“Sure, lady.
Blame it on the hitchhiker. I’m even heavier than I
look.”
“Look, mister.
I stopped and gave you a ride, no questions asked.
You can’t be bothered to change a flat tire for me,
or even get out to take a look when asked. And me wearing
my best tuxedo like a good daughter.”
“Fine. What kind
of name is Conor for a girl anyway?”
Not a girl. Not
a boy: Trans. Even freaks don’t understand it.
“Look at yourself.
Unshaven and bedraggled and getting worse by the second it
seems. Greasy hair covering the boils on your neck. You sit
there, why, you think you’re above this whole damn earth.
Admit it. Above the dirt itself.”
“I have finite
experience in the arena of motor carriages.”
“You are something
else. Listen, if you can’t change the tire, I think you’d
best be going. Take your clomping work boots and walk to
the next exit. It’s just a few miles. Send someone back.
And see if they’re not headed where you are.”
“But you’re going
in my direction.”
“I don’t know
why I picked you up. Matter of fact, I don’t even remember
picking you up.”
Dad’s famous with
farmers across the state for having perfect timing, everything
from the first frost to the last, never mind matters of real
estate and merger with ConAgra. Trading up, he says, Now that’s
what takes Vermont forward.
“You didn’t pick
me up. I materialized.”
“Peachy. So you’re
a ghost.”
“A wave, actually,
a complex combination. Consider the talk radio.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Would I lie to
you?”
Out the window a
sign for White River Junction. “My talk radio does.”
“Then consider this
a trade up.”
No. No way. “You
did not just turn my car pink.”
“I did nothing.”
“Of course not.
You’re an apparition, an irresponsible one, completely blameless
in supernatural matters obviously under my own control.”
“I am a product
of the mind.”
“Some mind.”
“Yours.”
“Whatever. You’re
getting off at the junction of I-91. I don’t care if you sit
in a Dunkin Donuts all day. We’re done, you spooky piece of
shit.”
“Spooky piece of
your shit.”
“I’ve seen you in
Halloween movies and Poe stories. You’re a cliché.”
“Name calling is
never productive.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“It should.”
“You told him that
when you were a girl, a young woman, years ago, before the
hormones, the surgery, the paperwork. Told him that before
all those things, before the day that he reached into his file
cabinet and ripped up his will—which as you know now was no
piece of empty dramatics. All because of one letter.”
Cell phone dead,
no choice remains but to walk to town to call AAA. Forgotten:
the expired membership.
“Hey mister, can
we stop this conversation?”
“It will stop instead
for you.”
“You belong to AAA?”
The man who turned
the car pink shakes his head. “We could discuss the matter
of your salmon motor carriage.”
“My pink car. This
should be priceless.”
“Recovery.”
“Recovery?”
“Recovery. Where
I come from—most recently, anyway—it is a common ailment treated
with over-the-counter medication. You may know it as memory.”
“Memory as a disease.”
“MEMORY IS A DISEASE!” The
man clears his throat as if to excuse an indiscretion. “Where
I come from.”
“Here too, friend.”
The man clears his
throat again. “Disease, if broken down into parts, is the correct
phrase. Unease, an inconvenience. Where I come from, where
we’re going, it is an uncomfortable vestige that irritates
constantly and is as damaging, Caitlin, as being a girl was
for you.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Go ahead and try.”
“What?”
The man who turned
her car pink holds a cheap jack from her trunk. Her last lover
refused to use it, called it shoddy.
“We have been here
for eternity.”
“Come have lunch
when you finish up here. Turkey sandwiches with Swiss. Your
favorite. You can find it. You will, no problem, my dear, my
darling, my child.”
And the cheap jack
falls, eliciting some physical sensation from Caitlin and Conor
and the rest of the people inside. To it call it a cathedral
would be hyperbole, and any conclusion is partially conjecture.
From any wreck, there are limits to what may be recovered.
# # #
Recovery by
T.K. Dalton
originally
published August 11, 2008
