Unblinking by Lisa Lenzo

Author:Lisa Lenzo [Lenzo, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC029000 Fiction / Short Stories (single Author), FIC044000 Fiction / Contemporary Women, FIC045000 Fiction / Family Life
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2019-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Lorelei

In the mornings, I write stories; in the afternoons, I drive for the public bus that provides door-to-door service in and around Saugatuck, Michigan. We carry young and old, rich and poor, able-bodied and disabled: anyone who needs or wants a ride. How we drivers feel about our riders depends on the particular passenger and the driver, but almost all of us, including me, grumbled about picking up Lorelei. Her wheelchair was dirty, sticky to the touch on the handles and everywhere else. Bits of dried gunk were stuck to the frame, and strands of Lorelei’s long, white hair had wound themselves around the joints above the casters. We couldn’t help but brush up against some of this when we used the tie-downs to secure her wheelchair to the floor, and if Lorelei got up and moved to a bus seat, which she usually did—with such ease that we wondered why she bothered using a wheelchair—her butt sometimes made a wet imprint on the bus’s upholstery.

Whenever I boarded Lorelei, I’d try to persuade her to stay in her wheelchair without telling her why. I’d say it made more sense for her to stay put since I had to strap down her chair whether she was in it or not. But as soon as I backed her and her wheelchair from the lift onto the bus, she’d get up and slip onto a seat, her face furtive and then stubborn as she avoided my eyes. Watching her, my own face would turn irritable and sour. After Lorelei disembarked, I’d check to see if the seat she’d sat on was wet; if it was, I’d tear paper towels from the roll and lay them on the damp spot so no one else would sit there.

Lorelei would ride every day for a month, then not at all for a few weeks. During a phase when she was riding daily, she kept remarking on a car parked on the Blue Star Highway just north of Saugatuck that had a for-sale sign taped to the window. Every time we passed it, she’d say in her Arkansas drawl, “I wish I knew how much that car cost. I’ve been looking to buy me a car.”

One evening as I was driving in my own Honda Civic past the Buick Lorelei had her eye on, I turned in to the gravel lot, pulled up close to the Buick, and copied the phone number and asking price on a three-by-five card. My brother Arthur was with me. “I’m writing down these numbers for one of my passengers,” I explained. “She’s been talking about buying this car.”

“Wow, Annie, that’s so nice of you to do that for your passenger,” Arthur said.

I gave him the same sour look that came over my face in Lorelei’s presence. “I’m not doing it for my passenger.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m not doing it to be nice.”

“Oh!” Arthur said. He laughed. “You’re doing it to get her off your bus!”

⊙

At least part of my aversion toward Lorelei was rooted in my upbringing.

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