Free The Way Life Should Be by Christina Baker Kline Page B

happened. And now I’m sitting here on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere, and I only called you because I don’t know what else to do.”
    “Jeez,” he says. “That’s rough luck, Angela. You got Triple A?”
    “No.”
    He lets out a sigh. “I don’t know what to tell ya. You gotta get to a gas station.”

    “I know. I just—I don’t know where I am.”
    “Have you thought about hitchin’?”
    “‘Hitchin’ ’?” I repeat dumbly.
    “Maybe you can get a ride to the nearest station.”
    “Where I come from, people who hitchhike end up in gulleys without their heads.”
    “Aw, c’mon. You’re in Maine. Stuff like that doesn’t happen up here. Not usually, anyways.”
    Is it my imagination, or has his Maine accent gotten thicker since I spoke to him yesterday?
    As we’re talking, there’s a knock on my window. I look up to see a Maine state trooper with a shiny gold badge motioning for me to roll down the glass.
     
    The whole time the kindly state trooper is giving me a lift to a Mobil station off the next exit, helping me fill the gas can the owner keeps in the back (apparently I’m not the only one who runs out of gas on these long stretches of road), ferrying me back to my car, waiting to make sure it starts, and giving me his number in case something else happens, I’m replaying the conversation with Rich in my mind.
    Like white blood cells, rationalizations rush to the site of my wounded pride to minimize the damage. I did catch him off guard. I wasn’t clear; he thought I was on Mount Desert Island already—of course he was surprised. It was childish to call him. I didn’t know where I was; how could I expect him to come to the rescue?
    Then, I can’t help myself, I start scratching the scab. He could have responded better in a dozen different ways. A little empathy, for a start. “That’s awful” or “I’m so sorry” or “What can I do to help?” He could’ve offered some practical advice, like calling911. The state trooper says I could have pinpointed my location by giving a dispatcher a mile marker.
    Tim, the state trooper, is all of twenty-three. He has a blond buzz cut and glasses, and it is his second year on the force. As he drives me around, he tells me about the obstacle course police trainees have to maneuver before they get to drive a cruiser. “Even at a hundred miles an hour, I’m probably the safest car on the road,” he says. On his shooting test he got a perfect score from twenty yards, then five and ten and twenty. “What do you aim at?” I ask, and he spreads his freckled young hand over his chest. “Body mass,” he says. “It’s unfortunate, but if you aim for the leg and hit a little kid behind the guy instead, there’s nobody to blame but yourself.”
    I can tell he hasn’t been on the job long, or doesn’t run into many people on the road, because he is so eager to talk. He’s the youngest of four kids; he grew up listening to his parents’ music, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, and that kind of soft rock is still his favorite.
    After he drives off, it occurs to me that I now know more about Tim than I do about Richard, the man I am on my way to see. My supposed soul mate.
     
    The highway is long and empty, narrowing from four lanes to three and then two, and flanked by trees, only trees. Who has ever seen such colors in nature? Vermilion, brilliant gold, hunting jacket orange, olive green—the colors of L.L. Bean turtlenecks. I feel as if I’m passing through a magical forest.
    Just before Bangor I veer off I-95 North to 395 East. The trees fall away and soon I am coasting up and down wide, sloping hills. Cottages that look quaint from a peak are revealed, in the valley, to be modest dwellings with cheap siding and dismantled trucks in the side yards. I pass through Ellsworth, or at least itscommercial strip, a gauntlet of strip malls and fast-food restaurants culminating in a Wal-Mart that sits on the edge of town like a fat