The Nights Were Young (24 page)

XXVII

The drive back to the house that James and Marie shared was long, very long.  Marie half considered driving past the exit she needed on the highway and going anywhere else.  The thought rolled around in her head the entire trip, the thought of a choice she could make.  Travis had made his choices.  He had chosen to enjoy life the only ways he knew how when they were young.  He had chosen to make his life better when the partying had gotten the best of him.  Marie had followed him, when they were younger, into that world of freedom and choice.  Where was that world now?  It was not where James was, where her mother was, or where she was heading.

              She arrived that evening.  James was watching TV and drinking.  Marie came in with her bags.  He did not get up. 

              “Where the hell is Crossfalls?” he asked.  His face remained fixed on the TV screen.

              “Not here,” Marie said. 

              He was surprised by her sarcasm.  He looked her way and spoke coldly. “You’re mother’s been calling you for a whole day.”

              “I’ll call her when I get around to it.”

              He turned back to the television and raised the volume. 

              “Look… I’m sorry for ruining the party-”

              “Save it,” he interrupted.  “I don’t want to hear what you have to say about that, and quite frankly I don’t even really want to see you or have you in the same room right now.  So if you wouldn’t mind… just leave.”

              Marie looked to the corner of the room, where the window was.  She knew beyond it were the hills and everything beyond them.  Her decision was made.  Her heart beat faster, and her blood ran quicker.  This was it, now or never.  She left the bags by the door and ran into the bedroom. 

              She was flying.  She threw a suitcase on the floor and began throwing clothes inside it.  She crammed her jewelry in the pockets.  She stuffed every inch of it with anything in the bedroom that was hers – nothing that was given to her by James.  Not to her surprise, it only took one suitcase to get everything.  The pictures, the furniture, those could stay.  For all she cared, those things could simply burn. 

              James walked. “What the hell are you doing?”

              Marie ignored him.  She rolled the suitcase past him and back through the living room where she grabbed her guitar that was propped against the wall. 

              He ran forward and grabbed her arm tight. “What are you doing?”

              “Let me go!” She yanked her arm away. 

              He glared at her. “Where are you going now?”

              “Away from you!  Away from here!” 

              She turned away, but he grabbed her again.  She whirled around and shoved him away so hard that he tripped over the nightstand and fell to the floor.  The lamp on the nightstand fell and shattered under him. 

              “Shit!” he screamed. 

              Marie went into the kitchen and dug to the bottom of the drawer next to the sink, where the keys to her Cavalier had been sitting stagnant for years. She turned and marched to the door.  She grabbed the rest of her bags and left the house and into the garage.

              She punched the button and the electric door lifted. She marched out of the garage and got to her Chevy Cavalier. She tore the blue cover off, marveling at it. She threw in her bags and the suitcase and the guitar. 

              James rushed up and stood behind her, holding his back and breathing heavily. “You’re leaving?”

              Marie stared at her car. “You know,” she said, holding her hand on the door handle of her car, “this is the only thing I own. Took me all those years in college to save up for it. Remember?”

              James was baffled. “What does that have to do with anything? How is that important, Marie?”

              “Because it’s mine,” she answered. “I chose it. And now I’m making another choice.” She looked up at her fiancé. “Yes, I’m leaving James.”

              “Where are you going this time?” James asked. He waved his arms up and down once, and then he put his hands on his hips and sighed. He didn’t understand how serious she was.

              Marie shook her head. “No, James, I’m leaving you… for good.”

              “What are you talking about?  You live here.  Where are you gonna go?”

              “I don’t care,” she said calmly.  “Wherever the hell I choose to go.” 

              She opened her door. 

              “After everything we’ve been through?” James asked. “You’re just gonna run away like this?  What are you?  Scared?”

              Marie stopped, and she laughed. She shook her head, and felt the light in her, in her eyes as she looked at James.

              “No,” she said confidently.  “If I were scared, I’d be staying.  But I’m not scared, not anymore.  Life’s too short for that.”

              James was still angry and his face showed his confusion. 

              “Life’s too short for me to spend it pretending that we love each other, James, because we don’t.”

              He heaved.  He was frowning, and scratching his head.  It was something he would not understand that night or maybe in his lifetime.  Marie understood him.  He wanted the plan, her mother’s plan, the plan of many people, the plan that Marie had almost given herself to, and the plan that had kept her from loving the boy she should have loved. 

              “What are you going to do?” he asked.

              Marie was quiet.  She turned her head, where in the distance she could see the hills and the space beyond them.  She slid off her engagement ring and placed it on the pavement.  She looked at the house, the quiet house she had spent so much time alone in.  She closed her eyes.

              “Live,” she answered. 

She took a last look at him, then got in the car and left the driveway.  He remained there, looking after while she sailed away down the road and out of his reach. 

Marie kept driving.  She flew past the hills and then beyond them, further and further on that stretch of road that seemed to lead on into eternity.  The night was young, like they had been when she was eighteen, and it was a sight Travis would have loved.  She was terrified.  There was no certain destination, no certain answers anymore, but there was freedom – this wild freedom she had felt seven years ago, a freedom she had shared with the young man she would never forget.  She was terrified, but she loved it, for she felt alive in the face of the coming night, and she knew that a new day would follow it, and new days would follow after.

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