A Song for the Road

days. And this monster”—he gestured beyond the fence with an affectionate smile—“measures radio waves from space. Very, very faint ones.”
“Like really distant stars?”
“More like the gas and dust clouds between them.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Didn’t you look around the visitor’s center?”
“No, I missed the last tour. The guy gave me a map to walk out here on my own.”
“So …” The man dragged the word out, his lips twitching as he ticked the points off on his fingers. “You didn’t check the schedule before coming; you didn’t know this was a cell-free zone; and you weren’t even interested enough in astronomy to poke around the visitors’ center before coming out. Which begs the question: Why are you here?”
Miriam managed a crooked smile. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
His eyebrows skyrocketed. “Try me.”
All right, then. “My kids sent me on a flip-a-coin road trip across the country. This is the first stop.”
“No kidding!”
Not the reaction she’d expected. Although what she had expected, she couldn’t say.
“Well, if that don’t beat all.” He raised the camera to his eye. “We do have pay phones, so you can use a card to call them. Let them know you haven’t fallen into some man trap in backwater West Virginia.”
She didn’t have to tell him. A simple thank-you would suffice. But something inside her craved hearing the truth aloud, here in the shadow of this great white monster Blaise had wanted her to see. “Actually, they passed away.”
He lowered the camera again. Now he’d get all weird and figure out some awkward way to extricate himself from the conversation. Loss seemed to turn a person into an allergen.
But to Miriam’s surprise, he stepped toward her instead of away. “I’m so sorry,” he said, touching her elbow. Just like she would have once done when a family came to plan a funeral. “I lost my wife three years ago. I know you probably hate for people to say they understand, but … I understand. And I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.” Damn it, this trip was supposed to be about her. Her family, her demons, her chance to grieve—alone. She hadn’t come out here to sympathize with a random stranger’s personal tragedy.
But she’d lived long enough in Georgia to know the demands of Southern hospitality. “How did she die?”
“Cancer. Long, drawn out. Horrible. With just enough hope to keep you from letting go. You know?”
No, she didn’t know. She hadn’t had the luxury. Only a knife to the gut, and the long, slow bleed ever since.
The technician went on. “I always pictured the two of us at eighty years old, sitting in rocking chairs on a porch, holding hands. And instead, … you know, by the time it was over, I wouldn’t have recognized her as the woman I married.” He turned the green camera over and over in his hands. “But I’m grateful for that time too. In those last few months, I was able to love her in a way I’d never imagined was possible. It was intense. I thought sometimes it was going to about kill me. It was a long, hard goodbye, but it was a gift too.”
Miriam tried to imagine sitting by Teo’s deathbed. Or, for that matter, sitting in twin rockers, holding hands. She couldn’t do it. She’d never been able to sit still for long. She wanted to be doing—making lists and checking things off them. Just like her mother.
“Come sit, Sassafras. The work will wait.”
Of course, the work could have waited. It was just dishes and balancing checkbooks and cleaning the bathroom … and fixing the toilet. It all would have waited. But it hadn’t felt that way all those times when Teo stretched out a hand and asked her to come cuddle on the couch. How many times had she turned her back on him and resented the hell out of him the rest of the night? Resented them all, actually, for watching reruns of Knight Rider when they’d all seen the to-do list stuck to the refrigerator.
Was this how Mom had felt, all those years: drowning under the weight of too much to do and too many unfulfilled dreams? Had Dad ever asked her to stop and just spend time with him?
Maybe it was better that Teo was gone. Otherwise, there might have come a day when, like Miriam’s parents, she and Teo started throwing around the word divorce—a word that could never be taken back. Even if, in the end, like her parents, they stuck it out.
The technician stood silently, his gaze fixed on something only he could see. She ought to reach out—offer a warm hand clasp or a gentle hand on his shoulder. One thing she’d learned from doing pastoral work: for life’s toughest moments, words were useless. But here, on the far side of her own loss, helplessness walked in lockstep with her stifled, guilt-ridden grief.
The technician shook himself back to reality. “What am I doing, standing here all afternoon? Here, let’s take your picture.”
He snapped the photo, handed the camera back, and walked toward the gate, whistling and jingling his keys. Miriam headed back the way she’d come, turning to walk backward for a few steps, staring up at the first landmark of her journey.
Maybe her life wasn’t so different from this telescope: ponderously heavy, fixed on a given point in time and space. Maybe it took something massive and powerful to shift the trajectory of her life too. Something like a flip-a-coin road trip.
As frightening as this vast emptiness felt, it belonged to her alone. Out here, she had a chance to discover what she needed, with no one else offering opinions on whether it was right or wrong. To dig deep for the strength to become whole again.
Her hand crept to her locket. She traced the engravings on the antique silver and fingered the latch. It would be so easy to give up and go back home to the comfortable misery of the familiar. But the wind in the