Anywhere but Here

What people are saying about Jenny Gardiner's books:

A fun, sassy read! A cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a chocolate cupcake...you just want more.

—Meg Cabot, NY Times bestselling author of Princess Diaries, Queen of Babble and more, on Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

With a strong yet delightfully vulnerable voice, food critic Abbie Jennings embarks on a soulful journey where her love for banana cream pie and disdain for ill-fitting Spanx clash in hilarious and heartbreaking ways. As her body balloons and her personal life crumbles, Abbie must face the pain and secret fears she's held inside for far too long. I cheered for her the entire way.

—Beth Hoffman, NY Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt on Slim to None

Jenny Gardiner has done it again—this fun, fast-paced book is a great summer read.

—Sarah Pekkanen, NY Times bestselling author of The Opposite of Me, on Slim to None

"As Sweet as a song and sharp as a beak, Bite Me really soars as a memoir about family—children and husbands, feathers and fur—and our capacity to keep loving though life may occasionally bite."

—Wade Rouse, bestselling author of At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream

ANYWHERE BUT HERE

by

Jenny Gardiner

PUBLISHED BY

Jenny Gardiner

Anywhere But Here

Copyright 2010, 2015 by Jenny Gardiner

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All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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ANYWHERE BUT HERE

Chapter 1

I’VE never actually considered divorcing my husband. Murdering? Yes. But divorce? Never.

We’re at the same restaurant at which we’ve eaten every fourth month for the past decade of my life. It’s a pleasant little French bistro, fancy without being pretentious. The sort of place where—despite the formality of the waiters’ white dinner jackets—the din of guests’ conversations makes you feel as if you’re in a far more casual cocktail lounge, not an uppity dining establishment. All around me people are chattering, some laughing, some gesturing with vivid European-type hand flourishes. Doing what normal people do when dining out. God, how I envy them.

How dare you allow margarine to accompany this handsome example of artisanal bread? My husband Richard confronts the waiter, hoisting the offending spread toward the man’s face, his voice slightly elevated with agitation. "I see it’s been well-kneaded. You can tell by the lack of large air holes. It’s tender, slightly moist, not too chewy. It deserves a real butter to showcase its glory."

I sit in silence next to Richard. Next to him, not across from him, as is the custom when two people dine out. Richard always insists that I’m perched abruptly to his left in a booth, shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh, like Siamese twins, leaving us both to stare at the empty seats across from us as if taking in a dull play. While Richard interrogates the waiter, my imploring eyes beg the man to rescue me from my captor, my albatross, my husband of the past twenty years.

I reach for a piece of bread with my right hand, only to have it intercepted by Richard’s left one. Ah, ah, ah. One piece of bread is enough, Mary Kate. You’ll spoil your dinner if you eat any more. And at these prices—

My husband’s name is Richard, but I often mentally refer to him as Dick. As in what a dick.

In my mind, I’ve got a gun pointed impassively at his head. Nothing fancy, a simple little handgun. Shiny, black, metal—cold to the touch, but warm with the promise of what could be.

This rockfish, Richard points at the menu as he drones to the waiter. "Is it adorned with a watercress sauce that has been pureed and strained? Because I won’t touch it if it has any strands of fiber in it. And is the fish farm-raised along the eastern seaboard? I can’t abide it if it comes from any further than that, it simply won’t be fresh enough."

A dew of sweat has broken out between the thin bands of what hair remains on his exposed pate, a barometer of his now-evident annoyance. Richard likes things to be just so. Anything that departs from the manner in which he expects it can elicit his ire, in the form of verbal redress, infantile temper tantrum, or embarrassingly impulsive physical demonstrations to get his point across. He once hurled a stale dinner roll at a waiter who insisted it had been cooked fresh that day.

My sweaty palm clutches tightly around the gun, like a child’s apprehensive hand gripping a parent’s protective one.

I close my eyes, in part to escape his omnipresence, but also to savor the fantasy for just a few minutes more.

This pinot noir from Oregon just cannot compare to the one we had last time from Washington State, don’t you agree? he blathers on with an air of pomposity, not really wanting me to respond. I tell you, I don’t trust those screw caps on wine bottles. They’re not natural. Sit up straight, Mary Kate. Elbows off the table. Oh, and Joe? Your name is Joe, right?

Joseph, sir, the waiter corrects him. Of course he’s a Joseph. With his artfully-styled chestnut hair undulating gracefully like a soft cloud atop his scalp, and those dimpled cheeks accenting a knowing smile. His barely-there eyeglasses are his only concession to physical imperfection. He’s no Joe. He’s a Joseph. "And it is fresh butter, sir. From Turning Point Farm, right up the road. We serve only the best."

Then why does it spread so easily? Butter usually arrives hard at the table. Richard’s left eye twitches with distrust.

We allow it to come to room temperature before serving it, sir, Joseph the waiter says. It’s delivered to us fresh daily.

"Right. So, uh, Joe, these oysters on the menu, do you really think Chef should be serving oysters? It’s not a month with an r in it." Spoken with the air of authority with which every utterance from Richard’s mouth is accompanied, whether or not he does know a thing about it.

My hand trembles momentarily, not from hesitation, but more from a wave of climax-like pleasure that comes with knowing that with one squeeze of the trigger I could put an end to my ongoing misery. I absentmindedly stroke the handle with my thumb, a worry-bead motion that soothes away any anxieties I might have.

Well, I’ve decided what I’m having, Richard says, his arms moving in unison in a swagger of confidence as he rubs his hands together. And I’ve decided what the little lady is having as well.

Joseph’s eyebrows work in opposition to one another, curious that the verbally flatulent man before him chooses his wife’s meal and forces her to sit in the force-field of his Svengali-esque thrall like some purple Kool-Aid-guzzling cult follower.

I need to pull the trigger. I need to pull the trigger. I need to pull the trigger.

Mary Kate, stop muttering, he reprimands me.

Christ, I didn’t realize I was actually vocalizing my fantasy. Not a good sign.

The young lady, Richard pauses, giving the waiter a conspiratorial wink, then continues, The young lady will have the mussels Parisienne, the pork-stuffed fennel salad, the pan-seared duck grillade, and a caramelized kumquat soufflé. Of course I understand it is entirely out of sequence to include the dessert order at this time, but I know that Chef needs advanced notice for such a delicate treat.

Dear God, shut him up.

I realize that once the American Express bill arrives, for this order alone, I will be chastised for the next three to four months for my spending habits, even though in truth I am at the mercy of not my spending habits but rather Richard’s. In reality, I hate mussels, or any other sea-going creature that can be potentially construed as a bottom feeder, with the exception of lobster, which he’ll never let me order. I wouldn’t know the difference between a stuffed fennel or a stuffed funnel, duck makes me break out in hives, and I cannot stand kumquats, whatever the hell they are, and will inevitably pass my dessert onto Richard regardless.

The décor here reminds me of a restaurant I ate in during a trip to Elmira back in ninety-eight. Richard loves to compare and contrast. While he exults in restaurants past, I mourn the departure of our waiter, my only hope of elevating this meal to something more than the practice in tedium that it is. Well, perhaps it’s more like that place in Paducah, back in oh-three. Walls were a similar shade of gray, the bar wasn’t quite that dark of a mahogany, however.

I toss out a few yes, dears and how interestings to Richard just to feign that I give a care, but it doesn’t matter anyhow. Richard is only interested in Richard, and I’m just here for, well, actually, I’m never quite sure why I’m here. It’s not like I go along to many restaurants with the man anyhow. I almost feel as if I’m here to ensure that he has someone nearby to whom he can show off.

When Joseph returns with my unwanted mussels, he places the bowl in front of me. My husband has other plans, however, and switches it in front of his own place and begins unhinging the shells, extracting the meager portion of phlegmy meat and fork-feeding it to me. It matters not that I’ve told Richard countless times that I don’t like mussels. With each of these meals it’s as if he’s opening up a book he’s never read before.

Richard, please, you go on and finish them, I say just to get him off my back. I catch Joseph watching my husband force-feed me mussels—like I’m a goose being prepared for a future as pate—with mild amusement. Or perhaps pity. No doubt the kitchen staff will be hearing about me in a matter of minutes. I’ll recognize the guffaws emanating from that direction.

My entrée arrives, and Richard reaches across and cuts my meat into bite-sized pieces for me against my wishes.

Don’t mind if I help myself to a bite of your duck, he chuckles with a Guy Smiley-like talk show host tone. At least one of us is having some fun. Mary Kate, you must try this calves liver. It’s almost as good as the one I had in Sheboygan that time during that veneers and implants sales conference. He stuffs a bite of the foul meat into my unwilling mouth. I turn to my left and spit it immediately into my white linen napkin. I can’t help but think the bloody chunk of chewed meat is about the size entry hole a bullet would leave in his skull.

If I pull the trigger now, after this ritual force-feeding of organ meat, I think the judge would let me off. The old calves-liver-in-Sheboygan defense. Any reasonable jurist would understand.

Now, I’m flying out tomorrow afternoon, Mary Kate. I’ll be gone for a week. I’ll need you to pick up my dry cleaning for me before I leave. And you’ll have an early supper ready for me as well. You know I don’t like to travel on an empty belly. He rubs his stomach for emphasis. I’ve got a busy day; I’ll have to be up at oh-dark-thirty.

I nod my compliance, unable or unwilling to engage in conversation with the man, yet oddly incapable of stirring up a thought in my brain that would enable me to escape my painfully monotonous existence. Well, hardly a thought. The flash of steel from that fantasy handgun flickers in and out of my mind like a hummingbird flitting in and out of the bowl of a petunia, with each glimpse a little nectar for my famished soul.

Joseph finally brings the desserts to the table and I’m silently grateful that at least Richard can’t cut a soufflé up. Alas, instead he insists on spooning it into my mouth like I’m a six-month old eating jarred Gerber’s squash supper. He even scrapes around the edges of my lips with the spoon, just as I’ve seen young mothers do with their babies to keep things neat and tidy and under control.

I suppose I can only be glad that these meals don’t occur more often, that my public humiliation is limited to three times a year. And that Richard spends enough time on the road that I do not always have to be ministered to like a marionette attached to strings. But I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been at this for far too long. That maybe my fantasizing about blowing the head off of my husband just might be a sign that I need to get out of here. Now.

Chapter 2

Have you ever thought about picking up a hitchhiker?

God, I could probably count the hundreds of times I’ve driven past a guy hitchhiking—they’re always men, aren’t they?—and actually recoiled at the idea of picking one up. Yet all the while I felt the tug of the siren’s lure. The thrill of the illicit calling to me. Live a little, Mary Kate. And for a millisecond—the amount of time it would take for a snake’s tongue to flicker out and back—I’d slow down. Only to speed up and drive nervously onward. My God, I could never pick up a dirty, creepy hitchhiker!

~*~

Years ago, when Richard and I honeymooned in Niagara Falls, I saw a warning emblazoned with skull and crossbones in a tourist pamphlet: it cautioned visitors never to stare at the lip of the waterfall. Something about that mesmerizing turquoise ribbon of water tempts people to jump in.

Take a leap of faith, Mary Kate.

This is precisely what I’m thinking as I drive along the Richmond Highway in my white 1994 Crown Victoria (must be a good car if state troopers drive it, Richard always said) headed into town to retrieve Thankless Dick’s suits at the cleaners.

I’m at a stoplight, about to get onto the interstate, taking my usual shortcut into town. That light takes forever. Normally I file my nails waiting for it to turn green, or maybe I’ll check my grocery list, change radio stations, anything to while away the boredom of waiting. One might wonder why I get bored waiting at a five-minute stoplight yet haven’t been bored waiting forty-one goddamned years to do something exciting in my life.

At any rate, I already filed my nails at the last traffic light, and I don’t have any groceries to buy; the pantry is stocked full. I only have Richard’s ill-fitting suits awaiting me, and Rush Limbaugh on the radio repeating all of his stale platitudes that Richard told me I should believe. And I have. Because he said so. Rush is berating some poor sobbing woman whose son was killed recently in the war. I think her point was that if there were no war she’d still be able to pick up the phone and tell him she loved him. So sue her for missing her baby boy.

I’m getting angry at Rush for being insensitive and I’ve got my finger pointed out, ready to change the station, when instead of looking down at the radio I look up. And that’s when I see Him. No, not Rush Limbaugh. And I don’t mean Him in any religious sense, either. I mean Him. A hitchhiker. Like a mirage, just waiting for thirsty me, crawling along the desert of my parched life, not even knowing how badly I am in need of some liquid nourishment like the kind he might have to offer.

He’s like no hitchhiker I’d ever seen before. Not filthy and unkempt, like most of them; he doesn’t look dodgy or dangerous at all. And he certainly doesn’t look like any of the wanted photos I’ve seen on the bulletin board at the post office. Not a mug-shot kind of face. No, siree. He more resembles the Boy Most Likely To Succeed: Wholesome. Handsome. Athletic. Gorgeous.

He reminds me of s grown-up version of Christopher Atkins in The Blue Lagoon: a Golden Boy. A tangle of flaxen curls spilling from his head like the froth from an overpoured head of beer. A crooked grin exposing orthodontia’d teeth gleaming white—the brilliant white of a polar ice cap—in the noontime sun. His white t-shirt is removed and dangles from his waistband, exposing a smooth, bare and tanned chest glimmering with sweat. He has a shark’s tooth dangling from a leather cord around his neck.

His eyes are a rare shade of green, like the color of a valuable stone you might exult in if you discovered it while excavating ancient ruins—very precious. Yet more still than the color, I’m drawn to the flicker of sadness that dashes across them as he sees me slowing down to pull over. As if he maybe doesn’t want me to stop. I don’t know.

But I do know the sight of him triggers something in me. Not something necessarily sexual, mind you. In truth, nothing stirs anything sexual in this desiccated-egg vessel I’ve become. Hasn’t in a long time. But if anyone could have, it would most definitely be Him.

No, perhaps it’s something maternal, I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got that son-less mother pining for her lost soldier boy on my mind, and any handsome young man would remind me of him. But as soon as I see Him, sockless in his worn-out Teva sandals, khaki shorts overflowing with pockets, nothing but a knapsack slung casually over his bare shoulder and sunglasses cocked atop his curls, I know what I have to do. It’s not like I’m hearing voices or anything. No sinister goings-on, which is what Richard would say. No, I just know it’s the right thing, what I’m about to do, no matter what the outcome. I know it’s all about Mary Kate Dupree, finding some life in her lifeless existence.

~*~

Once when I was a child I was riding in the car with my mother not far from our rural Virginia house when we passed a man standing alongside the two-lane road, his arm out, thumb extended, hoping for a lift. It was a fairly lonely stretch of highway, really. That man could’ve waited hours till another car might come by.

Why don’t you give him a ride, I urged her. He looks tired.

Mary Kate. My mother glared toward the man over her black-rimmed cats-eye glasses, her coiffed hair not budging against the wind even though the window was rolled down. You are never to ask such a foolish question ever again, do you hear me? We do not mingle with the likes of him. He’s filthy. My God, he has a beard. And long hair in a ponytail.

As she spat out his description his appearance rapidly grew darker and more menacing in my mind. The guy practically sprouted snakes from his scalp.

Men like that want only to harm nice ladies like us, Mary Kate, my mother admonished. Always remember, you are a dignified lady.

~*~

I remember that warning. Even as the alarm bells are going off in my head, the ghost of my once-proper Southern mother hollering out at me: you’re a lady, Mary Kate!, still I can’t help but stare directly at the lip of the falls and take a running leap over that taunting edge and just hope for the best. I don’t have any other choice, really. It’s that or blow my husband’s head off. And I’m not prepared to trade my figurative prison for a literal one.

Chapter 3

"You need a ride?" I duck my head down to be seen from the passenger window as I stop along the right-hand shoulder of the on-ramp. I look to my left and right and in my rear-view mirror, almost fearful Richard will be right there to stop me with what I’m about to do. All I see are trees buffering the highway and a few anonymous cars accelerating along my left side to get onto the highway.

My heartbeat has quickened from its usual box step rhythm to something more like a lively merengue. I don’t know if it’s obvious to Him but I feel like I’m beginning to pant, like my old dog Hank used to do before a thunderstorm.

Christ, I hope my hands don’t sweat like Hank’s paws did. That dog left a damp trail of prints on our linoleum kitchen floor most days during the summer months when the steamy July and August heat collided with cold in the upper atmosphere to create raucous storms that often left even me wanting to seek the safety of a dog house. I can feel a late summer kind of storm brewing inside of me now.

The hitchhiker cocks one blond brow toward me as he sizes me up and down.

Yeah, I could use one, he says slowly with a hint of a drawl. His gentle voice is a bath of tropical waters washing over me. If it had a flavor, I’d say it was key lime, or maybe pina colada. You sure?

Am I sure? Hell, no, I could never be sure. But I am positive. That I am indeed. I inhale deeply, a newborn taking the first breath of life, and exhale, savoring the bold new aroma of the unknown.

Sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Hop in. I hit the power unlock button with a cross between trepidation and confidence not borne of any previous experience.

Dear God, I hope the sun’s planning to rise for me tomorrow. I say a little prayer to my namesake Saint Mary—patron saint of, among other things, penitent sinners, glove makers, reformed prostitutes, pharmacists and (God help me) sexual temptation—for my safe transport. I don’t know that I fit into any of those categories, but I figure it can’t hurt. And it sure would stink if I went out on a limb for once in my damned life, only to find myself the gullible victim of some insane serial killer. If Mary Magdalene’s willing to lend me some moral support, I’ll take what I can get.

For a minute I try to picture what Richard would say to me right now. The storm tide of his constant disapproval floods my