People found these nicknames charming. I found them stupid. When I went to the Soviet Safeway for milk and had to walk away empty-handed because the dairy case was empty, I wasn’t amused. I just wanted them to get new management.
“We need a real grocery store,” I continued. “One that has actual food on the shelves.”
“Do you think you could take the car and go?” Matt asked. He gave me an apologetic look. “I’m so beat.”
Matt had started insisting that I drive as soon as I got to DC. “You just have to get used to it again,” he kept saying. But I disagreed. After living in New York for seven years, I’d pretty much completely forgotten how to drive. When I went home to Madison, I sometimes dared to take my parents’ car a few blocks, gripping the wheel at 10 and 2 and riding the brake the whole time.
Even when I was a teenager, my dad had to beg me to practice driving, taking me to empty parking lots where I coasted along at fifteen miles an hour, slammed on the brake when it was time to turn. Some people love driving, love the feeling of being in control, swerving in and out of lanes; I’ve always preferred being a passenger.
I’d driven exactly once since I’d been in DC, when we went to brunch in Georgetown. I’d panicked as I tried to parallel-park and a line of cars honked at me like I was purposely holding them up. Matt and I had to switch places so that he could pull the car into the parking spot, which was mortifying. And now here he was, casually suggesting that I “take the car” like he was going to trick me into driving.
“I don’t really know where I’m going,” I finally said.
“You have the GPS. And you know where you’re going.”
“I really don’t. I have no idea where anything is.”
“Beth, it’s like riding a bike. I promise. You just need to get back on.”
“I think you mean, it’s like a horse. The saying is, get back on the horse.”
“Yeah, sure, okay. Driving is like that. You need to get back on the horse.”
“Well, I hate horses. You know that.”
Matt looked at me, like he couldn’t decide whether or not to be amused.
“Fine,” I said, grabbing the car keys. “I’ll go.”
I walked out the door, waiting for him to come after me. When he didn’t, I said, “Fuck,” and went to the car, which was parked in an alley that was home to the biggest rats I’ve ever seen. Just a few days earlier, one had charged at me and I’d screamed bloody murder. Matt said it sounded like I was being assaulted, and I said that’s what it felt like. It was something no one had told me about DC — the rats are bigger there. And bolder. I think the warm weather makes them this way.
I found the store just fine, of course. Deep down, I knew Matt was right about the driving. What did I expect? That he’d drive me wherever I wanted to go, always? Like my own personal chauffeur? As I loaded a case of Diet Coke into my cart, I felt slightly ridiculous for making a big deal out of it.
But then, on the way home I got lost. I missed the turn onto T Street and somehow ended up entering the Dupont traffic circle. The GPS had been telling me to turn around, but as I continued around the circle for the fifth time trying to find the right exit, she couldn’t keep up, and just kept saying, “Recalculating.” When we’d gotten the GPS, Matt had set it to speak in an Australian accent, which was funny at first but now I couldn’t understand the stupid Aussie. “Tell me where to go,” I screamed at her. And then, like she would care, I added, “I hate it here.”
—
Leaving our apartment in New York had been harder than I’d expected. It was our home for five years, the first place we’d lived as a married couple, and I was attached to it. It didn’t help that my parents had sold the house I’d grown up in just a year earlier, and now lived in an unrecognizable ranch house in a retirement community. Our New York apartment was the only home I had left.
I made a point of telling everyone that we were moving — the man who worked at the wine store around the corner, the workers behind the counter at our bagel place. When I pulled the manager of J. G. Melon aside to say good-bye, Matt looked embarrassed. “What?” I said. “We come here all the time. Don’t you think it would be weird if we vanished? If we never came back?”
“People leave New York all the time,” Matt said. “I’m sure they’re used to it.”
“I just want to say good-bye. It’s the right thing to do.”
The day the movers came, I couldn’t stop crying. I cried as they carried out our boxes and furniture, and when I hugged the twitchy doorman, Bob, good-bye. For the whole time we lived there, he’d blushed and said, “Okay, now,” whenever I said hi to him or told him to have a good day, and when I wept on his shoulder on moving day, he just about turned purple.
We watched the moving truck pull away, and then we got into our new car, which was loaded with the rest of our things, and started the drive to DC. Matt kept his hand on my leg, sometimes rubbing my shoulder or smoothing my hair to comfort me. But after about an hour, I knew he just wanted me to stop crying. And that night, as we got ready for bed, and I still had tears in my eyes, he was a little impatient.
“Come on, Beth,” he said. “I know it’s hard, but what did you think? That we were going to live in that apartment forever? For the rest of our lives?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I guess I didn’t really think about it.”
He sighed that night and reached over to put his arm around me. “We’re here,” he said. “And home is wherever we’re together.”
It was a nice thought, but I didn’t totally believe it.
—
When I got back from the grocery store, Matt came right down the stairs to meet me at the door. “I thought you’d need help with bags,” he said, looking at my empty hands.
“I left it all in the car,” I said. And then, feeling stupid, “I got lost.”
“Oh, no. Did the Australian fail you?”
“Yes,” I said. And then, before I could help myself, “I hate it here.”
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
—
I hated everything about DC. I hated the weather in the summer, how it was so humid you could barely breathe, how you started sweating as soon as you walked out the door.
I hated the way people asked, “Who do you work for?” as soon as you met them, like that was the only thing that mattered. I hated the shorthand people used to talk about their jobs: I work at Treasury, they’d say. Or at DOD, or For POTUS, or I’m an LA. It was like they didn’t have enough time to say the whole thing, like if you didn’t know what their acronym meant, you didn’t matter anyway. (I also hated how it wasn’t long before I used these acronyms, how they so quickly became a part of my vocabulary.)
I hated that the Metro was carpeted, and that it was so far underground — you felt like a mole by the time you got down the escalator — and I hated that you had to swipe your card to get in and out of the station. I hated that you couldn’t eat or drink on the train, and I especially hated that everyone obeyed the rule, like they were afraid they’d be arrested for sipping a cup of Starbucks on their morning commute.
I hated the helicopters that buzzed overhead, like we were in some sort of war zone. I hated how the motorcades stopped traffic, halted the Metros, and clogged up the streets, usually when you were running late to get somewhere.