For of course he hadn't--in fact he hadn't needed to. Taking a risk, she had pulled up his number illegally from customer records and sent him a text inquiring as to whether John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were back together again.
His car had overheated on his way to Moab you see, and he really needed this car to move him to the Midwest for grad school next month; he had told her this explicitly, for she was the one working the Midas front desk that afternoon. Hard experience had taught him that when his car was in the shop, it was usually for awhile, so he had brought a long book to read.
It was near the 4th of July, so he was at last tackling David McCullough's John Adams. But the text didn't quite enrapture his attention, and so his gaze kept wandering up to her bright green eyes when he thought she wasn't looking. She decided to take a chance and ask what was happening.
"Oh, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson just had a falling out," he replied, "It's really quite tragic. I'm hoping they'll be besties again by the end."
"Oh, how sad!" she continued, "Let me know if they get back together!" In this manner did they pass the afternoon, while the mechanic ran his diagnostics.
Wow she's really cute, he thought to myself, and if I didn't know any better, I'd mistake her polite customer service for actual flirting!
And besides, even if she was actually flirting with me, I'm moving in a month.
Well, obviously he didn't know better, for she sent him the aforementioned text later that same afternoon. He responded that Adams and Jefferson were indeed back together in the end, and that it was very heart-warming. She then asked if he liked Thai or Pizza. By now, even he could pick up on loud signals like those, so he asked her if she would like to split some New York-style pizza come Wednesday. She said that would be lovely.
Later he excitedly told his roommates how this gorgeous girl at the autoshop had totally just asked him out, like something out of a fantasy or a dream, something too good to be true! But she didn't remember it that way, no not at all--in fact, quite the inverse. She repeatedly insisted to everyone who would listen that he had asked her out that afternoon. "Smooth!" is what her friends all told him, which, while flattering, always just slightly confused him, since it was quite clearly the other way around: she had come on to him.
Now, he was grateful that she had come on to him, he loved her refreshing forwardness--and in the passionate weeks and months that followed, as they criss-crossed the country on meager stipends and salaries in a fevered long-distance relationship, meeting each others' families, he ordering her flowers from three states away and she spontaneously buying him clothing, both picking out each others' rings and making many plans for the not-so-distant future, they would often reflect on the serendipity that had his car breaking down during the one month she'd worked a second job at the very autoshop he came to, and how God, the heavens, angels and the fates had so foreordained their paths to cross at precisely that right moment, to lock eyes over John Adams--but still she had been the one to come on to him.
Nevertheless, to her, it was integral, all-important, essential even, that she remember it as him asking out her.
This should have been telling.
For the very things that pull us together are the very things that pull us apart.
She was at cross-purposes with herself, you see. She was raised in a conservative family in a conservative religion in a conservative part of the country and had attended a conservative college, all of which had imbued her with certain deep, inviolable convictions, viz: the man must make the first move, women must not be too forward, that her highest calling must be stay-at-home motherhood, to be grounded, domestic, stable, charitable, with a Biblical desire for her husband.
She often asked him how quickly he could finish his program, so they could settle down at last and have as many children as possible. This idea that she could herself be forward, that she could desire and not just be desired, that she could be impulsive and wild and free, was a cognitive dissonance her own mind would not yet let her think, even as her wildness was manifest from their first encounter.
He should have paid closer attention.
For it was no rare moment of impulsiveness in some meek, submissive soul that caused her to break office-ethics and send him that text, but a deep and propulsive spirit that burst out of her more often than she realized. Tellingly, these moments of impulsiveness occurred when she was thinking least--that is, in impulsive moments her real self came out, not the carefully curated Good-Girl she had performed for so long that she assumed the role actually was her.
Ah yes, even in our post-modern, post-structural world that has complicated the very notion of identity beyond all useful definition, it is still possible for a human being to have a "real self" yearning to break free!
Her impulsiveness was, as most things, both a strength and a weakness, for she really was a charitable soul, earnest to do well by others, such that whenever she felt an impulse to do good, she didn't debate its merits or worry how it might be perceived, but simply did it; and hence many lonely were visited, hungry were fed, and mourning were comforted because of her impulsiveness.
But let us here be clear: her goodness is not what made her impulsive, but the wild thing inside her. Up till then in her life, she had been able to carefully, subconsciously channel her wildness for good, yes, but it was a wildness all the same--and what wildness wants, what wildness needs, more than anything and all social conditioning, is to feel free, no matter her goodness.
Hence, after some two years of working post-college at multiple and menial minimum-wage jobs, when she suddenly landed a coveted position as a flight-attendant, her wildness exerted itself. He had been rooting for her of course (he knew how much she needed this break), and naturally assumed that this new job would be but a new wrinkle in their long-distance relationship: she would be but a time-zone ahead instead of a time-zone behind is all, and besides, she would be able to fly out to visit (and fly him out to visit!) much more often.
But here's what actually happened: the moment another outlet appeared for her wildness to be free, even one as simple and low-key as flight-attending, this same wildness overwhelmed her conservatism, her traditionalism, her reason, her rationality, her feelings, her love, her very goodness and decency, like a torrent tearing through a chink in a dam, finally ripping it apart in the onslaught.
She had always said, she had sincerely believed, that what she wanted was to be grounded, to settle down with husband and children; but instead she had found herself inexorably drawn to a career that would leave her as literally un-grounded as possible, in a plane in the sky, and thus her true wildness exerted itself. And a boyfriend, even one that her whole body desired, even one who yearned for freedom and wildness as much as her, yet was still stuck in grad school, simply could not contain the flood.
So, to the surprise of them both, she "mentally disengaged" (her words), and in open defiance to all of her upbringing and most cherished and conservative values, she turned from true love and flew out into the wild wide open. She brazenly admitted to being "awful" to him when she announced she "wanted to take a break," that she was the one cruel and unfair and sudden, as though her honesty would save her. But still--and this is the adjective she kept circling back to--she just had an overwhelming desire to feel "free!" Her wildness had tasted freedom at last, and she would not be weaned from it so quickly, no matter how callous, how different from the person she thought she was, it made her.
He would reflect later that she was, after all, a woman conflicted, at odds with herself, who had never willingly admitted--much less owned--that she had had this wildness all along. What she thinks she wants and what she actually wants remain opposed within her. Perhaps if she had embraced it from the beginning, her wildness maybe never would have gotten the best of her, nor the best of each other. But she had never let herself see this wildness in herself, much less master it, just as surely as she denied that she had asked out him. She was never as conservative as she thought she was. And so the wildness will continue to get the best of her.
The irony, of course, is that he had as deep a yearning for wildness and freedom as her--in fact, I dare say that that's why they were so immediately attracted, why they fell so passionately in love in the first place--for they were kindred spirits, as each saw in the other what each most desired in themselves. They could have been free together.
But then, he had known about this wildness within him for years, in fact had spent most his 20s living with it, indulging in it, running free with it, reconciling it, moving with it like an old friend, making the best of his wildness instead of it making the best of him. But she still had not. What pulled them together pulled them apart. She still has much growing up to do. Physically they were only a couple years separated, but in their souls they were still ages apart.
Perhaps it's for the best, his friends consoled him, that this eruption happened now, and not, say, after they were married and actually had settled down, with all those children she claimed she craved crawling about (which would have grounded her beyond all), only for her wildness, too long suppressed and deferred, to finally erupt more violent than ever, like some long-dormant-volcano, tearing apart their marriage, destroying their family, and sending her spiraling out of control. Dodged a bullet that one, they said, and he was increasingly inclined to agree. Nevertheless, in his unguarded moments, he still caught himself wondering about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
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