You’ve been quiet for approximately 20 miles and I don’t know why. Your fingers are grazing absentmindedly through your beard, as they often do when you’re thinking, when you have something you want to say. I look at you and you pretend not to notice. The sun blares straight into your eyes and you pull down the visor, squinting at the road. Somewhere in Massachusetts the radio had started picking up evangelical channels so we had switched it off. I turn it back on but the channels cycle quickly, catching white noise and landing on nothing.

“Lily’s pregnant”, you say, eventually, in the same flippant manner you might say “we’re out of milk”.

“Wow, finally”, I say. “That’s so great. That’s so exciting.”

You nod your head. “We can take her out when we get home. Not for drinks, obviously. Dinner or something.” You don’t sound particularly happy. Lily, your sister, is 35 years old and two years into IVF. I look at your face and try to figure out why this has prompted such a reaction.

“When did you find out?” I ask. You’re close to Lily.

“Back there” you say, surveying the past through the rearview mirror. Your eyebrows are slightly furrowed. “She called when we stopped for gas”.

And you’ve been quiet ever since. 

“She’ll make a great mother,” I say.

A nod, and then a sideways glance. 

“So would you,” you say carefully.

“What?”

“You’d make a great mother, too.”

This blindsides me. We have been married for sixteen years.

“Oh.”

Nothing else comes out.  A crackling silence spits around us. 

“Just that you’re great at everything,” you say, as though I don’t know you. “That’s all I mean.”

Along the roadside, a kaleidoscopic palette of yellow, orange and red hail us north. At home, the leaves have only just begun to turn. Up here they are on fire. We have been on the road since this morning and have about 45 minutes of sunlight left. I have never seen such beauty. But now there is a knot in my stomach. 

Neither of us have been to Maine, but your father had grown up in Portland and regaled you with stories. Stories of your father are more vivid than your memories of him. You know that he sang in a Pink Floyd cover band and that he had both his ears pierced, that there was a scar on his chest from the time he fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. You know that he liked to be outside, that he resented your mother – really resented her – for the life they’d built together in the suburbs. And you know what he looks like because your mother’s house is filled with photos of his face, which incidentally is also your face, so close is the resemblance. But you aren’t sure you’d remember what he looked like without them. And so Maine is the promised land, the place we talk of going to when New York City seems to be collapsing in on us. And it’s been collapsing in on us lately. 

The night before we booked this trip, I dropped a pot of stew which had been cooking all day. Liquefied beef splattered across the kitchen walls and six floor tiles smashed as the pot hit the ground. The downstairs neighbour pounded the ceiling with all the violence and hostility he could muster. Not a drop was left in the pot. The fridge was empty. You closed your eyes and I put my head in my hands. We said nothing, but scraped up the mess and threw it away. It was too late to order anything, too much to think about. You cracked a beer and turned on the news. I went to bed and cried. The next morning we agreed to get away for a while. 

I lay against the headrest and look at you, all of your familiarity. My heart feels higher up than it should be. “Are you honestly thinking about kids?” I ask. “When did this happen?”

You overtake a woman in a green car with a Georgia licence plate, then you glance my way and shrug. It’s a slow shrug, an awkward shrug. “I don’t know,” you say, your voice soft. “Maybe I’m having a midlife crisis. But we can talk about it another time. I’m excited for Lily. And for our trip.”

I try to talk myself out of getting wound up. For years you have let me spew my thoughts at you, like a malfunctioning typewriter. But you keep all of your secrets bound up. It scares me to imagine all the things you don’t say. My mind atomises and splits a hundred thousand thoughts in a hundred thousand directions. I’m 41, but I still feel 18. Clueless, still waiting to get it.  I lean towards the window and catch a glimpse of myself in the wing mirror. My hair is greasy, I should have woken early enough to wash it. I should be so much better at all this stuff by now. Better at cleaning the house, making appointments, keeping the fridge stocked, saying no. Better at being a grown-up. Three deep wrinkles are embedded across my forehead and my grandmother’s bunny lines wriggle along my nose when I smile. I run a finger along my jawline and sigh. Malfunctioning is a good word. “Maybe we should stop somewhere to eat”, you say, to break the silence. “I’m getting hungry.”

At the next exit, we leave the highway and pull up at a truck stop. Everywhere we have stopped has looked the same. It doesn’t matter if it’s Texas or Connecticut, small-town America is small-town America. You take out your phone and start to look for restaurants. Beside us, a man in a baseball cap is helping a little girl into the backseat of a truck. The truck is huge, and high off the ground. “Daddy you’re hurting my leg,” the girl squeals as he lifts her. He doesn’t say anything. His shirt is decorated with crucifixes and his face is round and red. With the child safely in the car, he slams the door with force and then catches my eye. What are you looking at? He seems to say. I turn towards you instead. Your face is entirely different. So relaxed. So kind.

“There’s a diner up the street”, you say, with fingers back in your beard. “With a very solid 3.5 star review. Should we give it a shot?” I have long envied how you can box and unbox an elephant. “OK” I say. You start the car and the truck pulls out in front of us. Its windows are tinted and I can’t see the driver or the little girl. Free Your Mind, their bumper sticker says.

The diner is called Ruby’s, and it’s busy. We take a seat at a small booth next to the window. The menus are made of thin paper and double as placemats. I shift uncomfortably in the seat, unable to make eye contact, unsure what my face is doing, where to put my hands. You catch my eye and smile. “Thank god” you say. “I need some carbs.”

We’ve been to hundreds of these little diners over the years. The ambience is always more interesting than the food, but we like them. “Real slice of life” you always say. After your father jumped off the roof your mother started working double shifts as a cook. 

I’m not even hungry. That’s a first. I wrap a hand around my stomach. It’s bloated, it’s always bloated. Sometimes at home I remove all of my clothes and stand in front of the mirror, pinching and poking as hard as I can, leaving big red marks. My breasts are doing okay. Round, sizeable, not yet saggy. But nobody likes big tits anymore. I heard that just the other day, on a bus in Brooklyn from two men who were chatting loudly to a third man over speakerphone. At the time I’d rolled my eyes, but only for the benefit of the woman, slightly older than myself, who sat opposite. We exchanged weary smiles. 

“What are you thinking about?” you ask. I shake my greasy head, but I am thinking about something in particular. A party we attended in the summer. 

We had taken the subway to a party on a rooftop with a perfect skyline. Thirty or so people were milling around – a larger group than we had expected. Younger, hipper, more attractive. We had met the host, Daisy, through your sister. She was 33 and worked in fashion. Judging by the apartment she probably made more money than the two of us combined, and she was fun, carefree, unbothered by our age difference. We quickly parted ways and I chatted with a couple who had recently moved from Berlin, both aspiring actors – both very excited, both very much in love. You stood off in the corner with a woman who had asked you for a cigarette. She made conversation with you in the way that smoking a stranger’s cigarettes often necessitates – who do you know here? Where do you live? What do you do for work? At first I paid no mind, but then, a second cigarette lit in quick succession and I noticed that your voice had taken an inflection I had never heard before. The way you might speak to a talkative child, perhaps. The woman was beautiful, but worse, she was funny. You laughed a lot, and helped her to remove a piece of glitter that was stuck to her cheek. At some point my conversation had run dry with the Germans. Everyone else at the party had broken into groups. I tried to insert myself into a ring of people who were passing a badly-rolled joint and laughing about some situation they had all been part of. “That’s hilarious” I said, like a barnacle trying to attach myself to a shiny cruise ship. A few nodded but most pretended I wasn’t there.

Embarrassed, I backed out and walked towards you; you were telling the woman about the half-marathon you had signed up for. “You should do it,” you were saying, in that same sing-song tone. She agreed, but politely, the way you do when you know you’ll never see a person again, the way you spare hurt feelings. “Here” you said, pushing your phone towards her “save your number and I’ll send you the details.” Until a few weeks prior I’d been running with you. I’d stopped when you mentioned – carefully, tactfully – that you preferred to run alone. That it was a meditative practice for you, something that was entirely yours.

“Just trying to decide what to eat,” I say.

The waitress comes to serve us. “What can I get y’all?” she asks. You order a coffee. Scrambled eggs with bacon and toast. I ask for a cup of tea.  “That’s all?” you ask. I nod.

The waitress writes this down. She seems to be in a rush, but she’s friendly. Her hair is grey and blonde, coated with enough hair spray to provide structural integrity. She’s probably only in her fifties, but she looks older. She’s wearing thick eyeliner and a thin wedding ring.

“Y’all here for the music?” she asks. 

“The music?” you ask.

“Bob and Dan” she says with a nod. “And, you know, whoever else.”

“Oh” I say, idiotically. 

She points behind us, where two men are unzipping instruments from their cases in the corner of the diner. “You sure you don’t want anything to eat, babe?” she asks. I shake my head. She winks and walks off. There is a way in which women can intuit. The way they see your husband flirting at a party. The way they interrupt a conversation to introduce you, to invite you in and make you feel safe. You pour us some water and I drink as though I’m parched.

“Live music in a diner, that’s a new one,” you say, feeling the tension but pretending you don’t. There have been so many close calls over the years, close calls or near misses. Drunken fumbles. 

It’s not that I don’t like kids. I love kids. It was just never the right time. I was never the right kind of person. “Yeah,” I say, unable to think of anything else.

Bob and Dan are in their sixties and are both wearing denim jeans and baseball caps with flannel shirts. When Bob takes the microphone he has the whole diner’s attention, there are cheers and whoops and whistles and it’s clear that we are the only ones who didn’t come for the music, which embarrasses me. “It’s good to be back,” Bob says into the microphone. The cheers go up a notch, and then a standing ovation. You and I look at each other and then stand up as well. The waitress comes over with my tea and your plate of food. She smiles as she sets them down but her attention is on the men and she seems nervous. As soon as everyone sits back down and quietens, Bob gestures towards her, beckons her to come up. Again the cheers begin, but you catch my eye and we’re hearing the same thing. It’s not celebratory, but something softer, something reverent.

“I just want to say thank you to everyone who donated to the charities and prayed and brought food over to the house” the man says. “Me and Wendy sure did appreciate it and still do.” The waitress is now standing next to him and he has his arm around her, he’s holding her so close, so tenderly, as if she may fall into the abyss if he lets go.

“A lot of you knew our son and a lot of you didn’t. The ones who didn’t, really missed out. He was everything like Wendy and not a bit like me.” He pauses for laughter that comes in a quiet murmur. Wendy is pursing and unpursing her lips. “We love ya Bob” a woman shouts. “We love ya Bob” comes a chorus.

“Now I know you’re here for me and Dan, but since it’s Wendy’s first day back too, and since she’s been writing a little something, we thought it might be nice for her to share that.” 

More cheers. “I love ya Wendy” a woman shouts.

I feel entirely out of place, a person just passing through. I wonder if we should carefully slip out and get back on the road, but I look at you and see something else on your face. You clap your palm in gentle applause as Wendy takes the mic, and your support is so sincere. You do not know her but you are rooting for her. You are always rooting for people. 

Wendy puts a hand over her mouth and then takes it away. I can see that her eyes are shiny and I realise how pretty she is, how tired she looks, how heavy her heart is. “I’m no singer” she says, “but… my son. My son was kind. And smart, and funny. A really good son. And I’ll tell you this… he loved music. Loved it more than anything. So we’re here tonight and I thought, well. Here goes nothing.” Bob gives her a thick, loud kiss on the temple. I hear you clear your throat, fork paused mid-air. 

Through the night and through the day,

In my head you’ll always stay.

You are my baby

You are my baby

You are my only baby, Alfie 

You glance at me and smile a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes. We’ve been together for so long, but there’s a part of you I’ve never been able to touch, a part that remains entirely out of reach. Three years ago, when you found out that your mother was dying, you hailed a taxi directly from your office and booked the next flight on your way to the airport. You didn’t have a thing with you, not even a pair of underpants. The flight wasn’t for another  four hours, so you sat alone in the terminal, waiting for the gate for Houston to turn into a gate for Indianapolis. When I think about this I feel as though my heart is sinking lower and lower in my chest. You told me only later, once you’d landed, not wanting to disturb me at work. I have a habit of prioritising work. I have a habit of not prioritising you.

We get back into the car and sit for a moment in silence. The headlights cut into the dark. The GPS says we have one more hour to go. I can barely remember setting off this morning. 

“Sorry I brought up kids,” you say, your voice is quiet but steady. “I don’t even know if it’s what I want. I think… I just want to feel like there’s more. Like I’m not just waiting around for something to happen. Does that make sense?”

I nod without looking at you. My eyes are welling up. Outside it starts to rain and a gust of wind rattles a maple tree in the parking lot. Magenta leaves dance off into the air, and one of them lands on the windscreen. “Does the thing you’re waiting for involve me?” I ask finally, and I’m afraid of the answer. My eyes are fixed on the leaf. You say nothing for a moment, and then you reach across the console and flick my cheek like you used to when we were younger, the sting makes me jump and I turn to look at you in surprise. “Obviously, shithead” you say, and then: “Wait, are you crying? Oh god, you’re such a panic. Come here.” Your voice is playful in the way I know and I love and I miss. You wrap an arm around me and my heart unshackles. Why do I let myself spiral like this? Why don’t I ever just talk to you?

You put on the wipers and pull back onto the road, the tires humming beneath us as the radio clicks on. It’s playing a song we both hate, but it’s one we know all the words to – Lily’s favourite, her karaoke song—and we let it play. You nod towards my phone, and

I call her, putting her on speaker. “Lily,” I say as soon as she picks up, my voice cracking with misplaced emotion “just wanted to say we love you and send the biggest, warmest, congratulations”. “About time” Lily says, but her voice is laced with excitement. It sounds like she’s cooking, the clatter of utensils and pans in the background. 

“For the love of god don’t name it after anybody in the family” you say. She cackles. “As if. And don’t call her ‘it.’” She’s so happy, so ready to be a mother. By the time we hang up, we’re both breathless from laughing and suggesting stupid names, like Canoe and Martini and Tokyo. The quiet returns, but it’s different now, almost post-coital. “Maybe we should stay in Maine,” I say suddenly, surprising myself. “Rent a little cabin. Quit our jobs. Figure it all out.” 

“I’m in” you say, and we beam, knowing it won’t happen, that we haven’t even stepped foot in Maine, that we love New York. But it doesn’t matter. I’m wiping away happy tears. We keep heading north. 

---