My door hangs open and there are kernels of popcorn all over the seat. Exploded from the microwave bag when I slammed on the brake. Through the door I can see Marion. Standing in the woods. Back to me.
She stares into the dark and I don’t know what to do. All I know is this is bad. Bad like Josie scratching her legs and crying on the other end of that phone line. Crying and too far away from me. I don’t want to get out of the car, but she’s out there for so long, I don’t think she’s ever going to get back in.
“Marion?” I say, warning her so she knows I’m coming up behind her. “It’s pretty dark. We should get going.”
She shakes like some piece of her is broke, and I know this is something I shouldn’t see. Something private. Like Mom. Like Josie. I walk into her periphery and her eyes make me hate myself for taking her here.
“Hey . . .” I inch closer and reach my hand out, even though the instinct is all kinds of unnatural. But this is what you do, right? You comfort people.
“Please don’t touch me,” she snaps, and I drop the hand so fast she shudders. “I’m fine,” she whispers, but there’s no way I believe that.
She stares into the forest, like she wants to walk into it, and more than anything I want to take her hand and tell her this is going to be okay. Even if I don’t know how it’s going to be okay. Just that it is. So she knows she’s not alone.
But I’m not that guy.
* * *
The parking lot is practically empty when I pull in and slow down. There are a few cars near the gym and I’m sure one of them is hers, but I don’t ask. She hasn’t said a word, and I haven’t said a word, and I’m not going to start now.
The car isn’t stopped when she opens the passenger door again. I slam on the brake and she shoots forward, throwing a hand out against the dash.
“Hold on, geez,” I say. “I can take you to your—”
“This is fine.”
She doesn’t leave, despite the fact that everything about her says she wants to. I swallow, with the door half-open as she strains her neck to look at me.
“Which car is your—?”
“My last name,” she says, cutting me off.
“What?”
“What’s my last name?” She says it quietly, barely above a whisper, and I notice her hair is up. At some point she pinned it away and all that’s left is this raw question in her eyes.
And for some reason I want to answer it. But . . .
“Are you the Honda?” I say, nodding to the closest car.
“Sure. Why not,” she says, which means it’s not, and now I really don’t know what to do. I could drive her to the Honda, even though it’s not her car. Or I could sit here and let her get out, which somehow seems worse.
“Medford,” she says, forcing me to look at her. I expect her to smack me, but there’s this weird resign in her eyes instead. She’s not angry, which I hate, because I could deal with this if she were angry. Only she’s not. She’s whatever this is, with my name dead in her mouth.
Medford.
And I wish more than anything that, right now, I could tell her hers.
But she already knows that I can’t.