Page 11 of Hauling Ashe

Mach chuckles again through the phone. “She sounds like heaven.”

“She’s from hell.”

My clearly inexperienced singer belts out line after line of mumbled words, as she doesn’t know the song until the chorus hits. Then at the top of her lungs, she’s on point and shaking her head, tapping without rhythm on the steering wheel. She’s killing this song and I cringe.

“I gotta go,” I mutter to Mach, disconnecting us before addressing Mae over the riotous song. “Dogs are crying on the side of the road.”

“What?” she yells over the music, cupping her ear.

“You can’t sing,” I tell her, a little too harshly. “Turn that down.” Suddenly, I sound like my father and a memory I keep locked in the recesses of my mind stumbles forward.

“What is that noise?” Jonathon Ashford would yell at me as my fingers flew over the piano keys.

“It’s not noise, Jonathon. He’s a prodigy.” My mother defended my love of music. I didn’t know what prodigy meant when I was young, but I played on those eighty-eight keys like a master. Like the ebony and ivory were part of my fingers. Their sound was part of my soul. The ‘noise,’ as my father called it, was heaven. Blissful, aural nirvana, drowning out all the silences of our home, or at times, the screaming matches between my parents.

After another rendition of the chorus returns, Mae belts at the top of her lungs before turning down the music.

“Maybe you need noise canceling headphones,” she suggests.

I actually have a pair as I’d assumed I might need them to concentrate on the trip. However, I’m not pulling them out simply because she recommended them.

“Just wait until I put on the dirty romance novels,” she warns. Her body shimmies in her seat and a cute-evil grin curls the side of her mouth. Her shoulders wiggle and her upper body squirms while she continues to mutter the wrong words to the song.

She wouldn’t dare switch to a naughty romance book. She said no fake orgasms, and the last thing I need to witness is a real one as she gets off to the sound of some deep tenor reading words like pussy and cock to her.

The thought causes stirrings in my own pants, and I wonder what this reaction is to her. Don’t even go there. Shaking my head, I disagree with the lyrics of the song.

This woman will not get in my blood.

She will not make me a no-longer lonely man.

I will not fall in love with her.

This highway is a dead end.

6

Playlist: “Soul Man” - Sam and Dave

“Think” - Aretha Franklin

[Mae]

If life was a highway, somewhere along the way I’d gotten a flat tire.

I didn’t know who I was anymore or what direction I was going. I remained stranded on the side of the proverbial road, looking at the other drivers as they passed me by in their shiny Audis and practical Hondas. I stood speechless, wondering if anyone would stop and help me, or if I’d be on my own, as I always have been, to fix things myself.

I wanted to ride that highway…or at least, take a journey to rediscover myself.

Who am I? Who do I want to be? Where have I been?

The physical answer is I haven’t been anywhere. Born and raised in Missouri. Planted and currently living in Michigan. I’ve been a mother, a wife, and a business owner but I am still lost.

This trip was about me searching for a deeper answer. A truer version of myself. Because somewhere over the years, I’d become someone I didn’t recognize. I don’t have much to complain about so being unhappy sounds unreasonable. I have beautiful grown children—something many women dream of having grace their lives. I own my own profitable business—in an economy where jobs are rare and coveted. The main unhappiness in my life ebbed and flowed around a volatile marriage—one that had more ups and downs than a rollercoaster. Traveling around curves, mood swings happened like the sudden drop of a cart, or my anxiety increased like a slow, steady climb to the top of the rails. The unpredictability of marriage might be something romance-lovers crave, but I don’t hunger for it. I thirst from the lack of romance. My life should feel better without Adam. Yet despite being an independent, confident, hear me roar, kind of woman, I don’t feel that way. I am still missing something. I recognize the hole, but I don’t know how to fill it.

Love seems like an obvious answer.

Dating in the new age as an older woman leaves me numb. Beautiful men make me stupid, and most of them aren’t attracted to me anyway. Case in point, my backseat passenger. I resent his good looks, and the image of his life as perfect. Then again, why wouldn’t it be? Willing women throwing themselves at a handsome man? Yeah, it must suck to be a good-looking guy. I have no sympathy.