The road went on forever, until it shrunk and trapped us in. Jason’s truck maneuvered through the vast and winding roads of Central Jersey. People say that Central Jersey doesn’t exist at all – that there is only South and North and nothing in between.
We drove from Princeton to Freehold to Asbury Park beneath the jagged shadows of slender trees. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jason since the summer before college. He told me there was a knot of unresolved emotions dormant in his heart, begging to be untangled. A wide open box of necessary closure. When his silver truck pulled into my driveway, I was flooded with every night we had spent blanketed in that truck, every mangled, deformed promise of ‘forever.’ Just the sight of him chopped our time apart in halves. It ran time beneath a shredder, raining flakes of memories over our heads.
The road was drenched in gray fog and I hadn’t been home for multiple years. Did I miss this? Any of it? I wasn’t sure. I had been doing a spectacular job at forgetting my childhood, my adolescence, my life. I had become an expert in shedding old skin and propelling my constantly raw, constantly changing body into the wide abyss of anything new.
First, we spoke about our families. His younger sister, Claire, and the way she would look up at me like I was her own personal God. She’d swallow the words that I spoke and regurgitate them right back out. She walked as I walked, tried to move as I moved. She enrolled in ballet because I was a dancer.
“How are Claire’s ballet classes?” I asked. “What, is she eight now?”
“She’s ten,” Jason smiled with the left side of his mouth. “For a while, the dancing was great. She even thought she saw you in the audience, back at her first recital… But then she fractured her ankle, was out for a season, and now she’s healed but hasn’t gone back.”
“Why not?” I still couldn’t look Jason dead in the eyes, so I settled on the freckle in between his two blonde eyebrows.
“She stopped caring.”
We drove in silence for a moment, the notion of care and its limits dangling in the air like a shattered wind chime. The space between us widened and darkened. Suddenly, I wanted to grab his hand and dive headfirst into that wide, dark gap. I imagined it as a portal to a new world where nothing ever changed, where every trace of guilt entirely dissolved, where we could both forget our lives and exist in some shapeless, mindless landscape curled into one another.
“So, you’ve liked living in the city?” Jason looked directly into me.
“Yes.” I did not hesitate. “Everybody cares about something. Everyone is moving towards something. The people are buzzing. It’s electric and moves at the pace of my thoughts.”
“You do have a very fast brain,” Jason said.
I remembered all the hours I would talk at him, and he would smile and nod and never know how to respond. He often told me I was his everything, the answer to questions he didn’t know he had – his beginning, middle, and end. What I could never admit was that, for me, he only felt like a beginning. Only a sliver of my vast, unfolding something. There had to be something more. Something massive.
“I like how small I feel in the city and how big the world feels.”
“You like how small you feel?” He looked at me as if I just told him I was suicidal.
“In the grand scheme of things,” I stared into the beating sun.
“The grand scheme of what?”
Jason’s voice was bruised. He told me that I broke his heart. I asked him what that felt like, when I broke his heart. He told me he couldn’t describe it.
“Well. At least you are a living, feeling thing,” I said.
“I guess.”
Suddenly, I saw his heart sitting in his lap, shards of a mirror punctured each artery, and in every piece, I saw my reflection – my face looked cold, my posture bent towards somewhere else, as if I had hyperextended my body to keep one foot in the city. Years ago, the situation seemed so simple. I had wanted a big life and his plans were small. But I know that big lives and small lives don’t really exist; there are only lives, intertwined, connected, a collage of experiences that create a fragmented yet beautiful picture. He wanted to stay home and work in the car shop. I wanted to dance on the stage of the world.
“How’s your dad’s shop?”
“Hanging in there,” Jason nodded. “There are always cars to be fixed, and I like making things work again.” He stared at me, throbbing with an obvious longing, then merged onto the highway.
For moments, again, we drove in silence. Jason has tinted windows, so we can see everything but everything can’t see us back. I let the tall scenery pass me by through a distorted pane of glass.
“I have missed you so much,” Jason blurted it out, and in that instant, I remembered how it felt to be adored. I left this town to go to a place where the whole world could see me, but I’ve only blended in. I remembered lying in the bed of this same truck, telling each other we were “family.” I would speak about my dreams and he’d listen. I’d ask about his, and he’d talk about dancing into a void of eternity with me.
We pulled over to the side of the empty highway as the sun turned to gold. Time ran diagonally, and I could have been thirteen or seventeen or twenty-four. I forgot the way he kissed with his teeth, the birthmarks on his skin, these textures that made him rare and real, impossible to replicate. We zipped down our clothes and sprawled across the backseat.
It was late November and the days were short again. I saw this happen in real time, the shrinking of day, as Jason came inside of me at a rest stop off the highway. My eyes shot open. His sealed closed. A billboard of a Crucifix towered over the truck, carrying a sad, droopy Jesus. “IT’S NOT TOO LATE,” the bold white text declared. The sun had just set behind the billboard, behind the rough sketch of God, emptying the whole sky bare.
“Jason, I’m not on birth control,” I yanked a strap up my shoulder.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. You used to be. It was just a habit,” Jason babbled. “It will be okay.”
It would not be okay. Was this his plan? To impregnate me in the back of his truck and force me to move back to Jersey?
“I’ll buy you a Plan B?” he offered.
I sighed and rolled down the tinted window. It was laced in our own condensation. Waterfalls of love and apology poured from Jason’s desperate pupils. At the shake of his bottom lip, the shiver of his naked shoulders, I wondered, how could I hurt such a fragile creature? How could I resent such a loving thing? So I kissed him again, and this time, I allowed my stiff body to drape along his, allowed myself to be one side of the red velvet curtains parting down the middle of the stage, rather than the stage itself, the spotlight, or the dizzy person beneath it.
On our drive back, he told me about the Thanksgiving leftovers in his fridge. His mother’s signature sweet potatoes, his father’s perfectly roasted Turkey bursting with flavor to the bone. I pictured his parents watching a movie on the couch, sinking into their sofa’s familiar imprint of two bodies curled together, morphed into a single dent. For all the couch knew, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer could have been one, very obese person. That, I thought to myself, is the true measure of a long and happy marriage: to convince your sofa that there aren’t two of you at all.
“When do you feel most alive?” I asked, staring at the veins in his neck. He really had to think about this one.
“I feel alive when I’m running, because I remember that I have blood, because I can feel it go to my head,” I nod to his remembrance that he has blood.
“When do you feel dead?” I cut him off there. I was ready to scavenge for something interesting.
Jason’s eyebrows furrowed in. He slammed on the brakes. I screamed. I felt alive. A family of deer had sprinted into the middle of the road. There they stood, mother and father and fawn, the color of honey with soft white freckles and stunned eyes. The deer stared at us, static through the windshield. I stared right back. Jason let out a sharp exhale and buried his head into the small of my shoulder.
Maybe this would be the threshold. Maybe this, after nearly killing a family of deer, after nearly running us off the road, we could fold our trembling hands into one another’s and I would finally feel that thing I had been waiting and waiting to feel. That thing they write sonnets about, the passion of suicide-pacts and holy matrimony and being buried parallel. But he opened his mouth and nothing had changed and he never told me when he felt the most dead.
Growing up, our houses were fifteen minutes apart but in very different neighborhoods. We drove past his street, where the houses had pools and gardens and multiple stories. Jason was supposed to drop me off before the sun went down. He told me he would love me for the rest of his life. I smiled and nodded, but couldn’t form any words, because the next day, I would drive on these same highways, back towards my sparkling city, towards my vast unfolding something. I would resume the life I was crafting for myself, a blur of voluntary confusion. A life of what’s next and next and next. A life of what’s coming and coming and coming. Most importantly, a life of movement. I was going to dance on the stage of the world. I was going to be a backup dancer in a rap music video where I’d move my hips in warped directions in front of very expensive cars. Maybe the rapper would take me under his sweaty wing of gold and show me an even bigger world.
Jason stopped in front of my house but didn’t put his car in park. I looked towards my house, into the window, and saw my father asleep in a rocking chair. His mouth hung open, a cold aging face, lit by the glow of the TV where a newscaster spoke about my city. They needed more buildings, more offices, more places to live, but there wasn’t any more land, so they built up the ‘Needles,’ narrow buildings that resembled a blade shooting straight into the clouds. The only issue with the Needles, despite their hideous exteriors, was that they lacked a proper foundation and could fall over at any given moment.
My house looked like it was eating itself and I didn’t want to go inside. A street lamp lit Jason’s face from the most tender angle. Light pooled into the small of his neck, into the dip of his pale collarbone, into the ripples of his sandy blonde hair, into the gap between his teeth.
“We can drive a little bit longer, if you’d like.”
And so we drove. Past my neighborhood. Past his. Through a series of skinny spiraled roads neither of us had ever dared to explore. We drove towards the edge of our town. Towards the edge of ourselves. The dark road forked ahead: one side illuminated by the warm glow of street lamps, while the other faded into a dense fog. There, at the edge of the misty lane, stood an OPEN HOUSE sign, followed by another, then another. The white signs, marked with bold red arrows, seemed to beckon us in.
An open house is drenched in promise. I have always found them thrilling. When my father was younger and more willing to leave his chair, we would go to open houses in every reachable zip code. We would roam through its rooms and corridors making elaborate plans as to how we’d fill the space in another life. A bigger life.
“Where are we?” I asked Jason, as the sky transformed into a twisted shade of indigo and the streets grew so small, the truck could barely inch along. The rear view mirrors bent backwards and sharp twigs clawed at the sides of his car.
“I think I made a wrong turn,” Jason smiled. I could tell that he liked the idea of being stranded in time with me. Jason’s truck lurched to a halt. There was no more road, only wintered shrubbery. I put my head on his shoulder. I could feel myself surrendering. I could feel the whole world slow down.
We hopped out of the truck to inspect the sinking tire, but our attention was drawn elsewhere. Another OPEN HOUSE sign lay tilted on its side, the red arrow pointing towards a curved driveway ahead. We exchanged a glance, and without saying a word, made our way down the trail.
Before I could knock on the cream-colored door, a strange old woman with a hunchback and a cane swung it open. The woman smiled, revealing a set of yellowing teeth speckled with cherry lipstick.
“Welcome, children!” the real estate agent giggled and snaked her body to the side, gesturing for us to enter. “Come in, come in.”
I craned my neck to peer around the space before entering. The house was unfurnished, smelling of mildew and smoke. It had high ceilings with exposed wooden beams. An orange fire with blue tips burned and crackled in the fireplace. On the floor, a carpet, the color of eggshells.
“My name is Martha,” the real estate agent extended her hand.
“Jason.”
Violet,” I waved from his shadow. Jason and I entered the windowless room. He put his arm around me and decided to play a little game.
“My wife and I,” Jason spoke in a deep foreign register, “are in the market for a house in the area. We’ve been looking to buy for a while, but not many houses on the market have this level of historic charm. They’re a bunch of remodels.”
“Oh yes,” Martha stood unnervingly close to Jason. “You are a couple with good taste.” Martha began hobbling through the empty, windowless living room slanted onto her cane. “This house dates back to 1894. It is right on the border of three New Jersey towns. In many ways, it is townless. It belongs to the space between the named land.”
Jason was cheeky and exhilarated. “So, what does that mean in terms of school districts?” he put his hand on my belly. “We might be expecting.” I flinched.
Martha clapped her hands. “Dealer’s choice! Come here, let me show you the kitchen.” She looked like she was about to keel over.
The kitchen had a large tiled floor and rustic wooden cabinets. Its refrigerator was prehistoric, contrasting the magnetic letters of the alphabet spelling ‘Home.’ Martha flicked on the overhead light, a white fluorescent wash that aged us another fifty years.
“Take a seat, children!” Martha gestured towards a breakfast nook tucked into the corner. I had to admit, the nook was rather inviting. We nestled into the dated booth and Martha opened a cabinet. She pulled out a large bottle of red wine and two wide rimmed glasses.
“Cheers to young love! The whole future in front of you! Inside of you! Together, within these walls!” Martha hovered over us.
“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves,” I interjected as warm wine slid down the back of my throat. Minutes bled together and soon the bottle was gone. I realized I had spent the last hour listening to Jason tell Martha the story of “Us.”
Martha wiped a tear out of her cataracts. “I am touched! Truly. Well then, there’s plenty more of the house for you two to see.” She stood from the nook and reached for her cane. “My old hips can’t make it up those stairs anymore, but you must go test out the bedroom.”
Jason took my hand and led me towards the stairs. Everything was spinning. Martha poked her head around the corner. “Don’t be shy,” Martha winked. “Take your time.”
Boundaries dissolved into the thick air and all the facts of my life had gone blurry. Jason led me into a bedroom with salmon-colored wallpaper and silicone stars stuck to the ceiling.
“I love this house,” his words slurred together/
“You do?” I started laughing, but I didn’t know why. He started laughing, moving his neck like a bobblehead. This was fun. We were having fun. We collapsed onto a bed with a mattress hard as stone. It cracked both of our backs at once. This made us cackle even harder, although now, we were also in pain, at risk for paralysis. Drunk from Martha’s ancient merlot, sucked into the draft of this windowless house, broken backs and slurred words, Jason and I couldn’t stop laughing.
I locked my arms around his neck and kissed him like shooting a gun. As we rocked the mattress back and forth, I felt something cold and rubbery fall onto my face. The stars on the ceiling began raining down on our bodies, sticking to the goosebumps on our skin. We were glowing. A star fell into my gaping mouth. We passed it back and forth
“This is amazing,” my words slurred together, I forgot where I was, my back was numb, my skin was covered in silicone stars.
Jason sprung out of bed and slid open the door of a closet. In the closet, two white robes hung, each embroidered with our names. Jason put on his robe as if he had done this so many times before. He tossed me mine. There was something familiar about the fabric against my skin.
“I love this robe,” I said, tracing the embroidery of my name along my collarbone.
“I love you,” said Jason.
I pulled him out of the bedroom, around the corner, into a tiny bathroom. I ran the shower. Its temperature was perfect, water trickled out slowly then all at once. I washed Jason’s shoulders. He washed mine. He gave me a tight hug. The water turned cold.
“We should probably check on Martha,” Jason looked right through me.
“Who’s Martha?” I had no idea what he was talking about. We put on the robes and left the shower running. I ran backwards down the hallway, towards the wrong set of stairs, and found myself reaching another dead end. A set of cobwebbed stairs swung from the ceiling, leading into an attic. Jason followed me up there. It was full of dollhouses – one for every house in our town. I found my house. I could see my dad through the window, watching TV with his mouth agape. I found Jason’s house, its deep red brick and grand foyer. I found my best friend from kindergarten’s house. Everyone was here.
t the far end of the attic, there was a round window, like the escape hatch of a submarine. I peered out into the evening. There was nothing. No moon, no town, no driveway. No real stars. No rubber stars. Everything was black. Jason crept up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. He squeezed my growing stomach.
“We should go downstairs and check on Martha,” Jason whispered into my ear.
Martha. Her image flashed into my mind. I rubbed my eyes and looked back out through the attic’s window. “Jason,” I said. “What do you see? When you look out this window, what do you see?”
Jason looked up and out and squinted. “I see our reflections.”
I ran out of the attic and Jason followed. A muffled song traveled up the spiral staircase, a scratched record spinning from the living room, playing Ella Fitzgerald.
‘Stars shining bright above you
Night breezes seem to whisper ‘I love you’
Birds singing in the sycamore trees
Dream a little dream of me’
We tiptoed down the stairway. Martha had tossed her cane to the ground to waltz around the living room with an invisible partner. She painted the air with open palms, swaying in and out of her shoulders.
‘Say nighty-night and kiss me
Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me
While I’m alone and blue as can be
Dream a little dream of me’
Jason and I sat on the bottom step in our embroidered robes and watched Martha’s dance. She sang along to the lyrics, her voice cracking as the record skipped. Her hunched back rocked to the left and the right, brittle knees leading her around in circles, creating orbits. Martha opened her eyes and looked towards us. She didn’t stop dancing, but burst in a fit of giggles.
“Come dance with me,” Martha said. “It will feel like you’re floating.”
“We have to go,” I stood up. Martha’s eyes were closed and her waltz picked up.
Jason took my hand and led me to the center of the windowless living room. Martha danced around us in circles, grasping her invisible dance partner. Perhaps she was imagining her late husband, or a son she hadn’t seen in thirty years.
“Just one dance,” Jason whispered. He put his hands on my waist, I placed mine on his shoulders. “It’ll be okay.”
We pressed our foreheads together and swayed back and forth. The record was no longer skipping. Martha was no longer singing along. As our foreheads melted into one another, our thoughts began to trade back and forth. The voices of our consciousness evened out into one genderless voice. The sounds of New York never harmonized. They always overlapped. There was always a contradiction, always a siren. Someone was constantly waiting to be saved. I remembered the way that I felt walking through Greenwich Village, entirely anonymous, skipped over by the eyes of strangers and the many changes of pace. One time on the subway, I saw a turtle on a leash, a woman’s water break, and a mime rob a sleeping CEO.
‘Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you
But in your dreams whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me’
Jason and I open our eyes. Everything is out of focus. Martha is no longer here. Jason has faded into a much older man with the same kind eyes, now flecked with silver. I press my hand to my cheek and feel one thousand new lines, one hundred new folds. I am brittle and aching.
“I told you I would love you for the rest of my life,” Jason says, hot tears of joy streaming down his face. The old house is furnished now, filled with our echoes. Framed photographs of a life I can’t quite recall drape from the popcorn walls, their colors fading yet familiar—children, terriers, holidays. A large leather sofa bears an obvious dent. For all the couch knows, Jason and I could be one very obese person; the true measure of a long and happy marriage.
Jason enjoys being stranded in time with me because we are all stranded in time and need something to hold onto. I was ready to cradle the clock itself, but for some, the clock is too hard, too cold. For me, time is the only thing that makes any sense, so of course it had to disappear. It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to swallow you whole.