The small town comes gradually into view, revealing
itself to be nothing more than a group of dusty houses, a motel and a gas station.
John fills up the car, while I hurry inside for a packet of cigarettes. As I
stand at the counter to pay my eyes are drawn to the array of liquor lined up
behind the shop clerk. I feel that itch in my veins that makes me long for the
rush of alcohol in my system, makes me ache for the burn on my tongue and the
warmth in my belly. It would be so easy right now, just to ask for that
half-bottle of whiskey. To feel the hard glass in my hand then unscrew the cap
and smell the sharp, heady scent, to disappear into the bathroom and take a
long gulp, letting the liquid hit the back of my throat and work its way into
my blood, gradually diluting my pain…
I
hurriedly hand over the money, walking out without the change, before the last
of my resolve is shattered. Then I chain smoke three cigarettes in quick
succession, brutally crushing the butts underneath my heel when they are
finished.
I
catch a weather-beaten local watching me brazenly, staring at the rich
strangers with the flash car and the fancy ways. I bet he wonders what we’re
doing here, deep in the vast and empty desert. Well, I wonder too.
“Excuse
me,” I call over to him.
He
simply raises an eyebrow and turns away.
“Hey!”
I persist, demanding his attention. “Where’s the nearest pay phone?”
He
runs his eyes lazily down my dishevelled figure, raping me with his gaze.
“That’ll be down in the General Store, little lady.”
“Well,
where’s the general store?” I ask impatiently.
He
nods in the direction of the gas station. “You’re lookin’ at it. Ask Bud
inside.”
Turning
exasperatedly away, I head back inside the shop and address the clerk, trying
my best not to look at the shiny bottles as I do so. “Could I use your phone,
please?”
“You
could borrow my cell,” John offers, and I flash him a guilty glace.
“I
have to call Luka.”
“Oh,”
he replies and walks away.
I
am ushered into a back room, and pointed in the direction of the phone, the
clerk standing over me as I prepare to dial. “Uh, this is a private call,” I
hint for him to leave.
I
punch in the familiar number, holding my breath as I hear ringing on the other
end. What am I going to say to him?
“Hello,”
Luka answers.
I
pause before speaking, my voice caught in my throat. “Hello,” he repeats. “Is
anybody there?”
“Luka?”
I blurt out suddenly. “It’s Abby.”
“Abby?
I’ve been worried sick about you. I tried calling your apartment, the hospital,
everywhere… Where are you?”
I
take a deep breath before answering. “Somewhere in the middle of Arizona.”
“Arizona?
Why?”
“It was the first
flight we could get out of O’Hare.”
“We?” He asks, the
first hint of suspicion and hostility leaking into his voice.
“John’s here with me.”
“Carter?” He fairly
yells. “You’re in Arizona with Carter.”
“It seemed like a good
idea at the time,” I reply in an apologetic tone.
“And now, now what does
it seem like?”
The clerk appears
hovering at the door once more. “Listen,” I tell Luka. “I have to go, I’ll talk
to you when we get back, okay?”
I replace the receiver
quickly and hand the guy a five-dollar bill, rushing out of the store before I
can stop myself from buying that six pack of beer I glimpse in the corner of my
eye, and guzzling the cool liquid straight down. God, a cold beer would be so
good right now, so refreshing, and it would just give me that extra kick to get
through the next few hours…
I shake my head, trying
to dispel the urge.
“What did Luka say?”
John asks, feigning disinterest.
I shrug. “Not much.”
“So,” he says tightly.
“Do you want to drive?”
I automatically catch
the keys he tossed in my direction. “What are we even doing here, John?”
“I don’t know,” he
replies. “You were the one who wanted to come.”
“I was drunk at the
time,” I protest. “I’m not exactly at my most rational when drunk. If I’d said
I wanted to pony trek in the Himalayas, would you have taken me?”
“Come on,” he emits a
short bitter laugh. “This is hardly Nepal. You said you wanted to get away for
a couple of days, so now we’re away.”
“Away in the middle of
nowhere,” I bite back. “Do you even know where the Hell we are?”
“Sure I do,” he
replies. “We’re in Grantsville – ” he points at the town’s ‘Welcome’ sign –
“Grantsville, Arizona.”
“Why thank you for
making that exceptionally complex deduction,” I say sarcastically. “And where,
pray tell, is Grantsville, in relation to anywhere resembling civilisation,
that is?”
He digs in the glove
compartment of the rental in search of a map, finally locating one and pouring
over it. Finally he stands up straight again and points in the direction we
were travelling. “The Nevada Stateline is about 100 miles west on this road,
then it’s a little further on to Vegas,” he turns around. “Or we could head
back the way we came to Phoenix. We can catch a flight back to Chicago from
either city – since I’m assuming that’s what you want to do.”
I nod curtly. “So,
which way? Onwards or back from whence we came?”
He thinks for a minute.
“We should carry on – after all, there’s no going back is there?”
“No,” I agree in a
quiet voice. “There never is.”
~~~
The
rest of the trip is spent in a semi-awkward silence. I turn the radio on and we
listen intermittently to country music, letting the sad lyrics and the slow,
sliding melodies provide a depressing soundtrack to our trip. We swap over the
driving a couple of times, both of us tired now, our bones aching with fatigue
and need for our equivalent pick-me-ups. I saw it in John’s eyes when we
stopped for a bathroom break. He had the haunted look of an addict. I touched
his arm in private understanding and the connection between us flared once
more, before being stifled by the hot, oppressive atmosphere of the car.
While
John drove I tried to sleep, managing short catnaps filled with disturbing
dreams of Luka’s dark eyes and my mother’s manic laughter. He’s a good man,
Maggie had said. And so is your friend John. She was right. Right about
both of them, so why do I keep hurting them so much? Or can I just not help it?
Do I destroy everyone and everything I touch – my legacy from her?
We
reach Las Vegas suddenly, the city looming straight out of the desert like some
bizarre mirage of concrete, steal and neon lights. The temperature seems to
soar even higher, what few breezes there are halted in the shelter of the tall
buildings, the pollution hovering like a blanket over the colourful metropolis.
John
turns the rental car in at the airport and I disappear into the bathroom to
change clothes and clean myself up a little. I wash away the road dust in the
small sink, turning the white tile a dirty red with sand, and almost regret
this trip ending. Because when I go back to Chicago it will be real, not just
some distant nightmare, My mother will be dead and my boyfriend won’t know me
and my best friend will hate me for stringing him along like I have.
I
want to turn and go back on the road, to do it properly this time, to make the
escape I longed for in the first place. But I know it won’t work, for exactly
the same reasons this trip has been a disaster. We can’t leave our troubles
behind – they don’t stay neatly filed away in places or people, they live in a
tangled mess in our heads and follow us wherever we go.
Eventually,
I drag myself away from my reflection in the mirror, unable to stare any longer
at the face I now don’t recognise as my own. I see more and more of her in
me every day. I have her hair, her cheekbones, her hollow eyes ringed with dark
circles. The older I get, the more changes that occur inside me too, I become
more and more screwed up – just like Mom. I seem to be accumulating problems. A
string of failed relationships. An aborted baby. Alcoholism. Getting thrown out
of medical school. My greatest fears are being realised and my tenuous control
over my life is gradually slipping away. The worst thing is, I don’t know
whether it’s her doing this to me (the inevitable influence of biology
and learned behaviour slowly distorting my mind), or whether I’m doing it to
myself. Maybe in trying so hard not to be her, I forgot to concentrate on the
things that are more important. I was so busy with my fears and my paranoia
that I messed up all on my own.
I
am consciously aware of the two warring sides of my personality. There’s the
sensible Abby, who puts up walls to protect her heart, who killed her baby
because she was afraid of being a bad mother, who is content to be a nurse
because it’s safe and familiar and carries no risk of dashed hopes. She’s the
one who wants to be with Luka, because he’s safe and reliable and he cares for
her. She’s afraid of showing her emotions, of falling in love, because then
she’ll have no power over her feelings or her actions. It’s not the love she
fears – that she craves – it’s the falling. She is petrified of loosing her
footing and flying through the air, not knowing where she might land.
Then
there’s the other Abby. The volatile, passionate Abby. The one who finds it in
herself to laugh and cry and get drunk out of her mind. The one who suggests
road trips, or lets down other people’s tyres. The one who acts totally on
impulse and has beautiful hopes and dreams for the rest of her life. The one
who still believes it’s possible to be happy. She gets up and yells in the
middle of courtrooms, because she loves someone so deeply she will do anything
to try and help them. She gets angry and sad and carefree and all the rest of
the roller coaster of emotions. She self-destructs in bars and she hurts
everybody around her, but she also takes leaps of faith and lives her life to
the full.
The
crazy part of me wants to turn to Carter now and tell him to get back on the
road. She wants to let go completely and travel wherever the mood takes us. She
wants to risk my heart by falling for him and kissing him and playing the
casinos of Las Vegas, because my luck’s been that bad so far, it has to change
sometime, right?
But
sensible Abby wins over yet again. She knows I have to head back to Chicago to
organise my Mom’s funeral and deal with Luka and decide whether or not I’m
going to carry on in the medical programme next semester. And she’s afraid.
Afraid that dropping everything and running across the country with a man (who
isn’t even the one I’m supposed to be dating) means I’m crazy. She’s afraid
it’s just the first step in a downward spiral, where I become more and more
like Maggie every day. She sees too many parallels with the aborted trips to
Disneyland and the depressed episodes spent locked up in motel rooms. Best to
stop it now, to return to my normal (safe) life and pretend like nothing
happened.
I
leave the bathroom decisively, my uncertainty firmly quashed. I am making the
right decision, there is no other one to be made, we have to go back.
~~~
I
meet John outside the bathroom, pacing back and forth impatiently waiting for
me.
“So,
did you see about getting plane tickets?” I ask.
He
turns to look at me, his expression half-guilty, half-reluctant. “I asked at
all the desks,” he explains. “And the first flight to Chicago I could get is at
ten a.m. tomorrow.”
“Not
until tomorrow morning?” I exclaim, suddenly panicking. This can’t be
happening, I had my mind all made up, we were going to go back and everything
would be fine. Now, though, I feel lost again, unable to cope with
circumstances beyond my control. “Did you go through every airline? There can’t
possibly be nothing available? What about in first class? Or transfers –
we could fly somewhere else first then go on to Chicago.”
“And
the journey would take twice as long and cost twice as much,” John reminds me.
“What’s the big deal, anyway? We could spend the night in a motel here, get
some sleep, then go back tomorrow. Eighteen more hours isn’t going to change
anything.”
I
glance over at Carter standing next to me, his eyes unwaveringly following my
every movement, his hands stuffed protectively into his pockets, and I think
that eighteen hours could change a lot – too much in fact.
“I’m
not sure…” I waver.
“It’s
just one night, Abby.”
The
last of my resistance crumbles, heading the way of the rest of my best-laid
plans. “All right, okay. I can handle it,” I say as much to persuade myself as
him.
“Good,”
he nods. “I saw a motel outside the airport, we can stay there.”
“Fine,”
I reply, walking out with him. We are just passing through the double-doors of
the main exit, mingling with the rest of the tourists and business people and
gamblers, when a sudden thought occurs to me, hitting me sharply in the
stomach. “Are you sure they were no flights left? You weren’t just saying that
to make me stay?”
John
spins around on me, caught midway between amusement and offence, his mouth
laughing but his eyes hurt. “What? You really think I’d do that?”
I
realise my mistake at once, the certainty of a second ago now dismissed as
impossible, a figment of my paranoid imagination. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
that. In fact, I’m sorry for all of this. For dragging you into this, for
acting like a total bitch.”
John
wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me slightly into his body. “I’m sorry
too – about Maggie. About your Mom.”
I
say nothing in response, afraid that any further conversation will unlock the
floodgate to all the tears threatening to spill down my cheeks. Instead I just
lean my head against him and carry on walking. The familiar AA mantra echoes in
my head – one step at a time.