West of You

by Christina Metcalf

  “Not right now.”

  “For fuck’s sake! Straight answer from you would be nice.”

  I remember having a conversation with the kids when I picked them up from school a few days before I left. I told Henry to always remember men say what they think and want you to do. Women, on the other hand, qualify their desires with phrases like “it would be nice” and “I would prefer.” But I told him never to mistake those feelings or qualifiers. They were just as strong commands as a man telling you to do something. More so if you were sleeping with one of those women but I left that part of the life lesson out.

  I felt forced to explain that difference after Henry ignored his teacher’s request of “it would be nice if you wrote more than this on your test.” He was surprised to see an “F” because she had said “it would be nice” not “it’s mandatory” or “you need to” so he figured he had a choice and he chose laziness.

  Henry nodded when I pointed out the difference. It felt like I was conducting a good parenting moment until he said, “Dad always says ‘it would be nice.”

  I let that drop just as I wanted to let this go now. But he deserved more than that.

  “The sheriff is Luke’s brother.”

  “Well, thank God. I didn’t know what had happened.”

  I nodded as if he could see me. I couldn’t decide if I would rather be on the phone with him or face Luke’s questions and what I assumed would be a case of slow-boiling rage at my unwillingness to give him a straight answer.

  “You had something to tell me?” I figured I’d take on the train. Is that a saying? Bull by the horns? Bite the bullet? Take on the train? Do you like it, M? She chose silence.

  “Yeah, is now a good time?”

  “Good as…” I was about to finish with “any” when a rap on the window made me substitute that word with “Jesus Christ!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sorry, nothing.”

  Luke’s face crumbled into a grin against the window and I said a quick thank you to the universe that he was not an angry drunk. I rolled down the window, placed Mike on mute, and told Luke I was talking to Mike. He nodded and waved as he went back inside. I love the sound of screen doors slamming.

  “Sorry. Just Luke. I’m in my car. I guess he came to check on me.”

  “If now’s not a good time…”

  I watched the bugs on my windshield and appreciated the fact I was not out there in the open air with them. Everything is bigger in Texas.

  “Go ahead.” I urged not really wanting to hear.

  I’d have to hear it eventually anyway. How he was getting married again. How he hadn’t expected to fall in love but they had and how Cyn loves our kids. But as I prepare myself for the deluge of emotion, trying to figure out some witty comment about hoping to get an invite...no words come.

  I watched Luke inside the well-lit house. He walked from the kitchen through the dining room into the living room. He stared up at his dad’s portrait over the fireplace. The house he was raised in. Maybe the house he hoped to raise kids in. Had they ever thought of kids? I never asked and she never offered. I just assumed her being in her mid-forties meant they’d be that cool childless couple that every married couple secretly felt jealous over. He must be so lonely on this big ranch.

  The crick in my neck brought me back to the guy I was supposed to be talking to. I couldn’t stand the silence any longer and so I erupted with:

  “When are you getting married?”

  I expected him to be won over by my cleverness but instead he says, “We’re not. Not right now.”

  Then what on earth is so important and why does he have that clipped, sad sound in his voice like he’s holding something back? Something he doesn’t want to tell me.

  “Cyn’s...we’re...having a baby.”

  And there it was.

  The one thing that hurt more than him getting married. Let’s face it, I didn’t want to be married to him so it wouldn’t be fair to be upset about that. Plus, Cyn would only be his current wife until the next one came along, and I was pretty sure there’d be another. You can’t advance into old age with a spice girl. But a baby? She wasn’t supposed to be the mother of any of his children. That was my title and my title alone. Now she had a permanent branch on his family tree.

  And I was going to be sick. The car was too hot. The night too cold. Too many bugs banging senselessly against the windshield. Luke pacing the rooms like he was looking for M and it was all caving in around me. So I brought up the only thing that made a difference…

  “But...you had a vasectomy.”

  Maybe she was cheating on him like he cheated on me. The silence on the other line meant he had either considered this himself or he was currently coming to grips with this awkward reality. Until…

  “I had it reversed three months ago. I didn’t want to tell you. It was right before Marin died.”

  “Don’t use her name!”

  “It didn’t seem right telling you then. Plus, I...we didn’t know if it would work. I didn’t want to upset you anymore than... you were.”

  “Do you think I would have given a shit about what direction your sperm were flowing when my best friend offed herself?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why the hell would you do something so stupid? Do you want to be 80 when the kid graduates from college?”

  “I’ll be 67.”

  “If you’re still alive.”

  He said nothing to that and I wondered if he’d hung up. I wondered if she was there with a hand on her belly listening to me scream at him for knocking up some woman other than me.

  “You told me you didn’t want any more kids.” I said like that would make the new child any less real.

  “Two was enough for us.”

  “But when I wanted more, you said you didn’t.” I reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “And now you’re having one? So what? You just changed your mind?”

  “I don’t think now’s the time…”

  “No, I need to know….”

  This is the point in the conversation where I become a very bad part of myself. I can see it like a giant precipice in the distance coming up on me. In Saint Petersburg, Florida there’s a bridge that crosses the mouth of the Tampa Bay. It’s one of those high bridges that forms the type of steep hill that feels almost like the first incline on a rollercoaster. Mike drove me over it before the kids were born. It was supposed to be a romantic getaway trip but he spent most of it kissing the rear ends of his company C-suite.

  I hadn’t thought about that terrifying rise on that bridge for nearly twenty years and now it came flooding back. That feeling tightening in my chest. The lack of oxygen in the car, at least it felt that way.

  Because right before we drove over it, Mike had told me its story. It wasn’t the spot’s original bridge we were driving on. In 1980, a cargo ship ran into the old one during a freak storm. The accident caused a portion of the bridge to collapse in seconds. 35 people died. They were driving along one minute like normal and as they reached the apex of the bridge, they couldn’t see the missing stretch of road. They were launched into the sky and then into the sea. The thought of what they felt at that moment cools my blood even during this sweltering night.

  The conversation with Mike brought up that long buried moment of terror on the bridge. But I was hardly unaware of the potential for freefall. Instead, I saw that opening and launched myself purposely forward with life-threatening acceleration.

  “So, you didn’t want any more kids with me but you want them with her?”

  My head throbbed and it wasn’t until I felt the snot on my upper lip that I realized I was crying. I saw Luke on the porch and the red glow that comes from a distant cigarette. Mike was silent.

  “Well…” I prompted.

  “It was a different time.”

  “It was only 8 years ago!”

  “That’s a world away.”

  I could’ve
taken that as an out. It did seem like a very long time ago.

  “Admit it. You didn’t want to have any more kids...with me.” I choked back a sob but knew he could hear it. His hesitation in answering told me he was a terrified passenger headed into the unknown. As the conversation continued, I saw the gap between the sections of road in our life’s path. I imagined the sparkling blue freedom that awaited me at the bottom. I gave it more gas.

  “What was it that made you feel that way?” I sniffed.

  “It wasn’t you.” He tried.

  “But clearly it isn’t you.” I added.

  I realized I could still stop before we ventured somewhere I didn’t want to go. There’s no one behind me on this bridge. Unlike those poor drivers in Florida, I could stop and avoid going over. But I had to get there and that night I felt like bringing him with me.

  “Is it because I was depressed? They could’ve put me on different meds.”

  In my mind I wondered just how far up I was at that perilous point.

  “I know. It wasn’t that.”

  I could hear he was close to giving me the unvarnished truth. A little more pressure and the freefall of emotion would bring us to where I desperately needed to be. Just a little more...

  “What then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Michael, be honest...for once.”

  That was it. The final push of the gas. The feel that my foot could not clamp the accelerator down any further. There was a freedom in flying forward for a moment unassisted by the pavement and the limitations of being married to someone. I reveled in the honesty of what we were. No pretensions. No need to sugar coat.

  Light. Giddy.

  Sunshine on the face.

  Before.

  Gravity doesn’t take long to catch up and if I remember anything from physics it’s that any object, feather, car, or person fall at exactly 32 feet per second, all things like wind and resistance accounted for.

  But I can tell you from experience, self esteem falls a lot quicker than that and with his torrent of words, I felt what those on that Sunshine Skyway in 1980 must have felt. That sickening plummeting that would undoubtedly end in pain and darkness.

  “I didn’t want any more kids because I knew at that time our marriage was over.”

  About a decade before I did.

  Splash down.

  Fade to black.

  All I can see is that you don’t belong to enola gay

  You know how people add “in bed” to the end of fortune cookie fortunes and how doing so completely changes the message? Life feels this way to me often. If you substitute just one thing, the experience is very different. What if I had listened more to M on that last phone call? What if Luke had come home early from the grain store? If he hadn’t hung around talking with his air force buddy?

  But it’s more than just time-oriented. There’s another dimension. Like puzzle pieces. Sometimes there’s a particular piece that changes everything. That piece inserted months earlier or months later, nothing. But at that moment, everything changes.

  After World War I, Woodrow Wilson had no interest in penalizing Germany. He believed to do so would have a crippling effect on their economy. The French, on the other hand, wanted blood or at least plenty of money and land. Wilson refused. He told the French he would leave the peace accords if they kept up with their demands. Then he got sick. Near death sick.

  When he recovered, he gave the French everything they wanted, including the lands. Germany’s economy was ruined for several decades and out of the ashes a savior arose. Right? Saviors out of ash, popular story. So Wilson getting the flu empowered Hitler. A virus changed history.

  A crack 1/8th of an inch thick killed 40 people. An unpredicted storm, change in wind direction, and driving rain knocked a cargo ship off course by a few feet and took out 35 people on a bridge. Something equally unimportant caused my best friend to decide her life wasn’t worth living and she cashed in her chips midway through.

  My sociology teacher was fond of asking, “What’s the difference between a madman, a zealot, and a prophet?” Students argued technique, background, funding, and a host of other things but he claimed none of that mattered. It all came down to timing.

  What empowers a crowd in one century will have you burned at a stake in another. One leader is heralded as a savior, while another is cast out as a heretic.

  What caused me to be a very popular date in high school, my lack of attachment, now means I sit in my 2006 Toyota Corolla crying while me ex repopulates the world with a twenty-something nail tech.

  I’m the same old story ana ng

  Luke waited for me on the porch swing or at least I imagined that’s what he was doing. I had wiped away most of the tears by the time I gently slid my butt next to his. In one of the few things I remember my mother telling me before she ran off was that no man will ever date you if you carry yourself like an elephant.

  Not that I wanted Luke to date me but I was already feeling undesirable enough. I didn’t need Luke to think I was a pachyderm. He took a long drag on what turned out to be a cigar and looked out at the horizon. There was nothing to see in the darkness but it kept us from having to make eye contact. I pretended there was something really neat out there too.

  “We gonna have a serious conversation now?” he asked.

  “That was my ex.”

  “Ain’t none of my business.”

  “No, but I’m really upset and it’s something i would tell M and...well...she’s not here and you are.”

  “I’ll listen to your ex story and then you listen to mine and give me straight answers this time.”

  Luke was as direct as a military launch signal. I had misjudged him. Over the phone he seemed so soft. I nodded and took his cigar from between his lanky fingers. I dragged on it and shut my eyes enjoying the cloying sweetness before returning it to him.

  “Okay, what’d your ex do now? Is that what M would say?”

  “No. You can’t ask it like that. Ask me what Mike’s up to.”

  “Okay. What’s Mike up to.”

  It was a statement, not a question. I could barely make out Luke’s face but I heard the annoyance in his voice. He likely didn’t enjoy being told what to do and how to do it. I forget that about men.

  “He and his girlfriend are having a baby.”

  Luke turned to face me. The light from the kitchen illuminated his baby face. The rugged exterior had faded away to something else in his eyes...pity.

  “I’m sorry. That sucks.”

  Then he asked, “On purpose?”

  And that’s what stung. He didn’t knock her up by accident. It wasn’t some drunken messing around and everyone was too lazy to grab a condom. It was planned.

  “Uh-huh. He had his vasectomy reversed.”

  “He your age?”

  I nodded.

  “Kinda old.” He added.

  I didn’t know if he was serious or kidding around with me. I gave his bicep a shove. It was rock hard. Suddenly memories of M telling me about his prowess in bed and his 33 year-old body made me feel disrespectful.

  “So...I don’t know what M would say at this point.”

  He took another drag on his cigar but his focus was on me and not the horizon. I wanted to switch his baseball hat for a Stetson.

  “She would say that he’s a dick and that he’ll be sorry he ever procreated with someone named after a spice.”

  “Would she? That’s kinda mean.”

  “You’re not very good at this.”

  I missed my friend.

  “Okay, let me try harder.”

  M always said he was a pleaser with a hard exterior.

  In the phoniest of high-pitched voices that sounded nothing like M or any woman for that matter he said, “He’s a loser and so is she. I can’t wait ‘til they’re covered in baby vomit.”

  I smiled.

  “That’s it. Thank you.”

  Continuing his falsetto he said, “He should’ve d
ied before loving anyone other than you.”

  “Okay, we’re going a little too far, princess commando.”

  “I read that once. Somewheres.”

  Our laughter lit up the air and I waited for M to join us. She would’ve been happy to see us getting along. Her other guys were always less than.

  But she didn’t. Just a warm breeze that made everything at that moment okay. I stared out at the oak covered in white lights and knew that was M’s doing. She was all over this place. The wheelbarrow with a hay bale and a pot of dead flowers, which were probably alive when she was. The tomatoes that had gone unpicked, shriveled and scorched in their planters. And the brightly painted bird feeders that hung from nearly every branch of trees that were big enough to support them...a birdhouse lighthouse, a birdhouse camper, a birdhouse firehouse...all her and all empty now.

  I wondered why he didn’t put the place up for sale, even though he grew up there. It had to be so painful sitting around pieces of her all day. But to box them up would be equally hard. It’s the type of thing you wish you could just walk away from. Leave the place like my mom left me, no looking back. Just preserve it as a shrine to what once was.

  “You have two kids right?”

  I nod.

  “Ever want any more?”

  The question eats at me. I always felt like there was one more little girl left out there like she was just waiting on me to give her life. Sitting around, waiting. She was getting discouraged at this point. The weather was turning colder and she probably knew there was a good chance I wasn’t coming for her.

  “I always felt like I was supposed to have another little girl.”

  “Really? M and I talked about kids. I really wanted a whole house of them. I grew up with seven brothers and sisters. It was the best. Never a quiet moment.”

  A smile crossed my lips. I could see Luke as a dad.

  “But M….”

  He stood and walked behind me. The rattle of the mini fridge allayed my fears that he was going inside and our conversation was over. He slammed the bottle against the porch railing and popped off the cap on the first try.