always have interesting things happen when I picked up hitchhikers—not always pleasant, but always interesting. Once, a man had such terrible BO I had to leave the car windows open overnight. But other times I got to see the flash of a life like a peek at someone’s true hand of cards, and I liked that.
On my twentieth birthday, I was out driving with a girlfriend and we picked up a man I have thought about a million times since. He sat in the back with his arm draped across the seat as though his invisible companion were along for the ride, too. My girlfriend and I were kidding around a little bit and he was laughing at everything we said and soon we were all laughing, it was the kind of thing where the laughter feeds on itself, where the sound of someone else’s snorting and wheezing keeps you going until you don’t even know why you started laughing in the first place—and you don’t care. It’s so good for you, that kind of hard laughter, so cleansing—you feel like your liver’s been held up and hosed down, your heart relieved of a million grimy weights. We were driving down Lake Street, I remember, with the windows open and our elbows hanging out to an early spring day. The sun was high in the sky, “I Can See Clearly Now” was on the radio and I thought, nothing needs to be hard. I thought, I can suggest anything, and these two will say, “Sure!”
Before I had a car, I hitchhiked a lot, too. I had my fair share of nasty men pick me up; one said he “laid out stiffs” for a living, and showed me his business card: THOMPSON MORTUARY, it said, in apologetic script. Then he asked if I would like to screw him, for a hundred dollars. He showed me the hundred-dollar bill, folded into quarters and stuffed into a corner of his wallet. I said, But don’t you want to be in love, have sex with someone you really care about? I really said that. I think I thought I was Mobile Therapist. He said no. I said, Well then why don’t you just get a prostitute? He said, “I don’t want a prostitute, I want a nice girl, like you.” His voice was so oily and dark and it came to me that he could take me anywhere and do anything. When he came to a stop sign I said, This is fine, thank you, have a nice day, thank you, and I got out and went home and called my boyfriend Bob Sandler and he came over and got me to stop shaking. I wonder where Bob is now. I wonder if he still has his hair, he had beautiful hair.
Another time I got picked up by a mother who was bringing her little son home from school, and she talked to him with great interest and respect about what he had done that day. I remember thinking, If I become a mother, let me be this kind. I was fascinated by the very notion of showing a child respect, it was outside my experience, my parents viewed children rather like puppies. The boy was about six, sitting with his book bag on his lap, idly fingering the clasp and having a conversation with his mommy and his insides felt right, I knew it. I thought, yes, let me be just like her.
I tried, but I don’t think I succeeded. There is so much I’d do differently, if I could. Sometimes in the quiet of the afternoon, I sit in Ruthie’s room thinking, an ache of regret lying like a stone in the bottom of my stomach. Not long ago I remembered how Ruthie always said, “Thank you, Mommy,” whenever I bought her school clothes, and I burst into tears because she should not have felt she needed to thank me for what was her due. I shouldn’t have said, “You’re welcome.” I should have said, “Oh, Ruthie, you don’t have to thank me.” Then I thought about how she also used to ask if it was all right to roll down the window of the car and I said out loud to her bedside lamp, “My God, I was so controlling. I’m so sorry.” After I cried for awhile (and you know I’d been crying so often that week) I got up in the middle of this particular torrent of tears and