Stuck in Manistique

by Dennis Cuesta

  “The deer.”

  “Forget about the deer,” he insisted.

  “No, you don’t understand what I mean. I didn’t want to tell you because I’m embarrassed.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She took a long second before revealing, “I was going east when the deer hit.”

  “East? You mean west.”

  “No, I was heading east.”

  “Weren’t you heading toward Wisconsin?”

  “I was, but I turned around near Manistique.”

  “Turned around? To go where?”

  She held for a few seconds. “Mackinac Island.”

  “Why?”

  “John was waiting for me there.”

  “Oh,” he said softly.

  “I’m really disappointed in myself.”

  They were silent for a second, then Mark said, “Why? You never made it there.”

  “Only because a deer stopped me.”

  “But you’re also assuming you wouldn’t have changed your mind again somewhere in between.”

  Her head swayed back and forth before she nodded gently. “I guess that’s true. Thank you.”

  Mark felt good—he’d even have said proud if were forced to admit it. It was something his psychiatrist mother might have come up with.

  Changing the subject, he asked, “How many siblings do you have? There was a brother when Vivian brought you to your parents.”

  She hung her head. “Yeah, Kyle. He died ten years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to . . ."

  “No, no. It’s okay.”

  He grimaced in apology.

  She tugged on the ends of her hair. “I’ve been meaning to tell you about Kyle.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. You remind me a bit of him.”

  “In what way?” he said, a bit sullenly.

  She hesitated, not sure whether she might overwhelm him if she got into it. “I don’t know exactly how to explain it.”

  “What happened to him? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  She winced slightly, before tucking her hair behind her ear. “I hardly ever talk about it. It’s awful.”

  “I’m sorry. You don’t have to—”

  “No, I can tell you.”

  Mark remained silent, preparing himself for a rare form of cancer or suicide or . . .

  She cleared her throat first, but her voice quavered anyway. “He fell off a bridge.”

  “What?!” Mark felt instantly unsteady. He grabbed the steering wheel firmly with both hands.

  “I told you it was awful.”

  “B-b-but how did it happen?” he asked, not really certain he wanted the details.

  She took a long, shaky breath. “Kyle was helping someone who had gotten into a car accident on a bridge. He tried pulling open the driver’s door, but it wouldn’t budge. So he tried the passenger side, which was near the railing of the bridge. He yanked hard on it, and it practically came off its hinges. He lost his balance and fell right over the short railing.”

  “Oh God, that’s awful.”

  “Twenty feet to the road below.”

  Mark became lightheaded.

  Emily sat up. “Mark, are you okay? You’re completely pale.”

  “I’m fine,” he said breathlessly.

  “Pull over. Now!”

  Mark assented with a trembling nod. The car shook as the tires crossed the roadside rumble strip, thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk, stopping half on the blacktop and half on the dirt-and-grass shoulder, some twenty feet from the tree line.

  He gripped the wheel firmly to keep his hands from shaking.

  “You okay?”

  He shook his head. “I need air.” He got out of the car and stumbled toward a row of bare evergreens. A weight pulled on him, and after a dozen steps he stopped and sat down on the hard ground.

  “Mark! Are you okay? Mark!”

  Mark came to, unsure how he’d ended up on his back. His vision unclouded slowly after several blinks. He sat up. Emily was down next to him.

  “Yeah,” he got out groggily. “What happened?”

  “You passed out.”

  He tried nodding. When he sat up slightly, the dead trees in front of him spun around like a skipping record. He felt nauseated.

  Emily held her hand gently on his wrist. “Your heart is beating fast.” She put her ear to his chest.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shhh.”

  “I feel funny. Like I can’t catch my breath.”

  “Quiet.”

  After a few seconds, she said, “You’re in a-fib.”

  “Is it a heart attack?”

  “No. You’ll be fine. Just relax and put your head to the ground,” she told him, gently pushing his head down.

  He complied. “What are you doing?”

  “Tell me if you stop feeling that funny feeling.”

  After a dozen seconds, Mark felt normal again. “Okay,” he said, sitting up. “I think I’m okay now.”

  She checked again. “Yes, back to normal. Has this ever happened before?”

  He shook his head. “A few times but it always stops pretty quickly on its own.”

  “Can you get up?”

  Mark stood up. Emily held her arms out ready to catch him.

  “You’ll have to drive,” he said. There was no way he was going to psych himself up enough to get over the bridge now.

  “All right. Do you want to go back home?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m fine if you drive.”

  They got back into the car, Emily in the driver’s seat. “You sure you trust me? I haven’t been driving for very long. I’m not even twenty-five.”

  He let out a breathless laugh. “Shut up.” He felt exhausted.

  She started driving. “When was the last time that happened?”

  “What?”

  “The arrhythmia.”

  Mark closed his eyes. He finally said, “You’d laugh if I told you.”

  “Laugh? I’m a doctor. I only laugh at patients when they’re not around.”

  He smiled. “Last week before I tried crossing the bridge.”

  “The Mackinac Bridge?”

  “Yeah . . . I can’t cross bridges. I admit it. There.”

  “What do you mean, like you have a phobia?”

  “A major one.”

  “I get it now,” she said. “When I told you about Kyle . . ."

  He nodded. “Do you know how much of my life is controlled by this stupid fear?”

  “I can see how it could be, yes.”

  “If I go somewhere with other people in the car, I either have to make sure we don’t cross a bridge or a long overpass or make sure someone else is driving.”

  “That must be hard.”

  Mark nodded. “I’ve never told anyone about this. I mean, no one.”

  “So how did you get across the Mackinac Bridge?”

  He huffed out a laugh. “So first I thought about taking a boat to Mackinac Island from the Lower Peninsula and then taking another boat to St. Ignace and renting a car in there, but I couldn’t find a rental company in St. Ignace.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I found out the bridge workers provide a free service. They drive scared drivers across the bridge.”

  “That’s nice of them.”

  “Yeah, and apparently I’m not the only one.”

  “But how were you planning to get us over now?”

  He shrugged. “I was hoping my fear of embarrassment was greater than my fear of the bridge.”

  “And what if it wasn’t?”

  “I’d use my backup plan: invent an excuse as we got close to the bridge, and make you drive.”

  She patted him on the leg. “I’m sorry you have to deal with this.”

  He looked at her, smiling. “Actually, I’m kind of relieved, telling someone about it.”

  “You should see someone.”

  “Y
ou mean a psychiatrist?”

  She nodded.

  “No, my mother was a psychiatrist.”

  “You told me. So?”

  “I’ve been sufficiently tortured by that profession.” He let out a chuckle. “No way.”

  “Does your mother have a fear of bridges too?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting that Vivian did.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It was in her story. When she crossed one of the bridges, she had to close her eyes. You don’t remember reading that?”

  Mark thought for a second and shook his head. “Maybe I closed my eyes during that part.”

  She laughed. “I suppose it runs only in part of the family.”

  “No, Vivian and I aren’t blood-related. She was adopted.”

  The lake disappeared, and soon after, buildings popped up here and there, curio shops and a motel, before a stretch of several billboards, most of them advertising boats to Mackinac. And then a small explosion of restaurants, motels, and gas stations. Mark pointed. “Let’s get gas here. I think we’re only a couple miles from the bridge.”

  “Okay.” She got out her purse. “Here, let me pay for gas.”

  He waved her off. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He pumped gas while Emily headed for the convenience store. “Want anything?”

  “Yeah, get me a coffee.”

  “Decaf, right?”

  “No.”

  “You should really avoid caffeine with your arrhythmia.”

  “Fine, but only if it doesn’t look too bad.”

  “How bad is bad?”

  He shrugged. “I trust you.”

  She nodded and smiled. “Cream or sugar?”

  “Cream, but only if it’s in those single-serving containers.”

  They were off again within ten minutes, Emily driving and Mark with a cup of not-horrible decaf coffee, black, in his hand. Shortly ahead was the turnoff for Highway 75 South and the Mackinac Bridge.

  “I should tell you,” Emily said as they merged. “I actually love bridges.”

  “What? We can’t be friends,” he declared.

  “My dad is a bridge engineer. Well was. He’s retired. So he always had bridge drawings and photographs on his desk, and he spent a lot of time talking about bridges with us.”

  Mark kept his gaze straight ahead, the lake in view on the horizon. The bridge would show itself soon. He drank one more sip of coffee and set it in the cup holder. He kept his thoughts to himself. How can you love a bridge when your brother died falling off one?

  A few seconds later, the Mighty Mac emerged from the distant haze. He exhaled sharply. He pulled out a jacket from the back. “I’m just going to take a nap for a while.”

  “Why don’t you just use your hands as blinders and see if you can cross looking straight ahead?”

  “That’s a five-mile bridge.”

  They quickly approached the toll plaza. After Emily paid the four dollars, Mark said, “Good night,” and ducked under his jacket.

  As she steered into the merge, Emily yanked on the jacket and threw it to the back.

  “Hey! What did you do that for?”

  “Because you’re going to confront this—at least a little bit.”

  “No. Not now,” he said in a panicky tone. He took off his seatbelt and leaned back to grab his jacket.

  “Mark, stop and look at me.”

  He gripped the jacket tightly as he put his seatbelt back on. “What?”

  “You can do this if you put your mind to it. Just look straight ahead, nothing else, and talk to me about something.” She moved her hand toward him, and he squirmed away from her.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  She placed her hand on his thigh, near his knee. “I think you can.”

  “Even if I look straight ahead and pretend I’m on some yellow-brick road, I’ll still see the towers. And I know the towers are holding up cables that are holding up the road. So, no!”

  She grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly. “I think you can do it.”

  They were already over the water, but low, before the bridge lifted up.

  Mark glanced at her, sighed, and relented. “Fine. I’ll try. But if I die from that heart thing . . ."

  “Atrial fibrillation. No, it won’t kill you, I promise.”

  “If I get real nervous, I’m pulling the jacket over me.”

  “Talk to me about something,” she said, ignoring him. “Tell me about your friend who called. Brad, was it?”

  Mark’s gaze had contracted to the grooves in the road. “Yeah, Brad. High school friend.”

  “Yeah? Tell me a story about Brad.”

  “I can’t think of one—oh, he just tried to set me up with his sister.”

  “Yeah, and what happened?”

  “I said, ‘No way.’”

  “Why not? Looks? Personality?”

  “No, she’s fine. It’s mostly because he loves his sister, and if it didn’t work out, I’d lose a good friend too.”

  “I get it.”

  “I think it’s pretty cool that Brad and his sister are so close. I sort of wish I had a sister like that.”

  She remained quiet.

  “Oh sorry, I—” He grimaced. “I should just hide under the jacket.”

  “No, it’s fine. It was a long time ago.”

  “It’s never long enough.”

  “True,” she agreed somberly. Then, “I want to tell you about Kyle.”

  “Sure.”

  “He’s the reason I went to medical school. He was a doctor. He was doing his residency when he died.”

  “Where was he doing his residency?”

  “At the University of South Carolina. I was sixteen at the time. He was that perfect big brother.” She sniffed.

  “Sounds like it.”

  She cleared her throat. “He went away to college when I was in fourth grade. I totally missed him, but he’d call me at least once a week.

  He’d come home on weekends quite a bit too. He went to Madison for his undergrad, so not too far from Appleton. When he was home in the summer we did a lot of hiking. And cross-country skiing in the winter. He loved the outdoors, so I did too.”

  Mark stayed silent. He could no longer avoid seeing the first tower. “Sorry. I may have to shut my eyes.”

  “The tower?”

  “Yep.”

  “Think of it as a tall building.”

  “That holds—”

  “A tall building, a tall building.”

  “Right . . . sure.”

  He kept taking shallow breaths as they drove toward it. He wanted to jump out of his body.

  They passed it.

  “You did it. See?”

  “Yes,” he replied tensely. “Barely.” He blew out and concentrated on the grooves again. “And there’s still another one.”

  “So you’re an only child?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes, and no other family. Though I just found out that I might have a cousin out there somewhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Apparently Vivian gave up a baby for adoption.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, her lawyer told me the other day.”

  “Are you going to look for him? Or her?”

  Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. Half of me wants to and the other half doesn’t. I mean, what if they want to be left alone?”

  “And you don’t have any other relatives?”

  “Nope. My dad was an only child, and Vivian was my only aunt.”

  Emily placed her hand on top of his, holding it firmly for a second. “Well you’ve got me.”

  Mark stopped staring at the road and turned his head to her. A warm, broad smile met him before she turned her attention back to driving. Outside her window was Lake Huron—far below and beyond. But it didn’t bother him. Joy and strength swelled in his heart.

  “Corny, right? Sorry.”

  “No, no. I appreciate tha
t. More than you know,” he said. She turned briefly again to him, nodding and smiling. Her eyes were sincere and he knew she meant it. “In fact, I was thinking something like that yesterday,” he said, continuing to gaze at her.

  “What’s that?”

  “That you and I are sort of like cousins.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Vivian is my aunt. And she was also your guardian for a short while—albeit she kidnapped you.”

  “Thank God she did. I see the connection.” She nodded slowly. “Yeah, we’re like cousins.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look,” Emily said. “We just passed the second tower.”

  His head snapped back and the tower was gone, vanished as if it had been magically erased. The land on the other side was close. “Hey, look at that, we did.”

  “You’re doing great.”

  He took in a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah.” He turned his head to the right toward Lake Michigan, and his stomach did a twirl, but he kept it together. He tossed the jacket to the back and released his grip on the door handle. “Look at me, no hands!”

  Emily laughed. “There you go!”

  He let out a nervous laugh before setting his clammy hand back on the door handle. “Okay, I shouldn’t get carried away.”

  A minute later they passed the end of the suspended road, and the causeway carried them toward the Lower Peninsula.

  “See. I told you you could do it,” she said.

  “Terra firma,” he declared. “That was exhilarating.”

  “We’ll do it again later.”

  He groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Should I take the next exit so we can switch?”

  “Sure—oh shoot.”

  “What?”

  “I have to make that call.”

  “What call?”

  “Cancel dinner with Laura.”

  Emily moaned, “Seriously?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Just go, even if you decided not to continue with it.”

  He thought about it for a second. “I’ll consider it.” He pointed to his left. “That’s the phone booth where you call to get picked up.”

  Emily glanced over and nodded. She took the off-ramp and immediately turned into a nearby gas station to switch places. They both exited the car at the same time and started clockwise around the car. Mark started a fast walk. Emily noticed and started running. Mark ran, too.

  They jumped into their seats.

  “I won!” they both exclaimed.

  “I went around the long way,” Mark protested.