18
We Gotta Get Out of This Place
==========DANNY==========
We just drove. We didn't say a single word to one another; we just drove as far as the city streets could take us, and then kept on going until we met the edge of town. The humidity was so thick and sultry that it was mentally depleting. Even the winds that came from driving with the top down failed to override the heat. It was an invasive kind of heat, leaving no prisoner alive. So we put the top back up and blasted the air conditioning. I kept a steady eye on the fuel gauge, that was clocking too close to empty for my liking, as I drove us down County Line 55 to Regional Variety & Gas.
Inside the little variety store, I paid for a full tank, and for the sake of entertainment, bought barefoot Mary a knock-off pair of Crocs. And in the spur of the moment of making the purchase, I tacked on a Slushie. For some reason. I really don't know why; I thought Mary would like a Slushie. Maybe? That was stupid.
When I stepped back outside—back into the sweltering heat that was so severe waves rippled from the concrete—I looked over at Mary sitting barefoot and still on the top of the trunk.
Walking up, dropping the knock-off Crocs next to her feet, I presented the Slushie to her. "Thought this might cheer you up."
Though her head was hung down, draping the blonde ends of her hair over her shoulders, the motion of her cheeks indicated a half-smile. Truthfully, I was expecting The Bitch Face, but she just took the cup, already sweaty with condensation, and started slurping. Against my will, my eyes turned to her feet, scuffed and red with blisters; swaying side-to-side off the bumper.
The gas station attendant eventually came out to assist us—per New Jersey State Law that every gas attendant must pump the gas. Perhaps it keeps people employed. I should lighten up. We exchanged nods. He asked me what kind. Regular. He snatched the nozzle off the hook and inserted it into the fill spout. The dollar's rapid climb made the gallons look pathetically slow. The nozzle chnk'd as a few silent seconds sat between all of us—me, Mary, and the pump guy.
Cicadas shrieked in the overgrown grass that sprouted from the ditches alongside the endless slab of highway. Cars whipped by in fragmented processions.
Eventually, I broke the silence. "What happened?"
"What do you mean?" Mary asked, looking at me.
"Why's it just you and your dad? Where's your mom?"
She didn't say anything. She just sat still, dangling her feet, poking at the Slushie with the straw. The fuel pump made a particular clunking sound indicating that it was done. The attendant slotted the nozzle back on the pump, smiled politely, and walked away.
Mary stirred her melting cup of ice for a while. "My dad never spoke about her. Well, unless he was piss drunk and bitching about everything." Using the straw, she started puncturing the Slushie. "I never knew her. All I have is this old picture that my dad never—or well, probably forgot—to throw out.
"All I know is that she came from a broken home and that her mom was a crazy psycho bitch. But, well, that is coming from Jim. So I don't know. Who knows?"
I looked up at the gloomy overcast sky, and my worries eased because it was starting to feel, and look like, an actual New Jersey summer's day. Humid and cloudy.
"Jim?" I asked, needing to clear the confusion.
"My dad."
While leaning on the side of my car, looking at her and waiting for her to say more, I noticed streaks of sweat under her armpits. Suddenly I became aware of my own sweaty shirt clinging to me, and took a look at my own sweat stains, feeling a little self-conscious.
"She moved in with my dad for a bit," Mary continued. "When she was young, sixteen or seventeen or something. And then, well, eventually Jim knocked her up, had a massive freak out, then kicked her out." Mary started shaking. "And like, sometimes—" She took a gasp of air. "Sometimes thinking about it really upsets me. Like, there she must have been, seventeen, homeless, and pregnant. With me. Like, all this shit is my fault."
Mary kept her eyes fixed on the center of the plastic cup collapsing in her hands.
"Where is she now?" I asked.
"You know that day you picked me up, when it was raining?"
I nodded.
"Well..." Mary's voice trembled, and then she looked heavenwards to the low-slung, solid gray haze of sky. Mary opened her mouth again, but only noise came out, and she started shaking her head. Her chin quivered as her lips collapsed into a frown. Tears surfaced as her eyelids rose to resist and hold in the temptation to weep.
Of course, I had no clue what she was going to say, but from what I remembered of that day with the roses and the rain, my heart had already made vacancy for the weight of her story.
But there wasn't going to be a story. Not this time anyway.
Mary didn't look back at me. Once the billowing of tears came and passed, and her eyes were liberated to open again, she stared out towards the highway stretching along the horizon in front of us. The cars whirled by.
"Fuck," she moaned and struck her wrist under her eyes. "I told myself I wouldn't cry."
"Don't cry."
"I won't."
Throughout the whole moment, with Mary sitting on the trunk of my car against the grayness of the day, I knew I was losing her again. She was falling and I couldn't catch her. No matter how smart, or how loving, or how wise that I thought I was, there was nothing I could do and it killed me. Forcing her to talk wasn't the answer. That would only drive her to retreat even further away. And I couldn't just continue to parade on with the day, pretending that there wasn't something deep inside haunting her.
Mary lifted her head and looked at me with a horribly docile look in her eye. A dying yet hopeful glitter flickered under her grimace, as if her faith lay buried in something she waited for me to do or say. My courage failed.
She pouted, shrugged. Looked away.
And it crashed. I lost Mary.
But then prompted by one last desperate measure, I finally said, "Let's go in the store." Nodding my head toward Regional Variety & Gas.
Mary didn't argue against the suggestion. So that must have meant something. Slipping her feet into the Crocs, Mary hopped off the trunk and followed me inside.
It was one of those crummy gas station stores. Maybe not to a trucker though, they may have found paradise in there. The best was the random beach gear. I wondered if anybody actually ever stocked up on beach gear at Regional Variety & Gas.
"Here we are," I said, spotting a collection of maps on the rack by the magazines.
"Maps?"
Mary didn't get it.
For a second I doubted myself. If instead of helping her, if I were doing the wrong thing, it would only plunge Mary into further disappointment.
I picked up "Roadmap of the United States and the Southwestern United States," and when Mary asked me why, I told her it was so we could plan our escape. We stole a pack of highlighters, paid for the map, and went to the County Donuts & Coffee next door. I ordered us two bitter tasting coffees, and then we mapped our road trip across the country.
Route 306 would take us to the Garden State Parkway; agreeing that we would first go to New York City. Mary said she'd never been. When I said Frank Sinatra, she answered Jay-Z. Whatever.
My marker lines were yellow, hers pink, and together we plotted the most complicated and unconventional route throughout the country in United States history.
"If we all gon be doin' Nashville, we best swing by Texas!" I said, in my Southern Man voice. Mary stared dully at me. At first, for a second, I wasn't sure why, and then realized that that was the first time I had ever done a voice in front of her.
"Well sugah," she drawled, "we's gonna be packin' us some rifles and havin' us a gud ol' Southern Ball in the Lone Star State!"
By the time we finished our coffees, accents were flying off the map, and we were shooting up to New York City, dropping back down through Virginia, dashing to Tennessee, inconveniently looping all the way to Texas, crossing through a corner of Oklahoma to get to Colorado—Mary said she'd always wanted to see the mountains, apparently when she was a kid, she had this "weird obsession" with Denver—and then we'd be sprinting west through Utah, and from there, direct to Nevada for a wild night in Vegas. Lastly, we'd arrive in California. Our first stop, the Santa Monica beach.
I could see it all. The deserts. The valleys. The mountains. Mary's hair blowing back in the wind, twisting and tangling like the rhymes of a Bob Dylan song as we drove for miles upon endless miles with the convertible top down. Mary would lean the seat back, exposing herself to the country sky, her skin beading with sweat as she tanned under the high-noon sun.
Then finally, after a long day of driving, the heat exhausting her to depletion, Mary would get tired and fall asleep wrapped in a blanket. I'd keep awake, I had to.
But then, just as my eyelids begin to grow heavy, Mary grabs the steering wheel and says, "It's okay, I got it. Look up." And I lift my eyes to the crystal light of the constellations woven onto the black shawl of the night sky.
Eventually, like a tired little kid, she'd stumble into whichever desert motel I found with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders and dragging on the floor.
Every night would be devoured in sex—every morning too. Once, we'd even do it behind a Denny's.
The days would start off with coffees at cheap diners with the map rolled out over the table, accumulating all the ringed coffee stains necessary to authenticate the journey that would begin all over again each sunrise.
Each state would require a new accent, a new outfit scavenged at the gas stations or the Native souvenir shops spread out along the interstate. Mary would finally get her Indian headdress.
And then finally, in the Golden State, California, we'd park our car full of belongings and, under the hot Pacific sun, sleep all day on the beach.
There we were going to be. I would be blue jeans and white tees. She, daisy dukes and rolled plaid sleeves. Together, we were to become the immortalized American Dream.
Staring down at our map, still in the desolate County Donuts & Coffee, and still on the outskirts of Jersey, Mary squeezed my arm, so I turned and kissed her.
Back in my car, I shoved our map in the glovebox, saving it for later. I drove her back to the Fisherman's Alley and Seadrift Drop intersection; Mary assured me it would be okay. Her dad apparently had the short-term memory of a goldfish.
It hit me with a hard, sudden strangeness when Mary said, "Yeah, it's too bad that you're leaving." For a long time, the move to California dominated the entirety of my thoughts, and now the actualization of moving across the country only came to me when someone brought it up. I hadn't even packed a single thing.
"Why is it, um, too bad?"
"Because you won't be around. You'll be... gone."
"Well, I, uh, don't have to be—gone."
A cold current from the air conditioning blasted against my arm. I clicked the button several times to slow down the speed of the fan.
"What do you mean, Danny? You don't have to move?"
"I don't have to—"
"Danny, Danny. No. Like, no. You're moving, it's like whatever." Mary's eyes surveyed the street through the windshield. "You're like the only person I actually know getting out of this shithole."
Getting out of this shithole. A longing I was bounded by my entire life. But, then, suddenly, I loved Gilmore Park. I never wanted to leave. I never wanted to see another day of my life without Mary in it.