Ever since I was a kid this was my least favorite part: the tangible absence of a person who has slept over. The air gets thinner. The walls have pulled apart. I hover over the couch like an astronaut, waiting for time to pass.
Since You’re Gone
Postcards From a Road Trip
A lot of people I love have a lot of opinions on what I’m doing next, but thankfully, the minute I stopped asking for advice and just started doing, was the minute most of them simply wished me well.
Friday night I had a going-away dance party at the favorite Chinese restaurant, and we stomped around until two in the morning — I fell asleep in lipstick and fake eyelashes, rolled out of bed Saturday morning like a sack of rotting potatoes. I packed the meager remnants of my possessions into my grandma’s ’95 Ford Taurus, hooked the cat’s harness into a seatbelt, and drove to meet Ben in St. Paul; he was going to join me for the road trip, and fly back to the Twin Cities on Wednesday, because he is an enlightened sort of fellow who doesn’t mind Sisyphean tasks. “You ready for this?” one of us probably said.
“Let’s do it.”
So we drove to Brooklyn: stopping in Janesville, Chicago, and Cleveland along the way, stretching the drive over three days. Sashimi had despised those first twenty minutes of the journey, throwing her body around the passenger seat and howling desperate pleas for death as I made my way to him in St. Paul, but shortly after that she curled up in the back and went to sleep, seemingly content for the rest of the trip. Wisconsin was all hills and golden leaves, a disproportionate moon bobbing along the horizon as if we could learn its song. Ohio was endless, Illinois was in disrepair. Indiana, Pennsylvania were lovely again, hills of tattered orange and manifest destiny, old barns and grazing horses. The sun rose, the sun set, we stopped for coffees and cut up blocks of cheese. We listened to music and radio shows, we stayed in an Econolodge and with old friends, we ate blueberry frozen waffles and watched a four-year-old squeeze the bejesus out of her portly black cat. “Looooove youuuuuu,” she said.
There was a moment, near the end, when we reached the top of a hill in New Jersey balancing like tentative little surfers on a wave, to see the crash of the New York’s massive glittering skyline suddenly revealed in the distance. I wasn’t ready for it, I thought. Can’t we just keep driving? Take the detour. Tell me another story.
Day 21: Broken Elevator
Whenever I look at something dirty, I envision what it would look like clean. Really though. Every single time.
Day 20: Go Go Go Go Go!
“I don’t know why I’m so tired,” I thought grumpily the other day. “I mean I finally caught up on sleep last night. What’d I get, six hours? Yeah, six whole . . .
“Oh Jesus.”
Day 19: Brooklyn Botanic Garden
We wandered into the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as if in a dream.
To get there, you’re ricochetted underground in the slow heat and dark of the subway for almost an hour; the train reaches the last stop and you emerge into the bright of day like a pallid ninja turtle, and the minute, the goddamn minute you turn your bewildered head it is right there; you’re suddenly surrounded by tall velvety leaves, lush grass, majestic columns. I’d never seen anything like it. The entrance garden was nearly empty; a cool breeze shifted its colors, showing silver underbellies, pistils heavy with pollen like clotted cream.
“Whoa,” Steve said. “Whoa,” I said.
“Well this was worth the ten bucks,” he said. “I am drunk on photosynthesis,” I said.
The night before, we had taken too many shots of bourbon after a day already devoted to drinking; we had hunched despondently over the table in a glowing red bar, and then cried at each other at 2am when the G took a million years to arrive. “Are we going to talk about this now? I guess we’re talking about this now, the train’s not coming.”
Morning had come slowly, carefully. By the time we arrived at the garden, we only had an hour and a half before it closed: an issue that had caused me some stress before we left. But it was okay. It was all going to be okay.
