MARGERY
“You’re kidding me!” Margery exclaimed as they stood in line at the frozen custard counter. “They make a new flavor EVERY DAY?”
“Yep,” Todd said, smiling at her in that way that made her feel a little less steady on her feet.
“But you’re not here for all those new fangled flavors-of-the-day.”
“I’m not?” She said confused.
“Nope. You’re here, for that.” Todd pointed to the sign hanging beside the flavors of the day sign— Maple Walnut Surprise! The sign read, with an overzealous exclamation mark that scared Margery just a little bit.
“Surprise?” She said, cocking an eyebrow at Todd.
“Hey now Margery Daniels—when have I ever steered you wrong?”
“When did you finally learn my last name?” She asked, her lips pursed as she tried not to smile.
“The night I picked you up. Last night…I think it was. I had to pick up your Driver’s Licence from the counter at the bar before we left.”
“Oh…right…” she said, suddenly embarrassed.
“Plus, you kept using my full name, Todd Mackewain, so I figured it was time to try it out. See how it feels to say your full name all sassy like.”
“And how was it?” She was full blown smiling now in the slowly moving line up to the custard counter in the middle of a state she’d never been to, with a man she’d just met the night before. She couldn’t even find it in herself to be embarrassed.
“Not as good as the surprise is going to be,” he said, waggling his eye brows before giving her a wink. Margery flushed and she could have sworn it reached down to where her bare toes peeked out of her comfortably worn sandals. “So,” he said, recapturing her attention, “have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Not in the food department,” she admitted—thinking of all the delicious things she’d eaten since the night before. They’d reached the counter now, and Todd seemed about to speak to place their order before he turned towards her one final time.
“Do you trust me? Or would you like to order something new-fangled?” he asked, smiling gently even though the teasing gleam was still in his eyes.
And before she could even think about the words, or analyze what they meant, a simple, “yes,” had escaped her lips. “I trust you.”
“Good,” he said, and turned to place their order.
The surprise turned out to be little chunks of waffle cones, still crisp somehow despite the ice cream, broken up and strewn with a maple infused caramel sauce though the maple walnut ice cream. The crunch of the cone pieces was a perfect balance for the creamy taste of the maple walnut custard, and Margery was pretty sure it was the best thing she’d ever tasted. God, I have got to stop saying that!
She’d had friends that had claimed to be foodies before—but Todd was on another level altogether. She imagined his way of picking places to eat earned him lots of praise with whatever female company he chose to keep. And though the old adage states that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Margery had always thought this unfair to women folk. After all, there wasn’t much in life that a good meal couldn’t at least improve. And you were always bound to have warm feelings towards the one that had given it to you.
“Stunned into silence again?” Todd teased, jarring Margery from her thoughts.
“Do you take all the ladies here?” She burst out suddenly, before she could shove another bite into her mouth. Todd’s eyes flashed to hers, and where she expected to see mischief and confident flirtation, she saw instead a neutral face, barely failing to conceal what looked like a deep well of sadness underneath. It was there for only a moment before the confident smirk returned.
“Only the pretty ones,” he said, chuckling. She watched as he created the perfect swirling bite on his spoon and then turned it upside down before putting it in his mouth and sucking the spoon clean.
“I’m sure there have been plenty of pretty girls in your life,” she said, staring at her sundae.
“No. Not really,” he replied. She nearly choked as she digested his words and the serious tone behind them.
“I can’t imagine why!” She got out before she realized how stupid and possibly sarcastic and insensitive that sounded. She back-peddled. “I mean you’re gorgeous!” She turned bright red. Why won’t any words that don’t make me sound ridiculous come out of my freaking mouth?
“Glad to hear you think so,” he said, smiling slightly. “At least I have my looks right?” The barely hidden vulnerability in his eyes was killing her slowly.
“I mean, it’s not just that! You’re charming and funny too, and kind obviously—you’ve been so kind to me, and to Nelson! You are the kind of guy that rescues puppies and damsels in distress, AND you know where all the good food is? What’s not to like?”
Todd laughed then, and it was the warm sound she’d loved from their drive earlier—chasing away the sadness she’d seen in his eyes a few moments before.
“You’ve only known me for 24 hours Margery.”
“25,” she corrected, looking at the clock. As I recall, you walked into the bar at 7:45 Last night, and now it’s 8:45,” she smiled at him triumphantly.
“And how is it, exactly, that you remembered exactly what time I walked in last night?”
“There’s a bell over the door! Isn’t there?” She realized she suddenly couldn’t remember if there was or not.
“Not that I recall,” he said, eyes locked on hers.
“I don’t know then…” she said, looking away. She was suddenly very intent on creating the perfect custard bite for herself, “I just…noticed you.”
“Because I’m gorgeous.”
“Shut UP, Todd!” She said, her face going from the light pink of a breakfast radish, to beet red. She could still feel his eyes on her and was determined not to look up into his smugly handsome face until she could regain a little composure.
“Margery,” he said after a moment, his voice soft.
“What!?” She said, looking up despite her previous promise to herself. What she saw in his storm blue eyes was not the satisfaction of a man who’d just been given a compliment but something akin to tenderness.
“I noticed you too,” he said, almost under his breath, and somehow his whisper skated its way across the table and gooseflesh broke out across her skin. They locked eyes for a moment then, and Margery suddenly had the sense that Todd was the moon, and she was the tide, and she’d be perfectly content to be locked into a push and pull rhythm with him for the rest of her days. In a moment that seemed both an instant, and an eternity, Todd’s gaze flicked down to her lips.
A sudden chant of “ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!!!” broke the tension, as a young family with three small children passed by their table, the youngest and rowdiest ones, almost knocking into them. Todd laughed, and fished his final bite out of his cardboard sundae bowl, smiling at the children, then smiling back at her.
“Actually,” Margery said, feigning a snobbish tone of voice,“it’s called Frozen Custard.” Todd chuckled again, and the sound skittered across her skin, and simmered in her bones.
“Allow me to demonstrate,” Todd said, fluffing the twin duvet cover on the lower bunk with the flourish of a magician, before sprawling across her bunk in the cab that night. “IN, the bed—”he said, leaning back with his arm behind his head, his freehand gesturing to his outstretched body. His white shortsleeved undershirt did absolutely nothing to hide his well formed biceps, and for some reason Margery was finding this very hard not to focus on. “OUT, of the bed,” he said as he swiveled his body to place his feet on the ground and stood up, suddenly only inches away from her. How have I never noticed how tall he was before? She inhaled sharply at his nearness but tried to pass it off as a laugh. But breathing in turned out to also be a huge mistake because all she could think about now was how incredible he smelled. What the hell is wrong with me?
“Well YOU weren’t trying to wrestle your way out of the sheets…like they were a…like you were a…”
“Yes, yes, you were thrashing about like a wild cat, I remember. So I have prepared an additional demonstration.” He snatched a blanket from his bunk, then lay back down on her bed, covering himself with the blanket. “In cases like these,” he said, once again gesturing to himself, “most find it helpful to simply, pull back the covers, before trying to get into a standing position.” His grin in the dim running light of the cab was like the cheshire cat’s, but somehow seemed even more dangerous. And Margery had had just about enough of that. Without thinking she yanked the pillow out from beneath his head and smacked him with it.
"YOU. ARE. SUCH. A. SMART. ASS!” She said as she bludgeoned him repeatedly with the pillow. Todd laughed so hard he seemed unable to make a defense, except for to block his face with his forearm, and cross one leg over the other. When Margery had finally finished exacting her revenge, she tossed the pillow onto Todd’s face and flopped on the edge of the mattress.
“What’s wrong with us Todd?” She said, her voice to her own ears sounding exhausted.
“What do you mean?” he said, propping himself up on an elbow.
“I mean, you’re a great guy. And you’re still single. And I….” she swallowed hard, “I was supposed to be at a hotel right now. Having the pins taken out of my hair by a man who loved me…who…who I thought loved me. And we were supposed…”
“You were supposed to start your adventure together,” he said, his voice full of understanding.
“But I know, you’re right Todd…it’s all so clear to me now. He couldn’t love me the way I needed him to, and the farther away I get from Alabama, the more I wonder if I ever really loved him at all either, or if…” she felt the burning in her eyes and her face collapsed into her hands. “I’m a horrible person.”
“No, Margery…” Todd shifted behind her, and she felt him gently prying her fingers from her face. “No one who has talked to you for even a five minutes could ever think that. You were just…scared. Your mom was sick, and you were afraid of being alone, and she was afraid of that on your behalf, and…and you made a mistake. I’m sure Sean seemed good to you at first…I’m sure he was attentive and kind, and he kept his jealous side shaded with affection. Not everyone is such an honest open book as you are Margery. I know I’m not. With you—what you see, is what you get. But some people who look good…” he inhaled sharply, “some of them are actually monsters.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she said. He let out a humorless laugh, and she looked towards him to see he had drawn himself up to a cross legged sitting position beside her.
“You could say that. My mom…” he paused, “I never knew my Dad. Not really. He was in and out of my life until I was three, when he beat my mom senseless and she got permanent custody of me for good. But after that…it was like she couldn’t shake the stain of it. Like the bruises had left a mark on her soul so deep she thought she wasn’t worth any more than that. She always left the guys when things turned nasty, but still…she seemed to always gravitate towards the assholes. The ones that beat her down emotionally, or made her feel small. And somehow she never saw that these were the flags—these were the signs that it was sure to get ugly again later.”
“Todd…” Margery stammered, her throat burning for someone other than herself now, “That’s awful.”
“Yeah,” he said, scrubbing a hand across his face. “It’s just another reason I spent all my time at Betsy and Mike’s. Even when she was home…” he said, his eyes going distant. “I never quite knew what I was going home to.”
“I’m so sorry Todd.” she said, lightly placing a hand on his knee.
“It’s okay.” He said quickly, as though he were trying to shove all the feelings he’d just unpacked down into the deep dark hole from whence they came. He ran a hand through his hair and sniffed, glancing at her sidelong before looking away.
“It’s not okay Todd,” she said. He looked at her, and the pinch in his brow made her long to raise a hand to smooth away the stray lock of hair on his forehead, instead she balled it into a fist as she repeated, “It’s NOT okay.”
He nodded slightly like he understood what she meant. Like he realized that she was someone it was finally okay, to not be okay with. Like it was okay to look at the raw deal of life and call it what it was.
“But it will be,” he said with a rising conviction.
“Yes.” She echoed, “it will be.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you Margery,” he said softly, peering into her face as though for the first time.
“There’s nothing wrong with you Todd,” she replied with a soft smile. “Even if you won’t explain to me why you’re still single.”
“Maybe I just hadn’t met a damsel in appropriate levels of distress,” he said. “After all, they say that chivalry is dead.” She slapped his arm.
“Todd Mackewain, you are incorrigible!”
“And you like it,” he said, his chin dimple returning with his smile.
“Yeah,” she said, before she could think better of it. “Yeah, I kinda do.”
They talked long into the night, about everything and nothing. In the solidarity that only comes with mutual sharing of words about their wounds, they found a balm. Margery drifted off, more at ease in the cab of this truck than she’d ever been in her bed next to Sean. And though the guilt still plagued her through the night, the light of the dawn on the following day burned it away, leaving only the song of adventure and second-chances humming in its wake.
TODD
Todd and Margery traveled all over, Todd only taking the contract carrying jobs that took him to his favorite places. They went to Michigan for a pickup at the Maple Syrup farm that Betsy and Mike favored, and Todd watched laughing as Margery declared that these were trees she’d like to hug. They drove past the lake one day, and once the fog finally cleared after hours and hours of nothing, Margery gasped at its vastness. They went to Idaho next. Todd took Margery to Warm River on a day off and they hiked all the way up to where the water poured at 50 degrees directly from a rock all year long. Margery loved the cabin by the old fish hatchery and declared she’d live there if she could. They stopped for tacos at every single authentic Mexican place they saw, but declared that the tacos at Valle Del Sol in Driggs, Idaho were the absolute best. They ate through the stash of trail mix so fast, Margery demanded Todd make more on the road. He told her he’d have to take a stop home eventually, to do some laundry but she simply declared,
“Todd Mackewain, when you promise to show a girl the world, you damn well better do it! Besides, that’s what a laundromat is for!”
Staring at her luminous form from behind the wheel, her blonde hair loose and curling freely in an untamed texture so different, yet infinitely more beautiful than the night they met, he couldn’t possibly argue.
He’d kept his hands to himself these weeks, even though he was dying to know what it would be like to kiss her—but every day they talked and talked and talked. They argued about blue grass music versus country music. They shared their favorite folk music artists, and their favorite artists to see live. They swapped crazy conspiracy theories and ghost stories and Todd revealed that his middle name was Rollins, which made Margery laugh for a full thirty minutes even though it wasn’t that funny, and hers was revealed to be way worse: Petunia. They talked about everything, and every vestige of reserve that Todd had attempted that first day to keep her at arms length, was obliterated. He found, that even though he knew it wasn’t fair, he wanted to be known by this woman. As much as he could be. For as long as she’d let him.
They we just pulling in to Jackson Hole, Wyoming when Margery received a phone call.
“It’s my mom, I’ll just take this real quick and then we can go to dinner,” she said hopping out of the cab where they’d parked at a truck stop on the outskirts of town. She’d talked with her mom plenty of times before, but something told Todd that this wasn’t any ordinary call. It was a sense as unexplainable as his gift, but still, no less real: an ominous foreboding crawling through the cab like a shadow. A moment later, his suspicions were confirmed when Margery climbed back into the seat, her face as pale as Todd had seen it in death.
“Margery!” he said immediately reaching for her to check if she was somehow wounded. “What’s wrong?”
“That was…that was the hospital,” Margery said. “My mom…she….she collapsed at home this morning. Her neighbor Susan found her a few hours ago and rushed her in…” her face collapsed into an ugly sob that tore Todd’s heart to shreds. “She’s still unconscious.”
“Which hospital?” Todd said quickly, getting out of his seat and buckling her seatbelt around her before climbing back in his own seat.
“D.W. Memorial,” she said numbly.
“Okay.” He said, setting the trucks navigation before turning to face her. He grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her forehead against his for a moment, stroking his thumb across her cold cheek. “It’s not okay Margery,” he whispered, “but it’s going to be. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that Todd,” she said, frozen. Her eyes barely blinking even as the tears in her eyes rose, then fell. “No one knows what the future holds.”
His anger was all the fuel he needed as he pulled back out of the truck stop and onto the highway again.
“Well maybe it’s about damn time someone tried,” he said, anguished. He kept a hand on her neck, as if he could hold her together, as if he could hold them together, as he turned towards the road that would take them back.
Back to Brewton, Alabama—and all that awaited Margery there.
**Looking for Part One? Click here to go back to the beginning of this story.**
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Gosh, I knew they were going to have to confront it all eventually, but I’d be content just to watch them truck their way around the US forever
As a born-and-raised Idahoan, I love the Idaho references!!