My life had turned upside down. I was at a loss; I had no idea what to do, what had gone wrong, had been going wrong, and, if I were to be honest with myself, I would have to admit that this wasn’t new, this thing with Anna and me: this impasse—we were on two different planes. I was all over the place. My office showed the chaos—halfdrunk coffees all around the computer, books opened to random pages, inkless pens everywhere. It was a mess, both my work and this thing with Anna and me. And I call it a thing because I wasn’t sure anymore what exactly it was, what it had been, what it was becoming. Not too long before the day I’m describing here, I thought I would get down on one knee. I was at the age, with the same woman for years. But it was madness: she was mad! Telling me that she couldn’t look me in the eye anymore. What was that? What had I done? I hadn’t the foggiest. There was nothing that could be done that day. So I stormed out of the house, yelling back something about having to clear my head, get things together, and I made more promises about how I would return after I figured everything out. By the time I came back, I would be a saint or a psychologist, at least, and we would fix everything up right. Turn this thing around.
My initial instinct was to take a walk, just stare at leaves on the sidewalks, thrust my hands in my pockets, and, with luck, wind up at the edge of a Zen-pristine lake, where everything would become clear—where everything would be lined up properly. There, I would see how to fix it. In my haste, though, I had slammed the screen door and emerged into the chilly, early-November upstate New York day wearing only an Oxford shirt, no coat, no hat. To return indoors and fetch my sweater and gloves was out of the question. I couldn’t give her the satisfaction of my mix-up, proving to her that I had made too much of a show with the exit and all. I decided to brave the chill. Maybe it would freeze and flake away some of the clutter in my brain. But when I slipped my already frostbitten fingers into my pants pockets, I discovered I had the keys to our car. A walk? A man needs to drive! Engine humming, downshifting, scenery racing by. Of course! I would drive fast, take lefts, rights at whim, and still end up at the lake of reflection and clarity. I ripped open the driver’s door and eased into the seat. The engine roared to life. A drive. Clear my head. Figure it all out. Outrun the confusion.
A late lunch, a turkey club—it didn’t sound grand and romantic, not as romantic as the idea of hitting the road, doing some soul-searching, soul-cleansing. But, still, hunger is hunger. After I eat, I thought, I could do all those great feats. People go to coffeehouses for all sorts of reasons—to work, to chat, to eat, to drink, to think, and, possibly, to clear their minds. When things go south, everyone offers each other tea. “Your fish went belly-up? Have some tea, dear.” “You can’t decide between this job or that? I’ll put on some tea, we’ll figure it out.” “Your potential fiancée is, all of a sudden, mad, and your thoughts are all over the place with, what, work, your upside-down relationship, and you’re out in the cold in a button-down? Tea. Tea for one should do.”
A slight comfort came to me when I remembered a student who had mentioned that green tea was beneficial to your brain or energy or chi or some such nonsense that was important to your well-being, so I ordered a cup. A placebo for the mind. A good kick-start to fix up the old discombobulated brain.
The tea and sandwich came to $9.51. When I placed a ten-dollar bill, two quarters, and one penny on the counter, the tattooed barista hesitated, eyed me suspiciously. I smiled. I like using change—that’s what it’s for, that’s its proper function. Get rid of the clutter and jingling in the pockets, clean out the baggage. Change only ends up on the floor in the car anyhow.
After the turkey club, which was delightful, by the by, I sipped the, by then, cooled green tea, which turned out to be Earl Grey. I didn’t let it get to me though. I wouldn’t let such a small thing bug me. There were bigger, badder matters all stuffed in my brain. A small mix-up. I said Green, she heard Grey. I convinced myself the sounds were nearly indistinguishable. An honest mix-up. Green. Earl. What’s the difference?
Back on the road, headed to god knows where, I arrived at a fork. I put on my blinker and decided to venture left to where mountains loomed in the distance. But the lever got stuck down, and instead of starting the left blinker blinking, the radio began sputtering mindlessly. I jammed the lever back up, and the radio dial stopped. An unexpected mix-up, probably just some loose wiring. I assured myself it was nothing.
I did myself a lot of good by driving well over the speed limit. When you’re doing 20 over the suggested rate on a country road as the sun is setting, there isn’t a whole lot of room to think about your ailing relationship with a madwoman, a woman who now seemed unpredictable and crazy. I imagined all the papers in my office, all these fictionalized photos of Anna and me looking sad and messed up, all my anxieties put down in documents, and all of them clinging for dear life to my bumper, but giving in to the gaining force, tearing away from my mind. I passed cars over the double yellow. I blazed past cows that moved too slow to see my speeding capsule whiz by. I liked the feeling and pushed the button to roll down the window. The window switches, however, decided it would be better if they now controlled the dome light. I fiddled with the locks, which only brightened the indigo backlights of the speedometer. I clicked the dome light on and off in rapid succession, and, with this newfound order, the windows finally shimmied downward. The car had gone mad! All the wires were crossed. Okay. If everything was going to entangle itself in a mad haywire bonanza, so be it. The windows were down, the car was flying. I was feeling better. That was all that mattered.
A scenic view somewhere in the Adirondacks tempted me. A green sign with white water ripples. My lake! I pulled onto the gravel shoulder, removed the key as if from the stone. This action sent the door locks into a flurry of gunfire. I jumped. The buttons for the doors did not respond to my request that they, for the love of Pete, just open up, and I escaped through the window. One other car was parked on the shoulder—a brand-new red Jeep. Through the driver’s window, I spotted a blue flashing light. An alarm system, no doubt. Everything working in proper order there. Lucky bastards. I stared at my maniac car, nodded to the Jeep, and suggested some note-taking.
It’s no help to see people in enviable positions when you’re trying to sort things out. I needed there to be no one else in the world at that moment, but there in front of me was a young couple cuddling by the railing, facing my lake. The young man in a warm-looking blue fleece getup stroked his companion’s back with the regularity of a pendulum. A chill ran through my body as I placed my arms over the railing, giving a small wave and silent Hi to the couple when they looked me up and down. I faked a yawn—I don’t know why, just to be doing something, maybe to suggest that I was just taking a breather, not, in fact, wishing them into oblivion so that I could think of what to do with my scattered, upside-down life. I dipped my head to peer at the blue-black lake, my eyeglasses promptly diving off my face and falling, falling, turning and turning as they plummeted and splashed into the lake below. The young couple followed my specs’ descent, and then they looked at me with wide eyes. I smiled again, gave a tiny wave, and went whistling back to my lunatic car. “Hey, guy! Did you need those?” I heard the kid yell. Need my glasses? Noooo. No. What for?
Now, my vision blurred, my anger with myself growing for not finding a place to collect my thoughts, I clicked the remote keyless entry button and my car’s windows thought to shut themselves, and the trunk, god love it, opened suggestively. My car was all in shadow at this point. I clicked and clicked the button, yanked on the door, but nothing was working. Nothing was wired properly, nothing was fine. Still, I hadn’t figured out what to do with Anna, and I was terrified to drive home in the dark without my glasses. Defeated, I climbed into the trunk, pushed down the backseat, and noisily struggled through the narrow passageway to the cockpit. I stabbed the keys into the ignition, promised the vehicle I would change the oil on time from now on, and the trunk, with whatever logic, slowly dropped and clicked shut. So be it.
When the rain started, I pulled the wiper lever. A tape ejected from the deck with the force of a champagne cork, ricocheted off the rear window, and pelted me in the back of my head. I hit the scan button on the radio, which made my seat recline; I reset the odometer, which flicked on my hazard lights; until, finally, in the blur of rain and glassesless eyes, I honked the horn, and the wipers went into godsent arcs. But only five arcs per honk. I got looks from everyone who passed me; my hazards were on, I was driving well under the speed limit, squinting, and blaring the horn for the wipers. This was the way of it for the entire drive back into town: rain; cars honking back at me; me, mouthing, “It’s my damn car!” until I switched to, “Count your blessings, ingrates!”
I pulled into a gas station and asked the attendant for advice on my inexplicably crossed wires. He looked down to the engine and battery and things. “Any trouble with the tumblers?” he asked.
What tumblers are, I cannot say, but I nodded that yes I did see problems, many problems with the tumblers. Well deduced, sir.
He reached down to the battery, yanked up a blue wire, reattached it to some hidden location, and wished me luck. I gassed up the beast, thinking that was all it needed. I imagined, as I sprayed gasoline into the tank, that the coolant was just as rapidly squirting into the oil pan, the oil pan dumping itself into the console’s ashtray.
Before I could return home, before I could face Anna, I had to try to find some way to gather myself, collect my thoughts, figure it all out. I crawled into the car through the window, put the car in gear with the temperature controls, and headed for a bar. I had wasted too much time with the green-tea fiasco, the juvenile joyride, the scenic view, which had, with such wit, stolen my sight, and this haywire car.
I backed into a spot on Main Street and thrust open the driver’s door, refusing to deal with the windows. The rain was still coming down, and my white Oxford was stained gray, sticking to my chest. I barged into the bar, wild-eyed, and ordered anything on tap. People go to bars when they need a drink. And to need a drink means to have something amiss. I had never done it before, but I had heard the idea. Bogart ordering whiskey and soda after getting slapped by some dame. The sage barkeep. It could work. A drink. A drug, really, to clear one’s mind.
An elderly couple in a booth across the room clinked two wine glasses, and I gave them the evil eye. How do you get there? There being probably their 40th anniversary—still in love, still finding that when their faces changed, when things started to get different in life, when work demanded more of your time, when the idea of kids entered the picture, when actual living kids burst onto the scene, they could still find the beauty in the newly forming lines about each other’s eyes—how do you do that? When in my early 30s, when Anna and I were about to call it quits, where would I be? Back at the beginning. Everything upside down. The barkeep pulled the tap for my beer, and I sprang out of my stool, possessed. I ran, doubled over, to the bathroom, and quickly relieved myself under a sign that read Out of Order. Where had the attack come from? I couldn’t place the logic of anything anymore. Alone in the bathroom I regarded myself in the mirror. I was blurry. I couldn’t make out the distinct features of my own face, but it was me. It was a little off, a little skewed. Soaked through. A little mad. It was me though—blurry and confused, unhappy and at a loss. I thought of the young couple at the lake. How did they do it? Were they meant for each other and so could enjoy themselves? The older, white-haired couple clinking glasses. How? I pushed the button for the dryer and imagined my crazy, maniac car roaring to life and leaving me here at this bar: the thing laying rubber in circles at some far-away track. All I wanted was some space to fix up my mind, and here I was, soaked through in a bar with nothing to return home to but the same mess I had left. Maybe worse now. I wanted to expel my helplessness. I placed my hands on the sink, bent over, and tried to will out a tiny cry. The toilet flushed. Inexplicable madness! I turned the faucet and tears flowed from my eyes. I wept into the basin. Nothing was working right.
I ignored the barkeep’s yells as I ran out the door. I needed to get home and fix my life.
Now either I’d completely lost it, or my car actually had hightailed it off somewhere. It was dark, and maybe I just couldn’t see it without my glasses in the rain and the wind blowing bags and leaves in lamppost-sized tornadoes. In any event, I started running down Main Street, arms in front of my face, turning sideways into the headwind, rain running off my chin in a solid line, my shirt pressed to my chest and the tails flying out behind me like a cape.
The strangest stuff. As I ran, squinting, I swear I made out a door two stories up on the face of a building. A pickup truck speeding in reverse through a red light. I saw a birch tree blown to the ground and daisies ripped up and rising into the moonless sky.
At the corner of our street, I caught sight of a rainbow fish swimming uphill in a flowing puddle. The wind and the incline forced me to a walk. I bent over and grabbed at the air, pulling myself up the street. I peered into the window of a house and, under the bright chandelier of the dining room, saw dunes, a sandstorm.
My car was in the driveway, dry as a bone under the carport. I made nothing of it. The screen door flew open, banged against the house, flew back, and was made a toy by the wind. I shivered and grabbed a hold of the knob, turning. Locked. I slapped my pockets. Nothing. I pounded the door, yelling for Anna. I rapped and screamed in the sideways rain.
Finally, she cracked the door and stood in her white robe, her pretty head hanging down, refusing to look at me. She seemed unaware of the storm. I called her name. She did not look up. She did not back away from the opening. I yelled to her, “Anna!” She was right in front of me. I banged on the house. In the wind and rain and madness I screamed out to her. “ANNA!” She remained staring down, unmoving. I was not welcome. But I did not go. No. Not right then.
I put my arms down to my sides. I hung my head. Then, it all came clear. I lifted my finger to the doorbell, pressed on the concave button gently, sensually, pushing inward, sliding my fingertip down its slick face with all my love. Quiet. Anna lifted her beautiful head, and her eyes, now on fire, blinded me.