Image by Jenn Rhubright

A month before my grandfather committed suicide, I drove him to Russ’ Auto Repair in Canton, Ohio, for his Cadillac to be fitted with a left-foot accelerator.

He couldn’t use his right leg because of a recent hip replacement. A prosthesis was installed to help support the weight of his body, which at 280 was the lightest he had been in a decade. Losing weight was one of the three criteria he had to meet before the operation—along with quitting smoking and drinking—and though he was normally defiant of physicians, this time he had followed doctor’s orders. After watching my grandma slowly die in a hospital room earlier that year, he had made a commitment to stay mobile. He wanted to be able to take care of himself, so he wouldn’t have to move in with anyone, or—his greatest fear—into a nursing home.

My grandfather had planned to be at the auto shop as soon as it opened at nine, so I arrived at his house at 7:50, hoping to be on the road by eight. When I arrived, he was already sitting in the car, and his walker, collapsed on the driveway, lay near the passenger side door. As I approached the car, he rolled down the window, and said, “I’ve been waiting here all morning. Now, close my back door.”

My grandfather had always been an impatient man. Throughout my life, if my grandmother and he were at a family function, he would abruptly stand up at the most inappropriate time, tell my grandmother to get her things, and walk to his car. The grandchildren would have to run to the car and wave as he backed out of the driveway. Once I asked my mother why grandpa always left so fast. She shrugged and said, “I guess when he decides to go, there’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

I caught a glimpse of the wreckage in the house as I reached to close the door. The house, which had been kept immaculate by my grandmother, was lost under dirt and clutter. Stacks of dirty dishes sat in the sink, two dining room chairs leaned against the wall, and magazines, letters, and empty glasses covered the dining room table. In the brown, plush carpet, the feet of the walker left small circular indentations that marked my grandfather’s journey from the living room, through the dining room and kitchen and to the car. Between the walker’s tracks, the carpet was raised like an acrylic wake, a wake left by a dragging leg that still hadn’t adjusted to the artificial hip’s metal ball-and-stem that had been inserted three weeks earlier. As I closed the door, I considered that it probably had taken him much of the morning to shuffle to the back door.

I returned to the car, put his walker in the trunk, opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel.

“Took you long enough,” he said. I could smell mint on his breath, a sure sign he was drinking again. He offered me a cigarette. Since I didn’t have enough nerve to tell him he shouldn’t be smoking, I decided to lead by example. I declined. “Then, what are you waiting for?” he asked. “Let’s go.”

During the first miles of the drive, my grandfather began his critique. He told me when I was going too slow, too fast, and when I didn’t come to a complete stop at stop signs. When he asked questions, they always had two parts. The first part was, “What’s the matter with you?”

The ride became a litany of: “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know how to drive?” or “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know how to use a turn signal?” or “What’s the matter with you? Why did it take two weeks to return my phone call?”

I had been avoiding his phone calls because I couldn’t deal with how depressed and reserved he had become after my grandmother died. I lived forty minutes away so it was easy to avoid his calls or, more precisely, him. So I let the rest of my family deal with him. I kept my distance after his first suicide attempt, because I didn’t know what to say to him. My mother finally made me contact him. She told me he needed the accelerator fixed and I was the only one available to drive him. If I would have known it would be my last trip with him, maybe I would have been more enthusiastic instead of focused on not wanting to deal with an old, depressed man for an entire day.

I indulged my grandfather’s orneriness because he seemed to be the grandfather I remembered. The one who decided it was his job to point out any and all flaws. I thought he had turned a corner and was getting better. I considered that maybe the new hip, the alcohol, or the freedom that would come with the accelerator was beginning to bring him out of his depression. I began to feel comfortable around him again, so when we were near Canton, I played along. I told him that he was getting too old to know what he was talking about, and it was best if he just shut up, or, as I said, “Shaddup!” We laughed together, and I continued trying to show that he was wrong to critique my driving. In fact, I became so caught up in proving that I knew where I was going and what I was doing that I missed the exit signs, becoming temporarily lost.

After forty-five minutes at Russ’, the left-foot accelerator was installed: a pedal placed on the left side of the brake and a bar and lever extending to the gas pedal on the right. I drove through Canton, and the car lunged and stopped repeatedly as I tried to find the right amount of pressure with my left foot. Because I wasn’t sure of the exact location of the pedal, sometimes I would hit the break instead of the gas, sending us into our seatbelts. Each time this happened my grandfather said, “Wrong one.”

The most frustrating aspect of the apparatus was that it made me aware that I was driving. That awareness made something so simple, incredibly difficult. Even now, I wonder if that is how my grandfather had felt. Everything became slightly more difficult after my grandmother died: cleaning the house, making dinner, walking, and, until that moment, driving. Perhaps the frustration I had in the car with that damn left-foot accelerator represented a small amount of the frustration my grandfather felt every day with everything he attempted to do.

Outside Canton’s city limits, my grandfather told me that my driving was making him sick, and it was his turn to show me how it was done. I stopped in a supermarket’s parking lot, so we could switch. In no time at all, my grandfather mastered the accelerator.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “The damn thing’s easy.”

A mile away from his house, I had the sensation of moving sideways. The white line marking the road’s shoulder slipped under the car. The tires kicked gravel and dirt as the car approached a drainage ditch. My grandfather was asleep with one hand on the wheel and his head on his shoulder. A month later, a neighbor would see the walker and  my grandfather slumped against the house, his legs buckled under him, and his head, once again, on his shoulder. Thinking that he’d fallen, the neighbor would run to help only to discover the semi-automatic pistol and the half-inch entry wound above his right ear.

“Hey,” I said. My grandfather woke and swerved the car onto the road. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

I expected to see his half smile, the one that indicated an insult was coming, but he didn’t smile or have a comeback. He hadn’t even looked at me. He kept his eyes on the road ahead of him, and I watched his cheek twitch as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. I thought about asking him again if something was wrong, but I never had a chance because he pushed the accelerator to the floorboard and turned the corner too quickly. Instead of talking I had to find a way to brace myself.

Brian Hall is an Assistant Professor of English at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, OH. His essays and photographs have appeared in a variety of journals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Palo Alto Review, Exquisite Corpse, The Lullwater Review, and The G.W. Review.

Image by Jenn Rhubright

If I’d been able to Google it twenty years ago, I would have breathed more easily to know that my malady was real, an identifiable condition. And that I wasn’t alone. Instead, I sheltered my secret in shame, like a drinking problem or a shoplifting mania.

The first episode burst on me like a sudden squall when I was crossing the Coronado Bay Bridge, the span of speed and efficiency that replaced the ferries that used to connect San Diego with Coronado Island. As I drove onto the bridge, I felt a sudden anxiety, growing to panic proportions as I ascended toward the looming mid-point. It was as if there were hands on the steering wheel covering my own, an evil entity who wanted to take the car over the side. I clenched the wheel in a vise-like grip to keep from making a sharp turn to the right, through the restraining wall and into the dark swishing water below. I was sweaty and clammy. Dizzy, hyperventilating. I braked in abrupt jerks. I slowed to about thirty miles an hour; cars veered around me, horns blasting. I couldn’t look beyond my moving cage and its boundaries—the white line on my left, the barrier on my right, the cars directly in front of and behind me.

When I saw the tollgate on the other side, the dam burst inside me; I dissolved into a quivering mass of gasping, shaking, sobbing. I pulled off to the shoulder as soon as I could and turned off the motor. I opened the windows and gulped fresh air until I felt able to continue to the Hotel Del Coronado, where I was attending a conference. The rest of the day was a blur, blotted out by repeating /images of that scary voyage, like a bad dream that haunted me. What happened? Was it a fluke? Was something wrong with me? Would it happen again? How would I get back across the bridge?

~

It has a name—hodophobia. From the Greek “hodos,” meaning “path,” and “phobos,” fear. The label is applied broadly to fear of travel, including flying, but it more specifically relates to road travel. These panic attacks aren’t restricted to bridges: they can be triggered by driving on highways, turning or changing lanes, in traffic or bad weather, over long distances and at high speeds. Mine were the textbook symptoms of a not very remarkable anxiety disorder, but I didn’t know it at the time.

I couldn’t shake the after-shocks and drove under a menacing cloud. I was able to avoid the bridge, but then on a drive down from Los Angeles with a friend, I seized up on the freeway. The same symptoms, not quite as intense as on the bridge, but with the addition of hazy vision—as if a semi-transparent dirty curtain was hanging across the windshield—and a stale, moldy smell. I still wasn’t ready to tell anyone—I said I was feeling a little woozy, maybe feverish, and my friend took the wheel for the rest of the trip. After that I could drive only in the right-hand lane, embracing the shoulder and inching along at perilously slow speeds. My reflexes were shaky, and I knew I was a hazard on the highway, making the imagined risk real, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I learned to get around the entire city of San Diego on surface streets, but the more I shunned the freeways, the more alarming they became.

I didn’t know which I feared more, a brain tumor or losing my mind. I was convinced there was something gravely wrong with me. My primary physician dismissed the former and referred me for a psychiatric examination; the screening consultant diagnosed an anxiety disorder and sent me to a therapist.

Therapy was illuminating at first. I was able to voice my anxiety about the stress I was under—I was preparing to give up a settled and secure life and satisfying work to live outside the country for the better part of a year, during which time I would be, virtually, in physical, emotional and financial dependence on another person. It was a fantastic opportunity but a threat to my risk-averse comfort zone and my zealous independence. The therapist identified my need to have everything under my control as typical of an ACA—adult child of an alcoholic. Well, I thought, maybe so, but so what, and then what? I was no closer to getting back behind the wheel with confidence, the insurance co-pays for my therapy were running out, and my departure was approaching.

~

I learned over time that I was in good company with an elite club of fellow-sufferers, writers whose frank admissions, vivid recollections and dramatic descriptions comforted me and validated my experience. In “The White Album,” Joan Didion drives from her home in the Sacramento Valley to see and report on the student revolutions in Berkeley and San Francisco. The Bay Bridge stood in her path, cold menacing steel. She grits her teeth and inches across. Some years later she told an interviewer that she no longer drives across bridges and only when necessary on freeways. Not one to let an experience go to waste, Didion has captured those feelings of terror in her writing, in the way that Virginia Woolf admonishes herself to observe her own despondency: “By that means it becomes serviceable.”

In Home Before Dark, a biography of her father, Susan Cheever tells of John Cheever’s suffocating fear of driving on bridges. He would be so shaken after an incident that he couldn’t raise a glass to his mouth for hours. She tells of being alone in the car with her father as a child when they crossed a bridge. She noticed the car’s jerking, her father’s foot shaking against the gas pedal, the stress on his face and in his breathing. He said, “Talk to me, about anything,” so she chattered about a book she was reading until they reached the end of the bridge. Cheever translated it to a short story, “The Angel of the Bridge,” in which the narrator has to pull off to the side while crossing a bridge to get his breath and nerves under control. A young woman hops into the car, a hitchhiker who thinks he’s stopped to pick her up. She’s a folk musician and sings him across the span while he enjoys a dream-like euphoria and basks in the beauty and durability of the bridge, the tranquil waters of the Hudson River below.

~

I spent most of my time abroad in a one-church, one-pub village in England’s West Country, where in addition to driving on the wrong side of the road, they careen down narrow country lanes and roar along at whiplash speeds on the motorways. I wasn’t willing to deny myself the second-hand book shops with their dusty finds, like Virginia Woolf first editions, afternoon teas with scones and clotted cream, the sculpted estate gardens and the craggy wildness of the Devon countryside. I would climb into my flimsy little Fiat and drive—nervously, cautiously, slowly—from village to village and around the moors, avoiding the maniacal motorways and the “B” roads, the more treacherous by-ways.

I returned home eight months later with my millstone still tightly shackled to my limbs but with steely determination. I had spent much of my time away planning my future, and there was no room in it for perverse fears that would hinder my mobility. One day I left home for a lunch date in a neighborhood most easily accessed by freeway. I started to take a roundabout route, but with mind over matter as my trusty weapon of choice, I entered the freeway onramp and stepped on the gas. I opened the window and took deep breaths, sucking in as much oxygen as I could and whooshing it out in exaggerated bursts. Breathe, breathe, I said aloud; focus, relax; relax, focus; keep breathing, keep moving—my mantra until I reached my exit. My neck and shoulders ached with tension, my palms and forehead were soaked, but I’d rejoined life as we know it in Southern California—life on the freeway.

Over time it became easier, and a kind of normalcy was restored, though I stayed off bridges. By then I had confided in a few friends, even then downplaying the severity; I tried to put it out of my mind as much as possible, but it still lurked, wraithlike, and would jump out and say “boo” when I wasn’t expecting it. We all live with our ghosts, I figured.

~

For Ruth Reichl, as for Didion, it was the Bay Bridge looming between her home in Berkeley and engagements in San Francisco. In her memoir she tells how she would resort to public transportation, however inconvenient, or cajole friends into driving her (without divulging her secret). The gravity of her situation reached epic proportions when, as an up-and-coming food writer, she almost passed up an opportunity to meet James Beard because she couldn’t cross the bridge.

In Literacy and Longing in L.A., a quintessential “beach read” by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack, we meet Dora, a freelance journalist who has been terrified of driving on Los Angeles freeways since the time she stalled in the fast lane of the Santa Monica freeway. She too learns to negotiate the city without getting on the freeway, willing to spend extra hours doing so, until an out-of-town assignment makes it unavoidable. She takes her place in the twelve lanes of thundering metal on the I-10 but likens her silent hysteria to Edvard Munch’s painting, “The Scream.”

Anne Lamott makes the fear vivid by virtue of its absence, recognizing it as common enough to resonate with readers. The narrator of All New People describes her mother’s bizarre phobias—revolving doors and houseplants—noting that driving across the Golden Gate Bridge was not one of them.

~

We all know people with phobias—they plague millions of people in the U.S. alone. A mix of heredity, genetics and brain chemistry combined with life experiences, hundreds of different phobias have been identified and classified. In one online listing there are upwards of 40 H’s alone, including my hodophobia, which is not to be confused with hobophobia, fear of bums or beggars, hydrophobia, fear of rabies or water, or homophobia, fear of homosexuality. There is hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, a fear of long words, and hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia, fear of the number 666. Something for everyone.

Phobias are treated with all sorts of remedies—hypnotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, and exposure therapy (“just do it”). Energy psychology includes acupressure, yoga, tai chi, and qi gong. Tapping, or Emotional Freedom Technique, is an acupressure method that uses meridian energy points across the body to release past emotional trauma. And there are homeopathic remedies, aromatherapy, vitamins and herbs.

Whether good news or a dubious downside, treating phobias is big business, the entrepreneurial spirit in action. If a condition exists, someone will find or fashion tools and techniques to fix it. I searched the web and found driving-fear.com and drivingfear.com (note the differentiating hyphen), fearlessdriving.com, fearofbridges.com, phobia-fear-release.com. There’s a six-step self-hypnosis program ($6 PDF, $20 book); an NLP program with an 85% cure rate ($37 plus a bonus book); an energy therapy program, marked down from $99.90 to $67; a program with no description but with a money-back guarantee ($67 standard, $87 premium). The do-it-yourself remedies on sites like ehow.com (“how to do just about everything”), include positive thinking, deep breathing, distraction (singing or recitation), talking about it.

~

I didn’t have much interest or hold out hope for a hyped cure—I was satisfied with my limited success; my condition was manageable. But when I was presented with an opportunity to experience tapping, I was intrigued. Audrey, a colleague, said she was freed from excessive cravings for French fries by this method, and the practitioner, a psychotherapist and yoga instructor who happened to be her mother, said that it worked well with phobias and anxiety. I resolved to put aside my skepticism. We invited Nancy to our office, where she met individually with three of us. Sara was an intermittent smoker who wanted to give up the habit completely; Irene was a compulsive chocoholic and hoped to be able to enjoy chocolate without binging. Both claimed immediate and complete success when they put the method to the test.

I told my story to Nancy, and, with her coaxing, tried to recall and verbalize the panicky feelings evoked during my crises and to rate my fear on a scale of one to ten. Along with tapping on my arms, she instructed me to sing “Jingle Bells” aloud. Jingle Bells? I suppose it could be anything distracting. But I never gave it a chance—I couldn’t tap away my trepidation. This wasn’t something I could do in the comfort of my living room; I had to drive across a bridge.

A few years later I was having lunch one day near the Coronado Bridge. It beckoned from the restaurant window, it taunted me: Come on, are you going to be a coward forever? I said OK, what the hell. I got in the car and aimed for the bridge. As I approached, panic clutched my gut. How do you tap yourself when both hands are in a death grip on the steering wheel? How do you sing or play mental word games when you’re struggling to breathe? I drove past the bridge onramp. I reasoned that it was a beginning, but it was years before I ventured forth again.

I became friends with a woman who lives in Coronado. Our get-togethers on her side of the bridge are typically foursomes with our husbands, so I tolerate the crossings as a passenger, outwardly composed but still a trifle uneasy. When she and I meet, it’s on the San Diego side. I maintained this status quo until we had to have our house tented for termites, and Eva offered their guest room for the two nights we would be homeless. Their home is large and lovely, and they are gracious hosts. We are parsimonious. How could we refuse? But I would have to drive back and forth to work.

The first afternoon, driving from my office to their house, I chickened out. I drove to Imperial Beach, an extra twenty miles south (and an extra hour in rush-hour traffic), where I could access the Strand, a long narrow spit of land that joins the mainland to Coronado. It would be possible to take this route for the next two days, but I wanted to rise to the challenge. I had observed when in passenger mode that the bridge seems less threatening coming back across—the access is more gradual, not as steep or curving. So the next morning, without giving myself time to reflect, I took the plunge, figuratively of course. My panic came with me, a taunting ogre perched on my shoulder, but I was determined. Terrified but determined. Short of breath, shaking, gasping, sweating, my fingers cramped from clenching the wheel, I took charge. I drove across the bridge.

I did it, I did it, I said to myself, my heart racing and pounding in a kind of hysterical euphoria as I continued on to my office, where I was finally able to stop and reflect on my victory. My exhilaration remained with me throughout the day—I wonder if this how it feels like to wake up after surgery and be told you’re out of danger—I thought I was on my way to full recovery. As much of a struggle as it had been, I convinced myself that I had broken the barrier and that it would get continually easier.

My triumph was short-lived. That afternoon I was eager to prove myself again, this time almost cocky with confidence. But as I entered the span, the full trauma struck, and the fear took over. I lurched and swerved my way across like a drunken snail, and I was in tears when I got to the other side. I knew that I hadn’t conquered the beast, that it would always be hovering, laughing at me, grabbing at the wheel, and I didn’t have the energy to fight it. On the last morning, I drove back down the Strand.

Alice Lowe is a freelance writer in San Diego, California. Her creative nonfiction has appeared this year in Hobart, Eclectica, Foliate Oak and Writing It Real, where her entry won first prize in an essay contest. She has published essays and reviews on the life and work of Virginia Woolf, including the 2010 monograph, “Beyond the Icon: Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Fiction;” Virginia Woolf has a way of popping up in her personal essays as well, including this one.

Read our interview with Alice here.

Image by Jenn Rhubright

A Close Call

Twilight, and things gold seconds ago have gone blue and hard to see.

I’m barefoot and running towards the front door of your place. Parked the car in the alley behind your building and ran. No one can get by. The car is still running and I am running to the door. Grandma called me as soon as you hung up with her. She said you and he were fighting and that she could hear Junior in the background, calm, placating. I bought her all this wine! he yelled so that Grandma could hear, over the phone lines that stretch up the interstate, alive and quivering slightly in the pink of the setting sun. On the phone, you told your mother not to worry. But you whispered it. She called me immediately. It doesn’t sound right. I left without shoes, drove fast and prayed for no cops. Then prayed for cops. Here now, the door gives way easily, it’s ajar and the dog doesn’t come to greet me. The living room and kitchen are empty. The only other room in the condo is your bedroom. The door wide is open. I tiptoe to it and his back is to me. The TV is on. I see it in the mirror behind your bed. An action film. Someone screams and a machine gun rapidfires bullets. Junior sees me behind him in the mirror and spins around. He has a steak knife in his hand. He’s a middle-aged boy, a cherubic face gone pale, eyes wide. The TV shrieks with bombs. Get out, I say, but I can’t be sure. I am not speaking but sound is coming through me. He sputters and turns to look at you, on the bed. Your hand is clasped to your ear. My right. Your left. You are coughing and with each convulsion, a thin jet of blood shoots into the air. I’m Sorry, you say, breathless and falling backwards. I shove him out of the way and am by your side, ripping the pillowcase into a strip and tying it around your neck. When your hand falls away, limp, I see a half a dozen small holes, and one big one, a heaving gill in your neck. Just a papercut, but for all this blood. I yank the knot tight against it. In minutes, your brain could die but you will keep your blood. Keep it all inside, I say. Keep it all inside, Mom. My hands flip open the phone, drop it, pick it up. Sirens wail on the television. I push four buttons, swear, hang up, and push three. Concentrate hard on the green button so I don’t miss it again. The time on the screen is still the same as it was on the dashboard clock when I pulled up outside: seven-fifteen. The hospital is at the bottom of the hill. I don’t let the operator finish. Sounds are made and I don’t know what they are. I only know Please and Hurry.

Let’s Do Better

The sun takes its time. A quarter to seven and the ocean and clouds are still sprayed violent pink. The shadows grow longer on the drive up the hill to your house. My boyfriend is with me. We were going to go to the fair. Devo is playing with the Psychedelic Furs. They’re too old to be good anymore, we reasoned as we drove away, even though we had been excited about going. We left because in the parking lot I’d had a feeling. I called you and you didn’t answer. That is, Junior didn’t; you don’t answer the phone anymore, and you confessed why, just last week when you got away from him for a while. He won’t let you answer it. Still, you’re both always home. And I had this feeling. How close we are, every second, to losing everything. We pull into a parking space near your door. Children are shouting from the pool in the courtyard and the stucco condos are pink and getting pinker with the setting sun. As we near the door, Chloe bursts out and stretches her long terrier legs against our thighs, bowing her back in a half stretch, half greeting. You are in the kitchen, chopping onions. I smell burning coals. You are sniffling, and you turn, surprised. Your face is swollen. You drop the knife and throw your arms around me, and I smell oxidized red wine, cigarette smoke, and cilantro. I put my face in your neck. You are an inch shorter than me. I can fold you into me completely. I whisper in your ear, Are you okay? He comes out from the bedroom, where he has been lighting the grill on the patio. Oh, hello there, he says. We’re about to have fajitas, you want to stay? You sniffle into my shoulder. No, I say. Mom’s coming home with me. I tell my boyfriend to get Chloe’s leash. He pats his legs and Chloe goes to him, her tail between her legs. Junior laughs. Why are you going, Deb? I got the grill started. He explains, She’s mad even though I bought her three bottles of wine at Trader Joe’s and I cleaned this whole place, you should have seen it before, and we rented some movies so I don’t know what she said but you know what, if you want to go, Deb, fine, I won’t stop you. Just can you come here a second? Can you come talk to me? But you push off of me and fly at him, jamming your little finger in his chest and saying, No more—you are controlling and manipulative and I want you out. Now. My boyfriend has the dog on the leash and he says, Let’s just go. The words surprise me, coming from him. They seem to surprise him, too. We four adults look at each other. I tell Junior, We’ll talk tomorrow. I think the best thing now is to just go and get some space for a while. Fine, Deb, he says, still looking at you. You go get some fucking space. He follows us to the car, taunting. You struggle against me, wanting to fight him some more. No, I tell you, wrestling you into the back seat where the dog is shivering, her tail coiled tightly around her legs. She nervously licks your face as I close the door. My boyfriend refuses to get in the car until I do, but I have one more thing left to do before we leave. I turn to face Junior.

Just Missed You

The sun sinks into the ocean while we wait for the locksmith in the parking lot. He shows up with a toolkit and I make some noise about forgetting my key at work and how you’re out of town. I show my driver’s license with this address on it. Satisfied, he jimmies the door. It is dark and cool inside. The blinds are down, which has been driving me nuts for two days. I got a message from Grandma as I was leaving the fair the other night, that she was worried about a fight you and Junior were having while she was on the phone with you. I went down that night but no one answered. Your car was gone—is still gone—and so is the dog. The dog goes everywhere with you. Glen, the drunk next door, told me that night you two often go to San Onofre or the desert to dry out. I’d called all the campgrounds. Where have you gone? The house is clean and still. Unusual. I used to live here, right here in this living room, but I feel like a sneak. A snoop. The door to your bedroom is closed. I pause before opening it. Nothing happens. I send my boyfriend to the bathroom to investigate and I open the vertical blinds that have kept me from seeing in for the last couple of visits, where I stood on the patio with Glen last night, trying to wrest the sliding door off its track. Long shafts of sulfuric streetlight stripe the bed, which is piled with covers and pillows. A duffel bag. Bingo. I pull the duffel bag towards me and there is a hand. Your hand hangs there, dumb and graceful, palm down. Pink. Brown fingers. A thundering boom from somewhere, everywhere, as if something open has been slammed shut. Sudden, awful tenderness follows.

No, I tell the hand. It stays, so I say it again, harder. No. It will not listen.

Louder now.

No.

I bare my teeth. It does not flinch.

Arms are pulling me backwards, away from the hand. I lean forward with all that I’ve got, barking, barking, barking. And then a howl.

Let’s Try Again

I wait outside the front door, which is half open. Inside, in the kitchen, you and he are in an embrace. You drop the phone on the counter and cross your wrists at his back. You are so small inside his arms that I cannot see you. A broken glass is on the floor, red wine spilling out of it, staining the terra cotta tiles. I turn away and let you be.

Erin McReynolds has an MFA in Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. Excerpts from her in-progress memoir have also appeared in The North American Review and Prime Number. She lives in Austin, TX, where she writes and edits for the Fearless Critic restaurant guides, and blogs about food writing, waitressing, wine, and trauma.

Read our interview with Erin here.