My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays (16 page)

Then one morning my mom’s grandfather told her that he was running off to New York to move in with his girlfriend and marry her. My mom helped him pack two bags with everything he’d need, and went with him to the train station and hugged him goodbye (but did not pass him condoms). She’d never seen her grandfather so happy. He waved to her from the window of the train, beaming, as it pulled away. Somewhere between Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia and New York, lost in a contented sleep, her grandfather passed away; the conductor found him when the train reached Penn Station. My mom’s parents were furious when they learned that she’d been in on her grandfather’s secret and had helped him pack his things that day. But she was unapologetic. “He couldn’t have been any happier than he was on that train,” she told them—and me, each time she repeats the story. “That’s the best way you could leave this life: happy, hopeful, and headed for love.”

Now I sometimes wonder: Was all my sweet anticipation on that three-hour Southwest flight the happiest I’ve ever been? Could I have guessed at all the fucked-up shit that was to come? I’ve often wished there was a way to freeze time, and that I’d known how to do it and had done it at thirty thousand feet above Nebraska—turned those three hours into thirty years, lolled for ages in that precious bath of hopefulness and light.

But nope, no luck there. A thick gray haze zipped the cornfields from sight, and ninety minutes later the plane dropped like a brick out of the clouds and screamed to a stop on the runway tar in Tucson, and I tramped up the jetway to meet my bride-to-be.

*

At baggage claim—our arranged meeting point—I collected my duffel bag quickly and retreated to a dark corner, scanning the crowd for Sarah. A part of me wanted to spot her before she found me so I could wade for a few seconds into that sensation of seeing her for the first time and gather myself before we engaged. I didn’t know what she looked like or what she’d be wearing but felt sure I’d know who she was as soon as I laid eyes on her. But the passengers all dispersed and the luggage conveyor wound to a stop and still she hadn’t appeared. Had I been stood up?

I felt a tap on the shoulder, and heard her breathe my name from behind: “Davy?”

I whipped around, and found myself facing a plain-looking stranger—long, wavy hair, a wide face and upturned nose, a slanted smile. Who else could it be but her? Still, it took me a second and a half to realize that this was Sarah.

“Well,” she said, with a cute, nervous shrug, stepping to me and putting her arms around me. I hugged her back, bummed that she wasn’t as beautiful as I’d imagined, and disappointed that a moment which should have been deliriously happy instead felt a bit awkward and off-kilter. But in a way I’d prepared myself for this. I knew that once we met in the flesh, I’d have to start building things with the real person Sarah was and let go of the girl I’d been imagining her to be. Even as a frightening sense of doom flitted close, I did my best to scuttle it. After all, I was happy to be here, with this girl who loved me and was up for adventure. I broke the hug off and smiled and took another long look at her.

“What?” she said shyly, laughing her wonderful, recognizable laugh, but not quite meeting my gaze. “Am I pretty enough?”

“Of course!” I said, though I felt a bit wobbly and suddenly sacked with fatigue.

“Then let’s get outta here,” she said, taking my hand in hers. “The rental car place closes in an hour. New Mexico’s waiting!”

*

Our plan was to hit the road before nightfall, after an early dinner with her mom and her friend Ivy. Sarah wanted to show me a place called Old Tucson—a sprawling, Old West movie set, featured in a half dozen classic Westerns, which had been abandoned for decades but renovated recently by the city as an entertainment center, concert venue, and Old West museum of sorts. For a three-dollar admission, you could have full run of the dusty streets, drink and play cards in the saloon, and fire off pop guns in the shooting gallery. The four of us ambled down the main drag, passing a few older fellows with silver mustaches, costumed in 1880s gunslinger garb, huddled in front of a building that said
BANK
, twirling fake pistols, and taking turns at a real ATM. Next door, hitched to a post in front of the town’s burger joint, a single emaciated pony flicked its tail at flies.

Inside, over hot wings, I chatted up Sarah’s mom and Ivy, while Sarah disappeared into the bathroom and a piano with no piano player clattered a tune from the corner, its black and white keys dancing up and down as though tickled by a ghost. Sarah’s mom had the gaunt, wrinkled look of a woman who’d lived a hard life in the desert and had disappointment on speed-dial. She was cordial but strangely uninquisitive—she didn’t seem too concerned with who I was or the fact that her daughter was heading across state lines with a guy she’d met for the first time in person forty-five minutes before. Sarah had warned me that her mom would be preoccupied—her mom’s boyfriend had moved out earlier in the week and hauled his stuff to a friend’s house; this had happened plenty of times before, apparently, but each time her mom took it as hard as a permanent breakup. The fact that she leaned so hard on Sarah when she took her lumps at work and in relationships had only made Sarah seem more Shade-like to me over the phone, but in
Gas, Food, Lodging
, everything eventually works out for Shade’s mom and she finds a good man—Sarah’s mom, sagging and deflated, seemed to inspire less hope.

Just to make conversation, perhaps, Ivy—nose-ringed, willowy-limbed, and about forty-four percent hotter than Sarah—pointed to a quarter-sheet flyer in the plastic stand at the center of the table. “Look,” she said idly, “Bubba Sparxxx is playing a show here tonight.” A few times a month, I’d been told, the small rodeo arena at the back end of Old Tucson hosted local and national acts. She gave me a coquettish smile. “Hilarious. We should go!”

“Bubba who?” asked Sarah’s mom.

I explained that Bubba Sparxxx was a white rapper from Georgia, kind of a southern-fried, XXXL-sized version of Eminem, but Sarah’s mom had no idea what I was talking about. Then two things happened right around the same moment: Sarah emerged from the bathroom, looking a bit haggard, like maybe she’d just thrown up, and then a second later, surreally, as if cued by Ivy, Bubba Sparxxx himself—draped in a massive, shiny white sweatsuit and trailed by a crew of managers, bodyguards, and lesser-known rappers—blammed through the red swinging saloon doors and took a seat at a table in back, about thirty feet from us.

Sarah came back over and took a seat, and for the rest of the meal the four of us said little and mostly just watched Bubba and his friends, while at the same time pretending to be having our own conversation and not be watching them. Bubba had a natural boisterousness, and his voice boomed above the fray of voices at his table; we could make out the details of what food he ordered, how badly he wanted to give the Old Tucson shooting gallery a whirl, and which hot girls he half-knew in L.A. and was hoping to get on the guest list for their show there the following night.

“God, his music
sucks
!” Ivy whispered fiercely, and I jumped in to defend the guy, admitting that I had bought his first album and liked it, with the tacked-on justification that I always pulled for any small-town rapper who’d made it big. “Well, watch this,” she said, swiping the laminated Bubba Sparxxx postcard from its table display and getting to her feet.

“Don’t!”
cried Sarah, but Ivy was already heading over to Bubba’s table. She went right up to him and asked for an autograph, and the hulking bodyguard-looking dude standing behind him produced a Sharpie, which Bubba nimbly took and used to quickly scrawl his name, all without ever looking at her. Then Ivy took a tiny glance our way, and for an instant before she looked back toward Bubba, her eyes met mine and flashed. She leaned in close and started murmuring in his ear. Bubba listened, nodded a few times, looked up at her for the first time and smiled conspiratorially, and then gestured, Godfather-like, to the bodyguard who’d passed him the Sharpie. He said something softly to the guy, and before I knew what was happening, Bubba had stood and was headed our way, flanked by the bodyguard and two others. They crowded close to our table, as though Bubba Sparxxx was our waiter and the others were trainees.

“Are you Sarah?” he said, looking at her.

She turned bright red and made a squeaking noise, surprised and embarrassed.

“Well, your friend told me the story, and I just wanted to say hi and let you know how much we appreciate you making the trip down. Kansas City, that’s like, what, a few days’ fuckin’ drive?” He glanced at Sarah’s mom. “Pardon the language, ma’am.” Back to Sarah: “Our fans mean everything, you know, so this is … well it’s the least we can do. Fellas?” With that, Bubba and two of the others launched into a half-baked and off-tune but enthusiastic version of “Happy Birthday to You” while the third answered a call on his cellie, saying, “Hold on a sec, we’re singin’ ‘Happy Birthday’ to some random chick,” and then watched the others warble to the end, shaking his head and laughing, without joining in.

Then they were gone, and Ivy was grinning around the table triumphantly while Sarah buried her head in her hands. I looked back and forth between them, and had a snap series of speculative insights about their relationship: Ivy was the more attractive and more outgoing one, but also more insecure. Again and again, over the years, whenever Sarah had a big crush on a boy, Ivy would flirt, charm, and dazzle her way in, until the guy took notice of Ivy and made a play for her, which, most of the time, she would deflect. If Sarah got upset with her, Ivy would plead innocence: “I can’t help it if he likes me, and besides, I know you like him, I would never hook up with him!” It didn’t mean Ivy was shady, and it didn’t mean Sarah was weak—it was just the nature of certain friendships and the way of the world. I’d been in Sarah’s position all through high school with Mike Kozura as Ivy. Hanging around Mike meant I’d have a chance to be around plenty of girls and take a charge at his leftovers. Any gentle rank-pulling on his part was just part of the deal.

This made me feel even worse about the fact that I was now hot for Ivy and whatever physical attraction I’d tried to fire up for Sarah was tailing away. But I couldn’t help myself, and I bantered with Ivy while Sarah watched us through slit eyes, unimpressed. It was so fucked up—what about all those spiritual, late-night conversations with Sarah, and the potency of our love? Wasn’t she supposed to be Shade? Only a soulless asshole would fly to Arizona so full of promises, then mack on a girl’s best friend. I tried to beat back, or at least conceal, my traitorous impulses by resting an arm over Sarah’s shoulders, but the move felt forced and awkward, and she stiffened under its weight. A minute later, she cut Ivy off mid-sentence and said to her tersely, “Hey, let’s go have a smoke.”

“No thanks, I’m cool.” Ivy smiled back.

Sarah wordlessly snatched up her purse and headed for the saloon doors, and I felt a bit of evil relief that she seemed to blame Ivy, not me, for the direction things had taken.

The waiter came around and I ordered a Maker’s on the rocks, even though it was barely five o’clock and Sarah’s mom was sitting right there across from me with a scowl on her face. But Sarah’s mom said, “I’ll have one, too,” and Ivy smiled and said, “Hell, make it three.”

The drinks came, and I took a long sip, admiring Ivy’s neck like a vampire. Then I turned to look out the front windows, and in the orange light of early evening I saw Sarah with her cigarette, leaning close to the skinny pony tied to its post and nuzzling it gently. There was something so sad and beautiful and lonely and Shade-like about her in that moment, I felt my heart swoop low. She also seemed to have purposefully placed herself in sight of us, and I knew that she was still sulking, but that all could be redeemed if I just went out there and talked to her for a couple of minutes about anything at all. Later, thinking back on it all, the fact that I didn’t go to her then, that I kept sipping my drink—slouched, boiling, in my chair, half-listening to the end of a story one of Bubba’s friends was telling about wrestling hogs—felt, strangely, like a greater betrayal than any of the larger betrayals to come. I watched Sarah as she teased her fingers through the pony’s tangled mane, and had the thought,
Nobody can save anyone
, which was crushing, since all I wanted myself was to be saved. From Bubba’s table behind me came a sudden explosion of thunderous laughter as his friend’s story reached its payoff. The sound broke the spell over me and I jumped up, ready to rush out to Sarah and rescue her from the sadness of the world, but before I could take a step, she mashed her cigarette out against a
Frontiertown Gazette
newspaper box, flicked it away, rubbed her face for a second, and turned and headed back in.

*

Two hours later the sun had gone down and the last traces of daylight filled the sky to the west as me and Sarah rolled in our rental Ford Focus through the dead edges of town toward the I-10 entrance ramp. Our elaborate plan had already been set into motion, and there was no reason to call everything to a halt just because her friend had flirted with me and I was having a few doubts. Really, I was excited to hit the road. We’d dropped her mom off at home, and I’d had a chance to briefly meet her mom’s boyfriend, Ray, who was sitting on their front porch when we got back from Old Tucson. He was wearing a nice suit but his face was sunburnt and dirty, giving him the vibe of a homeless guy at a job interview. I sat and talked with him about minor-league baseball while Sarah grabbed a few things from inside the house, and when we pulled away, I told her how he seemed like a good guy and she said, “I think he punched my mom last week and that’s why she threw him out.”

Sarah suggested we pick up some snacks before we got on the highway, so we bailed into a strip mall off Speedway Avenue with a liquor store and a Subway.

Inside Subway, the glaring overhead fluorescents gave Sarah’s face a drab shine, and I watched her order her sandwich: “Lettuce. Tomato. Spinach. Pickles. A little bit of mustard. That’s good.” I had a biographer’s knowledge of the details of her life, but still couldn’t get used to her physical self and the idea that this girl in front of me in line was now my new girlfriend. I wished that the Mexican girl behind the counter—green eyes and high, thin brows, maybe three years out of high school—was my girlfriend instead. She had a kind of sweet and gentle gloom, and as I absorbed her, a queasying stab of nervousness daggered my insides. I kept a distance from Sarah, trying to convey that although we’d come in together, we weren’t, like,
together
.