Last Exit

            “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been a long time since my last confession... Um, about three years. And I’m sorry about that, because I have sinned, but also… that’s not the main reason I’m here.”

            No word came from behind the lattice of the confessional booth, and Bridget Sullivan shifted the hem of her dress (a high-necked, gray sweater dress with black tights: piety in wool) and took a deep breath.

            “I think my fiancé is haunting the turnpike,” she said in a small voice.

            A mosaic of shadow and cotton robes bowed itself forward in the booth’s adjoining compartment. The sliding screen between priest and parishioner was cut in the shape of ten thousand tiny suns, as though Bridget needed any excuses not to stare directly into the other side, where Father Conlan settled himself to respond.

            “…What exit?”

            When she saw a ghost on the turnpike at 2AM, she knew it had to be Mark; no other spirit would be caught dead spending their afterlife haunting twelve lanes of blacktop. A small voice in the back of her head told her that any other dead fiancé would have visited his betrothed someplace special: in a blooming garden in spring, or on the moonlit beach at night, or on a snowy hill on Christmas Eve.

            She hated herself for thinking it, not just because it was one too many movies talking, but because it wasn’t fair to Mark. He had been romantic, in his own way. There had been the long drives wherever she wanted to go in the fall, flowers every birthday (even when his knucklehead friends razzed him for it), and endless hours talking about the house they would have one day. In those conversations, their dream home had opened up before them like a dollhouse, each room perfectly placed for them to admire all the little details or switch this table with that sofa. The house had never materialized, but that didn’t stop her from closing her eyes at work and opening up the walls to take it all in.

            Even so, it was hard to romanticize Mark’s ghost appearing to her half a mile from a Wawa’s. She reminded herself of the good times and kept the disappointment in her head, which, to be fair, she would have done anyway. She had moved back in with her parents since Mark had passed, and while they never maligned the idea of therapy, the mention of it left them silently clutching at the old-school Catholic mix of discomfort and disapproval like invisible rosaries in their hands.

            Which is why, when Bridget saw Mark doing roadwork at that ungodly hour outside the Holland tunnel (and why so late? Her sister in Manhattan needed a sitter for the night and ended up staying out until all hours, offered a bed, but Bridget had work first thing; it is what it is), saw him waving from behind the concrete barrier on the northbound side, she told no one. Maybe she should have. Somebody might have understood: her parents or Mark’s parents or her sister or her doctor or Claire at the shop or Isabel who had moved out west and wasn’t Catholic anymore but was “spiritual” and might have believed her without throwing Bible verses at her… but no. She kept it inside, even though she knew, like her heart knew the Lord’s Prayer and her fingers knew how to back-stitch: it was him.

She’d recognize that god-awful tattoo anywhere.

--

            “What do you think?”

            “Sp-quer? I think they really misspelled ‘Bridget.’”

            “S-P-Q-R! ‘Senatus Populusque Romani!’ It means ‘For the Senate and People of Rome.’”

            “You’ve never even been to Rome.”

            “No, but what did the Romans do better than anyone else? Besides the church, I mean.”

            Bridget tried to think, but the black ink stigmata on Mark’s arm was distracting. She fell back on ninth-grade history with Sister Georgia.

            “Columns and arches?” she said.

            “No!” Mark said. “Roads! Romans built the best roads.” He gave her a look like he’d pulled his hands from over her eyes to show her a brand new sports car in her parking spot. He was that excited.

            Mark Capavia was a third generation New Jersey Turnpike Authority employee, and even before that his people were with New Jersey Public Works. There was asphalt in the Capavia blood, and vice versa, his father liked to say; Bridget could just barely keep herself from wrinkling her nose whenever he did. It was a family thing, she told herself. The Capavias laid and maintained the roads used by a million people a day. They had a right to be proud.

            Third generation. Mark spent his days (and, too often, nights) laying asphalt on the same spots his father had, and his grandfather before him, like his great-grandfather had taught them.

            She looked at the tattoo. She tried not to think about how she would have consulted him before marking up her body.

            “The letters,” she said, looking at the enormous orthography strangling Mark’s bicep. “It looks like the AC-DC logo.”

            “I know!” he said, beaming.

            She pushed her thoughts deep down inside and smiled.

--

            Bridget had to remind herself that Mark had always wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Even back in freshman year of high school, when he showed up for their first date on his bicycle, he went on and on about how steady the work was and being the secret backbone of society (“used to be the railroads, now it’s us!”). She had known what she was getting into. She had known when they had graduated (her from St. Mary’s, him from Brick Township High School,) and she had gotten a two-year accounting degree while doing her seamstress work in Elmwood Park while Mark had given up after one semester and went straight to work. She had known when Mark’s father, Frank, got his double-knee replacement at forty-one and spent all his weekends with a hot water bottle and a mini-fridge full of Busch.

            She had known the summer after she graduated, when she got a part-time job in the city sewing ensemble costumes for a successful off-Broadway show. She had loved it. Back in Elmwood Park, tailoring wedding dresses, funeral dresses, and prom dresses made good money but this was… this was new! New challenges, new designs! She found a roommate she’d known from school and summered in the city, picking up spare work from a few other shows, swapping tickets with the other seamstresses to see a new show almost every night, dragging Mark up on the weekends to see museums and the waterfront.

            When the lead costume designer told her that her work was good, really good, and she could find Bridget steady work beyond the summer, she told Mark immediately. She must have sounded exactly like he had about the tattoo. New York! A good job for good money! A place where she was gliding along like shears through velvet!

            Mark got real quiet. When she asked what was wrong, he said, “Just worried about when I’ll see you all the way up here.”

            The gliding stopped. She’d found a snag in the fabric.

            Bridget had asked Mark once why they didn’t go visit Rome, if he was so proud of the history and the roads and the “SPQR.”

            “Rome’s gone,” he’d said. “I mean I know it’s not gone, but that Rome is. We’re Rome now.” He said it with a grin.

            They had been driving home from Mark’s parents’ place. His car rumbled past empty storefronts and a factory that hadn’t been open since the 90’s. She looked out at a shopping center well past its prime. The Acme grocery store never had a piece of fruit that wasn’t already prepared to be dumped in the trash, but there were two separate, neon-lit liquor stores on either end of the parking lot, which, by the way, was so torn up it looked like it had seen war. It was like driving through the lyrics of an early Springsteen song.

            Rome was going to fall. Was falling. Had fallen.

            But Mark was smiling. And he loved her more than anything. And the little house downtown with the studio he was going to make for her right next to the laundry room was calling.

            Three days later she called Mark with great news: the shop in Elmwood Park wanted her back as a seamstress and a bookkeeper. It came with a small raise. She was coming home.

            Then came the engagement ring and the wedding planning and dress (an A-Line, lace bodice, with a train, but not too long: timeless) and the extra shifts to pay for it all and the drunk driver just outside the Holland tunnel and the funeral planning (pine box with lacquered finish, gray suit for burial, an unadorned, black, floor-length dress for the service, a wake in the reception hall of St. Michael’s) and the months of alternating between crying at her parents’ house (“Hey now, sweetheart. We’re sorry. We loved him, too, but… it is what it is…”) and visiting Mark’s mother to comfort her while she cried.

            And then came Mark’s ghost, not a half mile from where he had died. After that came the long, autumn nights driving around to see him again. She had, four separate times, in his high-vis vest and short sleeves with that damn tattoo peeking out at her. She could always see it, no matter how dark it was. She wondered if there was meaning in that. She meant to ask someone, but who was there to ask? Not family and not friends, she had decided. And fortunetellers were scam artists.

So, why the priest? Well, when she went to Father Conlan, she was pretty sure she just wanted his blessing to go see a therapist. If a white-haired Catholic priest says you need therapy, you’re flat out of excuses.

            She never expected him to help.

--

            “You’re going to exorcise him?”

            “It’s not an exorcism,” said Father Conlan. “It’s last rites. Mark died before a priest could reach him. If you’re seeing him, and five times doesn’t sound like a hallucination to me, it might be he needs a little help finding his way up to Saint Peter.”

            They had decided to finish the conversation in Father Conlan’s office. Bridget was sipping decaf coffee to be polite. Father Conlan gulped down his still-steaming mug like it was ice water in July.

            “You’ll have to drive, of course, I wouldn’t trust myself on the turnpike after dark. Do you think you can hold a rosary while you steer?”

            Bridget looked up helplessly.

            “You’re right. We’ll hang it from the rear-view mirror. I have to prepare for the early mass, so I’ll need to be back here by three o’clock.”

            “As in tonight?”

            “God willing. Do you have something more pressing going on?”

            Bridget felt like she had asked for a bandage for a cut and was being ushered into an ambulance. What do you say to that? No, I couldn’t possibly? Could we talk about some other options?

            She crumpled like a cheap cotton shirt.

“Why do you believe me?”

            Father Conlan leaned back in his chair.

            “Bridget, God saved me from a car crash when I was a young man. My sedan was more tree than steel when they pulled me out. I should’ve been dead. I would have deserved it, the way I was driving. But I wasn’t. I got a fun little collection of scars, but I walked away whole. It’s why I joined the seminary, you know. So, you’re seeing a departed soul on the side of road? Am I supposed to tell you you’re crazy?”

            Well, yeah, that had been the plan, but Bridget was too embarrassed to admit it now.

            He spread his hands, like he was delivering her a personal homily.

            “God is everywhere… which is part of the reason we should really watch our language on the turnpike.”

            --

            “Jesus Christ!” she shouted, her whole body falling into the horn as some jag-off in an actual Jaguar nearly sideswiped her in a lane change.

            “Bridget, please,” Father Conlan said. “Remember, He’s everywhere.”

            “I know, I’m sorry!” she said. She didn’t say that she had resisted the urge to give Jesus several highly unpleasant middle names or that God and Father Conlan should temper their expectations tonight.

            It was two in the morning, and they had been driving for four hours, mostly circuiting back and forth between Newark and Lower Manhattan, back and forth through that tunnel like a bad euphemism for a loose woman (which she wasn’t, of course, but it’s hard not to be defensive around a priest). She kept getting a glimpse of the city that she had loved once, and then had to turn right back around for Newark. God, she hated Newark. It was ugly and small and those interchanges made her feel like she was on the world’s crappiest roller coaster. And she’d drank too much coffee and had to pee and they rerouted her past the frickin’ Newark Airport because of road construction (she had gotten as close as possible to look, but no Mark anywhere) and if one more fancy car cut her off on one of these silly-straw highway exits she was going to lose her mind permanently.

            “Bridget, it’s going to be all right.”

            “You don’t know that!” Then, with an entire upbringing of guilt rearing its head, added. “…Father.”

            “I don’t. Not for a certainty. But I have faith. It’s one of the primary job requirements.”

            Bridget said nothing.

            “Are you worried about seeing him again, or not seeing him again?”

            Brake lights snaked around her, and her tired eyes could see the lines they made as they orbited her.

            “Neither.”

            “You seem worried.”

            “I am, but not about that.”

            “Well, then, I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

            Straightaway. Her foot was on the accelerator now. It was all the way down. Tires pushed against road, road threw itself against tires.

            “I’m worried about drowning. About being that guy from the homily who’s drowning. The one every priest tells every year, no offense! You know, he’s drowning, and the lifeguard offers to save him, and he says no, and a boat comes by and offers to save him, and he says no, and then a Coast Guard helicopter comes to save him, and he says no, because the whole time he’s so sure God will save him. Then he does die and he gets up to heaven to ask God what gives, and God… God...”

            She was blubbering. The road signs and streetlights were starting to blur around her. Her eyes needed windshield wipers.

            Father Conlan cleared his throat, and in his best Sunday sermon punch-line said, “God says, ‘I was trying! Who do you think sent you a lifeguard, a boat, and a helicopter?’”

            They paused.

            “You’re worried about missing your chance,” Father Conlan said, quiet, patient.

            She didn’t know what to say. Maybe she should have kept Mark to herself. Maybe it was like birthday wishes: if you tell someone it can’t come true anymore. Maybe she was crazy and Father Conlan was too polite to say it. He was too polite. Here he was, a godly man at an ungodly hour.

            “I’m going to say a few ‘Our Fathers,’” He said. “You’re welcome to join me if you like.”

            He began. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

            In her sleep-deprived, bathroom-deprived, husband-deprived brain, Bridget started twisting the prayer around.

            My Mark, who art in Jersey, Capavia be they name. Thy girl has come, thy roadwork be done, here and possibly in heaven.

            Orange lights flared up. A late crew had come in, and the cars around her were starting to slow.

            “That’s him!” she said, pointing. It was only a mile from where she’d first spotted him. On the other side of the concrete barrier, a road worker was reaching up to adjust one of the lamps on a portable light tower. It was far and it was dark and her eyes were tired and she was tired, but there he was. She could see the stupid tattoo!

            “—andleadusnotintotemptationbutdeliverusfromevil, amen!” said Father Conlan, reaching for the bag in front of him.

            “Have you ever done this before? For a dead person?”

            “I have. Never in a speeding car, but you don’t get to choose how or when someone needs you.”

            Bridget pumped the brakes. She didn’t know how long the not-exorcism was supposed to take. Someone behind her blared their horn. She resisted the urge to give them the bird.

            “Right,” Father Conlan said. “I can’t take Penance, because, you know. And I can’t anoint the sick. But there’s still the Viaticum. I’ll offer up some of the Eucharist, and we’ll pray with Mark. It’s right in here, give me a second.”

            The jerk behind her, a bald guy in a New York Giants jersey, was now screeching around the side, clearly yelling some kind of profanity that told her he either hadn’t heard that God was on the turnpike or didn’t care.

            Bridget tuned him out. She tuned Father Conlan out, too, though the piece of her parents that she constantly carried around in her head was horrified.

            The road lights were ahead, bright and white, and in their halo she saw her tattooed, dead, wonderful fiancé just on the other side of the concrete barrier.

            She slowed down a little more. Another horn came: this one rising, peaking, zipping past and fading off like a single, long chord.

            “Bridget, you can’t stop here, sweetheart.”

            Bridget didn’t care. She swerved her car as close to the barrier as she could. She hit the rumble strips, which started grating the whole car. Beside her, Father Conlan fumbled, dropped something. She thought it might be the Eucharist. Oh, that was bad, her floorboards were filthy right now.

            She brushed it aside. She had to get to Mark. This time she wasn’t going to pass by, she was going to get out and explain to him, to make sure he understood she hadn’t really meant to leave. Yes, she had thought about it, and yes she had started taking some money out of their joint account (only what she had earned, and if he had asked, she would have told him!), and yes, okay, she had stopped wearing her engagement ring except when he was around, and yes she missed New York and some days her life made her feel like she was one of the brides who insisted on a bodice so tight she could barely breathe, and yes, she was trapped, and yes something needed to happen, but not the accident, never the accident.

            “Bridget!”

            Her eyes flashed away from Mark just long enough to see the torn tire on her side of the highway. Her driver’s side wheel swallowed it. Her car slipped left, sputtered, shredded itself against the concrete barrier. She slammed the brakes, fishtailed. She felt something clip them from behind, but she didn’t know what, all she saw was the light, all she could think about was Mark… Before the crash she thought she saw him rushing towards her. She thought she saw him leaping the barrier…

--

            The light was too bright. It was the only thing she could see. She tried to turn her head, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t move at all. She was flat on her back staring up into lights brighter than the stage lights on Broadway.

            She was crying again.

            “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

            “Hey… It’s okay. It’s okay now.”

            “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

            “No. It’s all right. Accidents happen. You can’t always stop ‘em.”

            “But I… I should’ve—”

            “You can’t stop accidents, Bridget. And you can’t let them stop you. I didn’t.”

            She tried to speak, but it hurt too much.

            She was moving now. She wasn’t moving herself, but she felt the world moving around her. The light got a little brighter, and then it started to fade.

            “I love you, Mark, and…”

            She didn’t hear an answer. But she felt it. She felt okay. She closed her eyes again.

--

            She was in the hospital for five days, but she was okay. The worst bit was the gown, god she hated the plastic-y feeling of it against her skin. Father Conlan, somehow, walked away with a bruise on his jaw, but was otherwise fine. Not even a concussion.

            “Chalk another one up for the big guy!” he said with a purple, lopsided smile that made Bridget’s heart hurt.

            Two weeks after that, she was ready to leave Jersey. She was thinking about heading west. Boston, maybe, or Chicago. She packed light, said her good-byes. Her mother and father couldn’t understand it. They kept telling her to get an MRI. Must have caught some brain damage in the crash. She waved it away. The doctors said she was fine.

            “I’ve got to go. It is what it is.”

            She wanted a different kind of loud. She wanted something new. When her car left the shop beat all to hell but ready to drive, she was ready to go.

            She felt lighter. She felt like Mark knew it all now. The last “I love you,” had done it. It wasn’t “I love you, but,” it was “I love you, and.” I love you, and I need to get out of here. I love you, and I want to try something new. I love you, and I’m leaving, and I’m taking a little piece of you with me.

--

            Before she left, she decided to drive take a long drive on the turnpike. She started in Tom’s River, got on at Exit 80, and drove all the way up to South Brunswick. She didn’t look for Mark. She just let herself become part of the traffic, part of the wheezy, arrhythmic heartbeat of home. She kept her eyes on the road. She wasn’t going to back to a hospital any time soon.

God help her, there just wasn’t anything beautiful about this fucking road. But at least it was going where it needed to go. And now, thanks to Mark, so was she.