Last Known Address. Elizabeth Wrenn

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СКАЧАТЬ aptitude wouldn’t fill a thimble. She tried the wiper switch again as rustling sounds came from the back seat.

      ‘Here, hon.’ C.C.’s chubby pale hand appeared between the seats, holding four squares of a Hershey bar. ‘Have some chocolate.’ C.C.’s panacea.

      ‘No, thanks. I’m okay,’ said Meg, though she realized her posture, hunched over the steering wheel, hands clenched and bloodless on the wheel, belied her claim. C.C.’s hand silently retracted, followed by soft sounds of smacking from the back seat.

      Meg touched the accelerator with her toe again. The speedometer registered a lethargic twenty-seven miles per hour. She pressed again and there was a small roar, so she tried the wipers; they started up again, at a galloping beat. But they seemed…untrustworthy. But both Shelly and C.C. gave dramatic sighs of relief and resumed chatting.

      Did they not notice that they were crawling along? Could they not hear the engine? Meg continued to breathe as if through a cocktail straw. The car was fine, she told herself; it was her. Hadn’t nearly everything become untrustworthy since—

      Even the bucolic rural Illinois farmland had become foreboding. The country scene, the broad sky, the rich, chocolatey soil of the newly plowed fields, the red barns with their big white Xs on the doors, they had all always been a salve to her, harking back to another era. She had such nostalgia for a slower pace and a gentler time that Meg thought reincarnation seemed a more distinct possibility than heaven or hell. But at the moment, the somber gray sky and the sodden fields felt not calming, but remote and desolate.

      They were down to ten miles per hour. Should she pull over again? A sudden stillness announced that there was no question for her to ponder anymore. The wipers slid one final arc. The quiet settled into the car like a morose fourth passenger. On momentum alone, Meg steered the car to the edge of the road.

      No one spoke, but she knew the other two were looking at her. She exhaled finally; she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. She took one hand off the steering wheel, turned the key in the ignition to off, then turned it back. Nothing. She tried it again, with the same result.

      She leaned back hard in her seat. ‘Shit. I’m sorry, you guys.’ She massaged the red marks on her otherwise white palms. ‘It was my stupid literary fantasy, to take the scenic small roads, emulate John Steinbeck. Now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere,’ she said morosely, staring out her window. There was not a house, barn or even another car in sight. Just acres and acres of wet farmland.

      Meg closed her eyes, too tired to remember C.C.’s cardinal rule never to tempt the fates when things were going wrong. As she rubbed her hands she thought: This can’t get any worse. They were stuck in the middle of their lives, in middle America, in the middle of life crises, and now, in the middle of nowhere. ‘So much for our Great Escape,’ she said with a small, unconvincing laugh.

      How many decades had they fantasized about ‘the Great Escape’? To just up and leave their kids, husbands, jobs, lives for a week or two, head for the horizon, free of the myriad burdens of being something to someone, other than friend. They’d long ago agreed that their friendship was what held them together, reminded them of who they were as women, whole identities unto themselves, not defined by their roles of work, mothering or marriage. Even when the demands of young children and escalating careers had meant their conversations were carried out more on the phone than in person, especially with Shelly’s stint in New York, their friendship had kept them all afloat in hard times, held firm the sails in high winds.

      Meg silently recounted all the reasons the trip had never happened till now: someone’s kid got sick, or was in the playoffs, or was graduating. Or someone got a promotion, or four new clients, or school was ending late because of snow days. Or someone’s husband had the flu, or suddenly had to go out of town that week, or was turning forty, or fifty, or was just too busy, depressed or tired to be left alone with the household responsibilities. Once, it was Meg’s dog. He’d cut his leg on some garden edging and the vet bill had wiped out her entire vacation budget. Meg had always thought all the reasons were valid. Disappointing, but valid. But now, at this gray moment, on this gray day, they seemed like so many excuses strung together. Even Buster.

      Oh my God! She turned, wide-eyed, looked back at C.C., then over at Shelly. ‘How ironic is this? You know all those reasons that kept coming up that we never did the Great Escape? It just occurred to me that the only reason we’re on this trip now is because…’ she had to take a breath, ‘…all those reasons left us first.’

      She looked at her friends again and they looked at her.

      ‘Fuck.’ Shelly leaned back against her door. ‘That’s true. First Len dies, then I lose most of my life savings in that damn mall development deal, having the added side benefit of making every man run to the other side of the street when they see me.’ She turned to Meg, her expression still incredulous. ‘Then your old dog dies and Grant takes off. You’d think The Trio had a curse thrown down on us.’

      C.C. made three neat spitting sounds in the back seat. ‘Don’t even say that!’

      ‘Relax,’ said Meg. ‘It’s merely the curse of middle age.’

      No one spoke for a minute, then C.C.’s voice floated up from the back seat, quiet, tentative. ‘So, I guess we’re broken down, huh?’

      ‘Of course we are,’ said Shelly. ‘And the car is broken down too.’ Shelly cracked up, but no one else did.

      ‘This isn’t a good sign,’ said C.C. softly, ominously.

      And, there it is! Not with the signs again. Meg thought the words just a half-beat before Shelly barked them out.

      ‘Not with the signs again, C.C.!’

      Meg felt that surge of anger again: at C.C. for perpetually seeing everything, good or bad, as a sign, and at Shelly for castigating C.C. for it. It occurred to Meg that their friendship had stood the test of time, but never had they put it to the test of the Road Trip. Not to mention: Remodeling a House. Which necessarily also meant: Going into Business Together. And, most dangerous of all, Living Together.

      Meg’s breathing grew tight and rapid, her heart pounding. The nausea, the headache. The weather. Migraine. As if the universe was saying: This is but one way things can get worse. She forced herself to inhale deeply. Don’t say it, she told herself, at the insistent thought in her head. But the words came out anyway. ‘She’s right. I think this whole trip may have been a mistake.’

      ‘Now, c’mon,’ said Shelly, lightly punching Meg in the arm. ‘We are three competent women. This is nothing.’ She made a ‘pbllth’ sound. A mere blip on the radar. We’ve been through way more than a measly old car breakdown together.’

      That was true. Birth, marriage, divorce, death, financial problems.

      Abandonment.

      Shit happens. And it seemed especially to happen when you turned fifty, thought Meg. Your kids leave. And then the dog dies. She’d had other friends who’d lost their old dogs or cats just before or after their last kid went off to college. No coincidence. They’d all waited till their youngest kid was five or six before they relented to the incessant begging and got a puppy or kitten. So all those animals simply came to the end of their natural lives at the exact time when many of the moms were feeling like a significant part of their own lives was ending. But Meg had been looking forward to the empty nest, that’s why she’d taken early retirement. She would not have if she’d known her husband, too, was СКАЧАТЬ