Trevor’s warm hand sat on my thigh now, resting there as if it had every right to the skin. That was a feeling I could get used to right easy – having him claim me, acting as if I were his and he could just touch me and tell the world I was taken. Taken. How full that felt, so complete and rich and real. Men in my world didn’t elicit these emotions in me, rendering instead a sense of tolerance, a mild appreciation to be taken out for a cheap Friday prime rib special, to be escorted to the latest action movie at the cineplex, and to be ridden in the backseat of a car or in their shared apartment because, well – because.
What else do you do with a life you didn’t choose and can’t get out of? You adapt and take whatever crumbs you can find so you don’t let your soul or body starve.
Trevor burst out laughing suddenly, the rich baritone exuding a combo of sleep deprivation, mystification, incredulity and a touch of madness. The sound made me smile and it was contagious, too – we devolved into a cluster of giggles until he gasped and said:
“I am so glad that you, of all people, picked me up on the road.”
“Well, Jeffrey Dahmer was busy.” Damn, there I went. Deflecting and making silly jokes when he paid me a compliment. I looked down and wondered what on earth he saw in me, dirty jeans and fat thighs pouring out over the sides of the bucket seat. Stop that, Darla, my wiser mind shouted. He likes you because he just does. Enjoy it. Let the man make his own choices.
He’s choosing you.
“He’s dead,” Trevor said, nodding.
“He’s from Ohio,” I prattled on. What a fucking turn-on, talking about a serial killer cannibal. Maybe my dating problems weren’t about the gene pool after all.
“What’s your house like?” he asked, changing the subject and turning what had been an awkward joke into an even worse mess. My house? What house? We lived in a double-wide trailer that was older than me, with mice living under it and plumbing that was about as reliable as Lindsay Lohan on a movie set.
“You’re about to find out,” I stammered, turning onto the road that led to my trailer park. Broken down cars and spare lumber littered the lawns of an increasing number of houses as we drew closer to my home, as if the trailer park were a magnet for trash and debris.
“Whoa. Tornado?” Trevor asked as he gaped, watching the scene fly by, pointing to the piles of random crap in people’s lawns. “Lawn” was giving them too much credit, the tufts of grass poking up here and there like remnants of hair on the scalp of a long-time chemo patient. A chicken coop in one yard leaned so far to the right it looked like it was doing pilates, suspended in midair by a series of vines I would wager were poison ivy.
“Um, sorta,” I answered, my voice sing-songy and my gut tight with a groaning fear and wretched sense that This Would Not Go Well. The man I sat next to about to get one hell of an education you don’t find at an upper-crust Boston college. If he thought my flip phone was out of date, what was he going to say when I parked in front of the faded, aluminum-sided old trailer with the crooked porch, torn screen and clutter that made the television show Hoarders look like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?
Real Life, meet Fantasy Life. Bringing home Trevor Connor from Random Acts of Crazy hadn’t even been anywhere near my actual Bucket List of life goals. I had wanted to meet him, of course, since the first time I heard his smoky voice as he seemed to sing his way into my clitoris and my heart, but inviting him to a house with yellow walls –not from paint, or some Martha Stewart magazine photo, but from decades of Mama’s chain smoking, and linoleum held together with asbestos and apple juice spills – ground in just how bad my life must look to someone from the outside.
What was Massachusetts like? I drove right past the park’s entrance and asked him that very question. Spending a little more time roaming dark country roads meant delaying the inevitable panic that was about to infuse my cells when Trevor met Mama. I could drive without thinking, the roads were imprinted in my mind, the map so embedded in me I could leave for fifty years and come back and still get around in the dark, blindfolded. Buying myself some time, I figured it couldn’t hurt to feel him out and get a sense of what his life was like, so I could compare.
And cringe. Knowledge is power, though – right? If I knew what he lived in, how he functioned, what income level is family was at, then maybe I didn’t need to worry so much. There must be poor people in Sudborough. Maybe he was one of them.
“I don’t know. It’s like lots of places, you know? We’re not rich.” He craned his neck around and spotted two guys sitting on the hood of a rusted out Cutlass, sucking off the teat of some 40s in paper bags. “Uh, not poor. Just, you know. Middle class. Everything is all New Englandy and the people are fake. Half the children are geniuses and we have to be diagnosed with ADHD and medicated to get extra time on the SATs so we can prove how perfect we are. You know.”
Heh. Around here, half the children are diagnosed with ADHD and medicated so they qualify for SSI for their family income to go up by $700 a month, thereby doubling it. Maybe we weren’t so different after all.
“Your fake sounds better than my real life,” I muttered as I recognized Old Mike, one of my mom’s exes, on that hood, standing and unbuckling his belt to take a piss. I hit the accelerator and whizzed by before he could whizz on my car.
“What do you mean?” Those eyes searched my face and I inhaled slowly, turning the car onto a small road that I knew would circle us back eventually. The early May air made the trees sway a bit, their branches dotted with the tiny, unfurling green buds that would soon become lush leaves, making this bleak road a fertile, pleasant drive and, thankfully, hiding some of the junk that dotted the front yards along the path. Trevor seemed genuinely perplexed, as if he didn’t notice how fucked up my life really was, from my junky car to my stupid ex finding us having sex at a rest area to the rotted out shells of cars along the way to my house, all clues that pointed to a grinding sort of working-class life that made me nothing like him.