When You're Expecting Something Else (2 page)

I should have wondered if I was sick, but the thought never crossed my mind. It seemed the most natural thing; to sleep when I was tired, eat when I was hungry, to cry when I was sad. Heartsick is what I was. But now, my teeth are brushed, the greasy bags emptied into the trash with chicken bones and spoilt cole slaw, and empty cobs gnawed of corn. Who was that slob? Surely it wasn’t me. I eat only healthy foods, and follow hygienic habits by the clock, and maintain wholesome daily routines. It’s who I’ve always been.

The motel clerk tells me where I can find a laundromat. I check out, and then I go there to wash my dirty, wrinkled clothes. Hypnotized, I sit on a pink plastic chair, and watch the suds splash against the window, and then the spin cycle spinning round and round just like the thoughts in my head. By the time I fold everything into neat piles, I realize that I like the feel of the heat against my skin, the clean, fresh smell of laundry soap, and I notice the sunshine of the day. My brain feels clean, like my clothes, and while my heart is still sad, I notice, for the first time, that the ache has lessened.

I drive and drive, from lonely two lane roads lined with trees, through lonely, crowded freeways with views of city skylines. Days turn into nights, my brain grows numb, and the scenery outside my windows blur like the rain on my windshield with the wipers going swoosh-swoosh-swoosh. I still think about having a baby on my own, but now I know it can only be one baby, and I’ll take whichever I can get. Whether it’s a lifestyle with T-ball, or pink ballet shoes, I’ll love my child more than life itself.
 

“You can still meet someone new,” my brain argues to my heart. “There are other fish in the sea.”

“Get real! I’m thirty-five,” my heart bleeds, yelling at my stupid, stupid brain.

In Kansas City I stop at a small deli in a Wal-Mart shopping center where I order a turkey on rye with everything and sit outside at a white plastic table with green chairs. I sip ice water and nibble my sandwich while watching people come and go, pushing shopping carts overflowing with detergents and toilet paper, diapers, and baby clothes. I see a mother in the parking lot yank her toddler by his arm and position him for a spanking on his diapered butt. I jump up and run across the potholed asphalt, abruptly dropping my turkey sandwich onto its plate, pickles and tomatoes spilling out. I yell at the top of my lungs, like a woman crazed by an inner demon, the one that resides in me. “I want babies, and you abuse yours! Do you know how unfair that is? I would love my babies!” I shout so loud that people stop and stare.

The mother stops mid-spank, the child stops crying. She thrusts him into his car seat, strapping and buckling with lightning speed, and then races to the driver’s side, jumps in, and peels out, driving way too fast for a parking lot and with a child in the car. She flips me the bird and then thumbs her nose at me.

“Hey lady, lighten up!” A fat man yells, meaning me.

I go back to my table, reassemble my sandwich, stacking the pickles and tomatoes on top of the turkey again. I feel a strange peace settle inside me, like order reestablishing after chaos. Usually, I’m quite restrained. I rarely say what’s really on my mind, and I’m self-conscious about what people think. But here and now, I really don’t give a rat’s ass. As crazy as it sounds, I feel liberated from my outburst, like a new person has emerged from my crisis. Nobody would dare kiss the best friend of this new personality. I am woman hear me roar.

Now every time I start to think about my dream babies, I laugh out loud to break the craziness, though laughter doesn’t really solve the baby problem, or some of the other problems I’m thinking about, like I don’t have a job or a place to live. I have a savings account that includes a small inheritance from my parents who died three years ago in a car crash, but it doesn’t amount to much, although I could probably make it through a year or two if necessary, but that’d be wasting good money. Glad I didn’t waste it on a wedding that wasn’t meant to be.

I drive and I drive, minding the speed limit, weaving my red Honda between the lanes on the highways, and find myself appreciating the topography of lands I’ve never seen before, from mountains to plains, cities to farms, the changing elevation shifting up and down like the moodiness that shifts in me. Then comes the long and dreadful road where boredom is worse than any of my moods and I long for a place to stop, anyplace less barren than where I am.

I see a green highway sign listing miles to San Francisco. It’s still a long ways off, but I feel my heart pick up its beat. Before long, I come to a town called Charming Hill, a strange name, I think, since it appears to be all flat farm land, dotted with dilapidated barns, cattle, and grazing goats. I see nothing charming at all, but I stop at a small café in the center of town there for a snack, but mostly because I’m desperate to talk to somebody, anybody who isn’t me. I find a waitress who’s happy to oblige.

“You know the movie,
Ernie and Meg
? It was filmed here, down that street,” she points. And then she adds, “Charming Hill is also the place where a little girl named Susan Hart was kidnapped from her bedroom window, but we try not to think about that. It’s really a very safe place to live.”

Coffee splashes from my ceramic cup onto the table. How lucky for Meg; I saw that movie and she got married! I think about Alex again and my marriage that wouldn’t be, and how my dream babies flew out of my own window just like Susan Martin, as if kidnapped by Alex and Sandy, and then vaporized into thin air.

“Are you okay?” the waitress asks as I swipe at my tears.

“Can you put this in a take-out cup?” I ask, pointing to my drink. “I’ve got to run.”

“Here,” she says, handing me a paper cup, looking at me with eyes of pity, which I cannot bear.

“How long can I keep on running?” I cry to myself when safely ensconced inside my car, tears subsiding again. I bang the steering wheel with my fists, and then my temper tantrum over; I’m on the road again.

Finally, I see the majestic orange towers, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, just as I’m about to give up hope of ever getting there. Traffic slows and I join the others jam packed on the bridge, feeling an excitement I can hardly contain, like I am crossing the bridge to my future, leaving heartache and trouble in my past. I pay my six dollars to the lady in the tollbooth and then follow signs to Nineteenth Avenue where my dirty, red Accord mixes in with other colorful cars that crawl. Feeling brave, I turn right onto a one-way street leading to who knows where.

And that’s where my excitement ends and trepidation begins. Where did these F’in drivers come from! Not to mention the one-way streets and vertical hills with stop signs on the edge. Fear threatens to engulf me as I hyperventilate to the sound of honking cars and screeching tires while pedestrians ignore the threats of large wheels that promise to crush their lives. Who are these people!

I manage to avert a total psychological breakdown, just by luck, when I turn onto a street that suddenly has cars driven by sane people. Here I see colorful houses attached together that I believe are called painted ladies because they stand so tall and regal, houses I’d read about in a travel book once. I pull over to the side of the road where I catch my breath and reprogram my navigation system, knowing that living in San Francisco is not the place for me.

I let the bossy navigation lady with the clipped British accent lead me out of the city onto the Great Highway, which snakes alongside the Pacific Ocean. Before long the Great Highway turns into Highway One and I see an opportunity to pull over onto a scenic overlook where I see white caps chopping through turquoise water, a mesmerizing view.

Huge waves crash against large black rocks, sweeping dark colored driftwood and green tentacled seaweed up onto the beach, covering the sand with white, frothy sea foam. Colorful orange and yellow flowers with bright green leaves fan the edges of the beach in front of the expansive, crashing ocean, the whole scene looking so much like a painter’s masterpiece that it fills my heart so full I’m sure it can never ache with emptiness again. I linger here, soaking in the view and smelling the salty sea air until my head feels full with a promise, a beautiful new life.

I drive on, but don’t get very far when hunger pangs and growls in my stomach beg me to me to stop for food. I follow signs into Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay. Suddenly, I remember a song, something about going to San Jose wearing flowers in my hair. Maybe I should go to San Jose next, I think, minus the flowers in my hair. I order clam chowder in a bread bowl from the corner snack bar and take it to an outdoor picnic table to eat while watching the fishing boats bounce up and down, the water rhythmically sloshing and splashing against their sides, while sea gulls flit and caw, occasionally diving for fish. One comes and begs for my bread, so I break off a corner to share, the gull my only friend in the world. I open up my map and circle San Jose as my next stop. I’m tired and I want to settle in to rest for a while at the next decent city I come to, which looks to be San Jose, and not too far from here. I’m tired and I want to make a home, a new place, where to rest my weary but increasingly hopeful head.

Chapter Three

Rather than using artificial insemination, I think about strong arms that long to hold me. It doesn’t have to mean love. Wouldn’t casual sex be better than going to a cold, calculated clinic? It came to me in a dream, not an erotic dream, or an angry dream, or anything like that. Maybe it was a dream inspired by angels because it was my first peaceful dream since coming to San Jose. I’m staying at a Best Western on Steven’s Creek Boulevard, though I’m apartment hunting and looking for a job. It’s Saturday and my heart oddly feels almost free of pain.

Thank God for Google and cell phones and coffee shops with Internet. I’m hooked up at a Starbucks not far from my motel, sipping black coffee and nibbling on an oatmeal cookie, surrounded by my animated peers. They all seem to be engaged in long, loud cell phone conversations, while the whirring froth machines provide background noise, all of it mixing together with the familiar coffee shop scents that permeate the air. Caffeine hits my brain and it amuses me that I find the incessant chatter both comforting and irritating at the same time, making me think about my sister and our recent communications. I’ve emailed her to let her know I’m okay and living in California now. I’ve talked to her on the phone once or twice, but the calls always seem the same.

“Are you nuts?” she screams. “What are you thinking? Alex is beside himself with grief. He insists there is nothing going on between him and Sandy. You need to come home! He’ll give you another chance.” She just doesn’t get it.
I saw them
. So, for now it’s email, and thank God for caller ID.

I fill out three online job applications for local hospitals, but my heart isn’t into working just yet. If my heart was in it, I’d be making appointments to meet nurse recruiters at the personnel offices in the hospital basements, planning to wear nice clothes rather than faded blue jeans and a wrinkled tee shirt, my uniform of the day. I’d visualize myself smiling and handing over my crisp, pristine resume -- minus references from Dr. Alex Masterson and co-worker Sandy Williams, of course. Online feelers are good enough for now. Besides, I remind myself, it’s Saturday and I have to find an apartment first. I have some appointments set up for later today, but I still have an hour to kill. So, on a whim, I explore an Internet dating site.