...And Then She Said Goodbye

The knock came on the door. Opening up, she saw an old friend, grinning ear to ear, holding up his keys. Brand new Trans Am! Her love of fast cars sparked a thrill in her heart as she accepted a ride. Leaving the kids in bed and kissing her husband goodbye, she followed into the night, promising to return in a little while...

I first met her climbing a mountain. A few of us had decided to spend the afternoon climbing one of the local peaks. Typically it took about three hours going up, only one coming back down. She had come with one of our other friends, barely out of high school, scrawny and a bit homely, with an unfortunate scattering of acne across her shoulders and forehead. She was pushy and loud, tending to punch and spit like a tomboy, laughing as she farted and sweating like a trucker. She & I were the only ones that had the stamina to climb the mountain non-stop; the others wheezed and straggled like a pack of nap-starved pre-schoolers. I was impressed with her moxie. While the others meeped and mocked and moaned, she kicked meep all the way up. She was for real.

...The night was clear, the streets dry. They turned onto Turri Road, a fun back road that twisted alongside of a creek feeding into the Bay/Estuary. As the tide rose and fell, it sent long fingers of brackish water up the streambed, filling the banks to the brink, then draining out again until the streambed lay near empty, thick, black mud shining like a tar pit. Further up the same road was the trailhead for the same mountain I had climbed with her. The headlights ate up the dark as they wound around the first few turns...

We became good friends. My wife and I had her over for dinners and took her along to the beach for picnics. She became a member of our family, an older sister to our kids, adopted into our lives, loving her like a daughter. We counseled her through bad boyfriends, bad drugs, were there when she got married, had her two children. We were the voice of reason when she split up with her husband, and her sanctuary and advisers when she tried to get back together with him. Things were going pretty well; she was off hard drugs, liked herself, and was serious about making her family work. Everything was looking up, and the New Millennium was only 10 days away.

...The car, large and powerful, was heavier than the driver was used to. His previous car had been small and sporty. The Trans Am had considerably more steel. As they hit the second of a set of right angle corners, the traction broke, and the car slid off of the pavement. Skidding sideways over the stream bank, the car flipped onto its roof into the mud. The windshield, windows, and back window were embedded in the thick, black mess. The doors immovable, the windows all buried in tar-like goo, the only way out was through the floor. The tide, at a very low point, had just turned and was coming back in, without mercy or malice. There's no way to tell how long it took for the water to creep in and slowly fill the car. Long enough that when they were found, all of their fingernails were broken off from the last mad scrabbling for escape...

Its been years, but I still see her. On the street, in a store, driving by. I just talked to her; I know I did. Even after we saw her in the paper, front page story, when we called the house to offer anything we could to the husband, now alone with two small children, her voice came on the line, still haunting the answering machine. Her daughter has her eyes, her son has her mischief. The place is empty where she once stayed. The memories I have are fading like a dream. I can hear her laugh, but can no longer remember how she would cry.

...When she didn't come home that night, the search began. The driver's wife hadn't seen either of them. They looked alongside of the roadway everywhere they could think that they might have gone. They checked old drug haunts in case they had fallen off the wagon and gone on a binge. Finally, one of the sheriff's officers spotted the car, once again exposed by the tide, a little after dark. The tow truck pulled the car free, but it was far too late. Angela was dead, and so was her friend with the new trans Am. The papers had a few days of shock and scandal, then forgot. Her funeral was heartbreaking, held in the same church where she was married just a few years before. The children, too young to understand, broke the tragic silence with lonely cries, asking for their mother, asking for their mother...

The last time I went to the spot she died, it was sunset. We drank a beer, pouring one on the makeshift shrine her husband and kids erected for her. As we passed the bowl, I could feel her looking down, happy that we were there, still loving her, keeping her alive. The stars shone like her twinkling eyes, and I thought I heard her laughing, running up the mountain, leaving us all far behind as she climbed out of sight.