FLIPKA

Chapter Eleven, Part Two

“I’m Henery the Eighth, I am,” I warbled as I shuffled along. It was the only song I could remember all the lyrics to. 

Henery the Eighth, I am, I am. 
I got married to the widow next door and
She was married seven times before and
 Every one was a “Henery.” 

She wouldn’t have a Willy or a Sam.
No Sir! I’m ’er eighth old man, I’m “Enery,”

Second verse same as the first. 
I’m Henery the Eighth, I am . . .

By the umpteenth round of Henery, my throat hurt and I still had not reached the store in Steptoe. I figured I’d been walking for about twenty minutes. The scenery hadn’t changed, nor had a car passed or a comet scurried across the horizon. There was no sound of life other than an occasional shuffling through the sand which I hoped was the wind. It was then that the mother of all dreads hit me smack dab in the face: I could be heading in the wrong direction. My assumptions about Big Gulch Road could have been all wrong. Yup, instead of heading toward Steptoe, I was probably marching toward the longest stretch of nothingness from here to Vegas, like a swimmer out of sight of land heading out to sea instead of back towards shore. It was a grim moment, not to be cheered by any amount of singing. Should I turn around or keep going? 

“Rats!” I shouted. “Poopy, fudgey, rats! I’m sick of this nonsense! Damned sick of it. Enough already. Where’s the damn director for this ridiculous farce? Come out, come out, wherever you are, and shout CUT. It’s time to move on to the next scene!”

Apparently I’m an atheist only during the day. Alone, on an abandoned highway at night, I’m a firm believer in whatever deity is willing to pull the switch and start the action. That’s why a backstage life full of circus performers in perpetual motion all night long is perfect for me. Keeps me from being alone in the dark, something I’d had a problem with since my father’s death, and now it was all coming back to me. That night with all its smells—gasoline mingled with gin, dusted with laundry detergent, blood. The bone-chilling cold when your blood pressure plummets and you go into shock. It was all coming back to me.

My father was as nice a drunk as you’d ever want to meet: a romantic and insatiable reader, but alas, a man with a head planted firmly in the stars. He died in the desert, leaving me alone. No matter how many times I’d tried to silence the reverberation of guilt I felt for the accident, jumping from one couch to another, meditating, medicating, confessing, primal screaming, and even acupuncturing, guilt is a disease like alcoholism; it can be controlled and managed but never completely cured. 

“You caused the accident with your smart mouth,” the voice of my ever-present inner child whispered. 

“You little shit. That’s not true.” 

It is perfectly OK to tell your so-called inner child that she’s full of shit, although generally it’s better to do so when in a therapy session (at least, that’s what I used to tell my patients). 

“See the star at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper, Fiona,” Papa began as we drove from Reno to Salt Lake late one night. I was seven. (That’s pretty much what I remember of my childhood—long drives across the state, being deposited at a grandmother’s, an aunt’s, a cousin’s.) “That’s the North Star. Unlike the other stars, it doesn’t change position, and do you know what that means?” 

Because I was his only child, he often overestimated my intelligence: “The other stars go around it like the sun?” I responded.

“Nooooo,” he laughed, reaching for the bottle. 

It hadn’t been the first dive into the bottle. I blamed it—the bottle—for the fact that my mother was no longer around, for the fact that we didn’t have a permanent home, and for the fact that I had no friends other than the encyclopedia. I made a wisecrack—some snide bit of slander I’d picked up from my acerbic grandmother. He reached over to give me a swat. The car went out of control. I woke up alone by the side of desert highway at night. End of the story. Now here I was again, twenty years later. Hell, I’d been a lot braver back then, or so it seemed. 

I was so lost in trying to analyze my way out of intense and paralyzing anxiety that when I heard the sound of the car, I told myself it was a hallucination—that on top of everything else, I was hearing things. But then I saw two headlights bobbing towards me from the horizon. “Praise be to all the saints and saintresses! Thank you, oh mighty stage director in the sky!” I said aloud. I was saved. 

I had a brief and sobering thought that it might be Dr. Gnecht or one of his boys, but luckily I could recognize the purr of an expensive sports car. Hubby number one (the only one, thankfully) was a man with a Ferrari appetite, a Volkswagen budget and a zipper that never could stay closed. The only thing I learned from him, besides the blessing of abstinence, was the sound of a Jag.