Fifty-One—Bo
I
t would not require an advanced degree in psychology to determine that the last 48 hours of my life might reflect poorly on my sanity. I had driven away two days ago without a fully formed plan in my head—something very not like me. But at the time, I was obsessed with a single objective, and my capacity to obsess is quite legendary. My objective, of course, was to avoid Ivy. She’d asked something of me that had shamed me in my inability to deliver. I could not face her. So, I got in my car and drove. I pulled onto the freeway and didn’t get off until my fuel light was flashing.
I’d driven 226 miles. But at that time, Ivy had not yet caught her flight. So, with my predictably faulty rationale, I gassed up and kept driving. Much, much later, when I pulled into the forlorn parking lot of the Bee-Line Mart in Flagstaff, I was pretty sure I’d lost my mind—I’d been gone for almost fourteen hours. Fourteen hours. It was just after seven the next morning. I was hungry, I was exhausted, and I had to pee, but I could not get myself out of the car. And as a true testament to my weirdness, I actually tried to sleep off my full bladder—for almost two hours, I tried. Then I called Mia. I called my sister to talk me out of the car and into a public restroom—which she did. Now for the record, panic doesn’t always accompany chores of this nature, but this time it did, and I could not have done it without her talking me through it. And with that achieved, I would have cried had I been able to withstand one more ounce of self-imposed indignity .
Instead, I kept driving, inordinately pleased with the triumph of growing mileage between me and all that was safe and predictable. I was so pleased, in fact, that I was a little pumped, maybe a bit manic. No sleep. Nothing but caffeinated beverages consumed through individually wrapped straws changed hourly—I happen to keep a stash in my glove compartment—two granola bars and a banana.
By late afternoon, I was in Albuquerque—as in New Mexico—which was surreal and inexplicably liberating. I’d made a deal with myself that I’d decide what I was doing when I got here—which meant I’d probably turn around and head home. But by the time I rolled in, I desperately needed a shower and to sleep, which entailed checking into a hotel, which entailed purchasing a change of clothes and a set of sheets, which would then entail time spent at a premium laundromat preparing said sheets and clothes. It was almost eight o’clock when I actually checked into the Marriott. I ordered room service, but only because I was starving and only because it was the Marriott. I put my own triple-washed sheets on the bed and by nine had fallen into a coma and slept the sleep of the dead until twenty minutes ago.
Twenty minutes ago, my phone pinged—7:36 AM in Albuquerque—and it rattled me to the core because only one number was allowed past the gates of my smartphone’s silent mode: Ivy’s. My heart had become a hammer as I sat up. I couldn’t answer it. Nothing had changed. There was nothing I could do to atone for what I’d done—what I hadn’t done. I’d reached for my phone anyway, and sure enough, the caller ID had said Ivy. I wasn’t even sure why I’d programmed her number to ring through when I didn’t want to be bothered by anyone else. I couldn’t talk to her, though. I couldn’t! I’d rammed my free hand roughly through my hair, then over my face, waiting for the call to go to voicemail—the whole time hating myself for failing her yet again— I couldn’t even answer my freaking phone . Finally…Another ping, a different ping: I had a message, which bizarrely, I could not listen to fast enough. Tw enty minutes later, I’d now lost count of how many times I’d listened to it.
“ H…Hey, Bo…” Ivy’s voice was soft, tear-clogged. “I’m…I’m so sorry I missed you. I think it’s early there, you might still be sleepin’. But I just actually kinda wanted to hear your voice… ” I heard her sniffle, and it took her a second to speak again. “ My…my mama died…’bout an hour ago…and I…I just wanted you to know .” When she started to cry, I felt my shoulders give way—again. “ That’s all ,” she continued softly. “ You don’t have to call me back, it just…It just feels better, you knowing. Is that weird? ” She took a breath. “ Bo…I… I also really need to know that we’re okay. I never meant to upset you. I wouldn’t do that on purpose in a million years. I hope you know that .” Another shaky breath. “ Well, I’d better go, I think I’m heading into a very rough day. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you again, for being such a good…friend. Have a good day, Bo.”
I stared at the ceiling and let the phone drop from my hand onto the floor. For a moment, there was barely enough strength in me to breathe. That girl. In twenty-seven years on this planet, no one, no one , aside from myself, had ever scared, distracted, confused, or overwhelmed me more.
I didn’t like it. But whatever it was, somehow fed me in a way that I’d never been fed before. And it hurt me that she was hurting, and I had never hurt this way before. I’d never cared like this before. I didn’t like it. But I didn’t want it to stop. This was insanity—and I knew insanity—but this was insanity on a different level. This was borne of having disappointed someone… someone I cared about. This was some kind of rogue humanity in me that recognized I was simply not man enough to…to be there for her. I squeezed my eyes shut. Not man enough…Not man enough to be there for her…To be…there…
There. There?
My eyes opened, then my mouth, as realization slowly bloomed awake in me .
One of the side effects of being me is that I’ve developed a finely tuned executive function —in other words, I seem to be able to effectively succeed in my life, despite my massive preoccupations with minutia. This is only possible because somewhere in the upper twigs of my rat’s nest of a brain, there is a master controller that has the ability to circumvent the rest of my bizarre fixations. At times—like now—my insight expands, and it becomes obvious to me that my executive function has been working all along—despite the circus.
I was shaking when I leaned down to pick up my phone from the towel I’d placed on the floor by my bed—there were three lying end-to-end, making a clean trail from me to the bathroom. It was the Marriott, but still. And I was shaking when I pulled up a road map of the United States.
No way.
I sat up, a chill crawling up my spine. I-40 E, on which I’d been driving since I left home, was a straight shot from Monterey to Savannah. “No… No freaking way.”
I stared at my phone, stared so hard I could have burned a hole in it. According to this map—and my demon EF—two days ago when I’d driven away, even though it had felt like it, I had not actually been driving away from Ivy at all. Instead, it seemed, I had been driving steadily toward her.
And not only that, it looked like I was almost halfway there.