Resting Place

Resting Place

REST AREA 2 MILES

I know you see the sign.

“I don’t want to.”

“You never do.”

“Don’t start,” Amy says, hands 10 to 2.

“Well, you need to stop. Anyway, Astro Boy needs to pee.”

“He peed an hour ago.”

“I don’t know why you always have to rush, Aames.” I look over at you.

“Don’t say it.”

“It’s…”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.”

“It’s not about the destination...”

“Argggggghhhhhhh.”

“It’s about the journey,” I drum-thwack the dash.

I smile and you look over at the passenger seat, and I hope it’s enough to excuse the New Age drivel. You do love my smile.

“Tell that to the grocery store waiting on the truckers to deliver. Tell that to the organ transplant recipient. Tell that to the newspaper editor on deadline. Tell that to the…”

I laugh as you scramble for further proof. I should know better than to argue with an academic. We’ve had this conversation a million times before. Maybe because you were born premature, you’ve always treated life like a race. Maybe because you’re a New Yorker, where amblers risk being crushed like ants. Maybe because you’re the youngest in your family, you feel you’re always catching up.

Our road trips are no different. You arm us with food and water and coolers and entertainment and towels and wet wipes, and Astro Boy with bedding and chew toys and treats, as if we’re on an Everest expedition without rest camps. As if you’re the mother of a messy brood.

“All right, all right, we’ll turn off at the next stop. Happy?”

I place a hand on your thigh, warmed even through denim.

You park and are out of the car before I’ve lifted my hand off your leg, opening Boy’s door and clipping his leash to his harness. He jumps with the trust of the naive or the insane, ending up between your scooped arms and the ground, sailing a little until he lands.

I squint up at the Jeffrey pines standing so proud I could cry as I inhale butterscotch and it reminds me of the soft plunge of your neck. I wish you would just come, sit, still, and let me breathe you in, again.

Leash wrapping your wrist, Boy walks you, and you stretch, arms forward, fingers interstitial, spaces written with my name, but before I can fill them with mine, you bustle Boy back in the car, unclipping the leash and attaching the one in the booster seat to his harness worn like a nerd in a vest.

I return to the passenger seat and whistle slow to say hi to our Boy, but he is too intent on the wild things calling him, a hair’s-breadth between lapdog and wolf.

When we met, I’d whistle-sing-serenade you and you’d blush in your tweed, alternating red and green, as I’d play stop and go so that you’d beg me to come closer.

Our friends wagered we’d last only a month. I was your on the way to somewhere. Or, more, out of somewhere. You’d spent four years with Alani as five rounds of IVF spread mulberry-colored florets across your belly and, with each failure, bruised hope and the best of you and her. So the last thing you wanted was anything serious. Which had always been my promise ring.

But we surprised ourselves and our friends as you filled the circle and became my first and only gold. I’d said I love you to others before, casual as coffee cups carpeting a car floor, but two months in, my Amy, the words fell out and with it a heart, apart from head, for once, as rivulets of red painted a path to you.

I wrote my first song about you: “You’re my resting place.” And you were touched, even blushed, though you gave me notes: “Sounds a bit like I’m dead.” And we laughed. Two writers living together can turn into a cage fight. But it’s lucky our professions are worlds apart.

I barely get my seat belt on as you barrel out of the car park and back onto the highway. Before I can say anything – we’ve been together six years, hopscotching ahead of words is the norm – you say: “Your parents will have a fit if we’re late for this.”

I can’t argue with that.

They’re sticklers for punctuality. You handle them better than I do, though it’s easier to deal with in-laws than blood bonds. After our visits, each time, you admit it’s a tightrope for you between aloofness and politeness because you are privy to the sins they keep stuffed in the basement, as they serve lemon bars and Arnold Palmers. Sins you’ve seen scored on my skin that your mouth salves in gentle magenta.

They still make up separate rooms for us and call you my “friend” when they introduce you to their social circle. While we make up that I don’t sneak into the guestroom as soon as they’re asleep. Don’t even get me started on pronouns and parsing non-binary to them. I am forever formaldehyded as Katherine/she/Sunday-school-attending dutiful muted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson.

We cap our stays at three days and always exhale when we leave. Unlike at your mum’s, where we breathe out as we flop onto a queen-sized bed littered with Hershey’s Kisses to welcome us, as she sits cross-legged on the end of it, lights a joint, saying, “Darlings, tell me what’s been happening.”

Your Dad died of a cardiac arrest when you were nine despite his being vegan and organic before they were a thing; too much heart for his body and this Earth. You tell me every time we visit his grave that you believe he brought us together so I could have a taste of true family. And I tease you that he brought us together so I could shake up your buttoned-up ivory tower tenured life as I graze my fingertips over your button-down with all manner of no-good behind my eyes.

We come from very different places. Not just professor vs. musician. Not just East Coast vs. Midwest. But upbringings. You tease me that every second sentence I say starts with, “Where I come from…”

Where I come from, black ice on the roads is a constant threat.

Where I come from, inky tendrils tugging day into night settle in, too much at home.

Where I come from, feelings are not unpacked but packed away.

You said you’re surprised how much pride is in my voice when I speak of my first home. I disagreed, but now I see the place that breaks you can build you too. Sometimes, home that paints a face purple after payday and too many pints. Other times, home a sensei who whips me into shape. Since I left my life, my religion, my parents, “there” is always lassoed to “here”. Home in neither, sometimes both.

You and I started fresh in California, not your New England or my Midwest. But it no longer mattered where. Only who. When I met you, home became your heart. An oven of love. And I your witch, no children to push me, I’m all in.

On the way back from seeing my parents, who looked thinner and paler than I remembered, we stop at a B&B that even Stephen King would call overdone. So much chintz and pink and lace and doilies that my teeth ache. That much kitsch can only secret a serial killer somewhere, hopefully not in our closet. We get the giggles as the owner, retired from real estate, shows us around, and I feel like a bitch because this place is the hair-sprayed woman’s semi-retirement dream, so I bite my gums and press on your shoe, but you refuse to look at me in case you lose it.

As we settle in the room, Boy gives the row of dolls and their black-bean eyes the side-eye as you both, wiped out from the drive, fall asleep. I, creepy as the pinafored porcelain voyeurs, look at you, my love, as I run my hand through the river of your hair that, unlike the rest of you, refuses to behave.

I envied your hair before I even lost mine. When you fed me ice-chips and lay blankets like phyllo pastry over my bony legs. Even before the chemo, you called them twigs, although you loved to wrap yours around them. But I know you resented how I could eat carbs like a 1970s wrestler while you’d count calories like a rosary. No matter how many times I told you how lush, plush and perfect a landing place you are.

I didn’t say anything when, before the memorial, you found a screwdriver in Dad’s shed, undid the wooden box I chose over an urn, and put some of its contents in a Ziplock. I guess you’re planning to bring the stolen stash to our special place. Remember when we went shopping for the box?

“More butch,” I’d laughed.

“So Californian,” you’d said.

And we braided our fingers like fifteen-year-old girls do hair.

Almost home, I don’t have to prod you to stop this time. May grey, which neither of us was prepared for when we moved to “sunny California” but which makes both of us feel more at home, is making it hard to see far in front of the car.

“So, I hope you don’t mind that I split you up but…” Amy says.

“I love it.”

I put my feet up on the dash, knowing I can get away with it now.

“I guess it makes sense, since between us, we’ve lived all over the map.”

“Aames, it’s perfect.”

You bump the log wheel-stop as you park.

“I know, I know, slow down, Amy,” you say to yourself or me, which has become much of a muchness lately.

I shrug-smile as I didn’t even have to say it.

You lean across to the glove box and take out the Ziplock. I brush my hand against your wrist. Shiny like nacre. You get out of the car and put the leash on Boy, tying a bow around his neck for the occasion. Luckily, there’s no one here as I don’t think it’s legal to just scatter your girlfriend’s ashes wherever you like. You walk a little further from the restrooms, even though it was the sacred ground of your accidental declaration. But you’d always been a classy chick.

My hunch was right. Your Ziplock shenanigans were to bring me – or some of me – back to where you’d said I love you on our first road trip. I’d confessed it months before. But you’d had to fact-check and footnote yourself to death before you were ready to reciprocate. And even then, you hadn’t meant to, yet. But we’d been sleep deprived and delirious after a weekend away and, almost home, when we’d stopped at a rest place for wees and walks for Boy and ourselves. We were still in the early stages of trading family stories like swap cards. Walking to the amenities, both busting, you’d said, out of the blue:

“My grandmother killed my grandfather.”

“Jesus, was he violent?” I’d asked.

“No, but she was.”

And we’d laughed so hard I peed a little.

“I love you infinity-much,” I’d snorted.

“I love you infinity-much.” Your eyes had looked bigger and browner than usual.

Those eyes that contain multiverses. That still make me dizzy. That snuck into most of my songs.

If anyone is watching you right now, I’m sure they’d presume you’ve lost it. You stand beneath a eucalypt, pick up Boy in case he’s downwind, and empty the baggie at the tangled roots. “Who scatters ashes at a rest stop?” they’d gasp.

“I love you infinity-much, Kit Anderson,” you call out.

“Love you infinity-much, Amy Sharma,” I shout back.

Boy barks, joining in, as you cry-laugh and the eucalypt leaves tambourine.