bridge’ and, most especially, the newest album, ‘River of Dreams’. They play-argued back and forth for hours about it one day at Big Video and More, not really upset at each other but more like testing each other, testing for reactions and responses.
He guessed that all relationships went through the same kinds of things, though he’d never talked to anyone about it before. Just one more thing he’d never discussed with anyone, never found out the right and wrong ways to approach a relationship. He’d never asked for advice from anyone, and no one had offered.
It just seemed like a shame. So much work, so much effort put into it, and it all added up to nothing.
But it hadn’t added up to nothing, had it? They’d shared something REAL for a while, hadn’t they? The times they had spent together had been the best in his life, so far. Was the fact that he was so used to failure, had that been a good reason to break up with her? Or was it because he was planning on leaving, and had been planning to leave for years, just wanting to get out of town and never look back?
While he had been with her, everything else in his life had seemed, somehow, less important. All the bad things in his life, his job, his car, his relationship with his Aunt, his lack of any driving ambition, his failure at college, all of those things had seemed a little better.
It wasn’t that he didn’t have any ambitions either. He’d always wanted to be an architect, and Bethany had encouraged him to return to school and work on his degree. He’d tried college, and that was actually where he had met Bethany, but one set of summer courses had convinced him that studying and academics weren’t for him. It wasn’t that he was stupid or anything. He’d done well in high school, but he suddenly realized that he wasn’t really driven to do anything. Whenever something became too difficult, too much of a challenge, he would bail out of it. His short-lived college education, his girlfriends, his relationship with his aunt. Even his hometown. When things had gotten too difficult to handle, he’d bailed, heading out for California and the promise of better things.
Running away from his problems, but David realized that he was carrying a lot of problems with him, and they would go with him wherever he tried to run.
But now he saw that things wouldn’t be any better or different in California, no matter how much better the weather was or how much more exciting the nightlife might be. He realized that it wouldn’t be any better because the problem wasn’t where he was; the problem was him. The problem was inside his head, where nobody else could get to it but him. Bethany had tried to help him, and he’d only pushed her away.
A lot of other people had tried to help him, but he’d pushed them away, too, or angered them so that they would leave, or said things to hurt them.
The problem wasn’t about his job or the ghost of his dead father, haunting his every waking moment, or his relationship with Bethany.
No, the problem was him.
“What’s her name, honey?”
He looked up, surprised, and saw that his food had come and been set in front of him and he hadn’t even noticed. He’d been zoned completely out. Doris had asked him a question, staring at him.
“Who?” he asked, even though he thought he knew exactly what she meant.
Doris smiled, and pointed at his food. “You must’ve been thinking about your girl ‘cause I brought that food and set it down in front of you a while back, and you’ve been just staring at it. And in such an all-fired hurry to order, too! So, what’s her name?” she asked again.
David resigned and told her.
“Oh, that’s a pretty name. Did you call her Bethany, or just Beth?”
“Mostly Bethany. I just liked the sound of it.”
“Uh huh.” She was looking at him carefully, her deep blue eyes studying him as if she was trying to crawl inside his head for a look around. “So why did you break up with her?”
He shook his head, half-amazed at her ability to read his emotions. Maybe it had come from all that staring she had been doing earlier.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m so use
d to things going wrong for me, I figured that things were going too good and they’d never last. I guess I broke up with her to keep from hurting both of us, and ended up hurting us more.” He felt like an idiot, opening up to this stranger, but she had kind eyes and seemed to understand what he was talking about, nodding as he spoke.
“I know what you’re talking about. My sister was just like you, never lettin’ herself be happy, never tryin’ for anything better. Pretty soon she had nothing to live for at all,” she said, her voice very low.
She shook her head as if she wanted to go on and say more, but then she didn’t, and to David it looked like she was trying to blink something out of her eyes.
She smiled at him and patted one of his hands and moved off down the counter, wiping up some counter areas that had been vacated by leaving customers.
That was weird, he thought. She’d been happy and cheerful, and now she was suddenly very sad. What had happened to her sister? For the moment, he was very curious about Doris and her mysterious sister - it was nice to have something else to think about, even if it was only for a few minutes.
After a few minutes, Doris wandered back over, glancing at him as he worked on his omelet and toast. “Sorry about that, but talking about Doreen makes me a little sad, even though it’s been over a year.”
David watched her carefully. “What happened to her?”
Doris looked up sharply, and started wiping the counter on one side of him. “She gave up. She decided that there was nothing left worth living for. She was in High School and had been in really good shape for a while, but then she got dumped by a guy and that pretty much destroyed what was left of her self-confidence.”
She looked at his questioning face, and continued.
“She killed herself. Pills.” Her eyes got distant, seeing the past. “She would have graduated from high school this past spring, and probably be starting college this month.” She finished up her wiping around David‘s part of the counter and moved off to check on her other customers, leaving David to eat his omelet.
As he ate, he thought about what she had said. What if he went on for the rest of his life always running away when things got too difficult, always bailing out of situations he didn’t agree with, how far could he run? What if things pushed him too far and there wasn’t any place left to run to?
Back in high school, he could’ve tried a lot harder. His Drafting 101 instructor had told him that he’d had real talent, and evidently the guy had been genuinely disappointed when David hadn’t signed up for any more of the architecture and drafting classes they offered. But did that mean that he could’ve gone somewhere with it? How would he ever know now? And even if he didn’t have any kind of talent for that kind of thing, wouldn’t it have been better to find out back then, instead of always wondering about it?
It was the same with Bethany and with Liberty and with everything else wrong in his life. The pictures in her book had shown him how happy he had been, and now he was running from all of that, scared to be hurt. But to fix something, you had to look right at it and size it up and find solutions for the problem and solve it. Not look away, not NOT face it, not ignore it, not run away from the problem and hope it didn’t follow you too far. Looking away didn’t make the problem go away, it just meant that you couldn’t see the problem anymore.
It was like drinking and drinking and getting drunk just to avoid problems that seemed too big to solve sober. He had heard the horror stories and lived the life of someone affected by a person who had a problem with alcohol, but now David was beginning to see that his aunt’s alcoholism wasn’t too far separated from his own problem. He and his aunt shared a special kinship that he had never seen before - they both ran away from their problems. David climbed into a car and drove, up into the mountains or off to California or away from his crying ex-girlfriend as she stood in a rain-puddled parking lot. His aunt simply climbed into the next bottle and refused to come out. Maybe that’s where he’d learned it.
He looked up and saw Doris standing down at the far end of the counter. She wasn’t looking at him or talking to any other customers; instead, she was looking at some guy. Actually, looking wasn’t the right word - she was positively glaring at some big guy who was carrying two cardboard boxes of liquor around the counter and into the bar area of the restaurant, a darker area off to one side that had a neon sign hanging over the entrance that read “The Hole”. The man was a big man, very muscular, and he obviously had no trouble carrying the boxes, and as he passed Doris and headed around into the bar, he smiled at her and blew a little kiss at her, his eyes fiery and strange. But even from his seat, David could see that the man’s smile wasn’t meant to be friendly. It was a spiteful smile, an angry one.
Doris wandered back over and stood in front of him. “Sorry, hun. I didn’t mean to fly off the handle like that. It’s just that I don’t talk about Bird very much, and when I saw you sittin’ there, feeling sorry for yourself, you just reminded me a lot of her.”
He was confused. “Who’s Bird?”
She smiled. “That’s what we always called Doreen. She was always flitting around like a bird, diving out of one thing and into the next. I started calling her that one day and it just kinda stuck.”
He remembered the black bird he’d seen in the Shenandoah Mountains, and a little shiver worked up his spine and crawled along his arms. He’d been at that rest stop and that was where he’d decided once and for all to chuck it all and go west.
“You okay, hun? You sure are ponderin’ on something,” Doris said, a hint of amusement in her voice.
David tried to forget about the black bird and moved back to his earlier question.
“Yeah, I’m fine - just thinking about your sister. Why...why did she do it?” He didn’t really want to know, not really, but he wanted to talk about Bethany even less. And this Doreen sounded like a female version of him, except for the very small fact that she was now busy being dead.
Doris just shook her head. “I never really found out, not for sure. She did mention to me a lot of times about things she regretted not doing with her life, things that she’d wanted to do but never got around to it. But then, we all have those kinds of regrets,” she said, looking at the entrance to The Hole. “But it was when she got dumped by that pig that she really lost it. It was only a day or two after that she took the pills and climbed into her bed and passed on.”
He glanced at the entrance to the bar, and nodded. “He was the guy?”
“Yeah, and I don’t think he cared, one way or the other. He’s been a pig as long as anyone can remember. He’s mixed up in some shady stuff, and he’s got a pretty little wife that some say he uses as a punching bag. But it wasn’t about him or his violent nature or his creepy friends that come in here - it was Doreen. She’d dropped out of high school, and she’d planned on but never got around to going to beautician’s college like she’d wanted to. She’d had to have gone back and finished her high schoolin’ before she could’ve gotten in, anyway, but it never happened. She kept puttin’ it off and puttin’ it off, and finally her time just kinda ran out. Everyone always told her she was good with the make-up; hell, she used to do up everybody for dates and proms and dances and things. I remember people encouraged her to go back to school and to go on to Beauty College, but she was too afraid, I guess. Afraid of failing, afraid of even starting, if the truth be told.”
Doris stopped for a moment, and from the look in her eyes, David could see that she was remembering. After a moment she continued.
“She never ‘went for it’, as you kids like to say now-a-days, and I guess the questions and the regrets kept piling up, and they finally got to be too much for her.”
David nodded along, knowing exactly what she was talking about. He was afraid to let himself be hurt; he could see that now. And because of that fear, he had held himself back, never putting his life or his future or his heart on the line.
It was like some gambler had once said: There are
no rewards without risk.
He had been too afraid that Bethany would eventually tire of him and end it, and because of that, he had ended it, prematurely. But the pictures in her book spoke so loudly about how she felt about him. But what if they had gone on for years, and gotten married, and had kids? Had his fear, his simple insecurity, made all of that happiness impossible? Maybe not. Maybe, if he went back right now and finished something for once in his life instead of always running away, maybe this time she would...
“It’s right over there, hun.”
David looked up curiously to see Doris pointing at something behind him.
He swiveled in his chair and saw that she was pointing at the closed-in area between the outside and inside doors that led out of the restaurant, and inside that area he saw two pay phones hanging on the wall. He hadn’t seen them before because he had come in through the connecting hallway to the hotel, but now that he saw them, he knew Doris had read his mind.
“It’s pretty damn obvious how much you miss her,” she said from over his shoulder. He did not turn around but kept looking at the pay phone, deciding. “And to tell the truth,” Doris said, “she’s probably thinking about you right now, too.”
It was the last part, the part about her thinking about him too, that made up his mind for him. It was like hearing the solid ‘clink’ of the last chamber of a combination on a safe as it was dialed in, and now he felt a sudden surge of relief. What had he been trying to prove by leaving? That he was a big, strong guy who could venture off into the great wide open all by himself? All he had really managed to do was run away from everyone he’d ever known, alienating them with his fear, all in a futile attempt to chase a stupid pipedream that now was obviously just another excuse to run away, to try and leave his problems behind.
A pipedream about running away from his family, his friends, his responsibilities.