I'm going to Madrid. Not that Madrid. The Madrid I'm going to is twenty-eight miles away. Also, you don't pronounce it Madrid. It's Maaadrid, like if a cartoon sheep were saying it. I'll give you a second to try it out; we don't want you coming off like a tourist.
There are two roads to Madrid (did you say it right?). The first is a scenic byway. It winds through the lumpy east mountains of New Mexico. Slouchy hills of boulders and shrubs that make city folk think, "Avalanche!" I don't mean to disparage them -- the mountains or the city folk -- as I have been a city person for most of my life. I like these mountains best during shadow hour. That's pre-dusk, when the rocks turn suede and hazy, smoothing out everyone's edges. They really are lovely, just not grand.
I am taking the other road. It's a straight shot that goes around the mountains. I rarely see another car coming or going on this route. It's good for my nerves. I'm a terrible traveler, prone to delusions of danger, and now that I'm in my forties, night blindness. I watch for deer, and smell for burning oil, waiting for my dashboard to light up like Vegas (if Vegas were more honest about broadcasting disaster). I fixate on the road so intensely that I miss the scenery anyway, even when I'm the passenger.
What I do see is a tiny house, tiptoeing over the white line, encroaching onto the road. A man sits at a strange angle on the porch and cradles something in his arms. Dog or baby? I slow to get a better look. Baby. At this speed and distance, I see that the man barely qualifies as a that, appearing to be maybe twenty or twenty-one. He didn't initially occur to me as shirtless, because he's completely covered in tattoos. None of them very good, some of them blacked out completely. He smiles and coos at his bundle. I can see now that the odd angle at which he sits is the fault of a missing wheel in the front corner of his tiny house. This posture, a cautious forward lean, reminds me of the first time Fischer came in contact with an underground pool, before we both knew how much he loved to swim. I shift my focus from house to man. When our eyes meet and his smile doesn't fade, I realize that I have come to a complete stop.
"You two need some help?" As far as I'm concerned, it's not a question. They are stranded, half in the road, in one of the few places devoid of cell phone service left in this country.
"We're good, aren't we Sky?" He turns the baby so that I can see its face. This guy isn't imposing any gender roles on his kid, but he is setting it up to be a punk rock throwback. I know that the baby doesn't have a lip piercing, but when I recount this story to my husband later, I will insist that it did. But I won't tell my husband later. I don't know when I'll talk to him next.
You can see that this young man has a handsome face hidden inside all of that youth. His eyes are dark, but sweet. He continues looking at me but starts talking baby talk.
"Our car blew a tire so Mamá took the wheel off the house and is heading into town." Ordinarily, I would hate myself for thinking how this looks so sweet on a man and pathetic on a woman, but I am distracted by the fact this is the first eye contact or words that I have exchanged with another living creature in six days.
"So you don't need anything?" Not that I have anything to offer. Not an old granola bar, not cash, not sparkling conversation or companionship.
"Nah, we're good. Thanks for stopping though. Say 'hasta luego' Sky." He waves the baby's arm at me as I pull away.
My mouth is caked and dry. All the moisture stayed behind with those two. I can see it in the rearview mirror. I've only got about eight miles to go. The safety of the tiny room at the hotel pulls me ahead. I'll fill the room with hotel TV sounds, and search for reruns of Friends. You know they play the reruns faster? They have to speed things up to fit in nearly an extra minute of commercials. If you've gotten used to binging on Netflix, you'll notice that when you catch them on TV, something's not quite right. Everyone's voice is a little higher, the cadence of the jokes slightly clipped. It's jarring in an unnamable way. Well, now I've named it, so you know it's not you.
I make the left that will take me into the town of Madrid when I see smoke up ahead. Smoke or steam? There's a beater of a Chevy pickup that's been hand-painted to look like a dragon. A very femme dragon, complete with lash extensions and bedazzled scales on to the bed. The mismatched "foot" confirms my suspicion that this dragon belongs to Sky's mom. Its nose is billowing steam and turned up at the opposite angle of the tiny house it left behind. But she's not here. I park the car and check the perimeter, then under the beast for the injured or mechanically inclined. She must be down the road.
I should backtrack a mile, pull over and feign eating a sandwich until the next car passes me. Let them help her. I feel a familiar nudging at my side and my nostrils inexplicably fill with the faint scent of peaches. I clear the passenger seat and set off to collect a wandering woman.
Only she's not wandering. She is running. Not a run that says panic. Her feet provide a rhythmic interruption to the haze rising off the pavement. Her arms two powerfully swinging metronomes, and she clocks in at 120 beats per minute. I hum "Stars and Stripes Forever" in perfect time, open my window and pull up next to her.
"Sky's mom?"
"Stars and Stripes Forever" winds down like a music box that's out of juice. Older, and taller than the portrait my brain created, she bends--way down--to put her sweat-soaked face in my window. She nods at me and exhales hard to even her breath.
"You want a lift?" A wide smile starts as a spark in her tawny brown eyes and ignites her whole face. Her features, if examined one by one (a slightly hooked nose, crooked teeth, freckles, a square jaw) sound like a mixed bag, but the composite is warm and vital. She's in the car in an instant, pushing the seat back to accommodate her lengthy muscular legs.
"We're gonna be so late. Thank you." She wipes her hand on her shorts and extends it to me. "Alice."
I take her hand. Well, technically she takes mine and makes it disappear in her own.
"Lucee." My name sounds odd, a word overused into meaninglessness. It sounded so ridiculous to me that I am suddenly worried that instead of saying "Lucee," I told her my name was "Spatula" or "Farfegnugen."
"Where to?"
"Madrid, to meet the welcome wagon."
The last eighteen months have been the hardest of my life, rivaling even the ubiquitous horrors of middle school. I've been through two miscarriages, the mental breakdown of my husband, the disintegration of my marriage, and one very dead dog. Yet, the idea of being met by the Madrid welcome wagon feels like the worst news I have ever gotten.
YOU ARE READING
Following Fish
ChickLit"The day my husband committed himself to inpatient treatment was the same day my dog died." When your life falls apart, and the pieces are so small and few that you can hold them in one hand, what do you do? Lucee Lekki decides to slip them into her...
