Sharon thought she could do it this time. Follow all the way through to the end. She didn’t just want to die. She had to. Her heart hurt so bad that the only thing that would relieve the pain would be if it stopped beating. She was sure of it.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel because she could feel one coming on. Just as she passed the exit for Cannonsburg, a scream-growl-rage tore out of her lungs until her visual field was shot through with exploding stars. And then she felt numb. Not limp or spent. Just numb. A body without a soul.
She drove on through the summer evening. Another remarkable sunset burnt hot red across a sky a color of blue Sharon thought she’d never seen in her life. It had been this way all summer. Striking sunsets. Pollution, she had read, but damned if the end of the world wasn’t stunning.
Unlike every other time she’d thought of killing herself, this time she had a plan. At mile marker 101, she would veer off the road and into the post of a billboard for the law offices of Mecklin & Berg. She always hated seeing their smug faces staring down at her when she drove by on her way to Pittsburgh. She figured there’d be no way she would survive such an impact. The billboard post had to be at least ten inches in diameter of solid Mon Valley steel, and this way no one else would be hurt. No one but her, of course.
Her cat Reggie had died a couple of months back, and her son Thomas lived halfway across the world–at least he did the last time she heard from him. What? Eight or more years ago now. She nodded her head confirming to herself that she was leaving no one behind.
No one but Maggie, she guessed, as she passed exit 87. Sharon never managed to keep friends for long, so she always had a new one coming or going. She’d met Maggie at an artist retreat in Pittsburgh earlier in the month. Maggie worked in acrylics. Painting naked women highlighted in lemon yellow or fuschia. Sharon didn’t think much of her work. She figured that for someone as young as Maggie–mid-30s–the nudes were bold and edgy. Sharon labeled them derivative. But what did she know? She merely dabbled in watercolors as a way to pass the time.
She and Maggie had bonded over their mutual disgust of anyone referring to vanilla as a flavor. “It’s a flavor enhancer at most!” shouted Sharon from the fifth step up of the old Victorian mansion near Highland Park. Maggie nodded her head and pumped her fist in solidarity. Later, at dinner, they scoffed together at the vanilla cupcakes served as dessert. They spent the rest of the retreat gleefully sharing their most beloved pet peeves.
Although they had exchanged numbers after the retreat, Sharon was surprised when Maggie called to invite her to a gallery opening in Squirrel Hill. A mixed media artist who chose vulvas as her focus.
Sharon looked up the artist online and was impressed with the wide range of interpretation of what she thought was surely the ugliest of all body parts. A vulva used as a flower vase. Daisies poking out of the hole. A blooming pink rose where the clit should be. Another vulva painted five shades of green titled “Mother Earth.” Another made out of condom wrappers, pregnancy tests, and positive HIV results. She wasn’t all that sure she wanted to see three rooms full of pussy art, but she’d been lonely since Bonita had ghosted her.
She still couldn’t figure out why. They had spent every day together for over two weeks. They’d met on the Driehorst Trail at Oglebay Park. Bonita walked there every morning, she’d said. It was Sharon’s first time, even though she lived just eight minutes away. Well, just eight minutes if she took the back way.
They’d meet up every morning at 6 am at the trailhead, and they’d talk about everything. The eyesore fracking pad on the hill opposite the park. “You can even see it from the swimming pool!” Sharon had exclaimed, her hand flung widely in the air above Bonita’s deep purple hair. Bonita’s dog, Honesty, barked at her burst of violence, unsure if she meant harm. Bonita shushed her, and on they went, walking and talking for more than an hour. This is the way each morning had gone for 15 days in a row, and then one day Bonita and Honesty didn’t show up. They hadn’t exchanged numbers. Sharon didn’t even know Bonita’s last name or where she lived or where she worked. She realized as the early morning sun made mist rise above the grass that she didn’t really know anything about Bonita at all. After four days of no Bonita and no Honesty, she gave up and went back to sleeping until it was time to get up for work.
Mile Marker 94.2. Sharon suddenly remembered that Subarus are safe cars. In fact, one of the safest car brands on the road. “Shit! What if the airbags go off and save my stupid life?” she wondered. “Hey, Siri, can I disable the airbag in my car?” “It’s illegal to disable an airbag. It requires written permission and an authorized mechanic,” Siri cheerfully stated. “Permission?” Sharon rolled her eyes, which inadvertently pushed a lash into the left one. She flipped the visor mirror down and searched for the errant black hair. She glanced at the road and then plucked the lash from her eye with her right index finger. She could feel another scream building, but before she could let it out, she looked back at the road and slowed down almost to a stop as the driver of a red Dinali nearly clipped her front bumper as he slid in front of her. “Fucking asshole!” she screamed instead.
Mile Marker 96.7. Her dad was a long-haul trucker, and he had taught her early on about mile markers and how to measure the distance between exits. She was four miles from her final exit, so to speak. At 77 mph, that’s, what, maybe three minute? Three minutes. Her heart began racing. She moved into the right lane and took off her glasses and then put them back on. She didn’t want to see the impact coming and reflexively swerve to miss the post, but she also didn’t want to miss hitting it either because she can’t see for shit without her glasses.
Mile Marker 98.2. She took a deep breath. One of the last breaths she’d ever take, she thought. She could smell her body spray, Sweetest Song, it was called. She got it one or maybe two years ago from her Secret Santa at work. She rarely wore any fragrance, but she had sprayed a few squirts as she walked out the door. Maggie, she thought, she would be waiting for her, but surely she’d see it on the news. “Woman Crashes Into Billboard Post.” Or, these days, “One Woman Dead in Accident,” posted on the local news’ social media page with comments like, “Thoughts and prayers.” “People drive way too fast on that damned road.” “I bet she was doing her makeup or talking on her cell.” She hoped Maggie would see the notice and not think that she had ghosted her. Maybe she should call and. . . .
Sharon stomped on the brake pedal. Just as she reached Mile Marker 100, she could see it. A semi jackknifed on the side of the road. The car ahead of her had stopped, and the driver was getting out, racing to idled rig. Two other cars were pulled off the side of the road. Their drivers already out and speeding towards the wreck.
Mile Marker 100.9. The debris strewn across both lanes of eastbound interstate glittered in the waning sunlight. She saw the driver jump from his open door and onto the grass, holding his left arm. She relaxed a little, grateful he was alive. As traffic backed up behind her, she and the driver in the hammer lane made eye contact and shrugged with their hands. They both decided to creep on, driving slowly through the broken glass and shattered plastic car parts. Sharon thought, It doesn’t seem to belong to the truck just as she got past the rear of the rig, which sat at an almost perfect right angle perpendicular to the interstate. Then, she saw it. A black sedan crumpled into the billboard post at mile marker 101. It looked as if it had been crushed in a giant’s fist. Her mind raced to comprehend the scene, and eventually she realized that the semi must have pushed the sedan into the post.
She rolled slowly, looking for signs of life as the three drivers and trucker reached the crumpled sedan. She pulled over on the berm and watched out of her passenger side mirror as the men attempted to open the car’s doors. The man in the black t-shirt and jean shorts put his sandaled foot up on the body of the car and attempted to jerk the door open. The man in the red plaid shirt and jeans beat on the windows. The other man and the trucker holding his arm paced around the other side of the vehicle, unable, it appeared, to gain purchase.
Sharon could smell her panicked sweat mix with the body spray to create a kind of musk that made her stomach revolt. She looked into the rearview mirror. Her face slick with perspiration. She looked back to the passenger side mirror and saw the man in the black t-shirt move away from the sedan and squat, cradling his head in his hands.
It was getting harder to see as the fiery sunset faded to dusk. Should she help? Should she get out and walk towards the wreck? She wasn’t very strong, but she figured maybe she could help them stay calm. Did they need to stay calm? Were the sedan’s occupants dead? Was it one person? Two? Children? Pets? She could see next to nothing now.
She sat in her darkening car and remembered that that car was meant to be her own. That she was supposed to be crushed behind the wheel with a handful of men trying to save her life. God, she thought, I sound so pathetic. I’m alive. She smiled and said out loud in the quiet hum of her car’s cabin, “I’m alive.”
She looked in the passenger mirror again and could make out only vague shapes near the sideways semi. Okay, I am going to go help them. I can’t just drive off. What if someone found out I was here and just drove away? How would that look? No, I have to make an effort. She cut the engine.
Just as she started to open the driver’s side door, her phone rang. She could see Maggie’s name come up on her phone screen. I can’t answer it now. I have to go see. Go check. What happened when they hit? What would have happened to me if I would have hit the billboard post? How bad would the damage have been?
Wait, she didn’t need to see that. She was alive. She didn’t die. She didn’t drive into the post. The phone stopped ringing.
She sat in the quiet darkness of her car. She could just keep driving. Call Maggie on the way. Let her know she had seen an accident. But they didn’t need her help.
No, she was going to get out and walk to the wreck. She slipped her phone into the front pocket of her crossbody and pulled the strap over her head. The phone started ringing again. Maggie, she knew without looking. No one else but spammers ever called her. She let it go to voicemail, and opened her car door. She stepped out and turned just in time to see an ambulance barreling in her direction. Before she could get back inside her car, the ambulance hit her, pushing her and her car off the road.
Early the next morning Maggie, who was a little hungover, read on the WPXI’s Facebook page: “Woman Struck by Ambulance; Killed.” She added her sad face emoji to the 32 others without bothering to read the article.
