Driving With the Top Down by Beth Harbison

that’s somehow politically incorrect or something. Anyway, if I’d thought more carefully ahead, I’d have gotten better paper. And something to put it in, I guess. I’m not sure where to leave this.
    I’m not very good at drama, I guess.
    Though, boy, I sure had a lot thrown at me this week. I mean, the truth, now that I look back on it, is that I’ve been putting up with a low-level hum of bullshit—yes, I said bullshit—for a long time, but I ignored it, pushed it away, whatever. I was the dutiful wife, right?
    So dutiful that I apparently had zero idea who my husband was or what he was capable of.
    I guess that’s the first thing you should know about me: I’m a blind idiot who doesn’t even know her husband of thirteen years, and I’m not very good at planning suicide.
    We’re not off to a good start, are we, New Friend?
    Oh well. I’m a letdown for everyone, always have been. A fraud, even when I didn’t know it. There’s no reason I should be any better to you than I am to anyone else.
    So, getting back to the point, I’m here in the Henley Diner, in a sticky vinyl booth that’s probably been torn for twenty years, and is imbued with the smells of every greasy thing that was ever fried up here.
    A year ago, if you’d told me I’d be here, ordering fried green tomatoes and pecan pie, it would have felt like a slap. Not me. Not Wilhelmina Nolan Camalier. (I never had a middle name, because my parents were so set on me keeping their last name that they forced the issue by planning for it to at least be my middle name when I married.) (By the way, not having a middle name is kind of a drag when you’re in school and all your friends think there’s something weird about you because your parents were too stingy to give you more than one name.)
    Anyway, I’m not exactly sure why I came here, of all places, two hours east of my house when my plan was to go south. For some weird reason, I wanted to see it one last time. I guess it feels like the last time I was sure I was happy was here.
    No. I’m kidding myself. You probably saw right through me, huh? Close as we are? This isn’t a place of great joy for me, it’s just the last place I ate really well. When I ordered my fried chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli, and consumed all but the greens in about six minutes flat. That was the last time I had fried chicken, incidentally. In fact, it was the only time, and I loved it the way they warn people not to try heroin because they’ll love it. But that was a bad day too, though not so bad as this day, and I came here for comfort food and I got it. The place has hardly changed.
    I haven’t either. Oh, I know I look different, even though you would probably be kind and tell me I look just the same. I’ve told that lie to people too. Maybe there’s a certain symmetry to my coming back here. Full circle. At least closing one circle.
    My friend Colleen and I sat in a booth—that one right over there, I can see it now. I sat with my boyfriend, Blake, and she sat with Kevin. We were on a happy little double date. I probably asked for my Diet Coke to be refilled six times along with everyone else, not feeling like I was actually drinking the equivalent of six sodas—half a case of sodas. Later that night, everything had changed, and I didn’t ever want to come back here.
    I guess I could go into what happened that night, but why bother? I’d come off crazy, like I’m still upset about some dumb breakup that happened all those years ago. Which I’m not.
    That’s not why I want to kill myself.
    I don’t even want to go into the details of how I ended up at this spot, in this booth, having my last meal. It doesn’t even matter. My life is just like anyone else’s sob story. I was raised by a withholding mother, and an overprotective father who didn’t know how to talk to or interact with a young—or older—daughter. I did well in high school, never got in trouble, then went to college, just