A Desperate Magnetism

Will got in his car and started driving around looking for Mary's car and calling her cell phone. It was the only thing he could think to do.

He had panicked after finding no sign of her at the apartment when she should have been there still sleeping.

There was no answer on her cell phone but he kept calling anyway leaving a message each time:

"Mary. I just got back and I need to see you. Where are you?"

"Mary, are you coming back to the apartment?"

"Mary? This is Will again. Call me."

"Mary, is your phone working? I've been calling, leaving messages. I feel like... I have a bad feeling. Please give me a call when you get this."

Half-aware of a strategy, Will drove in an expanding circle along the gridded streets of the town. By now he was moving in square loops of three miles on each side. Still no sign of Mary or her car.

The houses were becoming more spread out on one side of the perimeter and more dense on the other. Metaphors continually popped into his head comparing he and Mary to the different sections of town.

The crowded section of town was him up to yesterday. Accosted by distractions. Forced to deal with too many people, too many thoughts. Overloaded.

The empty desert...Mary. Disappearance. A vanished sea now just sand and stone.

Will's feelings today, driving alone, searching for a dream that he had lost before he really grasped it: the empty desert, one house per square mile and a hundred Joshua trees in between each, a held-breath, a dying heart beat.

The nothing of air. The empty of... The lack. Where was Mary?

He couldn't make all the connections. The metaphor fell away.

This was not going to work.

He called again and this time she answered.

"Mary!" he pulled the car over to the dirt shoulder and shut off the engine.

"Will, I..."

"Where are you?"

"I'm over at...that doesn't matter. I need to tell you something."

"Oh no," something was wrong, "Go ahead."

"Let's meet somewhere. I can't do it like this."

"Alright, how about we meet at the café?"

"Fine."

They each hung up, Mary first, and Will felt a weight in his stomach like the one you feel after being upside-down on a rollercoaster long enough for the abdominal muscles to loosen and your insides liquefy and move up, which is down, toward the throat.

In ten minutes he was at the cafe, standing next to his beat up old car, waiting for Mary to show up in her old beat up car. She arrived, but it wasn't in her ancient Oldsmobile. She drove a shiny new SUV.

When she stepped out, looking grim in the face, Will kept himself from asking about the car, but he couldn't stop staring.

"It's my brother's," she said.

"What?"

"It's my brother's car."

"Wow," he said, his mind not working properly. This was enough to throw him completely off balance. He'd been tottering already. Now he had to struggle just to speak.

This might be the most important conversation he would ever have and his brain had turned to mush, melted by the sunlight bouncing off this SUV.

"Mary, I'm sorry for taking off like that," he said, wondering if the phrase had come out right.

"That's kind of what I want to talk to you about."

"Ok, what is it? Tell me what is on your mind. And I, I will explain everything," the words rushed on, "I've got a plan - everything is worked out. My heart is changed and I'm ready to do, now, what I wasn't ready to do before."

"Calm down," Mary said, with some authority.

She was far away, struggling too, her face that of person stepping to edge of a high-dive. She was looking down, wondering if she could make herself jump.

"Will, I'm ready to do something too. I waited..."

He cut her off, "I was only gone for a few days! Three days!"

"Before that," she went on slowly, "I waited for you to say that everything would be alright and that we would figure things out...I just wanted to hear you say that we could do it, together, have this baby."

She looked him in the eye, his gaze steady with hers, both seeing what could have been but now would never be.

"But Mary, it's not too late. Don't you see that that's what I'm telling you, that we can make it. I've got a plan. I bought us a house!"

"I've wondered what was going on in your head, a lot. You just wouldn't, wouldn't say what you were really thinking. I understand that you, really, deep down, you were desperate before you left, desperate to pretend that nothing had changed, desperate to sound normal, and be normal. But this is real. And there's no going back."

He looked away from her, thinking she was right and she was wrong and the whole mess had become...such a...mess. Running off had been a desperate act. But it worked. While he was gone he saw himself at home for the first time; saw that he could simply choose which way to go with his life. All he had to do was choose. He had chosen.

"I'm sorry, Will, I didn't mean to -"

"No. No. You're right. And I'm desperate and begging. I'm pathetic. Because I've seen it all so clearly. I can still see it. We can be together and live a good life."

"Will. Don't convince me. I don't want some kind of pre-packaged argument. You sound like, you sound like, like you're not yourself."

"I've changed. I've had a change of heart, Mary."

"So have I."

"But I'm back!"

"You were gone a long time before you actually left, I'd say."

They paused, Will raised his hands, first the left then the right, as if ready to say something and abandoning the thoughts in mid-gesture. Mary noticed Will was sweating then she noticed that she was sweating too. There was no breeze.

Will said, "I feel like we're not hearing each other. Like we're polarized somehow. Like we're two positives nodes keeping each other at a distance."

"Maybe two negatives. But this isn't a stupid college course. Your Analogies Course isn't going to fix anything," she said with a vehemence that surprised them both.

"This is real life and, besides, I hear what you're saying. I've heard you talking for the last month and a half, evading this situation we're in - this baby. That's your whole story. When things get too real, you move away. You're the...whatever, the polarized magnet - repelled by the real world."

"Now who's analogizing? And when did the college courses become stupid? You always said you thought they were interesting."

"Is that what you want to talk about?"

Mary's body language was apologetic but distant, as if she couldn't help saying these things even if she wanted to and couldn't stop them from hurting.

With the discussion apparently over, Will asked about the new car.

"It's my brother's, like I said. He's letting me borrow it. We traded, so he's got my piece of sh#t. I'm going down to stay with my parents until the baby comes..."

Moving closer so that Will had to look her in the eye again Mary said, "my brother might not always be around, but he is always there when it's important."

"Mexico!" Will yelled, losing his grip on himself. "You're going to have the baby in Mexico!?"

"It's too late to argue about it," Mary said quietly.

Will noticed how her face was unwashed and her hair was nappy down around her neck. There were dark circles around her eyes. This sad creature had been beautiful until he came around. He wondered what he looked like and realized he hadn't seen a mirror for days.

She bit her lip, her teeth flat and stained, biting down against tears or anger.

He couldn't look at her anymore and he couldn't move.

With a step toward him, she put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, "This is good-bye, Will," and kissed him on the cheek like a nun or a mother, as if this were her penance.

Mary climbed into the SUV and backed out of the parking space, watched Will standing, staring at the space she had occupied thirty seconds ago, and she felt like the ghost of herself was still standing there, like she would stand there forever, talking about magnets, holding back tears, waiting to move, to drive away, and live her life.

More Fiction from this Contributor:
Left Alone at Night
Trumpets of Heaven
The Heart Interpreter