Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,93

life. I slept in the room that was once my parents’. In their bed. I bought new sheets for it. When I had company—I had company in those days, I had quite a few friends—they gasped when they came in at the beauty of my house. All of us were hippies, all of them were poor. Marty was over all the time. We both got jobs at the same university. First she and then I. She recommended me. I thanked her. It was her pleasure, she said.

I taught for almost twenty years. I had a job & I was normal. I used to go to concerts. I used to go to movies.

I met Charlene & fell in love with Charlene & then Charlene disappeared. I used to wander. I used to go for long walks all around the neighborhood, even late at night. I used to lie on the floor, spread out like a starfish, & gaze at the ceiling of my huge empty home & wonder why I had been chosen for the life I was living. Why I was chosen to be so alone. For a while, in my forties, I used to think I would marry Marty & we would have children. We got along so well. But I never once asked her for a date. She told me she was in love with a woman. Hilda. Who left her without a thought, who broke her heart. The women who were meant for me never seemed to know it. They were there and then gone. More people in my life have died than I believe is fair. About this, about everything, I used to wonder why, why, why. I used to feel things would certainly change someday. I used to wonder when they would.

I suppose I had been silent for quite some time.

“Anytime you wanna talk about it,” said Yolanda finally, “you can.”

& she patted my hand as she stood up.

Don’t leave me, I wanted to tell her, don’t ever leave. But in my heart I knew that this, also, was not fair.

• • •

I am nobody’s. And I have no place to go. It is one in the afternoon. I get into my car and put my head down on the steering wheel. I could turn the car on and sit there until the car runs out of gas. I could find a cliff and drive the car off it.

Instead I start the car and drive straight until I find a gas station, and then with twenty dollars of the hundred-dollar bill that I have I fill the tank almost halfway up. When I pay I buy the cheapest things I can find to eat: a pack of peanuts, a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and a huge Arizona Iced Tea, each for ninety-nine cents. I open the peanuts while I’m pumping gas and I down them in three mouthfuls.

I get back in the car and blast the heat. This time the car is warm and I feel better, actually, I feel better about life. I have food and fuel and slowly my body is thawing. A great mystery has been solved for me. There is another in its place.

Halfway back, I stop at a McDonald’s drive-through because I still feel weak. This time I let myself get whatever I want: I get a Quarter Pounder, two Quarter Pounders, and a large fries, and a large Chicken McNuggets with honey and barbeque sauce, and a large vanilla shake, and a large Coke. I pull into a parking space and let the car keep running, the heat keep blasting, and I turn on the radio and there is my friend Charlie Rasco, talking about what’s been happening with those Giants. I’d call in but my phone is dead.

This is the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted in my life. I feel as if I’ve been off in a desert someplace. I feel as if I’ve been stranded until now. I eat it as slowly as I can, tasting everything, feeling everything, letting it in, and memories and memories, too: how McDonald’s was a special treat, how after baseball games we got McDonald’s. On sunny days.

By the time I decide to go to Lindsay’s my hands and feet have already made the decision for me. I’m turning down the road that goes to her house, the long wooded road with the nicest houses on it. They are tucked back there behind the trees, their chimneys and gables showing,