Who would leave a baby in a roadside restroom?
Won’t Norah be surprised, he thought as he parked the Bonneville in the driveway, she’d only be expecting flowers.
REST AREA BY BERNARD HAFELI 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 68
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The trouble with drinking and driving, besides the obvious, was that you were forever looking for a place to piss. You couldn’t pull over on a back road. What if the township police were making their rounds, found your abandoned car, and waited for you to come tottering back? You couldn’t stop at a gas station or fast food hut because the restrooms were locked and they wanted you to buy something before you relieved yourself, like the two things were in some way related. Plus the cashiers were getting smarter at spotting obvious drunks.
Which Alex Straub obviously was.
But the rest area on the freeway into Detroit, two miles from home, was his quick fix. Countless times, with his bladder bloated, eyes watering, knees knocking together like castanets, Alex’s only goal had been to reach the ramp that led to the cinderblock, cement-floored rest area bunker, hurry quickly, but not too quickly, into the men’s, and let loose with the accumulation of an evening’s (or afternoon’s or morning’s) drinking into an iron-ringed urinal.
On the night in question, Alex had quarreled again with Norah, his wife of nearly two years. The quarrel followed the usual trajectory. After a few drinks Norah had inquired if Alex asked for a raise yet. No he hadn’t, he told her. It wasn’t the right time. With General Motors still reeling from the gas crisis so was Vent/Coomer, the advertising agency that employed Alex as a writer and Creative Director on the Pontiac account. Norah then asked when, exactly, the right time might be. Alex said some time before Christmas. Jeff Lincoln, his boss, would be in a more expansive mood.
“That’s what you said last Christmas.” Norah sucked her cigarette. The ember at the tip brightened. “Sometimes I don’t think you even want a baby. Then you’d have to stop being one.”
“How can you say that? What about all the tests I took?” Alex walked to the window. It was getting dark over the lake. “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry that this has been such a goddamn ordeal.”
“Let’s just drop it, shall we?”
“You brought it up. You always do.”
He could see her reflection in the window, spectral like a ghost. “It’s not my fault it’s costing a fortune trying to have a kid,” he said.
At which point he saw Norah’s reflection shake its head then jab out its cigarette in the fish-shaped ashtray on the side table, angry jabs that knocked the ashtray onto the floor, ashes orange and smoldering.
“Christ, Norah!” He hurried over to stomp out the glowing embers burning black craters in the carpet. The air smelled of singed acrylic. When he looked up, Norah was gone. The bedroom door slammed.
Flee, his best thinking told him. Disappear into the twilight and give this time to cool. On his way out he took two beers from the refrigerator. In the garage, from the hidey-hole he’d punched through the drywall, he grabbed the pint of Jack Daniel’s. With the beers tucked under the seat and the bourbon between his legs, he started up the Bonneville.
The fine November night was mostly lost on Alex. He was too upset, and disgusted with his own behavior. Norah could be a pain but it wasn’t her fault they couldn’t have a baby. Her mother, on the advice of an obstetrician, had taken a drug to prevent miscarriage. Nobody dreamed there’d be such consequences.
The radio buzzed with anecdotes about JFK. It was 16 years to the day that he’d been assassinated. Alex switched off the radio and listened to the wind rushing in the window. It wasn’t cold but it had a snap, auguring winter. The wind on his face and alcohol in his belly had a soothing effect.
Before long he was formulating his concession speech to Norah. First he would stop at the supermarket and pick up flowers, maybe a bottle of the zinfandel she liked. Then he’d go home and proclaim himself the fool he so unequivocally knew himself to be. He would beg her forgiveness. And she, for the umpteenth time, would grant it.
He hoped.
Once he worked everything through to his satisfaction he let it go, as was his custom during his booze-fueled field trips, allowing his thoughts to flutter and drift, alternating between moments of past glory and visions of future triumph—anything to keep his mind off the cold, gray polyp of the present.
This time he imagined himself stepping up to the podium and accepting the Gold Pencil for Best Commercial, 30-seconds or under, at the One Show in New York. “Thank you, everyone. This is a thrill and an honor. First and foremost, I’d like to thank my wife, Norah, who stuck by me when things got tough.” Norah sat beaming in the front row, next to Jeff Lincoln, who would soon promote Alex to Head Creative Director. “You deserve it,” Jeff would say. “Go make us proud, Alex.”
Then Alex realized he had to piss. Desperately. The first chance he got, he turned off the gravel road he was driving on and veered over to the freeway.
He brought the Bonneville to a chirping stop at the rest area. No other cars were in sight. Throwing open the door while the engine still rattled and pinged, he trotted to the men’s, unzipping as he went, thinking how humbling it was that everything a man held most important could be rendered insignificant by the overwhelming need to urinate.
A stench stopped him at the door. Never had he smelled anything so vile. From one of the stalls, a viscous brown sludge oozed out over half the floor. His eyes watered and bile crawled up his throat. Retreating outside, he scanned the parking lot. Still no one around.
He ran into the ladies’, entered a stall and let loose, experiencing an immediate shiver of pure pleasure.
As he zipped up, he heard what sounded like a yawn, ending on a high note, a question. He searched the other stalls—nothing. Turning to the line of sinks, he caught his ghostly reflection in the scratched glass. He looked desperate and frightened. Why? Of what?
The baby was in the last sink, closest to the wall.