Trashley: Part Two
Socks
Talking to a physicist was so refreshing. It felt like getting a free education. Ashley used four, five, and sometimes six-syllable words back-to-back. I didn’t know what she was talking about most of the time, but it sounded impressive. She taught me multi-universe theory, and I told her about when I saw an alien hiding behind a Spruce tree in Alaska.
We ended up having more in common than I’d thought. She showed me an Oregon Trail pin she bought on Etsy days before we started talking, which must’ve been a sign because I wrote a book about the Oregon Trail computer game.
We watched the same murder documentaries and listened to the same podcasts about murders. I did my best, “I’m Phoebe Judge, and this is Criminal.” My impression is irresistible.
It was annoying that I couldn’t google her; she had no digital footprint. Did she live in the moment? Was she present? Swoon. But deep down, I knew it was a red flag. She could’ve at least had a Pinterest or abandoned Tumblr from 2008. When I brought it up, Ashley asked what I was trying to find, and the answer was everything.
I want to know every single detail about you. Do you rent or own? Do you believe in ghosts or God? I believe in ghosts because I’ve seen them. Tell me your credit score and your deepest, darkest fears. Do you love winter or summer, because I hate both. Do you read the news or listen to NPR? Where and how do you get your information? Tell me who your enemies are and how you would kill them if you had the chance. Tell me what you think about when you masturbate, where’s the best pizza you’ve ever eaten, and where you want to go when you die. I crave information.
But I didn’t ask her any of those questions. It was too soon.
I curated lists of TV shows, movies, and podcasts I loved, hoping she’d love them too. We talked on the phone and texted throughout the day. Sometimes, she would vanish–usually on weekends–when we should’ve had the most time to talk. Not to brag but I’d never been ghosted before; what a weird thing to do to someone. She emailed me the first time she vanished, claiming she’d left her phone in the Fermilab cafeteria and couldn’t get it until Monday. It was a good excuse. When you’re trying to solve the Universe, you don’t have space left in your brain for basic things like keeping track of your cell phone.
Her disappearing act happened again the following weekend. But she came back—she always did. The fact that her absences continued threw me, but we kept talking, and she started to disappear less often. I’d get nerdy texts about isolating particles, and seeing her name pop up on my phone made my dead heart flutter.
Ashley’s trip back to LA was nearing, and I offered to pick her up from LAX. At first, she seemed excited, but then she changed plans. Instead of flying to LA, she flew to Bakersfield to visit her family. I’d only been to Bakersfield once a few years earlier when I pulled over in a Smart & Final parking lot and let my dog defecate everything in his system, and then continued driving to a wedding in Three Rivers.
Ashley told me she’d recently switched medication and had to go through a process called Titration. I’d never heard of titration, but Ashley said it was a six-week process, and that she needed to be around her family in case she experienced any side effects transitioning from her first medication to the second. Six weeks was a long time to go without meeting in person, but one of my greatest strengths is my patience. For example, I can go several years between making fun of my older sister’s Pearl Jam tramp stamp, and then BOOM, I hit her with a zinger over Thanksgiving dinner.
Ashley sent me a photo once she had boarded her plane in Chicago. She was flying first class and had downloaded an entire season of the MTV show I wrote and produced to watch during the flight. She paid for it, too, which I would never allow anyone to do. MTV made fourteen dollars that day. Later that night, Ashley sent a video of her family, they were all sitting in the living room, eating Carl’s Jr. and watching Ex On the Beach.
I was bummed to discover she hadn’t brought her dog. This was presumptuous, but I had kind of promised my dog, Perci, that her dog, Will, would be crashing with us for a little while. When I asked Ashley why her dog wasn’t there, she had a perfect explanation. Her dog was on a road trip.
At least with Ashley in Bakersfield, we were in the same time zone. Progress.
We talked all the time, sometimes until five in the morning. Ashley was really fascinating. Her parents put her in Mensa when she was young. She loved socks. She only wore white Italian leather shoes, she had an allergy to tree nuts, eggs, and the sun, and she had a photographic memory. She was extremely close to her Grandparents and Facetimed them every morning at eleven twenty-five, right before she took her lunch break at the lab.
Some of her stories were heartbreaking: she was deaf in her right ear because, as a child, her Dad walked in one night, drunk, and found her reading a book. He ripped it out of her hands and beat her senseless with it, sending her to the hospital, where she spent weeks recovering. He eventually abandoned her and her mother and was no longer in the picture, thank god.
As we were getting to know each other, I asked what kind of car she drove. She said a Tesla Model X, the same one that Elon Musk had. Damn, I didn’t realize Physicists made that kind of money. I had never been in a Tesla before, and I’d certainly never made eye contact with a Tesla owner. Her car was in storage in Colorado, but was being shipped to LA. It’s like she had pieces of her life spread across the entire country. A dog on a Crossroads-style road trip to SF, a car and storage unit in Colorado, an apartment in downtown LA, a place in Chicago, and a family in Bakersfield. It was a wild way to live, especially for a thirty-five-year-old woman.
One night, we were deep in conversation when she heard someone crying outside her bedroom door. I figured maybe one of her little sisters got dumped. She hung up to check it out, and I didn’t hear back from her until the next morning. She had horrible news. Her Grandfather had died, he had had a heart attack in his sleep.
Ashley was devastated. Her Grandparents had never spent a day apart in the sixty-three years of marraige. She was worried about her Grandmother. A day later, the worst thing happened. Her grandmother had a stroke and was taken to the hospital. She died that afternoon.
It was beautiful, really. Two people who were so in love they couldn’t bear to live without each other. I didn’t know what to do, so I got her parent’s address in Bakersfield and sent Ashley socks I found on Etsy as an I’m so sorry both of your Grandparents died back-to-back gift, so at least her toes would be cozy.
As Ashley grieved the loss of her Grandparents, she learned they’d left her in charge of their estate. This caused a lot of friction with her greedy Uncle, who harassed her over the phone, sometimes calling forty times a day, demanding she transfer the estate to him. She claimed her Grandparents had left her in charge because she was the only person in her family who was apathetic about money. The only person I’d ever met who was apathetic toward money was absolutely no one.
Her Grandfather didn’t believe in banks, and he hid money inside the walls of his house and buried the rest on his farmland in Missouri. Ashley’s grandparents left forty thousand acres of property behind in Missouri, Montana, and Wisconsin.
When she told me about the buried money, I told her we needed to get the fuck to Missouri immediately before her Aunt and Uncle dug it all up. I grew up at a Gold Mine in Alaska and know how to work a shovel. I spent my entire childhood finding gold, wooly mammoth tusks, and dire wolf bones, and I was certain I could find buried treasure in rural Missouri. In fact, no one was more qualified for this job than me.
Ashley grappled with what to do; it was all so overwhelming.
Some days, she’d threaten to transfer the estate to her Uncle Melvin, just to be done with it. And I’d give her pep talks, demanding she stand her ground. Her Uncle eventually backed off once he found out he and his two sisters were each getting one point three million dollars. Not a bad payday, and that shut Uncle Melvin up for awhile.
March flew by, and in early April, Ashley and I started planning to meet in person. The first time we were supposed to meet, she started a fight with me the night before for no apparent reason. It came out of nowhere, like a Taylor Swift album. I was confused and hurt. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a fighter. In fact, connecting with anger is something I’ve been working on in therapy. I’ve been a stoic for most of my life. I never get angry or yell, even when someone has treated me badly. But now all I have to do is picture someone punching my dog in the face, and I get pissed. And so does Perci.
Ashley and I made up, but I noticed that I was the one who had apologized for the fight I didn’t start and hadn’t participated in. The right thing to do would’ve been to walk away. But I’m not a quitter, and I had put in so much time. I was invested in Ashley and needed to put a face and body to the voice on the other end of the phone.
We made plans to meet, again, the following weekend. I offered to pick Ashley up in Bakersfield, but she refused. We agreed to meet halfway between us, at a truck stop in Frazier Park. Her younger sister would drive her there.
I was nervous. I hadn’t dated anyone in years, what if I’d forgotten how to do it? I pulled into the Pilot Travel Center parking lot and spotted a grey Tesla parked amid a sea of Semis. This had to be them.
I pulled up, and before I could even unbuckle and get out of the car to give Ashley a hug, she was in the passenger seat. Okay, so no hug. I thought I’d at least meet her sister to assure her she wasn’t dropping Ashley off with some random psychopath. It turned out to go the other way.
There was a psychopath in my car, but it wasn’t me.
Oh no.