“Stuck here like me, you mean.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Come on, I’m not dumb. Me, Vernon, Maureen, Eldridge, we’re the people you’re talking about. People who stay in one spot instead of seeing the big wide world.”
“Yes… well… that’s true… but I’m not belittling you or anyone else. I’m really not. But this life — it’s just not the life for me.”
“What is the life for you? Traveling the world?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not going to run off to college and become one of them. And I don’t want to just sit at home above the garage mooching off my parents. But yes, I do want to… go somewhere.”
“It’s déjà vu all over again.”
“What?”
“If you knew how many people who’ve worked at Oxendine’s felt like you feel… when did you decide to up and quit, anyway?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight? Tonight when?”
“I don’t know. Sometime during the course of the evening. Inside that hot room, with everyone laughing about nothing, and Vernon with the mistletoe, asking every girl five hundred times if he can get a kiss…”
“I think you’re being impulsive. And maybe the beer has something to do with this.”
“Well, maybe it’s time I act impulsive. I’ve been the rational one since birth. Reserved, like you say. My little brother was — is — a wild man, always did what he wanted, but now look at him — playing baseball at East Carolina, while I’m stuck here working at a tiny grocery store.”
“I don’t want to hear any more of your sob story.”
“…what?”
Thomas stood up and stuffed his hands in his jacket.
“You heard me. Like I said, you’re not the first person to walk through the doors of Oxendine’s Grocery, only to walk right back out because you thought you were better…”
“I didn’t say better. I mean I’m…”
“It’s the same thing. I’ve seen it before, I’m sure I’ll see it again. It’s old by now.” He glanced over at her, and the sight of her glistening eyes was sadistically pleasing to him. She should break down and weep. She deserved to feel hollow and hopeless. She deserved punishment.
But — he could stop now, if he wanted. He could apologize, make those tears evaporate, fix everything. He recalled a long-ago conversation with Vernon that had been very much like this one. Back then, Vernon had convinced him to stay when he wanted to quit. But Thomas wasn’t Vernon, and Vernon himself was drunk and babbling back in his mini-van. Thomas would say what was on his mind, and damn the torpedoes: “You drag me out here and ruin my goddamn evening — and I think I’ve made it clear how much I enjoy this Party — so that you can tell me you’re quitting, because we may have been friends, and there may have been a connection, and blah blah blah. You’re just a drama queen who wanted to tell someone else about your Big Decision, and you hoped I would pat you on the head and say ‘there, there,’ and then you’d disappear, because we can’t be friends because I’ll be doing this and you’ll be doing that.”
“Well, I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” Orianna said softly. “I didn’t mean to.”
“What you meant to do is irrelevant.”
He self-righteously turned on his heel and walked away, vowing not to look back. He broke that vow after ten yards. Orianna was still sitting on the dock box, but she wasn’t sobbing, as he expected; she was staring across the channel to Sugarloaf Island, as steely as she’d ever been. Thomas frowned, dissatisfied. He wanted to see her broken and weeping, but she’d apparently recovered already. He again vowed not to look back, and this time he kept his vow.
Chapter Ten
The drive to Raleigh only took three hours or so, but to Thomas, who never drove anywhere, it was an epic journey, taxing of one’s concentration and endurance. There were so many goddamn cars, and they were either going much faster than him or much slower. He cursed the slowpokes and wished a state trooper or a highway patrolman would appear and ticket the speeders. The ubiquitous “OBX,” “SOBX,” and “SALT LIFE” stickers dotting the vehicles also vexed him, as did the curly, flowery letters that women put on their back windshields to spell out their initials. Why did everyone have to have the same goddamn things on their cars?
He felt at home up until he passed by New Bern and its wide placid rivers, charming sailboats, and long-tongued bear-logo painted into an overpass hill. Then he stared ahead as Highway 70 unfurled in a seemingly-endless straight line. Little bordered the highway except trees and grass. His speedometer said he was going sixty-five (the speed limit was seventy, but Thomas didn’t want to overwork his old Malibu), but it felt like he wasn’t moving at all. He fell into highway hypnosis, so he turned on the radio to jolt his mind back to reality. The syrupy, auto-tuned pop songs didn’t really accomplish this, so he switched to NPR and listened as an earnest scientist and a bubbly interviewer discussed the intelligence of octopi — or octopuses, which Thomas was informed was the correct plural form of octopus. For a few minutes, he felt like a lucid receptacle of learning, but then the thrum of tire on asphalt and the endless trees just sitting there won out, and he turned off the radio and succumbed to the dullness. He didn’t feel like thinking anyway, he told himself dubiously.
He believed he passed by Kinston, Goldsboro, and Smithfield: he’d noticed a few things, several hours had elapsed, and signs were informing him that he was now nearing Raleigh. This was strong proof.
Thomas didn’t feel excitement or awe as he entered the urban jungle; he only wanted to get to the Dowling residence, and to do that he was not required to learn anything about Raleigh’s endless highways, boroughs, universities, or businesses. He just had to zero in on the few roads that would get him to where he wanted to go.
Finally, after dangerously changing lanes and feeling the cold breath of the Reaper, he exited Highway 40 and made his way onto a relatively quiet residential road. Well-manicured lawns and SUV-filled driveways smiled out at the world — but not so brightly that a passerby would actually decide to drop by. Every yard was decorated for the holidays in a charming-but-not-overblown manner. Some of the burghers were outside, either puttering in their yards or watching the kids or grandkids cavort. A straw-haired little girl, in pink helmet, pink pants, pink shoes, and pink t-shirt, rode slowly down the sidewalk on her pink bike. She sent Thomas a floppy wave, and removing one hand from the handlebars nearly caused her to crash into an azalea bush.
This was the subdivision of Oak Hills (though there were few oaks, and the hills were more like small bumps) where Dan and Emily lived. Thomas pulled into the Dowling residence at 703 Longleaf Pine Drive, and exhaled deeply. Finally he was safe from the motorist-horde.
The Dowling property looked much like the other properties in the neighborhood. The lawn was covered uniformly in Bermuda grass, its color a weak tan now that it was winter. Perfectly-sculpted shrubs stood guard near the house. The house itself was a two-story brick affair, as sedate as a lawyer’s office. The Dowling vehicles were visible in the two-car garage, and Thomas’s parents’ Traverse was parked behind them in the driveway. So everyone was here. Thomas got out of his car slowly; he’d only stopped once during the trip, for a quick bathroom break, and his legs felt as if they’d atrophied into uselessness. He gingerly walked along the lawn until he felt like an able-bodied man instead of a cripple.