What We Almost Had

I

It was a Tuesday. Sarah stopped at the gas station on Route 7 at eleven forty-five because that was when her shift ended at the Walmart and the trailer felt too small and the aunt's house felt too loud and the only thing she could think of was the sound of a gas pump counting up and the man who stood next to it and did not look at her but was there and that was enough.

Mike was pumping gas. He was wearing the blue uniform with the company logo faded at the shoulders. He was twenty-eight. He looked twenty-eight. He had not changed in seven years, which was either impressive or tragic depending on how you looked at it.

"You're late," he said.

Sarah set her keys on the counter inside the convenience store and looked at him through the glass door. "I'm not late. I'm just here."

"You usually come at midnight."

"It's eleven forty-five."

"I know."

He finished pumping her gas. He capped the tank. He wiped his hands on a rag that had been grey when he got it and was now the color of everything that had passed through it.

"Frank's buying the south parcel," he said.

"I know."

"Everyone knows."

"Yep."

They stood in the parking lot. The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. A semi-truck rattled past on the highway, and the ground shook for a second, then stopped shaking.

"Want a soda?" Mike asked.

"No, thank you."

He went back inside. She sat in the truck and watched him through the window and thought about how small the parking lot was and how much space he took up in it without trying to.

II

Tony Ricci was back in town. He had always been back in town — he had never really left, which was different from having never gone anywhere, but people in this town did not make that distinction — and now he was doing real estate, which in a town where the population had been shrinking for forty years was either a brilliant strategy or a cruel joke.

"He's offering below market," Betty Lou said, over coffee at the only diner that was open after eight. Betty Lou worked at the packaging plant and had opinions about everything and never apologized for having them. "He's offering below what the land is worth. He's offering below what the dirt is worth. If I had a house to sell, I would not sell it to a man who wears silk ties to a VFW meeting."

"He looks good in a silk tie," Dixie Rae said. Dixie Rae was a former beauty queen from 1997 and still held her annual reunion at the VFW hall, where she told the same stories to the same people and expected them to react as if they had not heard them a hundred times before.

"He looks good in a garbage bag," Betty Lou said. "That does not mean I should marry him."

Sarah listened to this conversation and thought about her aunt, who had been hinting for months that Sarah should "settle down" and "stop wasting her prime years" and "marry someone who has his life together." Her aunt's house had three empty bedrooms. Sarah's trailer had one room that was technically a bedroom but was really just a space between the kitchen and the bathroom where a bed could fit if you did not mind your alarm clock being twelve inches from your face.

She did not tell her aunt about the gas station. She did not tell anyone about the gas station. The gas station was hers and Mike's and nobody else's. It was not a relationship. It was not even a friendship. It was a Tuesday.

Sometimes it was more. Sometimes they drove to the mill and sat in her truck and talked about nothing. Sometimes it was just the pump counting up and the semi-truck rattling past and the sky being the color of a dead channel.

One Thursday — not a Tuesday, which was significant because Thursdays were not part of the pattern, which meant that when they happened, they were either accidents or choices — Mike came to the trailer. He stood in the doorway and said, "Want to go for a drive?"

She looked at him. He was not smiling. He was not frowning. He was just standing there, in the doorway of her aunt's trailer, in a blue uniform that had seen better decades, asking a question that he had been asking for seven years in different ways.

"Where to?" she said.

"Anywhere."

They drove to the mill. They sat in the truck. The mill was a skeleton of what it had been — a vast, hollow shell of corrugated steel and broken windows, with weeds growing through the concrete floor and birds nesting in the rafters where five hundred people used to make steel and make a living and make something that lasted.

"Frank's buying the south parcel," Mike said.

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Everyone knows."

He got out of the truck. He stood in front of it and looked at the mill and said nothing. She watched him through the windshield and thought about how he had stayed and how she had left and how neither of them had been wrong.

He walked back to the truck. He got in. He did not start the engine. They sat in silence for a long time. Then he said, "You should say something."

"Say what?"

"I do not know. Something."

She did not know what to say. There was nothing to say. The mill was closed. Frank was buying the south parcel. She was twenty-five and she worked at a Walmart and she lived in a trailer behind her aunt's house and Mike was sitting next to her in a truck with a slipping transmission and none of it was dramatic and none of it was tragic and all of it was.

He got out of the truck. He said, "I have to go back."

She nodded. "Okay."

He walked away. She watched him go. She did not call him back.

III

Frank proposed at the VFW hall on a Saturday night, during Dixie Rae's annual reunion dinner. There was potluck chicken and potato salad and a cake that Dixie Rae had baked and decorated with white frosting and red strawberries and a speech that Betty Lou gave about how "some people in this town have forgotten what it means to work hard" and how "character is not something you are born with, it is something you earn."

Frank stood up. He was wearing a suit that cost more than Sarah's annual salary. He was charming in the way a man is charming when he has practiced being charming in a mirror and believes he has succeeded.

"Sarah," he said. "I know we do not know each other well. But I know you are a good person. And I know this town needs people who are good. And I think we could be good together."

The room went quiet. Betty Lou looked at Sarah and raised her eyebrows in a way that meant yes. Dixie Rae looked at Sarah in a way that meant you are throwing away your prime years. Sarah's aunt, who had been waiting for this moment for three years, looked at Sarah in a way that meant I told you so.

Sarah looked at Frank. He was smiling. He was waiting. He did not know that she had spent the last three hours thinking about a man in a blue uniform who pumped her gas every Tuesday and sometimes on Thursdays and who had a truck with a slipping transmission and who had said, "You should say something," and she had not said anything and he had walked away and she had not called him back.

"Yes," she said.

The room applauded. Betty Lou patted her on the back. Dixie Rae dabbed her eyes with a napkin. Sarah's aunt hugged her and whispered, "I knew it. I knew it."

Sarah smiled. She felt nothing.

After the dinner, she went to the gas station on a Wednesday. She had never gone on a Wednesday before. Wednesdays were not part of the pattern. This was different. This was a choice.

Mike was there. He was pumping gas into a pickup truck that belonged to a man who worked at the packaging plant and complained about the price of everything.

"Frank proposed," she said.

Mike capped the man's tank. "Okay."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"I thought maybe you'd say something."

He looked at her. His face was the same face it had always been. Not handsome. Not ugly. Just there. "What am I supposed to say? You're twenty-five. He has a house."

"You have a truck."

"The transmission is slipping."

She paid for her gas. She did not thank him. He did not say you're welcome. She got in her car and drove home and thought about how simple it was to say nothing and how difficult it was to say something and how maybe that was the point.

IV

They married in April. The wedding was at the VFW hall, which meant there was potluck chicken and potato salad and a cake with white frosting and red strawberries and Betty Lou gave a speech and Dixie Rae cried and Sarah's aunt cried and Frank smiled and Sarah smiled and nobody cried for the right reasons.

Mike did not come.

Six months later, Frank's real estate deals fell through. The bank called. Frank moved to Tampa. He did not tell Sarah. She found out when she went to the bank to deposit a check and the teller looked at her with an expression that meant you should talk to your husband and she thought: husband. She had not thought of him as her husband in a long time. He was Frank. He was the man in the suit who had proposed at a VFW hall. He was not a husband. He was a circumstance.

She went to the house on Elm Street alone. She packed a bag. She did not tell Frank. She drove to her aunt's trailer. She packed another bag. She did not tell her aunt. She drove to the house on Elm Street and unpacked and lived in the house that Frank had bought and that the bank had taken and that she now owned because ownership was something that happened to people whether they asked for it or not.

She went back to the Walmart. She went to the gas station on Route 7 every Tuesday. Mike was usually there. Sometimes he was not. When he was, he pumped her gas. She said, "You're late." He said, "I'm not late, I'm just here." The truck's transmission was still slipping. Neither of them mentioned it.

One Tuesday, she stopped at the station and looked at Mike through the glass door and thought about the mill and the gate and the boy who stood there and never came in and the woman who wrote about him in a journal and the letter that was hidden in a floorboard and the truth that was too heavy for any one person to carry.

She thought about all of this and then she got out of the truck and went inside and bought a soda and paid with exact change and got back in the truck and drove home and ate dinner in front of the television and went to bed and slept and woke up and went to work and went to the gas station and said, "You're late," and he said, "I'm not late, I'm just here," and the pump counted up and the sky was the color of a dead channel and the semi-truck rattled past and the ground shook for a second and then stopped shaking and that was that.

It was not a happy ending. It was not a sad ending. It was an ending. And in a town where nothing changed and everyone stayed and the mill was closed and the south parcel was sold and the gas station was still open and Tuesdays were still Tuesdays, an ending was the most dramatic thing that could happen.

She stood at the gate in her backyard — it was not the same gate, but it was a gate, and gates were gates, and that was enough — and watched the sun go down and thought about what they almost had and decided that almost was the point. Almost was honest. Almost did not pretend to be more than it was. Almost was all they had.

And in a town where nothing lasted and everything faded and the paint peeled and the transmission slipped and the sky stayed the color of a dead channel, almost was everything.

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Author Note & Copyright: