Elizabeth was right. There was no way he could park Jezebel anywhere near the store. In fact, there weren’t many places in downtown Pittsburgh you could take an electric-blue Peterbilt Conventional with a sixty-inch sleeper and forty-eight-foot trailer. Not unless you wanted to end up trapped like a beached whale, snared in some narrow street by four-wheelers who park like the whole world is their front drive.
Instead, Josh drove straight to Jezebel’s parking lot ten miles out of town, did his paperwork, zipped up a week’s worth of stinking laundry and headed home in the pick-up. He figured Elizabeth wouldn’t really want to see him in the store anyhow. Not if she was busy measuring someone up as a giant tomato. Right now, he needed some sleep. He’d be more use to her wide awake, showered and ready for action.
The duplex that Josh and Elizabeth shared was nothing special, but it was on a quiet block with tiny neatly-trimmed gardens tended by peaceful neighbours. Josh owned the whole house but rented the lower half to an elderly Korean bachelor called Sim, a tiny man in his seventies who constantly complained that he was at the rim of death’s abyss, usually while in the yard tending patio pots full of unpleasantly pungent spices and herbs.
Today was no different. Sim was sitting on a canvas stool against the wall of the house in the chill morning sun. A cigarette hung from his tight mouth, and he held The National Enquirer at a distance from his face as though he were a doctor examining an important X-ray.
Sim looked up as Josh’s pick-up pulled into the yard, and by the time Josh had climbed out the old man’s face had changed from a lively interest in his paper to one of silent suffering.
‘How it been this time, Josh?’
Josh knew the routine. He liked Sim.
‘Good. Seven days, four loads. Pays the rent. How you been?’
This was how it always went.
‘Oh I not got long now, you know. I had pains. Real bad. Right here.’ He indicated his chest with the flat of a palm.
‘Maybe you ought to give up those smokes, Sim.’
‘They not problem, Josh. Living the problem. Too hard for me sometimes. Know how that is?’
Josh nodded. ‘Sure do.’
He continued to nod his head gravely as though Sim had pronounced a universal truth, but by the time he was through the door and the old man had returned to reading about the secrets of Hollywood’s bald stars, Josh was grinning. Life didn’t look too hard for Sim. But then life wasn’t too hard for him, either. Josh was thirty-two years old, and for ten of those he’d been hauling everything you could name, and some things you couldn’t, from one corner of his country to another.
Now, in particular, things were pretty good. His wild years had passed when he’d driven team, swallowing anything and everything illegal to keep awake for forty or more straight hours on the road, just like all the other guys who were trying to make a living. Four years ago he’d joined the world of grown-ups, got a bank loan and bought his own rig. Josh was up to his neck in debt, with the bank’s shadow looming over his house and his truck. But running his own tractor unit and trailer, even just having his name painted on the door in curly purple fairground writing, made him feel like a man who had done something useful every time he stepped up into Jezebel. It wasn’t just driving any more. He worked like a dog, he had a business, and it felt okay.
The house reflected that small triumph. The kitchen he walked through from the yard door was Elizabeth’s domain, full of silly calendars and photos stuck to the ice-box, dried flowers in baskets on top of the cupboards and plaid drapes swagged to the side of the windows that would never meet if anyone were bold enough to undo the huge bows that restrained them and try to draw them shut.
But in the spare bedroom that Josh had made his office, his life in the rig came back with him into the house. It was this room he headed for first, ostensibly to check if there were any faxes or messages on the answering machine, and flick through the mail that Elizabeth left in tidy piles on his desk. The truth was that the room was an airlock, a halfway stage to reacclimatize himself into a life that wasn’t really his; that of wandering round shopping malls, going out for dinner, drinking beer with friends in their yard or his, or just watching TV while Elizabeth fixed their meals.
All the ordinary stuff that most people did and thought nothing of, Josh had to relearn every time he pulled on the brakes and came home. At least in this room, with its giant map of the states pinned unevenly to a cork wall, piles of correspondence, trade magazines and bits of scrap paper that related only to his driving life, he could come down gently, ease into Elizabeth’s normality and try to make it his own. For a few days at a time, at least.
The fax stared back at him, insolently exposing the emptiness of its horizontal slot, and the mail was equally unrewarding. Just bills and a few late cheques from companies that paid slowly. He flicked through them with mild disappointment, the constant hope when returning home to a pile of mail that something in it would be surprising and life-altering, dashed again. Josh left the room, took a shower and crawled into their flowery linen nest for the first sleep of home. The difficult sleep. After six nights stretched out in a sleeping bag on Jezebel’s sagging foam mattress behind the cab with dozens of truck engines thudding outside, finding oblivion in this big, fresh, soft and silent bed took time.
This morning it couldn’t be found at all. Josh was weary, but closing his eyes brought nothing but the road rolling by on the inside of his lids. He lay in the bed, his hands behind his head, resigned to sleeplessness, content with merely resting in a state of semi-reverie until Elizabeth came home, when he hoped she would slide into the warmth and join him.
Josh remained motionless but wakeful for several hours, sufficiently relaxed to be unaware of the day as it played out its variations of light behind the closed bedroom drapes, but then he was a master of rest without sleep. Driving created a new gear for the mind, a neutral that demanded little of the body except breathing. It was almost trance-like and he’d driven in such a state plenty of times, despite the plain reckless danger of it. His enjoyment of the escape it afforded was broken by the sound of Elizabeth’s key in the lock, and the slam of the screen door. He opened his eyes, surprised to have dreamed what seemed like the entire day away, then stretched and lay back with his eyes closed, waiting in delicious anticipation for her to come to him, knowing that she’d see his pick-up parked outside and realize he was in bed.
It was comforting, hearing her sounds, the clatter of domesticity, as she moved about in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, putting away things she must have bought on the way home, and the scrape of a chair as it was pulled out from the kitchen table. Josh waited.
There was silence.
He slid his legs reluctantly out of the warm bed, pulled on a voluminous sweatshirt and yawned. As he made for the door he remembered her gift, fished in his jeans pocket and transferred the small box into the pocket of the sweatshirt. Then he made his way through to the kitchen, scratching at his skull like a bear.
She was sitting at the table motionless, her back to him, her head turned towards the small window. Elizabeth had hair that was only marginally longer than his own, but the cut was feminine and accentuated the graceful sweep of her neck. He leaned against the door-frame and drank in the slender architecture of her shoulders.
She turned and looked up at him. Brown eyes in a pale and almost masculinely handsome face looked as if they wanted to return his heat, but they were clouded with a film of defeat.
Josh put out his arms and she stood up and moved into them. With an almost imperceptible sigh of pleasure he allowed his fingers to part the dark hair and caress her head.
‘Bad?’
She nodded against him with a tiny movement.
Josh put his mouth to the top of her head and spoke into her hair.
‘Hell, they just don’t know what lucky is, Pittsburgh folk. The chance to zip themselves into a chicken suit, right here on their doorstep, and where are they all?’
‘Fuck off.’
She mumbled it into his chest but he could tell it was said through a smile. He lifted her head and made to kiss her, but her smile died as she looked into his eyes. Then she pulled free.
Josh put his now-empty arms up in a gesture of surrender.
‘Joke.’
‘I know.’
She sat back at the table, where he joined her and took her hand.
‘It’ll pick up. Just one guy who gets his rocks off at a party dressed as a pirate and tells his friends, believe me, you’ll be beating them off with shit-covered sticks.’
‘You’ve been gone a long time.’
An accusing tone she never used. It threw him, and he withdrew the hand that had been covering hers.
‘Got an extra load from Louisville. Couldn’t turn it down. I told you.’
‘We need the money that bad?’
‘Yes.’
She looked down at the table.
‘Sorry.’
His hand was still on the table top. Avoiding his eyes she slid her hand over and laid it on his. Josh reached into the sweatshirt pocket with his free hand, took out the small box and slid it towards her.
‘For you. It’s dumb but it’s for luck.’
She looked up and met his eyes, a smile beginning to ghost in them again.
‘You been screwing someone?’
‘I wish.’
She opened the box, rustled the piece of tissue paper and revealed the dull metal brooch. Her name was etched clearly but unevenly on it, with the E too far from the L and the final T and H crammed so tightly together they were practically one letter, but Elizabeth took the cheap gift from the box as if it were a Fabergé egg.
‘This is beautiful.’
‘It’s just junk. I thought you’d like it.’
‘You thought I’d like junk? That’s what I call romantic.’
She was smiling full on again. For Josh, the brooch had already proved hundreds of times its worth.
‘You like it?’
‘I love it.’
‘Well wear it and things’ll look better tomorrow.’
Her face clouded again and she toyed with the brooch, making a scraping sound on the table as she shifted it around.
‘Maybe.’
Josh held the bridge of his nose between a finger and thumb.
‘What’s the deal here? I’ve been gone longer and you’ve said less.’
‘I had things to talk to you about, that’s all.’
‘Well talk to me now.’
‘It’s too late.’
Josh sighed and bent his head. ‘Shit, Elizabeth. You’re acting like a teenager whose prom date hasn’t shown. I’m kinda tired here.’
She looked at him coldly, stood up, still clutching the brooch in her hand, and walked to the sink to stare out the window.
Josh watched her face as she turned back to him, and saw some kind of battle being fought behind those brown eyes. One of the emotions eventually won and she spoke softly, as if ashamed of its victory.
‘I’m pregnant.’
Josh blinked. He was aware that his heart had picked up its pace, but if that meant more blood was suddenly required and being provided, its rapid distribution seemed to be having little effect on him. It was as though his system had stalled like a smoky engine, leaving him temporarily unable to speak or move. He searched for the kick-start, and when he found it and spoke merely for the sake of speaking, realized that he should have waited.
‘Is it mine?’
Elizabeth’s face, already harder than he had ever seen it, darkened into the suburbs of fury.
‘I’ll give you one chance to take that back.’
He swallowed. ‘Shit, I’m sorry … I mean … Fuck.’
She regarded him with a mixture of contempt and grief. The same eyes that only minutes ago had looked up at him like a lover were now scouring him with acid accusation.
Josh tried again. As he got up to move towards her she made him jump with a sudden violent movement, lifting her arms and waving them in front of her as if to protect herself. He backed off, hands held out in an imploring gesture, and his voice, when it came, was higher than he would have liked.
‘I didn’t mean that. I don’t know why I said it. I’m glad. God, Elizabeth, I’m so glad.’
With those words something happened to Josh Spiller. A happiness that was beyond any he had ever experienced flooded into him and he realized that ‘glad’ was a weak and sickly word to describe the power of his sudden ecstasy.
Elizabeth watched the face of the father of her child as it exploded into rapture, watched his tense muscles melt into a slack, serpentine tangle of joy. Her lip trembled like a child’s as she braced herself. Then she spoke quickly to interrupt the acceleration of his emotion: ‘I’m not keeping it, Josh.’
His imploring arms fell.
‘What?’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
Josh looked at her for a very long time, then turned back to the table and sat down heavily on his chair. He leaned forward and cradled his head in his hands, his hot forehead pointing straight down to the table top.
‘Now hold up. This is going too fast. Talk to me.’
Elizabeth looked down at a hand which had become a fist, and when she opened it to reveal the brooch she had been clutching she could see two clear indentations that the scissors had made in her flesh. She closed her hand.
‘You weren’t here to talk to. I decided on my own. It’s impossible, Josh.’
He looked up from the cradle of his hands.
‘Why? For Christ’s sake we’re doing okay. Aren’t we?’
She swallowed back a sob, barely able to speak.
‘Nope.’
‘What do you mean?’
Elizabeth moved stiffly and rejoined him at the table. She stared into the yellow pine as though the words she was speaking were printed on it.
‘Commitment, Josh. That’s what a baby needs. It’s what I need too and I’ve never had it from you in any shape.’
He opened his mouth to protest but she silenced him with a sorrowful look.
‘I’m not complaining. This is an accident in a relationship that’s doing just fine. But it’s a relationship that can’t handle children.’
She was sounding rehearsed, but seven days to perfect a speech hadn’t been enough to stop it sounding phoney.
‘Welcome to daytime TV, folks.’
The bitterness in Josh’s voice was as alien to him as it sounded to Elizabeth. Any plan she might have had evaporated, and she looked at him like a frightened child.
‘Look at us, Josh. We live together but we’re not married. I see you for two, maybe three days out of every ten. I’ve just started a new business that needs all my time and energy. There’s nothing in this dumb life of ours that’s stable enough to make a good job of growing another human being.’
‘We love each other.’
‘Then why aren’t we married? Why aren’t you at home?’
‘Why aren’t you? Is sewing fucking Batman suits better than staying home and looking after our baby?’
She looked at him coldly. ‘Jesus Christ. You can take the man out of the truck but you can’t take the trucker out of the man. What next, Josh? The chorus of a Red Sovine song?’
He lowered his eyes.
‘I didn’t know you wanted to get married.’
‘You never asked.’
‘What if I asked now?’ His voice had an edge of desperation.
‘It would mean nothing. You wouldn’t be asking for the right reasons.’
There was a pause. A heavy silence that made Josh’s response startling.
‘FUCK!’
He slammed his fist down on the table so hard that Elizabeth leapt in her chair and caught her breath with the fright. Josh was breathing heavily, staring down at his hands, and she spoke softly when her heart had stopped pounding.
‘Next week. Wednesday at three o’clock. It’ll be over.’
He looked up slowly and her grief was almost uncontainable when she saw the film of tears that coated his eyes.
‘Then why even tell me? Does it feel good to give me a few moments of joy and then steal them back again? Huh? Make you feel big? Feel in charge? That what you call love?’
Elizabeth started to cry. Her chest heaved and she bent her head to her chest. Josh watched, wanting instinctively to comfort her but cancelling the order from his brain before it reached his arms.
She sobbed for a few minutes in silence, wiped her arm across her eyes and nose and then faced him again.
‘I told you because I was scared and lost. I always tell you everything.’
He looked at her tragic, puffy face and tried to feel the love for her he knew was there. But the imminent death of his baby, that terrifying appointment, the time already ticking away towards its execution as the baby’s cells split and multiplied inside her, was blocking it like a wall. He spoke quietly and with a malice he never knew he possessed.
‘You didn’t tell me you were a selfish bitch.’
Elizabeth stared at him for a moment, stunned.
‘Damn you to hell.’ She opened her hand and with all the force a close sitting position could afford, threw the brooch at Josh’s face and ran from the house.
As he sat still, listening to her car start and screech hysterically from the drive, Josh fingered the tiny scratch that his gift had inflicted above his eye. He bent to pick up the fallen weapon and closed his hand on the brooch’s innocent form.
There was no question of what action to take. He would do what he always did in a crisis. Josh Spiller got up and went to call his dispatcher.