Each night I scan my children’s faces for some sign of distress. I’ve oversensitized myself to the point where I consider every instance of lethargy or aggression to be some fallout from our lousy parenting. I never stay at work past 6 p.m. and I no longer entertain. Work has become simply a means to a paycheck and the paycheck is just to cover the day-to-day expenses for this unhappy existence. That evening in New Jersey where everything changed yet again, I was just a harried worker, needing to get home to her kids.
I was about halfway home when I stopped in Rutherford, New Jersey. I needed a bathroom so badly and couldn’t make it all the way home. I took an exit and entered a town of old brick buildings where the businesses had names like Luigi’s and Carmine’s though everyone appeared to be Hispanic. I saw a Burger King, home of the easily accessible toilet. I jumped out of my rented Ford Taurus, locked the doors, and went into the stall with toilet water chemically coaxed to purple. I placed the keys on top of the toilet paper holder, that shelf too small to hold a purse but large enough to be in the way of getting to the paper. But in a rushed attempt to get out of the stall and back to the turnpike, I swung to hit the flusher with my foot. My size-101/2 pointy-toed boot caught the Hertz key ring in just the right place and knocked the keys into the toilet, where they splashed the second I pushed my foot against the flusher. While I tried to tell myself that I hadn’t actually done what I did, I waited in vain for them to appear at the bottom of the toilet as the water settled. I pleaded with invisible forces to reverse the actions of those last two seconds while I suppose the swirling vortex of keys headed speedily on their way to some wastewater treatment plant in New Jersey. I was instantly a transportationless, frantic, pathetic mother who couldn’t manage to get home to pick her children up from their father’s one-bedroom sex pad because she flushed her Ford Taurus keys down the toilet.
I stood motionless in the locked stall, and I begged for a do-over. In fact I demanded a big do-over, a many-years, many-choices do-over and I wanted it to begin right away. I had always been the good girl, the cooperative one, the girl who didn’t party too much or get facial tattoos or sleep with strangers. I was the one who answered the teacher’s questions, who did her homework, who opted to rise early and work late after everyone else left. Shouldn’t it be guaranteed for that girl to not have her life turn out like this? Isn’t there a pact with some sacred being, a deal with the angels? I didn’t realize I was actually pounding on the metal wall that separated my stall from the one next to me. I didn’t realize I was moaning in some guttural, frightening way that would send little girls running for their mommies. I also don’t know how long it went on.
Some man was sent in to save me from myself though I could hardly see him through my tears. I caught sight of something paper and golden on his head that appeared to be some sort of crown. I think he was the King of Burgers, and somehow he got assigned to the lunatic in the ladies’ room. He was a nice man, large and Spanish-speaking. I know enough Spanish to understand the word loca, spoken into a radio receiver. He was telling people this white lady in an expensive suit was nuts. He put his large, brown arms around me in an effort to contain me but I interpreted this as his desire to hug me. I hugged him right back, with a force that I’m sure surprised him. I couldn’t hold tightly enough to his thick middle that smelled like French fries. My ferocious grip caused his crown to fall into the toilet but I didn’t let go, wouldn’t let go of this adult-sized human who felt strong and supportive and in charge of something, even if it was security at the Rutherford Burger King.
Eventually my heart, which had been racing, slowed. I heard people come and go, turning on water, pushing on hand dryers, sighing at us just standing there in our open second stall. Another man came to the door to ask if he was okay and he said, “No problema.”
I pushed back enough to read the name tag on the man’s shirt. “Leonardo,” it read. He winced and adjusted the tag and only then did I realize it had opened and I’d been stabbing him with the pin. He even had droplets of blood forming on his mustard-yellow shirt.
“Lo siento,” I said, reaching for toilet paper to dab at his wound.
He shook his head and squeezed my shoulders and said, “You’re okay.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
I thought about my next move, about how I should call Hertz or call a locksmith. I thought of the fact it was now 6 p.m. and that Friday evening at 6 p.m. in New Jersey is probably a time that all locksmiths and all Hertz car rental agents have universally agreed to go home. It’s the time that no human should ever do something stupid.