Yesterday I spilled three different liquids on me while driving from Newark Airport to Rhode Island. True story! The first was Coke, inside my beautiful Italian leather purse. That was so incredibly annoying that when I later hit a pothole holding a full bottle of water and it splashed into my face during a phone conversation – no, I wasn’t using a hands-free set, spoilypants – I could only laugh, because at least this time I didn’t ruin an Italian leather purse, right?
So by the time I was within Rhode Island state lines with a totally dead cell phone (because when you buy a brand-new mobile, Krissa, they don’t fully charge it, and it WILL die on you if you talk to three different people for thirty minutes each), I didn’t think I could possibly trump the water spurting onto my face, until the cup of tea.
Hold on about the tea. Because it’s crucial to note that the reason I talked to three different people for 30 minutes each was because I’d just left Stuart at the airport and I thought I was cool, really, I’d taken him as far as I could and said a cheery goodbye. But I obviously wasn’t fine because when I stopped at Vince Lombardi to get some quick dinner, I encountered a snag in my cheer. I couldn’t eat. I was hungry, oh yes, hungry enough for Burger King, but lifting food to lips came smack up against the knot of sad in my stomach, which was busily spreading oily tentacles everywhere. So the food sat there on the empty Coke-soaked passenger seat, mocking me. Hence the phone calls, because good people are the only antidote to knots of sad.
Back to that tea. The cup of tea happened because I needed to pee really bad at exit 3B so I pulled over at a Mobil to use a payphone and update my parents on my drive. Which I didn’t have to do because the nice guy at the counter, when asked where the payphone was, insisted I use his mobile phone. He must have thought I’d walked in from 1996, who uses payphones, right? So I bought a cup of tea to make a sale for his samaritan gesture.
Then I decided, whilst driving at 70 MPH, that I wanted to throw the teabag itself out the window. Why not? So I rolled down the window and carefully placed the tea bag into the lid of the mug and held it out the window. Then, of course, the tea bag zoomed right back into the car like so many nervous chihuahuas and landed – where? – in my lap.
It was right then with the steaming teabag on my crotch, listening to some droning BBC podcast, where I think I fully absorbed that Stuart was gone for a week. I know it’s only a week, but when I hear myself say that it sounds like when alcoholics admit they know they have a drinking problem when you know they’re not going to do anything about it and pass them the whisky while you’re up. Rationally, I understand that it’s just a week. But everything about this distance, from the complex schematics to call each other without spending a fortune to the constantly adding five hours to the time, it jerks me back like a cruel joke to how it was two years ago. You could say I’m a veteran of long goodbyes and even short ones trigger malaise.
But back to the car ride and the tea bag in my lap. Let me tell you worst thing about all this, and no, it wasn’t the various liquids in my poor dad’s car/on my crotch/in my purse/on my face. It was just that malaise – that sharp stabbing realization that Stuart with his wicked sense of humor wasn’t in the passenger seat to laugh at my slapstick. I laughed enough for both of us but it’s not the same, is it.
Of course, the argument could be made that with Stuart there, he would have thrown the teabag out HIS window and ended up with hotcrotch. I’m just saying is all.