The Road

Creeping melancholia threatens to overtake me again. To them it looks like tired. To me it feels like dead. The difference matters only in degrees, only in ways that nobody else notices anyway. As the aftertaste of my cola curls my tongue, I absently wonder if what I’m tasting is some contaminant that might kill me. I drain the rest of the bottle in three long swallows.

I can’t remember when it was that I stopped caring, stopped wanting to be happy. Trying, in fact, to sabotage what little was left of our once happy but tumultuous relationship. But what I do wonder is why I attached such significance to it all anyway, why I was so affected by what he thought or whether we were fighting or what he said or the inflection in his voice when he said it, why I cared. There’s a big part of me that thinks I’m better off without him anyway, better off without anyone, free from having to worry about living up to somebody else’s expectations, free from the danger of losing myself in another relationship that doesn’t give me what I need. Maybe it’s because we used to be so good, when there were no promises and no strings and no baggage between us. Well, we did a good job of making baggage, by ignoring the rest, and in the process we became a statistical casualty.

I stand up on the 7-Eleven sidewalk and lob the empty bottle toward the trash can. I miss, but I don’t care enough to pick it up and do it right, and so I walk away, feeling horrible all the time, not sure where I’m going but I’m walking away, away from myself. The old self would’ve picked up the bottle and made some joke to the wino next to the can about a basketball scholarship. The old self wouldn’t feel harder and more wronged by the world than the old bum.

The air is cold and I hope it freezes the feeling, the twinge of what I used to be, hope it freezes that along with the tips of my fingers and my nose. I’m walking along the curb, traffic starting to pick up as all the good people of the world go home from their comfortable jobs to their comfortable homes in their comfortable cars. I wear my pain like a winter coat and I measure out the steps twelve-thirteen-fourteen- NOW! Three quick steps into the street without a backward glance – fuck, I still can’t do it without wincing a little – and am dismayed to hear the same sounds I always hear behind me, tires screeching, the nasal staccato of a horn, rubber yielding to pavement and granting me another day for self-destruction. The whoosh of air to my left as he swerves, he’s screaming something at me as if I cared, I barely even notice the color of the car that failed me. I stand still for a minute before hopping back onto the sidewalk, no need to draw it out long enough for somebody to call the cops. That’s all I need, to be stuck someplace cozy for 72 hours and safe from myself, protected from everything but the bitter black of my thoughts.

I turn west at the next corner, and wonder if my old self would have had the balls to do it the right way, pull the trigger or kick the chair out or drag the blade deep enough and long enough, rather than having to settle for the chickenshit gambling game I’ve been playing because I’m both too scared to live and too scared to die. Roll the dice, leave it in anyone’s hands but my own, because I don’t trust myself to make any good decisions anymore.

Like two Fridays ago in the biker bar, the big grizzly bear leaned up in the corner seemed like a slam dunk after too much booze and blow, sure he’d be trashed enough to lay his bike down a block or two away once we topped 40. But he got us to his place in one piece, rode better than he walked but he fucked just fine and even made me coffee before he called me a cab in the morning. Didn’t even have the decency to be a nasty rapist or a serial killer, an exciting way for me to go instead of waking up from another pathetic night.

I’ve come to a park I share with a handful of drunks, homeless people, hookers, and high school students from across the street toking up before English. I’ve almost forgotten how cold it is, my only reminder the vapor that hangs in front of my face like a veil. An echo of my old self wonders if anybody will bother me, but deep down I know they won’t. I’ve become the crazy park bench lady that even the crazy people avoid.

I’ve got the hands of a much older woman, always have, right there along with my soul and my lower back – all testament to having made a career of putting my own needs last and doing it well – but the last few months have taken their toll out in flesh. My fingers, sore and cracked just like my lower lip as I self-destruct bite by bite. Pain is the only thing that cuts through the numbness, the fog, makes me remember I’m alive. Sort of like you pinch yourself to tell if you’re dreaming. But not. I know this is real, no doubt about that – the only question is when the feeling will stop altogether.

I wake up and the park bench is hard. It’s nighttime, and I’m glad for the anonymity of darkness. It’s not cold enough outside to freeze to death in my sleep tonight, so I might as well make my way toward home. Who knows, maybe I can have a kitchen accident or slip and fall in the bathtub, I’ll have to put some thought into that.

I walk past a huddled mass on the sidewalk, and I know that it’s Jack, because I used to take care of him in the emergency room when I was alive, but he doesn’t know any better. He was always pickled, and I looked and acted nice. He asks me for some change as I pass, I drop a hearty “fuck you” at his feet and then hope to hear him lunging at my back, listen for the scrape of an empty bottle on concrete as he gets up to knock me cold. But Jack doesn’t care any more than I do, the numbness has got hold of him too and he’s chosen an even slower train for his final departure. A hundred yards or so up the sidewalk, there’s a fat greasy haired old bum laying a hump to an even dirtier woman, they’re both grunting and I would have steered clear in my old life, but tonight I take perverse pleasure in stepping hard on her hand as I pass.

I stand on the street corner for a few minutes, I know passersby are mistaking me for one of the cheap hookers that litter these streets and I don’t care – I’m just trying to figure out which way to get home. Walk? Get a cab? Hitchhike? Catch a bus? It’s almost too late for that. Cabbies in the city are too cautious now to offer me any promise. Walking and hitching seem to be my best worst options, so I bear north.

I can’t have gone more than a couple of blocks when the unmistakable scent of apple pie hits my nose, and it looks to be coming from the little diner up a ways on the other side of the road. The closer I get, the more it smells just like Grandma’s house used to, and that singular odor embodies safety and power and strength and love and longing and all those things that left me long ago. I have a few bucks left in my pocket, and I remember a long time ago reading Kerouac and thinking “Well if he can have apple pie and ice cream for dinner, then why can’t I?” And I decide to do just that. There’s something playing at the edges of my consciousness that feels a little like hope, though I can’t be sure since it’s been so long.
My mouth is watering and I think I’m starting to smile as I dart across the street. This time, without wincing. There are no horns or squealing tires, just a flash of blue and a loud noise and too much air all around me and blue and bright white and spreading darkness. And the smell of apple pie.