It was slow going out of Chicago. East of South Bend it started raining and kept it up for three days and nights. Starting to feel a little biblical. I think it would be arrogant and self indulgent to say the near-freezing rain and wind didn’t bother me because I was born and raised in Oregon. Humble origins. But it did, bother me, and I was getting weary . . . and cold. I thought about holing up in a motel until the storm passed when a light colored ‘51 Ford coupe pulled over. Actually, just stopped in the road thirty or forty feet in front of me. I figured the driver was afraid to get stuck in the water on the shoulder. Smart. The passenger door popped open as I ran up.

    I was breathing heavily and basically tumbled in, pretty much drenching the passenger side dashboard and floor. A pretty, dark haired woman maybe in her late twenties was looking at me evenly from the driver’s seat. I inhaled against resistance and the possibilities for the immediate future fanned out in front of me like a poker hand, or . . . maybe more like a gin rummy hand. I had never actually played gin but my sense is it has a lot more cards than poker. This fanning “gift’ had appeared randomly after awakening from a coma when I was four years old. I finally learned to control it the night I lost Rivka. She and I called this thing the “fannings.” It was an instant for anyone but me. For me it took anywhere from a few seconds to about a minute, regarding each action-output pair, but for everyone else, just the blink of an eye. That one only took a few seconds to see I was in no danger.

“Thank you so much, ma’am . . . I’m so sorry to get your car wet. Thank you for picking me up.”

“You looked pretty miserable, don’t ya know.” She had an interesting accent. I figured it was something Midwest. She started back up, her hands loose on the wheel, like she’d been driving through monsoons all her life. “Why don’t you take off your gear and dry off there, yeah?” I didn’t so much see her smile as feel it.

I shrugged off my backpack and in so doing noticed there was another person in the car, sitting quietly in the back seat. “My name’s Mickey O’Taney,” I said to the driver.

“I’m Sarah Hansen. Nice to meet ya. That silent person in the back is my daughter, Ellen. Say hi to the man, Ellen.”

The girl, a miniature of her mother, put her arms on the seatback and her chin on her arms. “Nice to meet you, Mickey O’Taney.” She said it without lifting her chin off her hands so her whole head moved up and down when she spoke. I almost laughed. It was something Maria, my friend back in Hillsdale, might have done. 

“Very nice to meet you, Ellen.” I was starting to shiver and my teeth were beginning to chatter. That reminded me of my first date with Rivka and I managed to cover the sound of my choked off sob with shivering and teeth chattering. “Sorry,” I said, apologizing for my noisy mouth.

Ellen handed me a towel for my head, saying, “Take off your wet things, Mickey. I’ll give you a blanket. I got lots back here. I was asleep.”

I started to do as I was told. I got to my wet T-shirt and paused, unsure. Big, hairy wet guy. Sarah noticed my reticence. “Go ahead, Mickey. Put those wet things down by the heat vent there. This Ford is old but the heater works fine, yeah. Where ya headed?”

“Umm, New York.”

“We can take you as far as Allentown.”

The blanket was warm, probably from Ellen. As I wrapped it around me, “Thank you so much, Mrs. Hansen.” And then darkness. I awoke and the rain had stopped. The windshield wipers were silent. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Oh, Hon, I think maybe you were a little sleep deprived, yeah,” Sarah said with a warm smile.

I looked in the backseat. Ellen was reading with a flashlight. She looked up and smiled at me. My breath caught. It was a crooked Koen smile, the special smile Rivka gave to me. She got it from her mama, Rakhel. I smiled back, recovered my composure and asked,  “Whatcha readin’, El?” Her smile turned shy.

“Pride and Prejudice.”

“Oh, I love that book. Where are you?”

“Early on. Jane has caught a cold and her sister, Elizabeth is visiting her at the estate where Mr. Darcy is warming up to her. I think it’s really funny.”

Laughing, “I thought it was hilarious. My girlfriend, Rivka . . .” My voice caught and I couldn’t continue for a moment. “Sorry, I.”

Ellen looked at me from the backseat, concerned. Rivka used to tell me all the time I wear my heart on my sleeve. 

 Sarah looked over and gave me an understanding smile as she was slowing. “I’m gonna stop at this roadhouse up here. I need some coffee, yeah. Maybe some breakfast.”

 Sarah looked over and gave me an understanding smile as she was slowing. “I’m gonna stop at this roadhouse up here. I need some coffee, yeah. Maybe some breakfast.” 

It was 8 in the morning and we were all hungry. “I can drive if you want to rest, Sarah, mm, Mrs Hansen . . . I’m a good driver. My papa had me driving a tractor when I was seven. I been driving a while.” I wasn’t lying. I drove Rivka’s car all the time out on the country roads and I had a fake drivers license that said I was nineteen.

She gave me a tight smile. “Let me think about it.”

Toward the end of our breakfast I excused myself and sneaked to the front where I paid the bill. Sarah was a midwesterner, which was pretty close to being an Okie, which was what I was, so I knew that me paying the bill was going to be difficult so I cheated and paid it behind her back. When I returned to the table she was looking at me, not quite perturbed, but a little chagrined that she’d been bamboozled. “Hey, I’m sorry. Sarah, believe me, I know this is not the hitchhiker way . . . and I don’t seem to learn.”

She tipped her head to the side, like she was sort of getting me.

“I mean, you go on the road and the idea is to rely on the kindness of strangers.” I said the last three words with my best Blanche Devereaux. It was well received. “But I just can’t resist the idea that . . .” I had no idea what I was about to say.

“Ok . . . I’m too tired to argue.” She tossed me the keys in limited surrender. “Just for a few hours.”

I smiled for the first time in a long time. “I’ll just stay on the 80, all the way to Allentown. Thank you, Mrs. Hansen.”

From the backseat. “Call me Sarah, yeah.” Then, like a light switch, she was snoring softly.

Ellen sat in the front with me and was a chatterbox. She was ten years old. Her mama was a teacher. Her papa left the family two years ago. They hadn’t heard from him since. He was a drunk and not very nice. I was raised Okie. I knew from drunks. She missed him but only a little. They left Creston, Iowa, when her mama found a job in the Allentown, Pennsylvania school district for more pay and smaller class size, plus they both decided it was time to leave Creston. It became uncomfortable for them after her papa left and Ellen was a free thinker and way too advanced for her grade level. She took a break from her narrative to open a coke and a bag of potato chips.

She wanted to know my life story. For some reason it was easy to tell this ten going on twenty-year-old girl about my life. I had to be light on my feet about the age and grade level details as I was nineteen in my story. She was very sharp. My story came out in a torrent. Everything . . . except the sex.  “So, the plan is to go to New York City, find a job. Try to find a way to get on with my life.”

Ellen’s mouth was open. I glanced over and Sarah’s arms were on the seatback, her chin resting there. They both had identical looks of . . . I want to say a mix of horror, disbelief, sympathy, sadness? Sarah’s sudden appearance on the seatback had shocked me a little.

 “Hey. Didn’t know you were awake. You’re very stealthy,” I said.

“Ninja mom, don’t ya know.”

“It’s easy to see you two are mother and daughter.” They started chuckling. 

“She’s actually my clone. Sorry, honey, but daddy wasn’t really your daddy.” They both laughed, almost cackling. It was obviously a well honed comedy bit with those two.

For some reason that started me giggling and the laughing was infectious and the three of us were giggling and guffawing and chortling on and off for the next ten minutes. They had made me forget how miserable I was . . . almost. Then I started feeling guilty for laughing. I thought, God, this sucks.

     Every time I’d start to feel a little bit alive, reality would strike. Why would God rip us apart? Why would God take Rivka away from me? How would that further some grand design? My soul had been torn in two.

I got them safely to Allentown and into their second story, two bedroom apartment close to Sarah’s new school. They extracted solemn pledges from me to keep in touch and they both, together, hugged me so tightly before I headed out the door I almost lost it . . . my emotions were so raw. 

I paused outside their door on the external walkway to re-tie my boots and could hear them through the door. “In eight years I’ll be eighteen and he’ll be twenty-seven. That’s not such a big difference, I don’t think.”

“In eight years he’ll be twenty-seven and I’ll be thirty-six, don’t ya know. I don’t think that’s such a big difference. What do you think?”

“Mommy!!” I heard peels of hysterical female laughter as I made my way down the stairway with a big stupid grin on my face.