What do you think he's trying to do to us?
Dad calls me sobbing and tells me not to worry.
"Okay," I say, "No problem," I say.
"Glenn rolled over his truck."
"Yeah," I say (remember I'm not worrying, and when I heard those words a part of me deep in my heart went completely numb) "Where is he now?"
"Standing by the side of the road...he walked away from it."
"Oh my God..." Then something tickled at the back of my head, "Wait...when was this?"
"The accident happened at three fifteen."
Then my eyes are filling with tears and I have to sit down because I was on the phone with Glenn from two fifty-eight to three-oh-nine. I know because I was looking at the LCD on my iHome. And our conversation was nothing spectacular it was so ordinary and then his brush with death...and the idea that one of the last things I could've said to him was "Your dog's retarded". How can you live with that? Well, I don't have to because he walked away without a scratch.
Well, I can't say that honestly. He got one scratch. Reaching through the broken window of his truck to retrieve his cell phone. It didn't even need a band-aid. How do you come so close to dying without even getting hurt? Not to sound ungrateful but how do you flip your truck and roll over three times landing upside down in a ditch and not get injured? How does that happen? I'm crying because I'm so confused and so happy.
There was a woman driving behind Glenn who witnessed everything. She watched his tire blow out and she watched him go flipping into the ditch and she called for help and pulled over. She ran into the ditch and she saw his arm sticking out of the window (unknown to her reaching for his phone) she thought he was dead and started screaming.
I can't wrap my head around this. Dad keeps yammering into the phone. He tells me how he called a hospital to see if Glenn was on route. The receptionist at the hospital answered cheerily into the phone,
"This is Elizabeth how may I help you?"
Dad's quiet a long time and I can't think anything to say so I'm quiet too.
"What do you think..." Dad asks, "What do you think he's trying to do to us?"
"Who?" I ask, "Glenn?"
"No God, what is trying to do here?"
"I don't know."
"What will we do?"
"You can't worry over a bad thing that didn't happen. Glenn's fine. Everything is going to be just fine."
Dad cried some more.
After we hung up I felt pretty alone here in the city and I wanted to be home so badly. Just to see Glenn. To reaffirm that he still existed in the world. There was no way home and I felt lonely. I scrolled trough my phone's adress book three times looking for someone to call. I regretted the first call I made. Should've known better. Then I called Angela before remembering she was at work. Then made a few more unanswered calls and just marveled how my phone list got smaller and smaller. Finally I settled and started painting.
Angela called me back and I told her what happened. I cried and told her how much I wanted to see Glenn because I didn't believe you could roll a truck three times and be alright. There was a pause on the line and then Angela asked point blank,
"Have you called him yet?"
"No, I don't want to bug him. He nearly died today."
"When you hang up with me call him and you'll both feel better."
When I called Glenn he answered with a ,
"Hey."
"Hey," I said back, "How are you doing."
"I'm sore, but alive."
Tears sprang to my eyes as I blurted out (and it sounds so stupid now),
"I'm glad your alive."
"Yeah, well."
"It's scary"
"Yeah, well."
I could hear baseball on the T.V. in the background and things felt more normal. But there was so much I wanted to ask him. I wanted to ask him what song was playing on the radio when he had his accident. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking when he heard all those windows shatter, that metal crunch. I wanted to ask him what it felt like to almost die. But I didn't ask, because I don't think I really want to know any of those things.
"I'm gonna borrow your car for awhile."
"That's fine. It's sort of messy inside though."
"That's fine."
"I don't want to keep you. I'm really glad you're okay."
"I know."
Then just like on conversation at three-oh-nine I ended it by saying,
"I'll talk to you later."
Over the phone he sounded pained, happy, and in a strange way proud. I thought about how me must've looked being pulled from the wreckage of his car by two good samaritans. I thought about how he must've looked walking away from his totaled truck to climb to the top of the ditch to survey the damage.
Then I couldn't get something else out of my head. I remembered standing with him between two trucks on a used car lot. We were there about a week or so after Liz's accident in Glenn's jeep. One of the truck's was black and the other was the red one the Glenn ended up with. I stood with him between the two trucks. The black one was the better deal. Newer year, fully loaded, cheaper (due to high mileage). The red one was slightly older, not as luxurious and a little more pricey. We stood between them and Glenn sighed and said,
"I'm just trying to figure out which one Elizabeth would want me to choose."
He chose the red one.
He walked away from rolling that red truck over three times.