You (You #1)(56)
Breathe, Joe. Breathe.
I hear Ronnie running and she gets here fast and grabs each kid by the hand and looks at me. “What a day, right?”
She’s flirting with me because she’s jealous of you and I’m on team Beck and I know how to get back at her. “Yes, ma’am.”
She didn’t like that and my ma’am had a two-fold purpose. It was supposed to make her feel old (done), and it was also supposed to make her go away. But then two deckhands come out of nowhere and the boat is turning ever so slightly and the deckhands are unraveling rope and the tired, drunk Connecticunts are coming this way because it’s just my fucking luck that this boat docks and offloads from the stern.
And if there is a God, then you are fighting with your father and you are lost in conversation. If there is a God, I will be the first one off this boat. If there is a God, this slow-moving steel beast will get there already so your stepmother can take her kids home and feed them the mac and cheese they’re screaming about. And if there is a God, then we are docking right now, we are, and there is a kid on land hoisting a ramp, there is. We are getting there and I will be third, maybe fourth off this boat and people are starting to get pushy.
And if there is a God, that is not you I hear behind me. And if there is a God, Ronnie will not ask me (me!) to move out of the way.
“My husband is trying to get through,” she says and she knows how to exact her revenge as well. Your father squeezes by me and apologizes for the close quarters. He turns his head and whistles for you, just as the boat finally settles and the deckhand releases the ramp that connects the boat to the land.
“Coming!” you say. “Jesus Christ, people this isn’t Ellis Fucking Island.”
And I love your sense of humor and disgust and I love you and that’s why, like a flower to the sun, I turn my head a millimeter, just enough to see your beautiful face and long enough for you to see mine, before the deckhand slaps the ramp down and locks it into place and I shove my way through that crowd and get off that fucking boat.
23
EVERY time I approach an exit, I want to pull off and find a gas station and change out of this musty costume. But I don’t. I am paralyzed behind the wheel. I am so panicked that I can only go forward. And the reason is horrifyingly simple: You have called me four times in the last hour since the ferry docked and this can only mean one thing: You saw me.
“No!” I shout and I feel like I’ve been driving forever and I punch the steering wheel and the Buick veers into the right lane and I cut off a truck and the trucker blows his horn and I open my window and I roar, “Go fuck your mother!”
If he responds, I don’t hear it and I roll the window up by hand (Mr. Mooney is a cheap old bastard), and I gotta slow down because it would suck to get pulled over right now. And it’s not like this is my fault, you know. You lied to me. Your father is not dead. I was on that boat because you lied to me.
Maybe I don’t know you as well as I think I do. But that’s ridiculous; we have a connection. It’s just that you messed up. You were supposed to tell me all about your dad, no matter how ashamed you were. And I was supposed to listen and love you and tell you that you were good. And then you would ask me about my life and I would tell you and you would listen to me the way I listened to you and then we would have been closer.
I ride up on a girl going too slow and she flips me off hard. She has a bumper sticker TAILGATERS FLUNKED PHYSICS, and a Boston College sticker and I hate driving and I would like to ram this car into her Volvo and watch her bleed out but no, Joe, no. She’s not the bad guy and she won’t pay for your mistakes.
This is on you, Beck. You messed up big time and you know I followed you and you know. You know. I lay on my horn and tailgate that bitch until she puts on her blinker. When I pass her I slow down so I ride right next to her with one hand on the wheel and one hand giving her the bird. The bitch laughs and I move on. Fuck her. Fuck you.
You will never forgive me and I need to never see you again and I need this family in the Land Rover to fuck off with their skis and their brand-new tires and I ride up on them too, hard, and my phone rings.
You.
The kid in the backseat disobeys his father and turns around and you know what I know about that kid? That kid will wind up at Choate Rosemary Hall (alumni sticker in the rear window), and that kid will be smoking dope and popping pills before his thirteenth birthday and everyone will think it’s so fucking glamorous because he’s popping pills in the woods off in Connecticut. I give him the finger. I give him a memory. I know what that kid will become and I know he won’t pay for his bad choices. He’ll get sympathy and respect and I veer around them and jump in front and slam on my brakes and the father beeps, pissed now, alive now, and I rev up and I’m out of there, fuck them and their skis and their snow boots. The heat in this car is broken and I’ll never get over the cold from the ferry. I’ll never be able to look at Dickens without going back to this day and I pull over to a rest stop and I shut off the engine. It’s so fucking quiet. It’s so December and it’s so over.
My phone rings, again. Loud. You.
I ignore (again), and I delete the message because I can’t bear the idea of you screaming in fear at me and accusing me of being a stalker. No. This is all wrong and I punch the wheel again and my knuckles are bruised and the bruises will heal but you will never forget the time that guy followed you to Connecticut and put on a costume (a costume!) and stalked you at a festival.