K.J. Stevens, author of A Better Place, brings us his latest effort, closer to god. A comprehensive collection of memorable writings, which guide us through a journey into the volatile and complex nature of the human condition.
Driving in the Rain
I have the ring, but it has been raining all day, and I don’t think that’s what she wants to remember. Rain. Puddles. A steady downpour of sky. I think I’ll wait to see if the sky will part and let the sun in. Besides, she seems happy enough sitting in the passenger seat, wearing her new fleece pullover. It is yellow, her favorite color, and 100% waterproof.
Merrill and I have been dating for two and a half years. We’d met at a bar called The Stowaway during our senior year of college. It had been Oldies Night and we bumped into each other during Michael Jackson’s, Beat It. Some guy wearing parachute pants and a rhinestone-studded glove had dropped to the floor to do a backspin, and as I jumped back to get out of his way, I bumped into Merrill, knocking her over.
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” she yelled.
She was drunk and wearing godawful amounts of jewelry and makeup. It was hard to tell if she was Cyndi Lauper or Madonna.
I was drunk too, and shouting.
“Need a lift, honey?”
“Is that you Huey Lewis?”
I stepped back and looked myself over. White blazer, pink t-shirt, white pants, no socks and white deck shoes. I had lost my mirrored sunglasses while dancing to Born in the USA.
“No Madonna! It’s me! Don! Don Johnson!”
She sat up and looked at me. I reached down and took her by the arm. The dance floor was packed with sweaty bodies spinning under flashing, colored lights.
“Don? Oh, Crockett! I’m sorry! I didn’t recognize you without your sidekick, Tubbs!”
I laughed with her, but the reality of it was that Tubbs was there somewhere. Charlie Wentworth, my black neighbor from across the hall, had come up with the idea in the first place. I had been studying for a biology final when he burst into my room.
“Man! We go as Crockett and Tubbs and it’s clear sailing the whole of the night! Us and the ladies is all it’ll be!”
It took a case of beer for me to agree to his idea and get me dressed up and in line at The Stowaway.
“Great idea, Charlie,” I said to him, as we stood outside in the cool night air, waiting. Crockett and Tubbs were everywhere.
As soon as we got in the place I lost Charlie to a young Asian girl who was dressed in a suit jacket and skirt. She had been clutching a clipboard to her chest that had CBS NEWS ANCHOR - CONNIE CHUNG written on it.
I looked around for Tubbs and Connie Chung as I lifted Merrill from the floor.
“Who you looking for? Your girl?” she asked.
“No, I was looking for Tubbs!”
“Pick one! They’re everywhere!”
“Not my Tubbs!”
“You gay?”
“No! Charlie’s his real name! He’s my neighbor!”
She laughed and hugged me and from that moment on, we slow danced. It didn’t matter that most of the songs were fast, or that we were sopping wet with sweat and being bounced around by other bodies. We danced round and round. A couple of gravity-challenged fools trying to keep each other steady.
I think of all this as we travel down the wet highway. I marvel at the fact that since our drunken meeting we’ve rarely been apart. It seems like a dream. One that you wake from, but keep feeling.
A semi whooshes by and we’re engulfed in a cloud of mist. I click the windshield wipers up a notch.
“Remember the Stowaway?” I ask.
“Do you have the headlights on?”
“Yes. They’re on.”
Merrill is leafing through Cosmopolitan, sniffing perfume samples. She holds a page into my face. A picture of young woman’s tan pierced midriff.
“You like this one?”
“It’s alright, I guess.”
“I’m talking about the perfume, not the girl.”
“I know. It smells good. I wasn’t even looking at the page. I’m trying to drive, remember?”
She closes the magazine and tosses it into the backseat. I watch a white minivan close in behind us. A woman with wide, white eyes and a frizzy mess of hair is driving. Her hands are glued to the steering wheel at ten and two. The van is filled with kids. None of them must be buckled up because little bodies are bobbing up and down in the van, playing catch with a soccer ball.
The van pulls up alongside of us and a little girl in the front passenger side seat stares out at us. She is holding a sign that reads: Local Union 876 Bobcats are #1!!
I wave at her. She smiles and shakes the sign above her head. The van zips by.
“Think they’re heading to the game, or home?” Merrill asks.
“Do they cancel soccer games on the count of rain?”
“They do if it’s lightning.”
Lightning flickers through the clouds. My ears wait for the thunder, but it doesn’t come.
I remember watching Merrill on the intramural soccer fields. Maroon and yellow jersey. Auburn hair pulled back into a pony tail that I liked to watch bounce and sway as she dribbled the ball. Her legs smooth, muscular, strong. After the games she’d strip down to her sports bra, and the sight of her all wet and energized, was intoxicating. We both agreed that the best sex was the sex we had after her intramural games Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
I reach over and put my hand on her thigh. Her legs are bigger than they used to be, but I have been prepared for some time because I have seen pictures of my aunts who have played softball or basketball. Years younger. Tagging runners out at second base, or lining up for jump shots. Their legs smooth, muscular, strong. When I see these same aunts now, at family picnics, or at the cottage, in shorts or bathing suits, their legs are thick and bulky. All bumpy and blotchy. Veiny. Like they’ve been beaten with a ball peen hammer.
“Are our kids going to play sports?” Merrill asks.
“Sure. Why not?”
She puts her hand on mine and says cheerfully, “I want a football player and a swimmer.”
“I want a hockey player and a gymnast.”
“That would be good. Two kids, boy or girl, it doesn’t matter.”
“I’d like two boys.”
“You would,” she says. “All you men want more men.”
It is true.
I think back to me and Merrill, sweaty and wet on Saturdays. Both of us locked inside each other, swallowed by the throes of post intramural sex. Fucking hard before her parents came to visit, like they did nearly every Saturday. I remember shaking hands with her tight-gripped father, feeling guilty because the hand he was holding had been on and in parts of his daughter that he never wanted any man to discover. Men, before they are fathers, must want sons.
I can feel the ring inside my coat, rubbing my ribs as the car passes over cracks and dips in the road. I’ve wrapped the black box with a yellow bow and placed it inside my coat like it is a living, breathing thing. I have handled it with care while thinking of the insignificance of precious metals and diamonds. I have thought of how foolish we are to assign meaning to things that do not last, but I know that it is a small compromise, and it will pave the way into showing Merrill that I want to give her everything.
She is restless, tapping her feet, playing with the radio.
“How long before we’re there?” she asks.
We entered Dakota County a mile earlier and the blue Taylor Heights water tower is now pushing up over the treetops. I am checking my side-view mirror when I notice the ducks just ahead. In the gray mist, against the solid, white line of the road, I see two mallards. The brown one is dead, its neck broken and stretched out, one wing sticking upright. Feathers everywhere. The bright one, green and shimmering in the rain, is waiting. Head down, sitting still, feathers ruffling in gusts of car wind.
I can’t stop. I can’t turn around. And I know I can’t let Merrill see.
“What’s that song you just passed?” I ask. “Was that Neil Young?”
“I don’t know. Which song? I’ve passed about a dozen.”
Merrill backtracks through stations, asking me, “Was this the one?” and I watch the ducks pull away from us in the rearview mirror. The green one will die too, I think. By starving, by crossing the road, or by being knocked silly with lead shot during duck season. An obedient lab will retrieve the bright body from a cold lake, or a stiff ground, and if the shock of it all hasn’t killed the bird, the hunter will with a quick twist, a snap of the wrist.
“I can’t find any Neil Young song. Are you sure that’s what you heard?”
“Maybe it’s over already. It sounded like the end, anyway.”
I look at Merrill. Her right hand is buried between her knees. She is looking out the window.
“You don’t have to pee again, do you?”
“What gave it away? The clenched teeth? Tears in my eyes? The locked knees?”
“We have about half an hour to go, but there’s a McDonald’s up ahead if you want to stop.”
“I don’t know what it is. I peed twice before we left and once at that filthy rest stop. I think it’s all the rain.”
The golden arches are bright against the gray sky. We park in the lot and immediately recognize the white van. As we make our way inside, we can see and hear the kids, all of them crowding at the register around the mom. I squeeze Merrill’s hand.
“Looks like it’ll be a while. Go ahead and do your thing. You want a milkshake?”
“Yeah, get me a strawberry one.”
I take my place in line behind the kids and wait. Everything is bright and clean. An old man wearing a burgundy McDonald’s uniform is leaning on his mop, watching the children. There is one frazzled cashier. A young man about sixteen. He looks to the mother for help as the children shout their orders, but her gaze is locked on the menu.
“Just give them whatever they want,” she says, holding a fifty dollar bill in the air. “I’ve been in the car way too long with them. Burgers, fries, pop. I don’t care. If it takes Ronald McDonald himself, I’ll pay for it. Just give them whatever they want.”
The old man sighs. He puts away his mop and begins wiping tables. There are two women in the grill area. One is lowering a metal basket of frozen fries into a silver vat and taking drive-thru orders over her headset. The other is putting together burgers while watching a black and green computer screen. It dictates what she does. After each burger is assembled she drops it into its respective slot. Cheeseburger. Big Mac. Quarter pounder with cheese. I wonder how much of it these kids can eat before it all catches up with them. Before their legs, hips, and bellies expand and explode.
Merrill has returned already. She puts her hand on my stomach.
“Maybe you ought to go for something light, like the grilled chicken sandwich,” she teases.
“Very funny,” I say, sucking in my gut. “By the way, that was quick. Did you even go to the bathroom?”
“False alarm, I guess. But maybe we should eat in. I’ll probably have to go again before too long.”
“I thought you just wanted a shake.”
“Whatever you want, but besides those candy bars a while ago we haven’t had anything since this morning. And it is still raining. Maybe by the time we’re done eating things will clear.”
“Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?”
The cashier’s face is red.
The children have moved aside and are circled around the mother waiting for their food. They wave their arms and chatter on and on. They look like baby birds waiting to be fed. Merrill steps up to order.
“I’ll have the cheeseburger meal super-sized, a nine piece McNugget, and two strawberry shakes.”
“And for you, sir?”
“I’ll just have one of those strawberry shakes that she ordered.”
“I’m not eating all that food myself!”
Merrill gushes. “We’ll share!”
I recall our stops. We have stopped at gas stations three times to pee and each time she has come back with something. Snickers bar. Twizzlers. Doritos. A 20 ounce Pepsi or Mountain Dew. I think of her thighs growing and growing.
The mother ushers the kids to a group of tables next to the play land. Some run off to leap into a sea of plastic balls. Some jump through holes and glide down slides. The rest dig into their food. Tiny hands shoving fries into tiny mouths by fistfuls.
“I don’t want our kids eating crap,” Merrill says, unwrapping a cheeseburger, taking a bite.
“Me neither, but I’m sure it’ll happen. Once in awhile on the way back from hockey games or swim meets.”
Merrill nods with approval and chews silently. She will not speak with food in her mouth and will not rest her elbows on the table. She’s always had manners. Not once have I heard her chew with her mouth open, or slurp through her straw. She burps and has other bodily noises just like everyone else, but she’s quick to apologize when she absolutely cannot contain them. One of the reasons she’s stayed with me she’s said, is because I have manners too. I’m the only person she’s been able to eat with in years because it seems that everyone chews with their mouths open these days. She’s told me that she can barely stand eating with her parents and that it’s been this way ever since she can remember because her father is a blatant, open mouth chewer. She’s said that she’s going to say something to him about it one day, especially before our wedding. She doesn’t want him telling the video camera how much he loves us with his lips smacking a mouthful of food.
We eat quietly. Both of us smile and nod and listen to the children near the play land. The mother is talking on a cell phone letting other parents know that they’ve won the game and that they are on the way home. “The weather has been a bitch”, she says, and some of the kids giggle.
Merrill rolls her eyes and wipes her mouth in disgust. I know we won’t ever swear in front of our kids.
We get back on the road. The sun is still missing. Clouds, rain, and thunder without lightning. The gray mist hangs everywhere. I begin to wonder if it is going to work at all. The sun is gone. The bridge might have been washed out. And what about the little wooden bench? I had carved our initials into it, knowing we would last, but hadn’t thought that the bench could rot away.
I had planned to walk with Merrill, hand in hand, to our spot on the bridge. We would sit on our bench, find out initials, and then I would ask her to marry me. She would say yes and hold me, while I traced our initials with my fingers, and looked over the edge of the bridge, into the lake where the stream ran into it. I would point out the beauty of a stork wading in the shallows, standing tall and straight on its long, slender legs, and Merrill would say, “That’s not a stork. It’s a Blue Heron. And it isn’t waiting for babies, either. It’s looking for fish.”
As we enter the park, I see that things have changed. The road is paved and smaller asphalt trails run off into the woods in several directions. I drive us to where I remember the bridge being and it is still there, but it is bigger and made of steel and concrete. An old man wearing a blue raincoat is fishing from a wrought iron bench. Near the bridge there’s a green porta-potty and by now, after the food and the shake have settled, and after all of the driving in the rain, I have to go to the bathroom.
“They’ve really jazzed up the place, haven’t they?” I say.
“That’s for sure. Doesn’t even look like the same place.”
“You still want to get out?” I ask.
She gives my hand a squeeze. “Would you kill me if I said no? I’m not feeling well.”
“It is still raining. And we can’t even sit on the bridge because that guy’s fishing in our spot.”
“We can sit and wait awhile. We can watch him fish and see if he leaves.”
I pat my coat pocket. The ring is still there, waiting.
The stream and lake are still there. The water froths with raindrop bubbles. I eye the porta-potty and shift around in my seat.
“You have to go now too, don’t you?” Merrill asks, smiling.
“Yeah, and by the time I get back, I’m sure you’ll have to go again too.”
Out of the car. Through puddles. The air is fresh and I suck in as much of it as I can because I can’t ever remember rain smelling so good. Wet pines, wet grass, and wet ground. Bird song muffled through wet leaves and dripping boughs.
The old man coughs from his place on the bridge. I watch him bait his hook until he looks my way. I wave and try to smile, but I can’t because I wonder, how lonely is a man who fishes alone in the rain?
The porta-potty stinks like shit and stale water. I try not to look into the hole while I piss, but I can’t help myself. Tampons, beer bottles, and diapers. Everything that does not belong there is there mixed with shit. I look at the sign that says, “PLEASE DO NOT DISPOSE OF GARBAGE IN TOILET” and I’m thankful that it has been raining all day because it is keeping the stench down.
I step out into the rain and breathe deeply. Merrill is sitting in the car, looking ahead at the old man, or the bridge, or at something else that I cannot see. I notice for the first time that she’s picked up a double chin somewhere along the way. I feel something stir inside of me, like fright and excitement, like being chilled from the inside out, but it comes and goes so quickly that I wonder if I’ve felt it at all. For an instant, I know something, but I don’t know what it is. I walk toward the car, looking in the direction that Merrill is looking.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“Us. I’m remembering us on the bridge.”
“That was a good day, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. We’ve come far, haven’t we?”
“Seems like yesterday.”
I feel for the ring in my pocket and lean toward Merrill. I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror and notice something different. My very own double chin. I kiss her cheek and feel my belt tighten against my stomach. It is time to move up a notch.
Merrill’s skin is soft and familiar against my lips. Rain or not, sun or clouds, growing thighs or double chins, what does any of it matter? We are together and time will change us by keeping us the same.
“It’s not just having a full bladder,” she says.
“What are you talking about?”
“And I know you’ve noticed the weight gain.”
I sit back in my seat and watch the man on the bridge. He is unhooking a sunfish from his line. It flips and flops. The yellow belly twists and squirms in his hands.
I think of us on the bridge the day I had carved our initials into the wood. I wonder if anyone had been watching us. From the parking lot. From the woods. Maybe with binoculars from across the lake. What had they thought as we leaned over the bridge and looked into the water? Did they know that we were watching perch minnows? Dark and gray against a bright stream bottom. If they had seen us, they couldn’t have known what we had known. That someone had thrown red and blue aquarium gravel into the water. That the perch minnows seemed to like it there, hovering above colors, like people staring at a painting trying to decipher texture, pattern, meaning. They couldn’t have known what we were thinking. That a family had laid a pet fish to rest. That they had carried the whole aquarium there not knowing that it held some fish disease, and now the perch and stream were infected, swimming in it.
Beyond the lake, I wonder where the stream leads.
I turn to Merrill. Her eyes are sad.
“I’ve gained some weight too,” I say. “All I do is eat. We need to get outside and exercise more.”
“But you’re not pregnant.”
I hear her say it, but it is still deep inside of me, moving around in my veins with the aquarium gravel, the old man on the bridge, the yellow-bellied sunfish, and the ducks on the side of the road. I wonder if on our way home we’ll see the ducks again. I imagine the green one will remain. It won’t leave. It can’t. It will die too, and it will not see another duck season. It will never see the flash of gunshot or the blackness of a splashing lab, and it will never feel the water change into anything besides what it has always been, something familiar and true, like lifeblood.
Everything starts to make sense as the rain dwindles to sprinkles
Her voice is shaking. “Did you hear what I said?”
The old man has packed up and has left our place on the bridge.
“I heard you just fine,” I say. “Let’s go outside and talk. The rain’s letting up and I’d like to be by the stream.”
As we get out of the car, I breathe the rainy air and stretch and yawn. Blood rushes up. Through me. And I feel like I can run for miles. I take the ring from my pocket and hold it in my hand as Merrill and I dance around the puddles.
Excerpt
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