I had been mulling over how my coffee was black as the eye of despair and then despairing.
"Shit, I stole that from Steinbeck. I can't even be original in my depression."
Then the cream hit my coffee, the tray hit the floor and outside, a streetcar hit a Lexus. The screech and the clang jerked me out of my malaise. I didn't know it was a Lexus until after I had wiped the stain from my blouse, left the diner and stood on the street with the other gawkers. Half the patrons had rushed outside, along with the waitress (without her tray) - the cook stayed behind with this stern look on his face. I decided to follow the curious ones.
From the street, I glanced at those left behind, their faces pressed against the smoky windows.
I thought there would be this tumult of sound, but there was just a nervous silence, as if we all held our breath at once. Everyone was staring at the Lexus -- but I stared at the streetcar. I watched the transit riders as they spilt into the street like marbles from a mason jar. The riders swirled and split; some moved to the boomerang shaped car, others backed away, like they didn't want to leave the comfort of the group. A few of them huddled together against the streetcar, drawing solace from its cold metal.
The sounds of feet shuffling and the creaking of metal wrenched my vision back to the Lexus. I wasn't part of the accident; I stood perched on its outer rim. But the intensity of it formed a spiral that enveloped my own emotions and drew me near.
That's when I surprised myself.
I ran to the car. My sadness shed and ran off me like spring rain. Traffic had stopped. The streetcar driver stood at the car door. The beeping of two dozen cell phones dialing urged me toward the bent Lexus. The driver's door hung like a broken wing off the body of the car. The streetcar driver pointed at me.
"Come here and help me."
What about all these other people? I thought. Why not ask a man?
"I can't." I held up my hands. I shook.
"Yes you can. She's small. Help me lift her out," he said.
He held the broken door open, gave it a kick and sent it rattling to the asphalt.
Before I could ask about moving someone before emergency workers arrived, the streetcar driver grasped my hand and pulled me toward the open door. I reached into the car and slid my hands beneath the woman's waist. She lay across the seat, supine, unbelted, her face tilted upward. A line of blood ran from a gash on her forehead, down her cheek and mingled with dark streaks of mascara. There was something familiar about her. A rush went through me at the thought that we may be related. The line of blood swirled like a child's drawing and added to the growing surrealism of the moment. Oh God, what am I doing?
My hands met the streetcar driver's, and I jumped at the warmth of moving flesh. The woman moaned.
"It's okay. You can do this." He spoke softly.
I resettled my hands. Then moved them down and cradled her knees. The driver nodded. He looked young, too young -- again, I wanted to ask if we should be doing this. He had opened the passenger side door and faced me now, kneeling behind the woman's head.
It was awkward, the driver on his knees, trying to support her upper body, and me trying to carry her legs. We're hurting her, we must be. My chest ached.
Together we inched her broken body out of the car and onto the street. A man rolled up a red corduroy jacket and placed it underneath the woman's head.
I watched her chest rise. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and stared at me. Now I knew why she'd looked familiar. Murmurs from the crowd grew louder, and several phrases repeated and rose above the muddle of voices.
"That's that woman."
"She denied everything and got off."
"Fucking lawyers."
"Serves her right."
"People," the driver muttered and shook his head.
"You think she was as bad as the papers said?" a woman behind me asked.
"You're talking like she's already gone." It was the corduroy jacket man.
"I know, I mean -"
He cut her off, "No one's ever as bad as they say."
I knelt down by the woman's head. Her eyes were closed again, but her lips were moving. The approaching siren made it difficult to catch what the woman was saying. I bent closer and felt her breath on my cheek.
The paramedics arrived and started to bawl out the streetcar driver before one of them recognized her face.
"Holy..."
The third paramedic, the youngest of the trio, put his hands on my shoulders.
"We'll do this, now."
I stood up and the three swooped in with clear tubes, bags of liquid and scissors. I saw the flash of a syringe before I backed away.
The jacket man asked if I was okay. I mumbled "yes" and started back to the diner. I heard someone ask me what the woman had said to me, but I just kept walking. As recognition spread through the crowd, so did the disdainful remarks.
At the restaurant, a few diners were still pressed up against the glass - it made me think of those lobster tanks in the Chinese place across the street.
I went in, paid my bill and left. On the street, a paramedic handed back the man's jacket; the two others lifted the covered stretcher into the ambulance.
When I got home, I showered, made a cup of mint tea and lay down on the couch. I phoned my sister.
"She reminded me of mom."
"That's an awful thing to say. I mean, after what the woman did in court? Didn't you read? Everyone knew she killed her husband."
I had read. So had everyone else in the crowd. The media talk about someone and we think we know them. I had read about someone they called a callous woman. I didn't tell my sister this. I didn't tell her how I thought we treated mom unfairly right up until she died. I didn't feel like arguing - I had just wanted to talk to someone close.
"Are you alright, Sue? I mean, wow, no offense but this is all pretty unlike you."
"I'll be okay." I wasn't angry she'd said that. She was right.
I decided to call my ex. I don't know why - maybe because I was thinking of him when I'd been staring into my coffee. I didn't know what I wanted to say to him. Sorry? For what?
I heard the click and knew he had another call waiting. He said he was really sorry and asked if he should call back. I said I was fine. I'd call him later.
I pulled my wet hair through my fingers. The squeak from the strands of hair took me back to that morning's meeting. The shampoo exec was as demanding as all bathroom product clients. I wanted to tell him that no one cares about the colour of the damn bottle. I wanted to say that I was tired of bullshit copy about pomegranates and jungle breezes and that I wanted to write something that mattered. But I didn't say anything. I just walked out and went to the diner.
When I called my brother and told him what happened, he asked if he should come over. I hadn't talked to him in over three months and now he's going to come on over? Was he just saying that because he thought he should?
"No, I'm fine." I needed to say more. "It's just that... here's a woman dying on the street and people who only know her from sound bites and headlines are judging her life."
"She made a lot of people miserable."
"She must have had someone in her life that loved her."
"Hey, you reap what you sow."
My whole arm jerked, the phone flew out of my grasp and hit the radiator with a loud CLANG. I heard my brother's voice coming from the dangling receiver.
"Sue? Sue! Susan, what the hell was that?"
I grabbed the phone. "No, no. I'm okay, I just dropped the phone when you said -" I stopped. "What did you say?"
"Shit, you scared me. What? When I said what?"
"Reap. " The word sounded strange to me.
"Oh, that. Just a saying." My brother paused. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"No, I'm not sure." My hands started to shake. "But you don't need to come over - I'll be alright." I took a couple of deep breaths. "Nevermind, I'm fine."
"Okay. But, I'll call you tomorrow. In the morning," he said.
"You don't have to."
"But I will."
I was about to ask him why, when I felt my throat catch. "Gotta go. Thanks. Bye." I hung up and fell back against the couch.
In the morning, I phoned the production manager and told him that I needed a day off. He told me it wasn't a problem and that he had seen me on the news last night.
"Really?"
"I thought you'd be hounded by calls from the press. Somebody must have recognized you. Your name was mentioned."
"Mentioned where?"
"In the morning Star. They said you and the driver... didn't anyone call you?"
"No."
"I guess there's a lot of Johnson's to go through."
"I didn't see a film crew."
"The paper said they were shooting a commercial in the Chinese restaurant and ran out when they heard."
I tried to remember a film crew. Nothing came. "I -"
"Listen, take a couple of days. We're fine here."
I put down the receiver, the doorbell rang and the red light on my answering machine began to flash. I figured they must have made it to my name. Walking across my living room, I had a fleeting thought that the press had bypassed the phone book, and I'd find them on my doorstep with microphones and notebooks in hand. I brushed aside the curtains and peered out the window. The bell rang a second time. It was my neighbour, the one who always complained about me. Somewhere far off a siren wailed.
In the scant seconds between my hand reaching the door and turning the handle, I saw the woman in the Lexus; the transit riders emptying onto the street; I heard the woman's voice overlap with my brother's as they uttered the same phrase. I'd heard the phrase before -- I had a vague Sunday school recollection of it. But in the time it took to draw three breaths, the act of hearing the line twice in one day created an echo that reverberated through my body and split something deep within me.
A fissure, ever widening, lay in front of me now. I stood on the precipice of change. To stand would be to gaze into my own regret; I would only look upon the sorrow of what my life had meant, and all that it could have been. To leap was to change my life forever.
I opened the door and leapt.
WHERE I'M CALLING FROM - Raymond Carver
