Journey

At four o’clock in the morning, we rouse ourselves and pack the car with last-minute things—computers, lunches, cell phones, toiletries—before heading south.  Thinking about the eleven or so hours this trip will take is daunting.  At sixty-five miles per hour, we watch the moon set and the sun rise as one by one the kids drop off to sleep in the back seat.  Nine hours in, we grow tired of the radio—the stations are either too loud or too classical; serious voices of preachers occasionally cutting through static.  Everyone is irritated.  The landscape has become routine.  I find myself thinking can’t we just be there already?

And then I’m reminded of the time over twenty years ago, when I packed up my car and headed to school in Arizona, my twelve-year-old brother my companion.  I was thrilled to get away from home, to begin a life for myself.  Occasionally, my brother would ask to stop.  He wanted to see the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert.  But I pressed on, eager to get on with my new life, as if by stopping, my future would escape me somehow.

I moved in to my apartment, lugging my suitcases, my books, my pencils and my dreams to the second floor.  I arranged my apartment and went from room to room, enjoying the view of the pool and the mountains, relishing my independence, wondering where life would take me.

A few days later, after I’d taken my brother to the airport, there was a rapping upon my door.  A woman introduced herself—Beatrice or Betty or something like that.  But my boyfriend—and future husband—immediately nicknamed her Hildy. 

The name stuck.

Hildy was short and fat.  She had a poodle perm: a mass of tight brown curls that must’ve increased the circumference of her head by eight inches.  She had thick lips and a dark mole and she wore transition glasses that prevented me from ever fully seeing her eyes.  That first day, she told me that the Queen of Sheba had stayed in our apartment complex.  That we were drinking her bathwater. 

Hildy, her husband Herman and their son lived in the apartment below mine.  Herman was a thin, pasty man with a high voice.  He wore white tee shirts and plaid pants no matter the weather.  Their son, a man of thirty, left the apartment only to go to work.  In size and shape, he resembled his mother.  In coloring and voice, his father.

Evenings, they would squabble, their arguments starting out quiet and slow.  I would catch a wisp here, like a thin stream of mesquite floating upon the air.  But eventually, as the evening wore on and the resentments continued to burn, the argument grew louder, one voice low and gruff, the others high and thin.  The argument would crescendo until the son’s voice erupted into screams.

I avoided Hildy.  She became suspicious of me.  She began to watch my comings and goings from behind the shade of her sliding glass door.  She called security and reported that I was disturbing her.  She often came to my apartment to complain about my behavior.

Within three weeks, I’d had enough.

My new apartment wasn’t near the pool.  It didn’t have a terrific view of the mountains.  But it was tucked far in the back of the complex.  Hildy would never find me.  I would no longer hear the arguments of her family.

My new neighbor was a bachelor.  In the evenings, I could hear his television; his dishwasher; the flirtatious telephone messages his girlfriend would leave on his answering machine.  I enjoyed eavesdropping on his quiet, comfortable life.

And when my husband and I graduated, I left him all the plants from my apartment.  Because, of course, we were eager to get on with the next stage of our lives.

I never did see the Painted Desert or the Petrified Forest.  I never saw Hildy again.

And as we make our way into the tenth hour of our drive, I wonder how much of my life have I rushed through in order to get there; wherever there may be.  I wonder, too, about Hildy’s situation: Was she caring for her son?  Or had the son taken his parents into his home?  Perhaps it was a combination; each of them bound together in an angry web of love and resentment and anxiety.  Back then, I didn’t care.    Perhaps I should have. 

My husband tells me we’re moving in a year; back to the place we both call home; the place I’ve left too many times to get somewhere else.  And I’m happy: This is what we’ve wanted for the past eight years.  I want to rush it.  Hurry the process along.  I want to get away from unfriendly neighbors and long commutes and this rush-about life we’ve been living.  But it’s not as simple as simply switching apartments.

We’re nearing the end of our drive.  The kids wake up and begin to chatter excitedly, peering out the window are we here?  And so I wonder one year hence: Of all the places we’ve lived, which place will be home to our children?  Which place will tug at their hearts?  Which place will they long to return to? 

But I cannot say. 

That is their journey, not mine.

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