It was a pickup truck, dirty blue, with a gash in the driver’s side door from some other angry episode. We pulled into the gas station right after he’d hit me harder than the usual. I heard a thunk inside my head, followed by stars and the weird hot metal smell of an iron heating up. There was a little whitewashed clapboard church across the road with yellow flowers in front. There was also a pool hall within running distance on my side of the truck, but those flowers got my attention. When he went to pay for the gas, I grabbed my bag out of the back and ran across the road to the church. I slipped inside and crawled under one of the front pews while two old ladies cleaned around me. I was only there a minute before he stormed in. One of the ladies, bucket and mop in hand, asked if he was looking for Jesus. Since even he wouldn’t hit an old lady in a house of God, he shuffled out, I wished I’d seen it, and soon enough I heard the pickup gurgle as he drove off away.

One of the ladies said I could come out, the other offered me ice tea. I climbed a ladder to wash the windows they couldn’t reach and that night a biker chick I met at the pool hall let me sleep on her sofa. In the morning, I hitched a ride home with a bug-eyed hillbilly driving a big truck who must have done 100 the whole time.

He was from the New Orleans crew who ate at the restaurant where I was the waitress. There was also a gang of Texans who looked like peace and love hippies. And a bunch of badass pot growers from Alabama who drove souped up Caddies that could out run any sheriff’s vehicle. These were not bumpkins, and I fit right in with my lipstick red hair and elaborate silver and turquoise jewelry. When I moved in with him, I hadn’t even started to unpack before he yelled at me. He ran hot or cold, I never knew which he'd be and I spent most of my time trying to stay one step ahead of him, it was exhausting. When he moved out, he left some of his furniture behind and stuck me with the bills. I pushed his stuff out on the porch; when he came to pick it up and saw what I had done, he shut off the utilities with a monkey wrench. Later, I was bad mouthing him at a bar saying I wished his new house would burn down when the woman next to me leaned back and there he was. The room froze, just like in an old western movie; we glared at each other for a cold moment before I walked out. That same night, his new place did burn to the ground along with his truck, which was filled with what he’d rescued earlier from the porch. He got out just in time, he swore I had cursed him and caused it. 

Odd, I dreamed about him hopping around barefoot in front of a bonfire when it was actually happening.

Early on, when things still looked good with him, he took me to Mardi Gras. He told me bayou ghost stories as we drove along the Mississippi with spooky Spanish moss swaying from the trees, and on the day of the big parade, he wrote the address of where we were staying on my arm in case I got lost. Which, of course, I did. We were dancing with the crowd and suddenly he was gone. I bobbed around trying to find him until I saw a cop and showed him the address on my arm; he walked me to the bus stop to make sure I caught the right one. I showed the address to the bus driver too and when I sat down, I realized my shoes were missing. I thought I loved him at the time, I do know he didn’t love me. Years later, I heard he was born-again and preaching to his own congregation. He was the first of the three blond Irish-American men I’ve been with who’ve tried to wreck my life; you’d think once would have been enough to learn my lesson.

During the summer break between my junior and senior years in college, when my parents were living on a US Army base in Germany, my mother took me on a bus tour of Italy. She had said it was the only thing left she wanted to do, see Italy, and the way she said it scared me. It went well, although she’d have kept me on a leash if there’d been one handy, especially in Venice. But by the time we reached Florence she calmed down and I managed to escape her clutches long enough to trance out in front of Botticelli’s Three Graces. We had heard a howling dog outside our hotel window the night before and she, a big fan of Barnabus Collins on the soap opera Dark Shadows, asked the breakfast waiter about vampires. Confused by the question, he stared blankly at her until she made fangs with her fingers. Shrinking back in horror, he sent another waiter with our coffee. Thinking this was hysterical, she told the story at dinner to our table mates on the tour. Then I talked about my theory that angels are really aliens. The other tourists on our bus avoided us from that point on.

After I was back at school, two months later, she killed herself.

Just before I returned to the States, she took me for a drive along the Rhine. We stopped at an ancient church at the top of a hill and sat on a wooden bench just inside the door while a wedding was going on. The bride insisted we eat with them afterwards at the banquet table they had set up in the courtyard. Later we parked beside the river to watch the barges go by. A family was playing ping-pong on one while their dog barked at the mother who, her hair pinned up in rollers, was hanging out laundry. The sister and daughter of sailors, my mother declared that living on the river would have been a perfect life. Still eating our sandwiches from the wedding banquet, we got out of the car as a pair of swans, so small and pretty on the water, swam towards us. My mother tore up her sandwich and tossed the pieces at the swans. Their shiny eyes locked on the food as they plucked it from the water. I handed the rest of my sandwich to my mother as the swans clamored ashore. Marching over to us, suddenly enormous, the male snatched the bread from her happy hand as the smaller female, she was as tall as me, studied my buttons before turning to her mate hissing and snapped at the food in his beak. Splashing back in the water without even a second glance, they glided off with the current. Speechless, my mother stood for a moment before driving us home as the green hills of the Rhine valley rushed by our car windows. Three days later, there was a terrible moment when my father demanded she and I say our goodbyes at the house because she might make a scene at the airport. He had his own agenda for wanting me alone, which led to an airport scene between the two of us much worse than one my mother would have ever caused; but as she waved goodbye from the kitchen doorway, I knew I’d never see her again.

He buried her at the military cemetery in Arlington even though she’d always said she wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered over water. He also lied to her brothers, saying it had been a car accident. She did, in fact, die in the car, after locking herself in and washing a bottle of pills down with some of his gin before turning on the exhaust. He remarried a few months later and tried to bribe me into keeping his secret from the rest of the family. I choose not to speak to him now, but I know he has two grown sons I’ve never met because that’s the way I want it.

Shortly before I left New York for Cape Cod, I visited an old college friend in DC and we spent a couple of hours at the Arlington Cemetery. After a search of the records, we found my mother across from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I tucked my AA anniversary coin, it was for 21 years, which is how old I was when she died, into the dirt that edged her stone where nobody would see it. I’d like to have her exhumed once my father’s gone and honor her request to be cremated and scattered across water. There are lots of ponds here, or maybe Herring Cove.

Do swans ever swim in the Provincetown harbor?