nightmare, I remember my dad’s upcoming birthday and make the decision to go home early. Home, I think, is a flexible concept. Since January, Rosie’s apartment was my home. I’ve regressed to an earlier definition, rolled back to a older version of myself. Am I a child again? Was I ever an adult? To visit my parents, to see Quarterville again after psychologically cutting myself off from both—to go home early: I sleep on the idea.
The dawnlight, however, changes nothing. I use bottled water to wash my eyes, then buy a full tank of gas and hit the highway. I try calling Rosie once while I’m still within city limits. She doesn’t answer. She’s probably still asleep. It’s early. The road is clear. I turn on the radio and listen to music for a while. At around nine I call my mom. I have plenty of fabricated explanations ready for when she asks why I’m on my way, but I don’t need them. “Of course you can come today. Of course you can stay here,” she says, her voice unable to mask her enthusiasm. She covers the receiver with her hand and calls out to my dad, “Beaver’s coming home!” Then, back to me: “You didn’t have to call to ask. This is your place as much as ours, and it always will be.”
That leaves one more call to make.
For this one, I stop at a service station. My hands tremble as I dial the number. Winterson’s voice booms, but only in my imagination. He’s not the one I’m calling. “Hello?” Mrs. Johnson says.
“It’s Charlie.” Birds fly overhead. “I’m not going to be your lawyer anymore.”
“What?”
“I’m no longer at the law firm. Someone else will take your case. They should get in contact within a week or two, but if they don’t, you get in contact with them.”
“Charlie, what happened?”
“It’s not important, Mrs. Johnson.”
“Jeez, I can’t say I was expecting this. I don’t know if I like it. What if this new lawyer ain’t up to snuff.”
“Mrs. Johnson,” I say, “may I tell you something as a friend?”
“Shoot, Charlie.”
I remember Frank Delaney’s toy guns. I’ll have to pay him for all his stuff I never used.
“Don’t proceed with the lawsuit. Don’t mortgage your house, don’t sell your assets. When Winterson’s talks to you, tell them you want to end it.”
“I don’t know… I’ve already spent so much money. Those experts, and your fees…”
“The hospital won’t settle and you’ll lose at trial.”
“But you said we had such a good chance. Thirty percent of one, you said. And we could win so much money. Charlie, you know I’m hardly drowning in savings. And Jack. It would help out a lot if we won.”
“Thirty percent is a ghost,” I say. “It’s a number pulled from the air. Even if it’s true, which I doubt, that’s a seventy percent chance of losing.”
“So you lied to me?”
I don’t know. “Yes, I lied.”
A stretch of silence separates me from Mrs. Johnson, who is no longer my client and was never my friend, and I struggle to conceptualise our relationship. We are strangers.
She hangs up.
I try the number again. No luck. I get out of my car and stretch, pushing my arms toward the July sky. My body crackles, complaining about how I’ve treated it. At the same time, the sound reminds me of eggshells breaking. I have a craving for pancakes. Although I may not know who I am, I have an idea of who I want to become, and that’s a start. I get back in the driver’s seat and turn the ignition. Ever since I knocked out the dashboard clock, the engine’s been purring like a kitten. Coincidence? Undoubtedly. I return to the flow of the highway. Traffic’s picking up and I’ve hours of driving left to go. My stomach makes itself known and, for once, I can hear it clearly over the rumblings of my other noisy companion: my conscience.
Perhaps it knows I’m heading home. Perhaps it’s not so broken yet.
I am optimistic.
I will put myself back together again.
But there are hundreds of cars on the highway and in each sits a person just like me. My optimism wavers. I am not alone. I am in competition with these other drivers. We all want to be ourselves, whole and happy, but there is a limited, shared pool of the materials we can use achieve this universal goal. Jobs, friends, apartments, lovers, money. We need, want and are these things, and my supply of them is dangerously low. My tank is almost empty and all the positive thinking in the world won’t fill it with anything but illusions.
Ahead, a car’s hazard lights blink at me from the paved shoulder of the highway.
I’m in a fix.
Reality is an axeman.
Over the the past four days, I’ve lost everything: my love, my job, my professional future. Sleeping in my car for a night and vowing to change who I am is fine. Returning home is fine. But they’re not answers to the one question that’s tethered to my brain, the one that comes flying back, unsatisfied, each time I smack it with an idea. It’s a question I already posed to Rosie through the open sliver of our apartment door. She answered purely for herself. “Now you leave,” she said. Now I keep trying to answer for myself.
And I can’t.
The axeman lifts his weapon above his head.
He, too, is waiting for the answer. He says or I say: “So now what?”
Attributions
Thanks to flickr user emilykneeter, whose photo "suburban sunsets" I used to make the book cover. Because she's an awesome photographer, you should also check out her website.
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