ladder like a king-of-the-hill linebacker, with no plans to retire, change industries, or move to Toledo. I’ve put out some feelers, even talked to a couple of headhunters, but the only companies hiring are all the way in Little Rock, and Sabine wouldn’t hear of moving.
So yes, I may be bitter but I’m not oblivious. I am fully aware how unfair it is to blame Sabine, but her success makes it so easy. I’m forty and washed up, and she’s just getting started. I come home beaten and burning with rejection to find Sabine glowing with the high of yet another sale. Lately, I’ve begun eating dinner alone in the den, mostly because I can’t stomach her hum of satisfaction.
And so, late last year, after a particularly shitty day at work, when I got home and Sabine wouldn’t stop nagging, when she kept pick-pick-picking at every little flaw, when she accused me of checking out of our marriage, of sitting back and letting her do all the hard hitting for our house, our bank account, our sex life, her words filled me with a pure, inarticulate rage. She shoved me, and I hit her. I didn’t plan to. I didn’t mean to. It just happened.
I know how this looks, believe me. I lost my temper with my wife, and now she’s gone. Maybe she’s trying to punish me for what I did, or maybe my earlier hunch is right, maybe something is really, really wrong. Either way, you don’t have to tell me. I am the husband with a history of violence, the man living for free in the house his wife owns, the person with the most to lose or to gain.
This doesn’t look good for me.
BETH
The storm blows north so I point the Buick south, aiming the nose toward Dallas. It’s not the most efficient way to get to the East Coast, but I’m not in any sort of hurry, and it’s an easy, roundabout route that circumvents my home state of Arkansas entirely. Even though you are hours, hopefully days behind me. Even though you’ll be on the lookout for a brunette in Marsha Anne’s black sedan, not a blonde in a gas-guzzling Regal, already down to a quarter tank, now is not the time to take any chances. I flip off the air-conditioning and roll down the windows, letting in the humid highway air. One advantage of this stupid new hair, it doesn’t blow into my eyes while I drive.
My eyelids are dangerously heavy, and I stop often. To grab another coffee and some snacks, to splash cold water on my face, to load up on gas and an IHOP breakfast platter. Eggs, biscuits, sausage, the works. It’s not my normal kind of meal—you like me thin and waiflike—but ever since leaving Pine Bluff, I’ve been ravenous. Maybe it’s the relief of finally breaking free, or maybe it’s that I’m no longer my normal self. I’m Beth now, and Beth eats whatever the hell she wants.
I’m nearing Atlanta when the sun comes up, streaking the sky with a spectacular orange and pink, so psychedelic bright that I reach for my sunglasses. My heart skitters in anticipation of my final-for-now destination. A city I visited for the first and only time with you, ages ago, for a college buddy’s booze-fueled wedding. The reception was loud and rowdy and at the rotating restaurant atop the Westin downtown, where you twirled me around the dance floor until we were dizzy—me from the shifting skyline, you from the cheap Russian vodka. When we stumbled downstairs to our room, I asked if you were drunk and your answer was to shove me into a wall. Atlanta was the first time you hurt me that way, and the last place you’ll think to look for me now.
I know I’m close when a giant Delta jet lumbers over my head, its belly white and shiny, its wheels braced for landing. I catch a whiff of jet fuel, brace for the roar of its engines, a sound somewhere between an explosion and a NASCAR race. It rattles the steering wheel, the windows of my car, my teeth. All around me, people slam their brakes, and traffic grinds to a halt. Six lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, red taillights as far as I can see.
I’ve studied the map, so I know where I’m going. Merge onto the downtown connector, follow it to I-20 east, then take a left on Boulevard to Cabbagetown. “Eclectic” and “edgy” is