and I wondered (as though he were a stranger) what he was feeling. If he was nervous.
“All my life I’ve done what other people expected from me,” he continued. “Whatever time I have left, I’d like to live it the way I want. Do you have any questions?”
It struck me that he did not see how ridiculous his last sentence was. I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid that once I started I might not be able to stop. Apparently he took this to mean that I had no queries, because he went on.
“I haven’t told your mother anything yet. I suggest you don’t call her until I’ve had the chance to break the news to her. I’ll do it over the coming week.” He became aware of my silence and added, “I’m sure you’re upset, but try to see it from my point of view. Is it fair to ask me to remain in a relationship that’s killing me?” While I pondered his choice of gerund, he said his good-byes, promising to phone me back with an update.
After he hung up, I lay down and tried to understand what had just happened. For some moments, I wondered if I had dreamed my father’s phone call. All these years I had been sure, in the unthinking manner in which we skim over the absolutes of our lives, that my parents had a good marriage. They had approached their joint activities-child-rearing, entertaining, traveling, movie-watching, gardening-enthusiastically. Within the boundaries prescribed by the culture of their birth, they had expressed affection, kissing in the morning when they left for work, putting their arms around each other in photographs, admiring a new outfit, sitting close on the couch as they listened to Rabindra Sangeet CDs. They often read together on that couch, my father laying his head in her lap as he turned the pages of
Had that not been love? If it had-and I would have bet my life on it-how had it crumbled overnight? Could all the things of the world crumble so suddenly? What was the point, then, of putting our hearts into any achievement?
Amid these metaphysical questions, a couple of practical ones popped up from time to time: Was there another woman involved? And, what would happen to my mother when my father told her? But that last question was rhetorical. I already knew she would not survive the blow.
I SPENT THE NEXT DAY, AND THE NEXT, IN BED, FIGURING things out. I had a single room; there was no roommate to wonder what was wrong. I did not brush my teeth or bathe or eat, though I did drink three cans of Coke that were in my mini-fridge. I did not attend my classes. This was a first, and deep down, the old me worried about consequences. But the new me merely shrugged and turned on the TV. My cell phone rang. I checked the number, and when I saw it was my father, calling from his office again, I turned it off.
On the third day, I resisted the urge to go and see my professors and, pretending I had been ill, pick up my missed assignments. Instead, I went on a rambling drive around the city and lunched at a fancy Italian restaurant I’d been eyeing for weeks. The food was as excellent as I’d hoped. I ordered too much, along with wine, but instead of asking them to pack the remains, I ate everything. Back in my room, I slept away the afternoon, feeling decadent and full of ennui, like a Roman patrician. I awoke with a headache and recalled that my weekly kickboxing class was that night. I considered skipping that, too, but fortified myself with ice water and a double dose of Tylenol and went to it.
The kickboxing class was held in a part of town my parents would have termed seedy, with tattoo parlors and adult video shops. (But enough of my parents. I would exorcise them from my mind.) I had learned about the class from a flyer I’d been handed at a cafe I had stopped by one day, out of curiosity. I’m not sure what made me try the class, or what made me keep going back. Perhaps it was that the other students were so different from me.
In class, I usually ended up next to Jeri, a waif-thin woman with hair of a redness I had not encountered before. Her ribs showed through her tight black leotard top, the same one every week. She worked at a used- clothing store named Very Vintage. She wore a lot of eye makeup and yelled viciously every time she punched, but she had a gamine charm. From some angles, she looked about thirty years old; then suddenly she would smile and be transformed into a teenager. I couldn’t resist smiling back or listening after class as she regaled me with the latest treacheries of her boyfriend, whom she was always on the verge of leaving.
This evening, Jeri’s smile held a frenetic cheerfulness, and halfway through class, during water break, she leaned over and whispered, “Guess what, I dumped the SOB!” Later, as we changed out of our drenched clothing in the women’s locker room, she said, “I’m ready to leave this god-awful hellhole. I have a girlfriend in New York- said she’d set me up with a job and let me stay with her until I find a place of my own. If I had a car, I’d be gone like this.” She snapped her fingers loudly.
“I have a car,” I heard myself saying. “And I’m ready to leave, too.”
“No shit!” she said. “Aren’t you going to college or something?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
It took us only a few minutes to decide on the details. She would go to Very Vintage tomorrow afternoon and pick up last week’s pay. I would bring the car at four p.m. to the address she provided. By then, she would be packed and ready. We’d hit the road. She would pay for half the gas.
I tossed and turned most of the night from an illicit excitement akin to fever. Or was it satisfaction at a well- executed revenge? Toward morning I dozed off and didn’t hear the alarm. I had barely enough time to stuff some clothes in a carry-on suitcase and put a shoe box full of CDs in the car. I felt a pang as I looked around the room; I had decorated it only two months ago, with posters of Impressionist paintings, a batik wall hanging, and three potted plants. But I told myself I had been a different girl then. On the way to Jeri’s, I stopped at the bank and took everything out of my checking account-over a thousand dollars-in small bills. I divided the money into stacks and hid them in various places-inside the glove compartment, under the floor mat on the driver’s side, in my cosmetics case. Right now I didn’t feel like trusting anyone.
I need not have rushed. When I reached the ramshackle house where Jeri rented a room, no one was there. I parked in the shade of a large mimosa, dozing again, dreaming in snatches. Images of past birthdays came to me, always with a pink cake that my mother had decorated with strawberries (though my birthday was in winter) proudly displayed on our kitchen table. The tables changed as we moved into different houses. The number of candles on the cake increased. But always there were the strawberries that my mother scoured the markets to find because I loved them. And always there was the ritual of a family photo afterward. My father would set up the stand, put the camera on timer, and run over just in time to be in the picture. Later we crowded over the photos, laughing at the imperfections that made them more fun: someone’s mouth hanging open, a dab of icing on someone’s cheek, the top of someone’s head sliced off by the edge of the photograph. But in my memory-dream, the expression on my father’s face had changed. He waited in stoic impatience for me to go to college, do well in my first midterms, and set him free.
I was startled awake by Jeri rapping on the car window. She was full of righteous indignation. The manager at Very Vintage had refused to pay her-had, in fact, berated her for quitting without giving notice, even though she told him it was an emergency. She had berated him right back. Finally, he gave her half of what he owed her, the miser, and threatened to call the police if she didn’t leave. She had packed just one bag-that’s all she cared to take-and some provisions for our journey, both solid and liquid. But it looked like she might not be able to spring for her part of the gas. She scrunched her nose in apology.
I told her it was okay. We would manage. Her eyes glinted as she considered the financial implications of my statement. (Was I a rich girl?) She disappeared into the house to fetch her things. By the time she returned, the sun was setting. She threw a suitcase into the trunk and, with great care, placed a brown paper bag on the floor of the passenger seat, between her legs. I saw the necks of two bottles-whiskey, I guessed, or rum. Jeri directed me to the neighborhood grocery where, true to her promise, she ran in to pick up supplies: potato chips with onion dip, sugar cookies, Coke and 7Up, ice in one of those disposable Styrofoam chests, and a stack of cups.
Ten minutes later, we were stopped at a red light on the access road to the freeway when Jeri said, “Oh, look!” A young man with a duffel bag stood by the side of the road, his punk hair streaked with blue. His cardboard sign said, need ride north, will share gas. Before I could stop her, she had rolled down her window.
“Where you going?” she called.
“Where
“New York.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” I said, but not too forcefully. I was fascinated by his hair and his ragged black shirt, declaring
