And the way that the presence of these two men changed the execution of time for me would come to an end.
Joe
It just seemed so weird to me that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. Here we were, hurtling along these weird country roads, in her little rusted out box of a car. It looked like something from those Soviet era movies that we were forced to watch in AP World History, but with only the grimness, none of the fascination. She had a glow, a purpose and a grounding to her and she seemed to be completely unaware of it.
At home, everyone, guys and girls, were so focused on making sure that they controlled as much as possible what other people thought of them and at the same time were thoroughly manipulated by what other people thought of them. The congruity of opinion was what helped you to stay popular, or at least to stay not not-popular. Being on the fringe was the kiss of death. In fact, I couldn’t really name anybody who wasn’t part of my circle. We were all the captains of the sports teams, the heads of debate clubs and outdoors clubs and Young Whatever Political party clubs. I was editor in chief of the newspaper and part of the academic decathlon team. Finding an answer to “What do you do?” was what we did. It was who we were, meeting these milestones, fighting for a high school resume that showed the world that we weren’t as inadequate as we thought we were on the inside.
And along comes Darla. Really?
She was the kind of girl…no, she was a woman. The kind we don’t have back home or, if we do, they don’t live in Sudborough. I could see why Trevor was taken with her, I got it and yet it seemed a little too much like slumming. If we knew we were around for months or even years I’d understand more because this wasn’t someone you fucked and left. This was the kind of person that made you stay.
A thin tremor of fear shot through my right arm and I gripped the car door handle to steady myself. Was Trevor thinking about staying? Is that why he was so cagey when it was time to leave? I did not want to be the messenger to Mrs. Connor with that missive.
The air was warm enough that Darla had the windows down or, perhaps, they just didn’t roll up. Her blonde curls, little tufts, flew out behind her face, her ponytail heavy and thick but her eyes animated and a little wild. Her excitement was for Trevor, I knew that. I’d been Trevor’s second best for a long time. He used to say that he didn’t understand why, that I was like something chiseled out of Esquire. But Trevor had something I lacked and frankly that I didn’t really want because it was a bit too untamed. And that drew women to him – the wrong women, of course. None of them actually wanted to be licked by the flames of the fire in Trevor’s belly. Darla looked like she wanted to be slow roasted in it.
“Darla?” I asked, quietly, my voice barely above a whisper. It made me feel weak so I cleared my throat and asked with a deeper, more authoritative voice. Her back straightened as I opened my mouth and said, “What’s it like?”
She turned her head, frowned and looked at me. Then her eyes went back to the road. “What do you mean? What’s what like?”
“Living here. Your life, your future.”
She snorted. “Future? What future?”
“You have fifty or sixty years left. What are you going to do with it?”
She exhaled and her shoulders slumped, just a bit. Her foot moved on the pedal as she slowed the car down and turned down another road. I didn’t remember the drive between her trailer and the hotel being quite this long but I didn’t care much either. This was the most enjoyable conversation I’d had in a long time and for once the focus wasn’t on my looks or my permanent record.
“Around here, Joe, people don’t…” she faltered, clenched her jaw and then relaxed a bit, “people don’t think that way. If you’re gonna go to college it’s either because your parents have enough money to send you away or because you need to be a nurse or get a criminal justice degree to become a cop, or maybe some specialized training like computers, or auto-tech. A lot of that can be done in high school, though, for free. People here, we work construction, we clean the houses of people like you though – there aren’t many around here. We don’t think in terms of futures and careers beyond, ‘Oh, I want to have a family some day,’ though, more likely it’s, ‘Oops, I guess I’m having a family now’.”
That made me laugh, and not in a funny kind of way. It made me nervously sick. The handful of girls I knew our age who’d gotten pregnant just got abortions. I wasn’t going to say that aloud right now to Darla. She was opening up to me and I didn’t deserve it after being such an asshole to her. Blowing it again meant that she wouldn’t give me a second chance.
I nodded. “I think I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Well, give me a chance.”
“It’s not about chances.” The car turned onto the gravel road of her trailer development and an immediacy, a sense of urgency swept over my entire body, making me tense without the usual irritability. “Your whole life is about having plenty, even if it’s plenty of things it doesn’t even occur to you to want. You have plenty of food, plenty of nice space in your house, plenty of nice cars, plenty of good tutoring, plenty of orthodontics.” She pointed to her crooked teeth. They were straight on top but the bottom jaw was a mish-mash of teeth thrown hither and yon inside her gumline. “You have plenty – but you also have plenty of rules, and around here we have our own set of rules. One of them is: don’t make too many plans, because people who don’t have money don’t get to have that kind of control over their life.”
“So it’s about money?”
The polite thing to say would have been ‘no’ and back home, if I’d asked that question, someone would have given a socioeconomic diatribe that explained that no, it had nothing to do with money, that it was about culture and that the working class were a morphism and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Darla’s refreshing answer, “Fuck yeah it is!”, made me double over with laughter.
I finished my chuckle and held my palms out, knowing she’d be offended if I didn’t explain right away. “I’m laughing because you’re so honest.”
“That’s funny?”
“It’s awesome.”
She pulled the car into her spot next to her little shed and our eyes locked. Before I could think about it, I began to lean forward, just wanting some part of her earthiness. She was the most real person I think I’d ever met. Her face softened and I swear she began to lean in, too.