Thomas McGuane - Driving on the Rim

Taking in the ordinariness of my town was a kind of anesthetic for the pain I held in abeyance. I took a moment to watch Jay Houston carry a case of Riesling down into his father’s old bomb shelter, and I remembered making out there with Debbie in tenth grade when Jay’s dad had rented the house out to the priest at St. Michael’s. Debbie’s house was next door and we would slip through the hedge and climb down into the shelter for endless kissing. Since kissing was all it ever amounted to, moving our heads around was the only way we could express our rising passion, and we always ended up with sore necks.

It seemed the perfect reminiscence to offset my anguish over Jocelyn and my fatuous identification with her father as though we were brothers in abuse. I thought about changing places with him, letting him walk around my hometown trailing my regrets while I retreated to the rest home and a full platter of resignation. The whole thing was becoming such a long story it baffled me that I hoped to tell it all to Jinx. I really didn’t know anyone else who might understand it. Nor did it seem the best expression of friendship. I did think that if I cared about Jinx I’d want her to hear everything; otherwise, what use would I be to her? My story was nearly all I had.

It began badly. I walked the few blocks to Jinx’s house, knowing that she would be making herself lunch there between appointments. It was a short drive from the clinic, and I was waiting inside as I heard her pull up, the distinctive motor sound of her old Jaguar. She usually rode her bike. She didn’t seem surprised to see me and asked if I would like half of her egg salad sandwich. I declined. I had her kettle boiling and made myself a cup of tea, which I placed before me on her dining room table. The dismay and humiliation of my relations with Jocelyn burned inside me, and I anticipated thoughtful words and relief from my pain once Jinx grasped my situation. Jinx seemed to recognize that something was up, because as she sat down with her sandwich and glass of juice, she neither said anything nor took her eyes off me. I thought I’d go ahead and get started but was surprised by my vehemence once I did.

As I bawled out my forlorn and embittered hopelessness, Jinx listened attentively — I’m really embarrassed by this; I honestly don’t know what inspired me to put it down — and it might have been this quiet attention that encouraged me to lavish my story with details. I told her about Jocelyn’s airplane accident and recovery at the clinic in White Sulphur Springs, and the growth of my infatuation. I described how I missed all the signs of Jocelyn’s exploitative nature and how my adoration kept me from ordinary self-protection. With lugubrious thoroughness, I depicted the heartache and love blindness that led me to overlook such quirks as her burning down her own home and lying about the death of her father. Worse, the recitation had the effect of reawakening Jocelyn’s malign romantic appeal. I may have even smiled as I recounted the passionate adventures with decorative hints as to the erotic attraction. Nevertheless, nothing in the world could have prepared me for Jinx’s response. She told me to go fuck myself. The cat was out of the bag.

“Jinx, what could you possibly mean?”

“I mean, why on earth would you think I’d want to hear about you and your castrating harpie?”

“Have you even met her?” On recollection, this question would appear to be at the heart of my inanity.

“Good God, why would I want to do that? So I could kneecap her?”

“Oh, Jinx.”

“She must have seemed so cuddly in her little airplane.”

“Jinx, please stop.”

“And this Womack, he sounds like a real treat. You’ve got a little Womack in you, too, don’t you, Cuddles. Can all three of you get into the tiny airplane? But let little Jocelyn do the driving or you might crash!” At this, she burst into tears. I attempted to sit quietly holding my teacup, but Jinx’s sobbing didn’t seem to be abating. I got up from my chair and went around to her side of the table. For some reason, my eyes fell on the untouched egg salad sandwich. I put my arms around Jinx’s shoulders and asked her what the problem was. Her answer startled me. She said, “I don’t know why you don’t love me.” In the face of these words, my towering self-absorption stood in a kind of glare, but I didn’t hate myself. I was just tired of myself. I seemed to be an unbearable weight. I seemed quite useless. Somehow, I continued to fan a glimmer of self-worth, possibly in vain.

I thought if I could re-imagine all the forces that had acted upon me in my life — my parents, my nympho aunt, Dr. Olsson and my professors, the lawyers, colleagues, neighbors, Jocelyn, even my patients, my most unreasonable dreams, my love of the earth, roadside hard-ons, experimental churchgoing, and work — I would finally find myself by implication. I had left Jinx off this list because to comprehend her I would have to step out of the shadows of all those things telling me who and what I was and try to emerge as an actual human being. This seemed not unlike twisting in the wind, and it came with a kind of dread. Jinx set out in my direction quite alone; why couldn’t I have had her courage?

She abruptly pulled herself together, wiped her eyes with a napkin, got to her feet, and walked out the door. I went to the window, where I saw her mount her bicycle and ride up Custer Street; she may not have been entirely composed because the two pedestrians she passed stopped and turned to watch her. I hurried out onto the sidewalk to better see her progress, which was steadily to the north and, I supposed, out of town. I ran home and got my lucky 88, but at first I couldn’t find the keys, neither under the seat nor in the ashtray. I went wild. The macaroon-averse neighbor waved from his window and I gave him the finger. I found the keys, after a ripping search, under the porch glider and ran to my car, where I saw the neighbor advancing from his stoop in battle mode; but I was already behind the wheel and on my way to Custer Street and northward progress out of town.

I went out through an informal trailer park, past the packing plant, across the river and into undulant sagebrush hills. I pressed on because she would have had to come back the same way she left, and after a long rise that seemed to end at blue sky and cumulus clouds, I saw her, a speck in the distance. I flattened the accelerator, and the 88 responded with its signature twisting lurch. In less than a mile I overtook her, but by a glance over her shoulder I could tell she did not intend to stop. I blew the horn and immediately understood that the honking seemed to express everything that was the matter with me.

I passed Jinx very slowly, but she never looked in my direction and it was clear a roadblock was my only hope. I pulled ahead twenty yards, swung the 88 across her path, and got out. She rolled to a stop before me and climbed off her bicycle, holding it upright by one handlebar. She asked me if this was necessary. She swept her hair off her face with one hand, letting go of the bicycle with the other. It clattered to the ground. I went to her and put my arms around her. I meant to comfort her, but something else was going on.

Business, if that’s what you want to call it, was picking up. I would have to get some help. I probably needed a nurse, but I didn’t want to move out of my house and I wasn’t sure where I could put her. The battling couple across the way continued to disturb my sleep. I must have been able to stand it because I didn’t think of moving and I was getting more of my former patients, the ones who felt that I had over the years acquired some valuable familiarity with their problems. Patients for whom depression was a component of their condition were loyal to me out of embarrassed reluctance to add to their anxieties by explaining them to someone new. The twins Olan and Darwin Ickes, farmers in their seventies with the biggest hands I had ever seen, fit this description: they had been raised to put their lives into “the place” and had only gradually realized that their grueling existence had resulted in a grudge against both life and “the place.” In short, they were depressed. I knew they wouldn’t see a counselor, so the counselor, a very effective practitioner named Joyce Erikson, and I visited the twins from time to time on “the place” and I think she might have helped them some. Olan and Darwin continued to see me.