West of You

by Christina Metcalf

  And that is how rich people tell you to fuck off.

  Sweet Home Alpha Gamma. Where the Sisters Are So True.

  I didn’t know what time his meeting was so I showed myself out around four and went to the nearest Waffle House. Cellphones are good for something. Back in the day I would’ve either had to drive around looking or mucked around until I found Palmer’s Yellow Pages. Thank goodness.

  I didn’t really sleep well. I could hear Cherish’s whiny New York accent trying to find out why Palmer was so upset. He was silent, which only made her louder. Still, I preferred that to listening to them having sex. Some people reward non communication in weird ways.

  Judy took my order and winked at me. She was one of those people who winked in an endearing way not because it was a nervous tick. It was the kind of deliberate action that made you feel like you were in on a secret. In turn, I wanted to tell her all of my secrets.

  She reminded me of what my mom would look like now if she hadn’t planned well for her future and she was barely scraping by. Actually, I remember very little about what my mom looked like. I guess I blocked it out. I remember her long auburn hair and the feel of it when she swung her head around, whipping it in my face. My first memory of her was crawling into her lap during the Phil Donahue show and her politely placing me beside her. I remember big tortoise shell sunglasses but I don’t remember what she looked like under them. Not clearly. I remember a far off look that frequented her eyes like she was looking directly past my shoulder at something on the horizon but I couldn’t tell you if her eyes were green or blue. Sometimes Mike makes a disappointed face that looks vaguely familiar and I attribute it to her though there’s obviously no relation. I’m just used to people looking at me that way.

  The only pictures of her still in existence are in my dad’s toolbox. He told me he threw them all out. He threw the ones out that I had easy access to. Probably wanted me to do something manly like “move on.” But he kept his indulgence. I guess after all these years he’s just not ready to let go.

  I imagine mom married for money this time and I am fairly certain she’d do it a second time. But marrying for love sure as hell didn’t get her anywhere. I remember her telling me how she just wasn’t meant for this kind of life. I was four. She told me after Donahue. I didn't know what that meant. Still don’t. Not sure if it meant living in Mass or living with us. I guess both.

  Judy didn’t look like the type who would ever run out on anyone. If Bonnie Raitt wrote that song about making someone love her about anyone other than herself, it was probably Judy.

  I pulled my paper map out onto the table to decide where I’d head next. When it comes to making those types of decisions, a smartphone just doesn’t give you enough vision of how everything fits together. You need paper for that.

  “Where ya headed?” Judy asked as she filled up my coffee.

  I wondered why in the world everyone keeps asking me that. They act like I know. For a moment I felt like Jack Kerouac and I wanted to say something deep and inspiring that she would tell other customers about years from now. “There was this one customer…”

  But I only had, “West.”

  “I like a gal who knows where she’s goin.’”

  “Well, you set your sites low and you’re bound to get there, right?”

  I searched her face to see if that was a deep enough moment. She smiled like I was the slow kid in class.

  “I useta live in Albuquerque.” she placed the coffee carafe on the table. “My old man drove truck and I went with him all around. It was so excitin’ seein’ the world like that.”

  I nod even though I’m thinking seeing the continental US is hardly the world but to Judy I guess it was.

  “We got into a bad way in New Mexico and that’s where he dropped me. Come to think of it, I guess we’re still married.”

  She smiled a nostalgic grin. The cynic in me figured she was pulling my leg but there are plenty of people out there still married because they haven’t tried hard enough not to be.

  “Did you love him?” I asked.

  “When it happened or in general?”

  “Either.”

  “Oh sure. I loved him like a mental illness. Still do”

  I didn’t know to what degree one loves a mental illness. A lot? Did she mean in a sick and unhealthy way? I didn’t feel like I had time to ask her.

  Judy’s boss stopped by and asked if everything was okay. I told him this was the best service I had ever had. He grumbled something about being happy to hear that and then told Judy she had to get back to work.

  Before she did, she said, “Don’t go to Albuquerque. Pretty sure it’s cursed.”

  I promised her I wouldn’t. But it made me want to.

  At about the time the sun came up, I was sleeping soundly in my car. Was, that is, until the incessant knocking against my window. I rolled it down and there was Judy.

  “You shouldn’t sleep in the car ‘round here. And if you’re travelin’ alone, you need to get yourself a weddin’ ring so’s people think there’s someone out there carin’ ‘bout you.”

  I nodded and told her there were people “carin’” about me. She said she had people too. We both were liars.

  My kids care about me in that I feed them but as my son mentioned when I said I was leaving for a trip west, “Who’s going to drive me to school?” I am a taxi and a chef to them. Nothing that a few dollars couldn’t cover.

  I don’t feel sad about that. Any mom who thinks her young children love her for anything more than what she is to them is delusional. There’s a questionnaire floating around Facebook that instructs moms to ask their kids a handful of questions about them, questions like “how old am I” and “what’s my favorite food.” One of my favorites is “what makes me happy.” I’ve read a lot of answers to these types of questions, from kids of all ages. But almost all of them answer that question in the same way, “Being with me.” Kids are self-centric like that. They can’t imagine their moms finding happiness in anything outside of their personal space.

  I was not that kid. I learned very early on that I brought my mother no happiness. Hopefully she’s found hers now that I’m not in the way.

  Kids come into this life needing things and they keep needing. Eventually, they may come to know who you are as a person but then there’s no guarantee they’re going to love you.

  Take my dad. I can’t say I really love him. I love him because he’s my dad and he raised me but in reality, he was a man who didn’t think much outside of what he was doing at work the next day and what show he’d watch that night. He lived within a rigid structure of things that must be done a certain way. Growing up, you couldn’t have dinner for breakfast and you most certainly couldn’t have breakfast for dinner. That’s just the way things were. These days, he eats his beans for breakfast and drinks the rest of his meals.

  My mother, on the other hand, lacked all of those conventional rules. With her, you could have dinner whenever you damn please and you can leave your kid with a man, who although he fathered her, was a complete enigma. Long hours of work had left him a mystery to me long before she took off. I guess the perfect parent lies somewhere in between those two people whom I love in name only because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

  “Did you decide where you’re goin’?” Judy asked as she lit her cigarette. I loved watching people light one outdoors. They guard it with the softest touch. The kind you save for baby chicks.

  “I think I’ll drive to Point Pleasant, West Virginia.”

  “Point Pleasant? What on earth is there? Thought yer headin’ west.”

  “Well, word has it that it isn’t cursed and I am but I’m kinda puttin’ it off.” I was picking up her habit of dropping the g’s.

  Judy smiled at me the way a mother smiles at her daughter when she realizes she is exactly like her.

  “...And Mothman.” I add.

  “Mothman? Oh, I remember that one.”

  This does
not surprise me.

  “He allegedly shows up when bad things are about to happen.” I warned.

  “Just some kids having too much to drink one night, I suspect.”

  “More like a government experiment.” I laughed at myself. So many people waste time talking about government conspiracies. Have you ever known the government to be able to do anything effectively much less keep an alien in secret. There are days they can’t even deliver my mail.

  “Well, I wish you luck.” She walked away toward the bus stop.

  “Thanks. Hey…Can I drive you somewhere?”

  “Ida know. You seem nice and all but the Mothman thing….Ida know.”

  I nodded. Wouldn’t be the first time someone thought I was not alright.

  “Do me a favor...fall in love, why don’tcha?” she suggested.

  “How do you know I’m not already in love?” I ask.

  Suddenly, Judy seemed way stranger than Mothman.

  “You need some balance, kid. A good guy might help that.”

  “Like your truck driver?”

  “I told you. That town was cursed.”

  Wish I knew good times for a change

  When I hit the border of West Virginia, I pulled into a Chick-fil-A and called Mike. If I hadn’t lost all track of time, he should be at baseball. This way I could call and get the credit without having to speak with him and face the fact that I was turning into a lousy mother just like my mom.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey. Thought you’d be coaching.”

  “Then why did you call?”

  Damn it.

  “You know me. I don’t like to talk and drive at the same time. I just happened to pull over so I thought I’d try you.”

  “Practice was called on account of rain.”

  “Your rain is my luck.” I hoped that my statement sounded happy and not at all sarcastic. “How are the kids?”

  “Everyone’s doing well. Cyn might kill your cat, though. Hope you’re not too attached.”

  “How many times has it thrown up on her stuff?”

  “Only every day.”

  I smiled and promised the universe that if the cat was still living when I got home I would buy it a giant pillow and stuff it with catnip and carry it around like it was ancient Egypt.

  “The cat is sensitive to spices.”

  “Huh? I haven’t given her any spices.”

  I muted him quickly and stifled a laugh, a big, evil, choking cackle. What kind of guy lives with a girl named after a spice, town, car, or weather type for that matter? Mike doesn’t get it because although his girlfriend’s name is a spice she spells it like a headliner on the marquis outside of a strip club: “Tonight only: Cynamon.” But he calls her Cyn like that’s any better. If our daughter doesn’t end up dancing on a pole next to her future step mom, it will be a miracle.

  “Is Maddie around?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  I looked at my watch. It’s 10:30. Why is she still sleeping?

  “What about Henry?”

  “You can try but he’s on the box.”

  “Put me on speaker then.”

  “ ‘kay.”

  “Hey Henry. What’s going on?”

  “Nothin’.”

  I could hear the sounds of war in the background. Henry was so poorly named. When he came along I was into this British phase where I loved all sorts of Pride and Prejudice type stuff. I thought Henry sounded regal. But the minute he came out he was all red-faced and screaming like he should’ve been wearing camo and sporting a mullet. He was a man’s man stuck with a prissy name.

  Even though he wasn’t yet five feet tall, he reminded me every chance he had that the name “Henry” was holding back his sports career. He was on a one-man campaign to get his entire baseball team to call him “Dawg” instead. I thought it sounded kind of silly with his last name--Brown--but I’m only his mom.

  “How’s school?”

  “School’s school.”

  I suddenly felt married to my son where every word was torture and I felt obligated to think of things to say knowing he wasn’t paying any attention.

  “Hey Sary.” I heard a young female voice in the background and not one I gave birth to. Suddenly I regretted asking Mike to put me on speaker.

  “Hi Cynamon.”

  “Havin’ a good trip?”

  This time her voice is louder. I can tell she’s walked over closer to the phone.

  “Well, as good as one can have when you’re taking a part of your best friend to be sprinkled in the surf.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. That sucks. She wasn’t that old either, right?”

  “My age.”

  “Uh-huh. So not that old.”

  “Mike’s age.”

  I liked to remind her in case she forgot, which she does a lot from the large number of Ed Hardy t-shirts I’ve seen him wearing recently and calling them all gifts from her.

  “Sorry about Rabbit and all that barf.”

  And yes, we named the cat Rabbit. We thought it was avant garde at the time.

  “Yeah, I kinda hate the little shit.”

  “Just don’t boil him in a pot.”

  “Ewww. I don’t eat cat.”

  I fought the need to mute the phone and instead bit my lip.

  “You’ve also never seen the movie.”

  Then I remembered it was likely she wasn’t born yet when it came out.

  “Well, it was good talking to you all. Henry, I love you. Tell Maddie I love her too when she gets up.”

  I pretended the grunt I heard from my son was an enduring testament to the love he has for me. Some such nonsense about “to the moon and back.”

  My text sound went off and I wondered what Mike forgot to tell me. But it was Walsey who just wanted to say I was on his mind. Over the past three months his constant vigilance and care had made him one of the most important constants in my life. But I was also relieved he didn’t want to get married. It gave me a reason to pretend we were at an impasse and couldn’t go forward. It gave me permission to stall. Walsey was the perfect distraction and the distance meant he didn’t have to see me at my worst. He could think of me as “beautiful” even when I was talking to him on the phone in the same thing I had worn for the past four days. He wasn’t the wiser. Plus, I could be normal for a handful of seconds it took to text or the few minutes he’d hear my voice. I was the best version of me with him because he wasn’t around. I was a Betty Crocker mom and he could be the White Knight on a unicorn galavanting through the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Perfect in every way.

  Wish I could stop, Switch off the clock Because nothing compares to you

  I drove past Cricket’s house three times before doubling back, sucking in my courage, and driving down the tractor path. I wondered what would happen if I got to the bottom of the muddy mess and it wasn’t her broken down car on skids but someone who was not nearly as friendly to a single woman with a thick Massachusetts accent.

  Luckily, I recognized one of her children from Facebook and that moon pie face put me at ease. Even if the child hadn’t, the minute I put the car in park, Cricket came running out squealing, just as I remembered her.

  She gave me a huge Midwestern squeeze before she remembered this was not a happy meeting. I wasn’t skipping through one of the heaviest meth-infested areas of the country (second to my hometown) on a lark. I was passing through on my way with my best friend, Powder. I decided right there and then as Cricket hugged the awful out of me that my beloved friend M should be “Powder” from now on.

  She held me out at arm’s length as one of the children wrapped their muddy hands around my knees.

  “I am so sorry to hear about M. I can hardly believe it. Are we really old enough to die?”

  I looked down at the child I would later find out was nicknamed Moose because of his size, and he scampered off. Truth be told, he wasn’t all that big. Tall, I mean. If they wanted to name him more aptly it shoulda been s
omething like “pancake.” Fairly wide but only a little fluffy in the height department.

  I wanted to tell her that any age can off themselves but I figured with countless children in the vicinity it was best to keep that fun fact to myself.

  She placed an arm around me and guided me into her manufactured home advising me to avoid the smattering of plastic toys faded from the sun and the elements. I looked around her wood paneled living room and will admit after being mostly in a car for 3 days, it seemed quite dreamy.

  “Sit, sit. I know you want something to drink. What can I get you?”

  I looked around as if on her walls might be a beverage menu.

  “Mountain Dew?” I asked, figuring I’m in the depths of its market.

  “Diet, regular, Kickstart grape, cherry, mango, lime, Ice?”

  I was clearly in over my head. But since I’m a purist in most things, I went with regular.

  “Cup or the whole can?”

  I felt like I was on an airplane.

  “Can is fine.” But the minute I said those words, I wondered if I was stealing from Moose’s lunch tomorrow.

  She brought me one with a bag of Doritos.

  “Thought you might be hungry.”

  It was 10:30 in the morning and I was. Cricket always got me.

  She sat perched on the arm of the couch, while I sunk into it. A moment later, with the cry of one of the children who may or may not have been hers--it wasn’t Moose--she was up in a flash. Pirouetting over strewn toys with the grace of the dancer she was back in school.

  She must’ve addressed the issue or muffled the child because the crying stopped without another sniffle.

  “Jimmy sure would like to meet you.”

  I nod assuming Jimmy is her latest husband’s name. It sounds mean. She’s only been married twice but one happened right after the other. Her first husband, Zeke, wrapped his car around a tree. I kinda thought she’d off herself after that. He left her with three kids under three. The family had been living with his step mother. Zeke was Cricket’s high school sweetheart, maybe even her middle school sweetheart. First love, you know how it goes.