Chapter 1: The Provocation
Michelle had sampled too much holiday wine at the family Thanksgiving gathering. It showed not only in slurred syllables but also in her uninhibited responses to a discussion initiated by my husband Dan, who led her on for his own amusement.
I forget what started this dialogue, but it had evolved into the question of whether women in the service were cut out to be fighter pilots, where a lot of maneuvering was necessary in short periods of time. Dan’s opinion was clear.
“The fair sex simply doesn’t function well in time and space,” he asserted. “There is no better proof of that, Michelle, than the trip to Alabama that Lisa and you took several years ago, when you got slightly diverted en route.”
“Big deal — we took the wrong road for a few miles,” Michelle told him.
“More like 500 miles in the wrong direction, wasn’t it?” Dan asked, a smug smile on his face.
“Dan, you don’t know the half of what happened on that trip,” Michelle said. “You and Lisa had broken up at the time, and Lisa and I were just two care-free single girls on a road trip, going where the wind blew us, up for adventure.” She paused and laughed at a memory. “Anyway, we didn’t pay enough attention to the route, but it certainly turned out to be a fine adventure, and Lisa engineered a clever mail-order way to get her dirty laundry done.”
The children had congregated around us, starting to pay attention to this unusual banter of their elders, which had branched out from the usual boring subjects. They were clearly intrigued by this last remark. As was Dan. It was time for me to step in and break it up.
“Dan, why don’t you give a hand moving those tables and chairs back into place. And Michelle, we should really help with the dishes.” I reinforced the suggestion by giving Michelle a hard look, and taking her arm. She caught on, and we moved toward the kitchen. When out of earshot, I said, “Do you really want our kids to hear some of the details about that trip? Or our husbands either?”
She chortled. “Well, Dan brought it up. And he was so smug, I was tempted to enlighten him a little.” She took a sip from her glass, then added, “Okay, you’re right. I suppose some of it is inappropriate subject matter for a family gathering.” She paused, before adding in a low, conspiratorial tone, “But, just between us girls, it was a fun trip and a good memory, right?”
Ashley revived the subject on the drive home. Our precocious 16-year-old daughter’s curiosity had been sparked.
“Dad, what was that all about — that trip where you said Mom and Aunt Michelle went 500 miles in the wrong direction?”
Dan chuckled, replying, “Well, sweetheart, you should really ask Mom about that. As Aunt Michelle said, I wasn’t in the picture at the time. I only know what I heard later, which was that Michelle was driving and your mom was navigating, and they wound up going 500 miles on the wrong highway in the wrong direction before somebody caught on.”
Ashley laughed. “Mom, you didn’t! I mean, I know you have a hard time telling your left from your right, but 500 miles, really!”
“We were young, darling, and as Aunt Michelle said we were just having fun. We didn’t have a GPS, and weren’t paying as close attention to the map as we should have. It didn’t help that it was an old map we borrowed from Michelle’s parents, which had another road highlighted on it from one of their trips. We had outlined our route too, but in telling Michelle where to turn, I picked the wrong line.”
“Why were you taking a trip to Alabama, anyway?” Ashley asked.
“Aunt Michelle was engaged to Uncle Richie, and he was in the national guard, stationed at a base down there during some military call-up, but he was going to be discharged shortly and had a lot of free time, and the two of them were eager to see one another again. Also, they wanted to plan their wedding. So Michelle decided to drive down there, and asked me to go along. Since your dad and I had broken up at the time, and I was between jobs, I thought it might be fun to see a little more of the country.”
“What was that Aunt Michelle said about mail-order laundry?”
“Well, that was sort of funny. We had been on the road several days and had a lot of dirty laundry by the time we reached the base in Alabama. We turned the rental car in and Michelle was going to visit with Richie a while. I was going to fly home. I had bought a few new things, and luggage space was at a premium. So I had the bright idea of packaging my dirty clothes up and mailing them home to Mother’s so I could wash them later.” I smiled at the memory. “I was also mailing another package to someone else — they looked similar, were mixed up and my laundry went to the wrong address.”
“So where did your dirty laundry go?”
I had to think fast there. “Oh, to the other person, a good friend, who actually washed the clothes before repackaging and mailing them back to me.”
“She must have been a good friend,” Ashley laughed.
And then, Dan just had to interject, “Girls, this is why I have reservations about women as military pilots. If they fly 500 miles in the wrong direction and then confuse the rocket launcher with the landing gear button because they look similar, some innocent people might wind up with a lot worse than dirty laundry.”
“Oh, Dad, give it up,” Ashley said.
I sort of fumed inside. I do love my husband, but his superior attitude just irks me sometimes. Not everything I do is a screwed up, wrong route. Maybe Michelle was right, I thought, frowning at Dan. Maybe he should learn more about what really happened on that road trip.
* * *
Chapter 2: The Journey
The law of unintended consequences: The decisions we make, the things we do have impacts on our lives all the time. Sometimes the consequences are disastrous, other times they are serendipitous, working out for the better. Mostly they are somewhere in between.
If Dan had been around at the time, he might have come along on that road trip, and being so anal would have navigated and not mixed up the two lines on the map. We would have gone direct to Alabama, and none of the following would have happened.
But he was not around. A month previously he had become involved with another woman at work, and thought he was doing the correct thing by confessing it to me, reassuring me in his overbearing, confident manner that it meant nothing and not to worry — he still loved me. His confession probably was the right thing to do, and maybe I was just too young and naive to appreciate it, but Dan had been my only guy, the only man I had ever made love with, and I felt betrayed. I yelled and told him to screw off, that I never wanted to see him again.