Maybe it’s the raw brilliance of the pale white moon suspended in a hard black sky that somehow makes everything about this night feel harsher.  Uglier.  Failing to soften what now seems especially unconscionable. 

        But I pretend not to notice, cautiously opening the door of Ash’s old blue Buick and sliding into the drivers’ seat, ignoring the question that all at once arrives with the insistence of knuckles rapping on glass, as to what I will do if the car doesn’t start.  As it is, every movement feels sharply critical, increasingly desperate, my insides tightly clenched around the fear that Ash will wake before I’m gone.

      Over these past months I have become intimately versed to his sleep patterns and the varying depths of his slumber, yet even so, the acrid taste of unease clings like sour bile inside my mouth as I release the brake and the behemoth slowly drifts backward.

         The movement proves inconsequential, the car stubbornly halting after rolling only a few feet.  I slide two fingers into the breast pocket of my cotton blouse, feeling for the sharp edges of the single key I’ve slipped from Ash’s key ring; a hard knot of anxiety thickening like a log at the back of my throat as I say a brief silent prayer. 

        My heart clatters like a galloping horse inside my chest as the worn-out car chokes once… twice…then sputters to life.  And the swell of my breathing – raspy and tight – throbs a passionate rhythm against my eardrums as I swing the vehicle around in the driveway; the sound of tires crunching over gravel striking against the jangled edges of my exposed nerves like gunshots. 

        I nose the car out toward the highway, drawn if by the taut threads of some imminent slow torture, daring only one final glance in the rearview mirror as the tires edge onto the pavement, watching just long enough to see the dark silhouette of the house swallowed up by night – only an instant before it is fully gone.

        There is nothing stirring.  Nothing reminiscent of actual life beyond the grunts emanating from the tired engine as the car passes slowly along the nodding streets.  And despite my screaming urgency to be away from this place, I somehow manage to hold firm against the impulse to slam my foot down on the gas pedal, knowing it is essential that I not risk drawing attention to my leaving.

        On Main Street, the only interruption to the ominous veil of darkness draped over the shadowy buildings is the harsh glare of artificial light spilling over the sidewalk outside Tootie’s all-night diner, and beyond that, the constant yellow blink of the traffic light suspended over the intersection like a fallen moon.

        Beneath the smoky film of a descending mirage, the compacted residential streets have all but melted away into the darkness, and all at once a vast green sea of corn is rolling past in waves.  The farmlands spread out to eclipse the landscape in every direction beyond the flat ribbon of concrete roadway; neatly quilted squares of fenced pasture held motionless in the shimmering wash of moonlight.

        The openness of the interstate unfurls before me, unraveled like twine across what has always seemed an impenetrable barrier.  The world lying beyond looks immense, the earth itself rising up to meet me.

        It isn’t long in coming that my fleeting sense of elation begins to cower, readily surrendering to the superior press of guilt and shame.  How can I really do this?  Ash has done nothing to mark himself deserving of such a cruel betrayal.  His one mortal fault has been to love me – clearly that is his sin.  This solitary crime running parallel with my own fatal flaw, the one residing here inside me – poisonously tangled; deep enough that it can’t so easily be grasping and wrenching away. 

        And while I am aware that this cowardly act of desertion will mark me as wholly unforgivable, I just as clearly understand that there is no going back.  Altogether certain that my determined choice to carve myself free from my life – slicing away both past and present – insures that there can be no prodigal return.       

        I feel the tension gradually leaking away as the distance between Callicoon and my eventual destination lengthens, my fingers at last relaxing their white knuckled grip on the steering wheel.  I’ve left.  Done the unthinkable and relinquished my life.  Where I go doesn’t matter, my only concern that it be distant.  Further than the past might ever seek to reclaim me.

        I wonder where I am.  A soft peachy glow is rising in the east and the subtle coming of morning’s light has altogether erased the sensation of reckless adventure that has successfully carried me through the night.

        Fatigue pulls heavily at my eyelids.  There are so many decisions to be made, yet my mind hangs suspended in a thick paste of confusion that refuses to dissipate.  And it is as if I have all at once forgotten how to breathe, frantic to squelch the panic rising like seawater into my throat.  Where am I going?  Do I know what I’m doing?  Do I even have a plan? 

        The insistent warning blare of an automobile horn startles me back to full conscious, slapping me sober to the recognition that I’ve drifted into the wrong lane of traffic, an oncoming car swerving wildly to avoid collision.               

        Again the car’s engine has overheated and I find myself stranded alongside the highway, a flock of motorists blowing past (an occasional craned neck or fleeting glimpse in a rearview mirror the only indication of momentary interest), as I wait for the geyser of steam jetting from the radiator to subside.  Not for the first time, I consider deserting the worthless hunk of tires and metal.  Yet, despite my wildly floundering state, thankfully or not, reason prevails and I impatiently wait for the chance to move on.

        Pulling over to fill the radiator at a gas station just up the road, I consider calling Ash from the payphone.  I stand inside a dirty glass-walled booth at the edge of the parking lot, not bothering to pull the accordion door shut behind me, my eyes passing over the sequence of numbers necessary to place the call – watch my fingers dialing – then returning the receiver to its cradle without depositing the required coins, knowing there is nothing I might say now that will explain any of this. 

       Another night is gone. 

        The afternoon has turned stormy, and after traveling for much of the day in a heedless driving rain, I pull into the near empty parking lot of a motel somewhere in Iowa.

        The stale air closed within the room holds tightly to the pungent odor of mothballs and mustiness, but I hardly care.  My only thought is for a shower and sleep.  After three days on the road, I feel like a soiled garment balled up and forgotten at the bottom of a laundry hamper.  And when I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror I am oddly frightened by the reflection of the stranger staring back at me: an expressionless, hollow-eyed entity watching from behind the glass.

        The plain cotton sheets dressing the bed have absorbed the clammy dampness of the room.  It is almost painfully cold and I curl into a tight ball beneath the thin blanket and wildly patterned bedspread, attempting to radiate the deadening chill from my limbs.

        Outside the rain continues to pound against the roof and windows like an angry fist.  From somewhere in the room comes the distinct sound of dripping water, but I don’t care to investigate.  It is of little consequence to me whether this room, or even the entire earth, should wash away. 

        I squeeze my eyes tight against the dark, waiting, hoping, praying, for sleep.  But my mind stubbornly refuses to be coaxed, the sheets tangling around me like determined arms as I pitch and roll uselessly.

        Wide-eyed with restless exhaustion, I all at once remember the small plastic radio I’d earlier noticed on the scratched veneer table opposite the bed.  I drop my bare feet to the cold linoleum floor and stumble forward in the darkness.

        The channels crackle and hiss as I turn the dial and listen for intelligible sounds, my fingers hesitating over recognizable tones: a disturbingly rousing polka station, gospel music, a local news program...until all at once, my body stiffens in mid-search.  Wavering…fading…then clearing as I attempt to adjust the tuning, is a voice at once recognizable – Elvis Presley singing “Love Me Tender.”

         A whirlwind of undetermined emotions stir and rise to the surface like a surging crowd, but the song is already finished and another voice immediately leaps out from the tiny speaker.  “Hold tight and we’ll be right back after these announcements, bringing you another hit, this one from 1957, when we continue in just a moment with more of your favorite golden oldies.”

        Golden oldie?  Since when have the remembrances of my life become oldies?  It was only twelve years ago that I’d been a gangly fourteen-year-old with a ponytail and a poodle skirt.  Is it possible that such an extraordinary chunk of time has found a way to slip away over the sill and out of reach?  Could all of it have been so long ago?  Become so far away?

        Waves of emotion wash over me, deepening in intensity as they invade heart and mind with a precise edge of sharpened clarity.  Those days have shaped my life; never quite forgotten days I’ve purposely packed away, trying hard to forget, even now, as they swell and swirl upwards in memories that break like the sea against the rocks.

          The sea.  Where it began and ended.  The whole of my existence.  All of it molded and shrewdly defined by the hand of the beautiful – insatiably hostile sea.