To say I hated Rebecca is too strong a word. Disliked, avoided, generally snubbed would better alternatives. Rebecca is married to my best friend, Steve, and so we are occasionally forced into each other’s company. Rebecca is an opinionated, feminist member of the lunatic left. Andy, my other best friend, says this is unfair and that the truth is I don’t like competition when comes to offering my opinions. Rebecca and I get into embarrassing scraps about politics when we’re all together. It’s only when I realize that the whole table has been quiet for several minutes while we bang on at each other that I call it quits. These days I avoid looking at her let alone actually talking to her. Andy thinks she is pretty and even sexy. I prefer to remember her yelling “fascist” at me after too many gin and tonics at a picnic at a now ex-friends house in New Hampshire. All this brings me the astonishing fact that Rebecca is sitting next to me in my car and I am driving her from Steve’s Vermont cottage to Boston so she can catch a plane to California. A string of unfortunate events made this four hour journey into my punishment for some grand sin I must have committed in this or some other past life. The fact is that she urgently needed to get across the country and I was leaving anyway for Boston. And so short of saying to Steve that I hated and despised his dear wife I had to agree to do him the favor of delivering her safely to Logan airport.
It was mid-winter and snow threatened so we set out as soon as Rebecca could get her stuff together which was much longer than necessary in my opinion. But I gritted my teeth and said nothing. And now as we drove towards the highway I could still feel the tension in my jaw. She was bundled up in a big blue cashmere coat with a long white scarf wrapped around her neck. Her hands were hidden by lumpy woolen gloves which were hindering her now as she attempted to break the silence by switching on the radio. I had already explained that the heating in the old Volvo was not up to the standards of Steve’s BMW but that for ordinary people it was quite adequate. She was about ten years younger than me in her mid-thirties. Steve and she met at a political rally in New York. Steve was looking for an alternative source of salvation after finally giving up on the church. He has given up on politics too now but, as he explains, he got something out of the search. One of the things that annoyed me about Rebecca was her hypocrisy. Glancing at her now out of the corner of my eye, I could see the expensive cut of her short black hair. How many damn refugees could the Red Cross fed on the money she spent at the hairdressers I wanted to ask. She also made snide remarks about fat people. Why couldn’t they just control themselves? She blamed them for succumbing to the dumb advertising of the fast food corporations. She herself worked out at an expensive gym in Cambridge and seemed overly proud of her body, purchased, if I may say so, on the backs of the poor obese people who made her husband rich. Steve wasn’t himself rich but his family was and the money seemed to trickle down quite efficiently. The radio was searching for stations and the sound of it hopping from one station to the next was annoying me. Why couldn’t she just leave it where it was?
“Rebecca,” I said. “Leave it on NPR. I need to know about this snow storm.”
“God, I can’t stand those patronizing sell outs,” she announced. “That’s what counts for radio journalism in this country? I ask you. What rubbish. It’s just another front for corporate propaganda, only it’s more dangerous than those right wing shows you probably listen to because people are taken in my their pretense to be standing up for real, actual working people.”
This was a typical Rebecca rant, full of exaggeration, innuendo and the personal dig at me. “I listen to NPR.” I said quietly, barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of the radio, that was still hopping from one noisy pop music station to another.
“That proves my point,” she said as if she had just won a long complex legal argument.
I ignored this, knowing that yelling at each other just half-an-hour into the journey would be a disaster. “Just choose a station, I don’t care which one.” She settled on Vermont Public Radio and asked in the voice of a spoiled little girl “Satisfied?” This too I ignored. We traveled on in silence.
The snow was coming down more thickly now and I knew from experience that the ploughs would be slow to clear the road this far up the highway. It was already dark and my headlights were picking out the bright flakes of snow as they fell on the road ahead.
“The snow’s pretty,” she said. I was cautious about this statement. If I agreed would I be falling into some trap? If I disagreed I would probably have to hear a long dissertation on why my sensibilities had been damaged by my crippling addiction to cable television. I settled on “Do you think so?”
“Of course I think so Paul. Why else would I say it?” I had fallen into the trap anyway. She carried on.
“Um, so you don’t want to talk about the snow. Let’s see now … I know you guys love talking about how crap the Red Sox are but I know next to nothing about baseball so that’s out. We can’t talk about politics because you fly off the handle and get argumentative if someone doesn’t agree with your right wing sentiments.” She paused and I could tell she was waiting to see if I took the bait. I almost laughed at the transparency of her game. She was turned in her seat facing me, her seat belt unbuckled. She had high cheekbones and a mouth that seemed almost too big for her face. She wore almost no makeup and a pair of gold studs in her ears. I couldn’t tell the color of her eyes in this light and I had never bothered to notice before.
“We could play truth or dare but I’m a married woman and my husband is your best friend. Now how much fun could that be?”
“You should buckle your belt,” I said ignoring her previous remarks.
“Yes, Daddy!” she replied and obeyed in a silly exaggerated way.
I could feel the car slipping on the road and Rebecca could feel my concentration and concern.
“Do you think we will get to the airport?” she asked in a tone of voice that was indistinguishable from an adult’s. Taking my cue from this new tone I replied that I truly hoped so and decided not to add that I would probably hang myself with my shoe laces if I was stuck in a snow drift with her. After another ten minutes of silence she suddenly remarked “I hate the snow.”
“You said it was pretty earlier,” I couldn’t help pointing out.
“Now it’s just scary,” she said. I almost felt sorry for her but not quite. The visibility had dropped and I was driving slowly. I expected Rebecca to complain about not getting to the airport on time for her red eye flight to the sunshine. Instead she pulled out a water bottle from her bag and offered it to me. I drank thirstily, my mouth dry from the tension of driving in the snow.
I must have drifted into the service lane because an abandoned car was suddenly right in front of me. Stupidly I hit the brakes and the car slid across the highway totally out my control and rolled slowly down an embankment. The Volvo was laying on the passenger side the engine still humming and the radio announcer still prattling on. After a few seconds of quiet we both asked if the other was okay. I felt I was hanging, suspended by my belt. I managed to cut the engine and turn off the radio. I pushed the door open and hauled myself out. I then helped Rebecca do the same. She had a small cut on her forehead but was otherwise just shaken.
“That was kind of weird,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. “It just came out of nowhere.”
“Hey, don’t be sorry. You’re the one who made me wear my seat belt.”
We were standing in deep snow below the highway. It was completely silent. No sound of trucks or cars, nothing.
“Do you have a cell?” I asked.
“I didn’t have time to juice it up before we left. My turn to say sorry.”
I could see that she was shivering. She turned towards me and snuggled close.
“Paul, I’m scared and cold. What are we going to do?”
We scrambled up the embankment. In the distance across the highway I could see the soft blur of lights. Holding Rebecca’s hand so we were not separated I walked us through the deep snow towards the distant glow. By the time we reached what turned out to be garage, store and thankfully a motel we were soaked and exhausted. We were still holding hands when we entered the reception area of the motel. Behind the counter was a young Indian or Pakistani man who brought out complementary coffees when he heard our story. Although the motel was full he found us a room.
“One bed only,” he said, “That alright?” Before I could reply Rebecca said that it was fine. I looked at her and she just shrugged. She was right what else was there to do? I could sleep on the floor or something. It would be better than sleeping in the snow.
Rebecca called Steve from the room phone while I showered. I wrapped a towel around my waist and picked up my wet clothes. There was no point in putting them back on until they dried. Rebecca was still on the phone but she had taken off her pants so that she was sitting in her tight fitting red shirt and a pair of white panties. She looked up and I quickly looked away. She was telling Steve about the motel and informed him that I was staying down the corridor. I threw her a puzzled look. She shrugged and gave me a what-can-I-do grimace. She assured him that it was unnecessary to drive down and rescue us. The triple-A would pull the Volvo out in the morning.
I busied myself spreading my clothes across the heater while she and Steve exchanged promises of their love for each other. When the phone was finally returned to its place she explained herself.
“Steve gets jealous easily. He’s a suspicious guy and I don’t want to have to explain this okay?”
“There’s nothing to explain Rebecca. I’ll sleep on the floor and you can sleep in the bed.”
“Don’t be silly, Paul. We’re grown-ups. We can keep our hands to ourselves and keep to our own side of the bed. Anyway, you hate me, right?” I instantly denied this and although this might have been a lie a few hours ago our recent adventure had changed something. She announced that was going to shower and I followed her path across the room watching her long legs and the patch of panty that showed beneath her shirt.
“You can look but you can’t touch,” she said as she closed the bathroom door.
When she returned I was sitting in my t-shirt and boxers on the bed flicking through channels on the TV. “Excuse the outfit,” I said. She told me I had yet to see what she would look like. Right now she was wrapped a big white towel. I could see the straps of her bra. I guessed she was wearing panties. Her hair was a silky, shiny and freshly washed. “Only basic cable,” I announced. She flopped down on the bed next to me and announced that she hated TV.
“Imagine what people could do if they didn’t spend their time looking at a fucking box of lights for fully a damn third of their lives. Imagine the books they would read, the conversations they would have. It’s just a way corporations have of getting into people’s houses.” I pressed the off button and asked her what she wanted to do.
“Let’s talk,” she said. “Tell me where you’re from, about your family. Then I’ll tell you my sorry history.”
We sat there talking while the snow fell into the vast silence outside. The room was warm and the bed comfortable. I told her about growing up in the suburbs of Boston. I described my crazy mother who eventually left my father in my final year of high school. I spoke about my sister who had disappeared into northern California five years ago and hadn’t contacted either me or my father since. I found myself opening up to Rebecca about my divorce form Anna two years ago. I expected her to take Anna’s side. Instead she understood my motives for leaving a dead relationship. Rebecca’s own life history was one of a rich kid from Washington with loving, caring parents; in fact a perfect childhood until her father was killed in a motor accident when she was 14. Her eyes filled with tears when she described how her mother was unable to cope and how she had to play the role of an adult when she was still so much a child. When she finished we sat in silence for a while, both of us lost in our own and each other’s past.
“Close your eyes,” she said jumping up from the bed. When she allowed me to look she had turned off all the lights except her bedside lamp. She had draped her red blouse over it giving the room a dull red glow. She was in bed with the duvet pulled up to her chin. She said I could get in too. “But keep to your side,” he said in mock serious voice.
“When did you last have sex?” she asked.
“Back in the fall,” I confessed.
