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“So here’s a question for you,” she said, staying where she was. “Were those your videos I saw you put in the back? Videos of the documentary Meryl has told us you’ve been working on in Rhode Island? About fishermen?”
“About their wives,” I corrected. “Yes, those were my tapes,” I said. Because they were my tapes. They were, in the absolutely painful past tense of the word. I imagined I could salvage a few of them—but there was very little I could do to get most of them back, most of the stories that would die with them. Still, it was possible some of the tapes could be saved. It was possible that this wasn’t over yet.
“I don’t know much about videos, but they looked kind of . . . troubled,” Dr. Moynihan-Richards said.
Thanks, genius, I wanted to say. But I ignored him, or I tried to. He was leaning forward now too, his arms locked around the empty passenger seat.
Mrs. M-R shot him a look. “Meryl was saying you try to make movies that end well? That that’s your overall movie-making goal?”
I nodded, even though it made me cringe a little to hear someone say it out loud. It just sounded so hokey, and also it reminded me how far I’d been from finding this film’s ending, how I had been just about equally far from one with my endless tapes of footage as I was now that my footage was ruined.
He caught my eye in the rearview, squinting at me, apparently entirely unsatisfied with my nod-as-response answer. “But don’t you think that’s a bit of a sad enterprise?” he said. “Trying to make movies in that way?”
“Which way?” I asked him.
“Happy,” he said.
“Well, not to be the bearer of bad news here,” Mrs. Moynihan-Richards said, “but I think we’re missing the larger issue, which is why you’d choose to put your footage in a garbage bag in the first place. On the subconscious level, at least, there is no question that disposal had to be your main intention. The placement of the tapes in the garbage bag alone makes that much clear.”
Dr. Moynihan-Richards nodded at his wife in agreement. I had forgotten for a minute that they were sociology professors, but I remembered it again in how they were looking at each other, how they were looking at me, like a case study. A case study of a girl who put everything she thought mattered most right into the garbage. The only problem with their theory was that, in my experience, my subconscious worked in trickier ways. Considering how I’d been living the last few years, I thought I could make a fairly compelling argument that if I were really trying to get rid of the tapes, a garbage bag would be the last place I’d put them.
Dr. M-R leaned closer to me. “So did you really think that you’d finish the film eventually? That you’d find the ending you were looking for?”
I turned my eyes back to the road. “I think I was hoping something else would happen.”
“Which was what?”
I looked right at them. “That someone would tell me,” I said.
“Tell you what?” Mrs. M-R said.
“What to do next,” I said.
She looked at me for another second before sitting back again, holding her wine jug closer to herself, looking back out the window. Dr. M-R followed suit.
“Well,” she said. “That’s even sadder.”
Then she was quiet. So was he. But I could still feel them sneaking looks at me, even when they thought I couldn’t anymore: not mean looks, but looks of pity, which were worse as far as I was concerned. I could feel their looks, and I could feel my heart beating, and the tapes—in the back—I swear: I could feel them weighing the wagon completely down.
And before I could think about it anymore—because I really couldn’t think about it anymore—I pulled the car off the highway, onto the shoulder, and halted the ignition. And with the Moynihan-Richardses of the Ozark Mountains as my only witnesses, I took the bag of tapes out of the back and threw it. I threw it as far as my hands and injured foot would let me—as far as I could throw it away from me. They almost looked like seagulls, the tapes did, flying out of the top of the bag into the distance. Sick seagulls, more like, dying seagulls. Because they landed in the grass, no more than ten feet from where they started.
I wouldn’t say I was happy looking out at them—the defeated remai
ns of the last three years of my life—but I did have a feeling of relief. I was deeply relieved that, if nothing else, I wasn’t dying out there with them.
I got back in the station wagon and, without a word, turned on the ignition and headed back out onto the highway, back in the direction of home. It was only when we were moving again that Mrs. Moynihan-Richards spoke.
She kept her voice down low. “Can I go ahead and assume that you have other copies?”
“Only,” I said, “if you want to assume wrong.”
I don’t remember all that clearly saying good-bye to the Moynihan-Richardses, and getting myself into the house. Getting the M-Rs into their RV, getting them gone. When I was inside, though, the entire place was empty, and incredibly quiet. Almost eerily so. I still wasn’t quite sure what to take from that car ride with them yet, how to digest exactly what I’d left on the roadside. I didn’t feel any relief that the tapes were gone from me now—that my never-ending project had found an ending. I didn’t feel a great sadness either though. If I had to name it, what I did feel was a space opening up inside me—a larger space than I could remember being there in a long time. I felt longing.
I went into the kitchen and wrote a quick note on my mom’s panda-bear pad and taped it to the front door.
This is what it said: “Go away now. Thanks!”
Then I headed up to my room, slowly. I didn’t turn any lights on as I felt my way toward the familiar staircase, crawling up the stairs to my bedroom, and opened the door half-expecting to find anything except what I found.
