Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash
Two hours from Interlochen, they pull into a gas station off the highway, and while Hank gets out to fill the tank, Lucy slips inside the convenience store, immediately accosted by the fluorescent lights and country music. A man behind the cash register, wearing a flannel shirt and a “Born to Hunt, Forced to Work” camo baseball cap, nods, then spits into an empty pop can.
Lucy wanders down an aisle of snacks and candies on one side, motor oil and windshield cleaner, tampons and baby wipes on the other. Finally, she sees a “Public Restrooms” sign at the back of the store beyond the large coolers stocked with beer, wine, and soft drinks.
She leans into the restroom door without touching it. Inside, the cement floor is partially wet, the walls dingy white tile. She chooses the end stall and proceeds to lay tissue over the seat, grateful she’s alone. Squatting, she reads the graffiti: Martha loves Bill. Jenny sucks cocks.
The main restroom door suctions open. Lucy finishes up and flushes, standing as close to the stall door as possible. A flushed toilet, she has read, can spray a cloud of aerosol droplets three feet in the air. She waits for the woman to slip inside the other stall, but instead hears water running, paper towels yanked out of the dispenser. The woman, she realizes, is crying. Christ, Lucy thinks, how can she get out of here?
In a flurry, she opens the stall door and moves to the other sink, turns on the faucet, and presses the soap dispenser: empty. She holds her dripping hands over the dirty sink.
“Here,” the woman sniffles. “Use this one,” and backs away.
Smiling, Lucy reaches over and lathers up, glances in the mirror. The middle-aged woman’s pretty, but hard-looking, purple streaks in her spiky black hair, plump lips painted blood red, smudged eyeliner. She’s wearing a black leather jacket and tight blue jeans.
Lucy rinses her hands and sneaks another glance in the mirror. The woman blots her face; their eyes meet. The woman’s leather jacket reminds Lucy of her sister Jules, who’d said she was never coming back. “I hate him,” she’d wept about Dad before storming out of the house. Jules had been as wild as their kitten Mika, a stray they’d had all of two weeks before it got hit in the street. After Mom died, her sister became even more restless and wayward, and though they all were grieving, Jules and Dad took out their heartbreak on one another.
The woman stands up straight and pulls her shoulders back as if she’s doing a neck exercise. “Aw, shit man,” she says, slamming a paper wad in the wastebasket. “I fuckin’ hate men, ya know?”
Lucy smiles sympathetically as she towels off and tosses her paper at the trash can, but it hits the rim and falls on the floor. The woman stoops over and picks it up, drops it in the trash, and then leans over the sink and fluffs her hair with her fingers, not even bothering, Lucy notices, to wash her hands first.
“Well, what can ya do?” the woman smirks, and Lucy’s confused for a moment, and then remembers: men.
After Jules left home, Lucy went off to college, and at the end of the first semester she received a letter written in her sister’s familiar, lazy-loose scrawl. Jules had said she’d gone to Hollywood to try to be an actress, but it hadn’t worked out. Then, the next semester, early spring, Jules had called Lucy; she was in Eureka, California and wanted her to know that she had a baby. “A little girl,” she’d said. “Amber Jane. Wish you could see her.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Lucy asks the woman.
“Aw, that’s so sweet,” the woman says, smiling into the mirror. “I’ll be fine. Just wish sometimes he’d ride his damn big bike into the sunset.” She leans forward pursing her lips, then grabs hold of the door handle and leaves.
Lucy checks the mirror once more as she fluffs her curly blonde hair in the mirror. Like Jules, she has cornflower blue eyes. “You must be sisters,” people always said, even though Jules was the one everyone stared at.
The week before spring semester was over, Dad drove up to the college, his unannounced visit surprising Lucy. They’d walked across the quad and sat on a bench by a pond near the Grotto. He’d looked terrible, his eyes sunken. He told her he’d gotten a call that morning. Jules was a passenger on a motorcycle riding southbound on the Angeles Crest Highway when an oncoming car crossed over the center line; Jules and the biker were killed instantly. Lucy had sat there, numbly trying to make sense of his words.
After the funeral, Amber Jane moved in with Dad, and Lucy quit college and moved back home to help. Sometimes she would catch Dad looking at Amber Jane with tears in his eyes. Two years later, he died suddenly. Six years ago, when Amber Jane was ten, Lucy met a nice guy named Hank. They got married at City Hall.
In the restroom mirror, her reflection: a middle-aged woman dressed in a black pantsuit, gold silk scarf, and discreet gold earrings. She knows how proud her sister would be—Amber Jane, a student at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy, some of her classmates the children of famous actors and actresses. But it was Amber Jane who won the role of Ophelia. Tonight, opening night, belongs to her—and to Lucy.
Outside, the sun has finally broken through the clotted gray clouds. In the distance, a motorcycle shifts gears, but Lucy’s already forgotten the crying woman in the restroom. She looks around, shielding her eyes, and finally spots their car over by a pine tree. Starting across the lot, she sees Hank’s crisp white dress shirt, which is unbuttoned at the collar for the long ride. He leans back, rawboned hands resting on the steering wheel. She looks in the passenger window: his head is against the headrest, eyes closed. Gently, she taps on the glass, and he turns his head to her and smiles affectionately.
On the radio, she recognizes Rachmaninoff’s gorgeous Rhapsody of a Theme of Paganini, the acoustics crisp and lush in the tight interior. As they merge back on the highway, she watches the trees and hills flashing backwards, and imagines a spotlight as bright as the warm sun above.
DS Levy lives in the Midwest. Her fiction has appeared in many journals and has received Pushcart and Best Microfiction nominations. She has had work included in Wigleaf’s Top 50 2021, and Long List 2022. Recently, she was a finalist in the 2022 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award at The Florida Review.