A Stand-Alone

An encounter worthy of its own space.

Poetry, gardening, and making/mending will return in the next newsletter.

Northwestern Nebraska sandstone

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She sits with her body pressed into the far corner of the passenger seat, two shoulder bags held tightly against her. An older model red SUV follows us. When we reach a stoplight, the driver pulls up close to my bumper. “Is he following us” she asks without looking back. “Yes,” I reply. “I knew I should get a no-contact order . . . he was abused as a kid, so he treats me this way.” I nod. We turn left onto the main street. The man in the vehicle behind us honks once long and twice short, then accelerates quickly straight ahead.

“I’ve tried to help him. When I come back it’s always better for awhile, then it gets bad again,” she said.

“I don’t think you can help him; he has to do that for himself.”

“So, do you think I should get a no-contact order?”

“Yes, I think it’s the best thing you can do for him and for yourself. He’s the only one who can change himself.”

The afternoon had been warm and breezy, when I found the small park with its brick picnic shelter where I could eat my lunch. I’d just visited the grocery in the little town where my partner teaches and managed to locate some gluten free crackers, a few white peaches, hummus, carrots, and a single serving pouch of salmon. The wind blew through the shelter, and I worked to pin the lighter items down with heavier ones, salmon packet with carrots, hummus lid with a peach. Four men on riding mowers crisscrossed the park’s open grass with the precision of an army conducting maneuvers. Their noise disturbed my quiet lunch. So I watched with relief as they loaded the mowers onto their trailer, piled into their truck and disappeared.

A few minutes later, another vehicle appeared. The driver, a man, pulled over on the wrong side of the road, opened his door and threw a bag onto the curb. A woman opened the passenger door and walked around the car. She paused for a moment as the driver slammed his door and left. Then, carefully, she retrieved her bag and began to walk toward the neighborhood at the end of the park. Another pause and the car appeared again. The driver opened the door and yelled, “fuck you!” The woman continued in the direction she had chosen. For a third time, vehicle and driver, locked together on a harrowing amusement ride they couldn’t seem to exit, circled back to honk and shout and speed away. I couldn’t see the woman anymore. She too had disappeared.

I finished my lunch and climbed back into my car; I tried to be with what I’d just witnessed. And I finally made a decision I’d mulled over for most of the afternoon: I would go to The Dairy Barn and get a very small hot fudge sundae. Still unfamiliar with this small town, I chose to go around the block rather than head out on an unfamiliar road that I was pretty sure didn’t lead to ice cream. And this is how I found myself and my car between the quiet woman with her bags and an angry bald man with an SUV. He had gotten out this time, the car door left open, as he shouted at her from where she stood on the sidewalk across the street. She had her phone in her hand. I stopped my car, ignored the man, rolled down my window and asked her if she needed a ride. She hesitated, “no, I’ve got someone coming to get me.” She looked in the direction of the man again. I said, “are you sure?” She said, “no, I need one, thank you,” quickly climbed into my car, and we were gone. She didn’t put on her seat belt.

“Where do you need to go?” I asked. The seat belt warning alarm blared.

“Where are you going?” She said.

“Well, I was going to The Dairy Barn.”

“That’s fine. Take me there. I’ll text my ride to meet us.”

My entire body had tightened, as if to increase its density. The seat belt alarm went off again.

She told me the story. I told her some of mine, my own reasons for ending contact with a person I love. Tears gathered below her eyes. They never seemed to fall, just collect there until she wiped them with a sleeve. She wavered, then settled, then wavered again. I pulled into the gravel parking lot, and we waited for her ride. I watched the small line of kids and adults ordering ice creams and hotdogs and tried to ignore the seat belt alarm.

“What’s your name?” I asked

“Jessica. What’s yours?”

“Emily”

When her ride arrived her tears breached their dam and spilled onto her cheeks. I wanted to hold her there in my car, speak one more sentence that might help, but she was gone. When I put the car in gear, the seat belt alarm fell silent.

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