Catching Up to You

Chapter 26.5 - Mary A.K.A. Pinkie

More than three-quarters on the way to Orlando and during her tenth stop at a toll booth, Pinkie reached for the remaining coins in her cup holder as she had routinely done, picking up the quarters one by one to reveal a black and white square photo of a young and happy Asian couple, attractive by the 80s standards and with smiles that matched the twinkling disco ball lights above them. The woman with big, poofy bangs was no other than Pinkie herself.

"Who's that?"

She paused silently, squinting at the image of the handsome man with sharp jawlines and a toned arm wrapped around the shoulders of her younger self. She squinted a few seconds longer than expected, as if she already knew who was there but was buying more time to loiter in the discovery of her memories on film. When Pinkie finally opened her mouth to tell a story behind the photo, Linny saw an expression on her face that neither she nor Angel had seen before during their road trip.

No one from the present day would suspect that a woman with straight, bobbed hair wearing thick, plain frames and a mustard yellow sweater - a look-alike to Velma from Scooby Doo - almost forty years ago on a women's college campus in Western Massachusetts was Pinkie. Her fashion was as uniform as the sea of long plaid skirts crossing from one lawn to another. The one thing that did make her stand out from the rest of the crowds, though, was her jet black hair and Asian facial features. If her younger self had her hot pink flaming hair as she does now, she would have feared that she would be getting more than just black hole stares in the classroom as she already had every time she walked by a Farrah Fawcett groupie ("if I had a nickel for every Farrah I passed, I would've paid off your college tuition a long time ago," she'd like to say to Linny every time they spotted a university sign at a distance).

At that time, Pinkie went by Mary, a fact that she spent many years burying it sixty feet under, where the rest of her secret hookups and pot smoking moments ("college was super stressful, y'know?," she'd comment, assuming that Linny, who didn't even know how to take a proper puff from a joint, would understand what she meant) lie, crushed by the suppressing weight of a constant desire to escape from the glamorously disciplined lifestyle that parents claimed she was so privileged to lead. Everyday, she would wake five minutes before her class to get to her class. During the last few months of the semester as a senior, she brought it down to two minutes, which she thought was a gracious move on her part.

Despite the routine, Pinkie looked forward to Friday nights. She never did during her three years before. Realizing that the only highs that could be a win-win situation for both her parents and herself, Pinkie became a pro athlete excelling in academia, dedicating her late Friday nights to the nearest library, surrounded by towers of discolored hardcover books with pages, one half filled with earmarks and the other with notes scribbled on them margins until one night at 1am, she heard a thud and a lowly groan from the adjacent corner of the study room made her jolt. The groan, she learned, came from a face that might have been more familiar in her diverse hometown in Northern California, but not here in cold New England, a face that belonged to an bespectacled Asian guy with a military crew-cut hairstyle. His name was Michael, a name that would convince one to be able to see how somebody like him would fall into a trap of sleeping in, losing track of time and sense of location.

Amused by the unique presence of a man on her campus, Pinkie approached him carefully, almost as if she was afraid to disturb the natural ongoings of such a rare breed.

"Hi. You look like you're a little lost there. Need some directions on finding the exit?" Pinkie teased.

"Actually, do you happen to know where the loo is? I figured it would be much easier to find with no one around." If it had not been the seemingly pretentious British accent that slipped out in between the charming crooked smile. Pinkie would have liked him more than she already did with his familiar appearance and sarcastic reply, taking solace in the fact that if he ended up being friends with her, she would not be the only one getting pitted with mysterious stares. Little did she realize, as how present day Pinkie always liked to share with strangers who asked about her love life, that Michael would be her lobster. The only predictable thing about her was Michael, who embodied who she wasn't: practical, even-tempered, respectful, and empathetic - all traits that Pinkie's parents wished she displayed more of to their friends and their friends' children.

"I hear opposites do attract," Linny nodded, unsure if her head was drooping because she was tired or because she wanted to dodge the nagging thought of a missed experience she would have in less than a year.

"Eh, I think it was more like our shared love for annoying the heck out of our parents," Pinkie said, smiling wryly.

"How long were you two together?"

"Not as long as I would've liked. The first ten minutes of Up were inspired by our story, y'know?"

"Oh," she said, unsure whether to laugh at the dry humor or to stay silent.

"Yep, cancer can be a son of a gun. Stage three. Gets to the best of 'em."

"I'm sorry."

"Ah, don't be! We lived the best that we could! Besides, it still feels like he's sitting right next to me when I'm on the road."

"Was he the reason why you joined the van life?"

"I actually convinced him after our parents were against the whole us being together," she said proudly. "We bought this van together with all of the money we had after we eloped in Vegas. All two hundred dollars. Lucky, I got me a handy man so all of them's fixin' needed in the kitchen was done by him."

Linny looked around the RV more closely the second time around. It didn't occur to her until now that the Brady Brunch cabinets were also in the background of Michael's portrait photo; they just had fewer mysterious scratches and dark marks on them.

"He would've been a great help had we met him at the beginning," Linny joked under her breath, thinking back when they had to abandon her car because no one knew how to fix it.

"Yeah, I wish he was there to help you," she said with still a wistful gaze in her eyes.

Linny thought of how fun it had been already spending some of her last months with Pinkie but couldn't help but wonder how their road trip would have been different if Michael had been alive now. Would the rational side of Michael have told Pinkie to not stop for the random young folks sending out thumbs under a tunnel out of fear (Pinkie mentioned how surprised she was able to convince him as she knew how often crazy stories about dangerous American hitchhikers would travel to places like Europe)? Or would he have been the cool uncle figure to them, taking them on late night hikes where cities' lights couldn't touch them, pointing out one painting of stars after another (Pinkie told her that Michael had been waiting in the library to take a trip to the midnight observatory showing on her campus to catch a meteor shower that only came every ten years, but he took a pass on it after he met Pinkie that night)? Or would he be both, mixing Coca Cola and cherry-flavored slushies in his cup at every gas station vending machine - like how Pinkie does - when he's feeling a little adventurous while also taking some quiet times to himself in the back corner of the RV, reading his favorite classics by Jane Austen (Pinkie had always loved how Michael was never ashamed being seen reading one of his Victorian novels in the public).

"If he hadn't had an hourglass runnin' on top of his head, I don't know if I would've had as much fun as I did with him all these years."

"You mean, you wouldn't have been living in this van, taking cross country trips whenever you wanted?"

"Nope. I probably would've gotten one of them fluffy jobs in one of those cubicles my dad had lined up for me. And then I would've gotten plain mad from that job and blame Michael and broke up with him and that... that would've been the worst mistake I'd ever made."

"Huh."

"Huh, indeed, child."

Who knew that someone's impending death would give life to someone else's.