The turn

I am not tired of being good. I am tired of being predictable. I have plumbed the depths of my evil side and found them as fastidious as my afternoons spent folding laundry. I am aching for boldness.

I met a woman once at a party. She was slathering cheese spread on Ritz crackers, her large body leaning into the kitchen counter of our mutual friends. Her lips glistened under the neon lights.

“I was driving back from a conference in Santa Fe,” she told between bites, “when I reached this intersection in the middle of nowhere. You know the kind. You’ve seen it in movies: two roads, no sign, no direction, nothing. Out of the blue, I turned right. To this day I couldn’t tell you why. I knew the way home was straight but I took a turn. I drove for three weeks taking whichever road I felt like taking. I ate and slept whenever I wanted to. The only call I made was to my daughter in college to tell her I was fine. She had her own life already. ‘Mama,” she said, ‘I just want you to be happy’. I don’t know that I was. I spent three days holed up in a motel room reading from a box of mystery novels I had bought at a garage sale a hundred miles back. I ate and drank from the vending machine and when I got done reading I went for a swim and a steak dinner. I saw the Grand Canyon. I think. Maybe it was some other canyon. Who knows really? I didn’t talk to anyone. Just did a lot of driving. When I finally came home, there was a letter from the school district telling me I had been fired for being a no-show. I had been a school counselor for twenty-two years. I could have gone back and begged for my job but I didn’t. I sold my house and everything I had. Kept a couch and a coffee table and moved to a garage apartment in San Antonio. I didn’t even keep a bed or a set of sheet. At first, I thought I’d do something: write the Great American Novel, go to school, start a hobby. But all I did was read and watch movies. It was like a switch had been turned off in me and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything worthwhile. Or maybe it was the opposite: a switch had been turned on and I was just living the way people are supposed to live. It was the first time in my life I didn’t have to hurry.”

She pointed at a flower dress with a sweeping gesture that left a dab of cheese spread on the tiled floor: “And now look at me. Here I am: looking for work and with seventeen thousand dollars in credit card debt.”

“Do you have any regrets?” I asked.

“Regrets? I wished I had had enough money so I wouldn’t have to deal with the creditors right now. But that turn off the highway? I think that was a gift from God and I am glad I had the good sense to take it.”