I came here to find time. Not sentences but paragraphs of it, maybe pages. It has disappeared from our house; interruptions shred and toss it to be carried off like confetti in a storm. I thought it might be waiting for me here.
State highway to county roads, two lanes but still a surprising 60 miles an hour, to farm roads, then what locals call spurs, then lanes. I stopped at a cemetery in Ruterville to read the German family names, take some photos, make a curly-haired, blue-eyed bull's acquaintance. He bellowed and left when his cows, far down near a barn, began to moo. Jealous women. A bit farther on was a road that had once been paved that led to one that was just dirt -- clay and small, sharp stones -- packed so hard for so long the surface was polished. It reminded me of the wagon wheel ruts across the Kansas prairie where even now, a hundred years later, nothing will grow. Puddles in the potholes and along the verge said it had rained recently. Rail fences and rusted barbed wire, a few cattle, oaks. The sign for the inn I'm stayed at is a piece of weathered wood with a blue arrow pointing to a graveled parking area. There are names on creosote planks. I pulled the rented Kia up to Belle Starr. Of course.
This time in my life feels like one of those months that isn't part of a season, March or maybe September. Unsettled. Some change is coming, a big one maybe, but exactly what or when isn't clear. Maybe not something good. A lovely breeze that grows to a howling blow, and in an instant what was a little thrilling is half a sycamore crashing through your roof. Fear floats in the back of my mouth.
Not much is open around here on Sunday nights. I unpacked and smooshed pillows, wandered outside among the empty cottages - I'm the only guest tonight, no caretaker even; just me and the cat - switched on lamps against the gloom, and headed back to have not the barbeque I wanted but (more) Mexican food at Las Patrones in town. It's a big room you enter through a door in the middle of a narrow front porch. A couple was drinking at a table out there, slurring intently. The just-OK food was helped by some good hot salsa. The bartender didn't skimp on tequila in the house margarita I surprised myself by ordering, served in the same kind of mug root beer used to come in, a juicy chunk of lime on the side. Belly full and on the first step of tipsy, I walked in the careful way drinkers do past the still-disagreeing porch couple and over to my car, parked near a tree. Tsk-tsking at myself for slurping down the last third of that drink before getting behind the wheel, I turned the key, slapped my cheeks and started chewing a stick of Juicy Fruit.
Driving just carefully enough those five retraced miles, I turned onto the charming dirt track just as the sun set behind a hillside full of twisted oaks. It wasn't that, though. Might have been the crown of the road or the backlit grasses, maybe the crackle of the sunflower stalks shaken by a gust. Something I saw flipped a switch and I was suddenly crying wide open. I wiped my flooded face with my palms, scooped wet handfuls that dripped down my wrists and soaked my sweater cuffs. I was a snottty, sobbing mess, having a booze-fueled meltdown like those in the bad old days when I'd wail along with Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good," only minus the anger.
Well, maybe not minus all the anger, if I'm telling the entire truth. It's not anger at a bad boy's crappy behavior or at myself for craving bad boy's body in spite of that. Mack and I are far past that, stopped acting out like that decades ago. We are settled, married, still very much in love. We trust; we know. Backstops, hands in each other's pockets, imprinted on each other's scent like wild animals that mate for life, that's us.
But ... I swallow, typing it. Years, time. There are changes. Same as skin that folds in the same place over and over makes a wrinkle. Sometimes, not all the time, but increasingly often he will do something, question something, say no instead of yes, want to stay instead of go, and a memory elbows its way in - his father late in life, when we used to lock eyes over his head or behind his back. My bones go cold. I take a huge breath and let it out, slowly, eyes closed, lips bitten. I think: I miss him, the Before Mack, the brave, sure-let's-do-it Mack, who never got edgy in a car or complained about headlights or driving at night, the Mack who would never ever do those things. The man I could barely keep up with. I miss him, my tenacious, win-every-contest man, the unstoppable, solid, strong Mack.
It rips my heart to ribbons that this is happening to him, and I eat guilt for wanting it to stop as much for me as for him. I know someday it will be my turn to be the one heads are shaken about, people feel sorry for, whose fingers worry over buttons; my subconscious and conscious selves dread this; I get it. But when it does, I won't fucking know, will I, that I've become an object of pity? I *know this*: I see him, every slip and miss and uncharacteristic remark, every thing he can't do, won't try, looks at with suspicion. All the So Not Like Him things. I see him struggling to hold on, to deny it, all of it, hating it. And I find my fingers curled into fists with nothing to hit.
I know I can't stop it, this slide, not his and not mine that will come in time, long after his. I can't fix him, reverse it, change him or this awful process. I can't tell him or snap at him, can't hurt him. All I can do is ease the way, keep him safe. And miss him. Oh, and I do. I was going through a box of old photographs, found one of us on a beach, my rugged bronze man. I reached for him. And then put the box away. I didn't want to remember.
I have the luxury of these escapes, breaks from the afternoons of clenched jaws and repeating things. I stay only two or three days, a carry-on trip, not a suitcase. Food won't spoil while I'm gone; half-a-loaf-of-bread trips. Anonymous places, cool green places, places where my disquiet is soothed by either the calm or the bustle. I will have these while it's still possible to go.
Tomorrow I'll be finished crying, my stuff will go back in a bag and I will leave this flowered bed, red dirt hideaway. I'll drive dry-eyed (I hope) back toward the big city airport. I might stop at that bakery in La Grange for another brownie and at Mueller's in Austin for smoked brisket. I will fly west across the dusty parts of Texas and southern New Mexico and Arizona, hurrying back to the coyotes and our red-tiled home, the agaves and lavender, and especially to the warm skin and brown eyes of the man I have loved all my life. Because I miss him.
where i stayed near Round Top, TX - The Prairie by Rachel Ashwell
http://www.theprairiebyrachelashwell.com/rooms.html
