Ted of the d’Urbervilles

Chapter 1-2

I packed my belongings and left. Packing took all of two minutes. I left the iPad behind. I tended to doubt I could keep it powered on. Maybe Dad felt the same way. Bitter party, table for one? Fine, but, to be fair, everything I owned in the entire world fit into a small backpack, and so bitter was about all I could muster. Any other emotion would be too hard to maintain, and so I generally abstained.

I walked outside as the dawn yawned its way to life. I echoed the maneuver. I had seven days to make it across the country, without a car, with five dollars and seventy-six cents to my name. It seemed daunting, but I’d survived the past six years; seven days across the country was a walk in the park. Granted, a three-thousand-mile stretch of park, but still. Plus, there were ketchup packets in every state. Porn, too. So what did I have to lose? More importantly, what did I have to gain?

I headed east. I headed toward a highway. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Ditto for three-thousand. I’d washed in the gas station sink the night before. My clothes didn’t stink. I was young, relatively handsome, and gave great thumb. Which is to say, I was picked up in about twenty minutes flat.

“Where you headed?” asked the truck driver from way up high in her cab.

I shielded my eyes as I stared up at her. She looked to be in her fifties. She looked like she’d have excelled at roller derby and sounded like she swallowed half the gravel on the road. “You a mass murderer?” I asked.

She winked down at me. “Gave it up for Lent. Saved me a ton on dry cleaning, blood being a b***h to wash out. You?”

I shrugged. I pointed at my clothes. “No blood.” Mainly because I sold it by the gallon. Got me a free cookie and some juice and a few bucks in my pocket. “Didn’t even dissect the frogs in high school.” Life was cruel enough as it was, and what did a frog ever do to me?

“Where you headed?” she asked.

“New York.” I got a chill when I said it. Fork meet road.

She shrugged and swung open the passenger door. It groaned in reply. “Heading to Phoenix. That’ll get you a bit closer. Okay?”

I matched her shrug with one of my own. “I hear it’s hot there.” I ran around the front of the truck. I tossed my meager backpack up just before I tossed myself up. I then slammed the door and stared her way.

She smiled. Her teeth were cigarette-filter yellow. You’d be hard-pressed to find a house painted that color. “An oven should be so hot, kid.”

“Ted,” I said, holding my hand out in greeting.

“Giselle,” she replied.

She didn’t look like a Giselle. She looked like one of those women with a boy’s name. Lou. Or Berty. I wondered what my dead cousin Mortimer looked like. Dead was all I could come up with. “Buckle up, Ted. Blood is also a b***h to get out of leather.”

“I hope that’s second-hand knowledge.”

She chuckled. The truck roared to life. Both sounds sounded alike. “No fatalities yet,” she replied.

“Here’s hoping you keep your record.”

She made the sign of the cross over her ample chest. “From your lips to God’s ears.”

I stared at the road. “He stopped listening years ago.” Six, to be exact.

She didn’t reply. We drove in silence until she turned on the radio. Abba. It was a CD. Giselle was chockful of surprises. I bet she kept them in her bosom. There was room for half of Pittsburg in there, with a fair bit of Cleveland. Not that I’d ever been out of California, but it was a good guess.

“What’s in New York, Ted?” she asked, once we were in the middle of nowhere and conversation was less boring than the road.

“Family.”

She nodded. “Family is everything.”

I blinked. I held in a sigh. They say it’s easier to laugh than to cry. Me, I found both just as difficult. “You have a family, Giselle?”

She flipped down the passenger-side visor. There was a faded photo. A man, three kids, a dog, a small brick house, and a manicured lawn. My sigh escaped. “Hard to be away from them,” she said, “but bills are bills.”

Funny, I had no bills, and envied hers. Not ha-ha funny, though. “How often do you see them?”

“Weekends. Curt works from home. Telemarketing.” Her chuckle returned. If you liked the sound of crunching gravel, Giselle was the woman for you. “I’m the breadwinner in the family. My mom cooked and cleaned and made us dinner every night. Me, I drive a truck.” She briefly looked my way. “Life can really f**k with you, Ted.”

It looked like she was trying to pass some sort of wisdom along to me. If she only knew about my PhD, right? “What would you rather do, ma’am? What would you want to do if you didn’t have to drive a truck?”

She nodded. She stared back at the road as she gripped the massive wheel. She was a big woman. The wheel didn’t stand a chance. “Dance instructor.”

I laughed. I felt bad for laughing but, come on. Dance instructor? What, for prisoners? I covered my mouth. A tear streaked down my cheek. I stared at her family and tried to remember the last time I laughed. “Sorry,” I said.

She was also laughing, large chest bouncing atop the equally large wheel. I relaxed. I hadn’t realized my shoulders had been bunched up. Then again, maybe they’d been that way for days, weeks. “Three kids and nothing but road food can change a person, Ted. Still, inside is a dancer. I think she’s lodged in behind a kidney.” Her laugh amped up as the truck picked up steam. “Anyway, you asked.”

“I bet you were a beautiful dancer, Giselle.” I had less than six dollars on me. Meaning, I had little to bet with.

“Thanks, Ted. You’re lying, but thanks.”

I shifted in my seat and looked back her way. This was the longest conversation I’d had with someone outside of a coffee house or a gas station in ages. I’d been dammed up, but the cork seemed to have popped free. “Do you always pick up hitchhikers?”

She again briefly looked my way. “When the mood strikes me.” She smiled. “Guess I was in the mood.” Her head again faced forward. “You ever been to New York?”

I’d never been anywhere. Even when my parents were alive, we were mostly poor. If I got to go to a zoo, it was a day for celebration. Don’t get me wrong, though; I had a good childhood. My parents loved me and showed it, when they had the time. It was just my adulthood that sucked. I mean seriously sucked. Hoover should suck so well. “Nope. First time. First time meeting the family, too.”

She nodded. Her boobs bounced. She could probably take me in a fight, I figured. Maybe that’s why she picked me up. I was company, not a threat. Then again, I’d been surviving off purloined condiments as of late, so threatening I was not. More lost-puppy looking, really. “You’re meeting your family for the first time? All the way in New York?”

I was the heir to something. I had nothing. Something was better than nothing, and so, New York could just as easily have been a walk around the block for all I cared. Also, this was an adventure. Even if I was heir to a stuffed doll, I was leaving San Francisco. I was leaving California. I was leaving a past that held no future. It was as if the off button buried deep down in my soul had suddenly been flicked on, Dorothy now burnished in glorious Technicolor. But was my destination Oz? Yep, that remained to be seen. In any case, I replied, “My cousin Mortimer died.”

It was now her turn to inappropriately laugh. “You have a cousin named Mortimer?”

“Had. And yes. And that was my first reaction, too.”

“You think they called him Morty?”

I scrunched up my face. I turned and stared out the window. In the cab, you couldn’t see the other cars on either side of you. All you saw was passing scenery, rolling green hills, the occasional cow, hawks, scrubby bushes. I’d never seen any of this before. We were barely out of the city. “Morty.” I tried it on for size. Nope, it didn’t fit. “God, I hope not.”

“Mort,” she said. “It’s Latin for death.”

I grinned, and not because she knew Latin. I mean, she could drive a truck; that was pretty awesome, in and of itself. She raised three kids, so what was a little Latin? “Guess he finally grew into his name then.” I looked her way. “Better late than never.”

“You always this gloomy, Ted?”

I blinked her way. I wondered if her kids were proud of her. I wondered if her kids were embarrassed that their mother was a trucker. I had no family to wonder about, and so I wondered about hers. Only, now I had my own to do so with. Weird. “Gloomy. Always,” I replied. Always being six years. Six years can seem like a lifetime, by the way. I hoped I would also grow out of it. I hoped it would happen earlier rather than later. It was good to at least have hope, even if it was just a sliver. Either way, I had Giselle. Until Phoenix, that is.

“You’re too young for that,” she admonished.

Tell me about it. “Let’s just say, I’ve been through a lot.” Which was an understatement of the gross variety.

She didn’t reply—at least not for about another twenty minutes. We drove in silence. The truck rocked me into a stupor. I thought of cousin Mortimer. How old was he when he died? What did he die from? How did Maximillian find me? How did he even know about me? Did I have other cousins, other family? All these questions welled inside me, swirling around inside my head like a swarm. I caught a glimpse of a tunnel up ahead. In we went.

Giselle pointed up ahead. “Light.”

I grinned. I got it. Here was her reply to me being through a lot. “Trucker philosophy?”

Her now-standard chuckle gusted through my swarm. “Best not to let yourself get weighed down by the s**t, Ted. The s**t will always be there. My youngest needs braces. The oldest is failing English. English, Ted. The language he speaks all day.” We emerged from the darkness. “Every tunnel ends this way. Every single one. It’s okay to dip your toe into the gloom; just don’t get mired in it. Janie will get braces. Paul will pass English. Neither will remember the s**t. I’ll look back on it all and laugh. That’s life.”

I smiled for her benefit. My parents were dead. They couldn’t look back on this s**t and laugh. I tended to doubt I could, either. I dipped my toe in and ended up neck-deep. It was slow-sand. Slow is far worse than quick. Slow f***s you up. Still, it was nice of Giselle to try. It was almost like having a mother again.

“What’s the middle one’s problem?”

She shook her head. “Don’t get me started on Jefferey.”

“My father killed himself,” I blurted out.

In six years, I’d never uttered those words. My friends, who slipped away as my life, too, slipped away, never talked about it with me. In any case, they called the first month. They stopped calling after that. I was damaged goods. I was an orphan. Teenagers don’t deal with heavy stuff all that well. I think they thought I was contagious, that death was following me around like some sort of lost mutt. I wiped the wetness from my cheek. I’d been crying. Go figure.

“Oh,” she said, her hand over her heart. Or as close as her hand could get to it, what with all the bosom blocking her way. “I’m, uh…”

“Yeah,” I sniffled. The tears kept flowing. Like I said, my cork had popped. Guess there was a lot of pent up stuff behind it. Again, go figure. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.” I stared at her through the salty water. “I think I got lost in the tunnel.”

She reached across the wide divide and patted my knee. “You’ll find your way, Ted.”

“You sure about that?” Because I sure as hell wasn’t.

Her head bobbed up and down in time with her boobs. Maybe that’s why Janie needed braces: her baby mouth simply had too much to work with. “I’m sure, Ted. You meet people and can tell. You wouldn’t have started hitchhiking if you didn’t have the chutzpah.”

“Chutzpah?” It sounded more like a way to release phlegm than a word.

“Nerve, Ted. People without nerve usually don’t achieve anything.”

“Usually.”

A sigh replaced the chuckle. “Watch, Ted.”

I didn’t know what to watch for, but I stared ahead. She pulled off the highway in order to merge with another one, to head farther south. We took a wide turn, the three lanes becoming two. The hills were replaced by farms. Something green was growing off to our side. “What is it?” I asked.

“Artichokes.”

I scratched at my chin. I was pretty certain I’d never eaten an artichoke before. Or stolen one from a McDonald’s. Or eaten one out of a dumpster. “There a lesson to learn from the humble artichoke, Giselle?”

“Nope. Hate the stuff.”

“Lost me.”

She shrugged. “We took a turn. The horizon changed. Everything is new and different.”

“You missed your calling, Giselle.”

There was the chuckle again. It was a sound a person could grow to love. Sure, you had to like gravel, but love would bloom just like those artichokes did. “I missed a lot of callings, Ted. That’s okay, though; there’s more to be had.”

“Just around the bend?”

The shrug rose and fell again. “It’s always darkest before the dawn. Rainbows follow a thunderstorm. It’s all f*****g true, Ted. Pardon my French.”

“French and Latin, Giselle; you’re a real renaissance woman.”

The chuckle grew to a laugh. I wondered what the artichokes would look like when they grew. I only knew of lettuce and tomatoes, of what fit snuggly atop a burger. I’d only ever seen one horizon. But at least I had chutzpah. Perhaps I would find my way out of the tunnel, though I still wasn’t laying any bets with my less than six dollars.

“I like you, Ted.”

My heart suddenly pounded. Affection. I recognized it even though I hadn’t experienced it in quite some time. I touched my again-wet cheek. Damn. f*****g corks. “I like you, too, Giselle.” But you’re going to leave me. Phoenix isn’t that far away. New horizon, same s**t. I thought it; I tried really hard not to believe it.