Crossing The Bridge

Marcy Sheiner

Lanie Foster sat in her red Ford Escort behind a dozen or so cars, waiting to pay her toll and cross the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. She arched her neck, trying to see if the metering lights were on, but couldn't see anything beyond the tank-sized SUV two cars ahead. "Damn suburban attack vehicles," she muttered. She lit a Marlboro from the end of the one still burning between her fingers, crushed the butt in the overflowing ashtray, and impatiently tapped on the steering wheel in time to some inane bubble gum music. Irritated, she switched off the radio. Damn those bastards who'd stolen her tape deck. It was stifling hot in the car, and she let out another curse for having chosen a red car some ten years ago—it seemed to draw the sun like a magnet,. Which was the least of her car's problems now: the lock had been broken by the tape deck thieves, the tires were nearly bald, and the clutch was on its way out. For the hundredth time that day, she mentally calculated this month's income and expenses, a reassuring practice in which she manipulated the numbers to match up, knowing full well that when rent day arrived, something would be off, and she'd be scrambling to gather enough dollars to pay the landlord.

This time no matter how she scrambled the numbers, they did not add up. A knot of anxiety so familiar it was like an old friend formed in her stomach. God, but she was sick of worrying about money. She willed herself to think about something else, and settled on the book she'd been reading all week—The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. She half believed in reincarnation, and her friend Phyllis, who absolutely believed, had insisted that she read it. It offered no clarity to Lanie's muddled mind, though; in fact, it raised more questions than answers. Like, if you were reincarnated as an animal, was that a step forward or back? Did one leave one's physical self, i.e., die, once enlightenment was attained? Was meditation really the only way out of the cycle? If so, she wasn't going to make it in this lifetime. Better to go with the Judaism she'd been born into—good deeds brought good karma--though Judaism didn't use the word, in fact barely mentioned an afterlife. Of course, if good deeds were the way to go, she wasn't exactly on track either. Oh, she did try; in recent years she'd even made a little progress in that department. But past deeds, especially the mistakes she'd made as a mother, weren't going to win her any points on the game show of life and death.

A dark green VW bus in the next lane caught her attention, plastered as it was with bumper stickers--standard automotive decoration for Berkeleyites. Save the Planet. Stop Racism Now. U.S. Out of El Salvador—time to change your stickers, she thought with a hint of contempt. One half-peeled-off sticker exhorted people to Practice Random Acts of Kindness. She tried to remember the missing half of the slogan, but her busy brain suddenly flashed to the memory of another drive, another tollbooth, some thirty years ago.

She'd been driving from Long Island into Manhattan, the kids stuffed into the backseat of her new Corvair—this was pre-seat belt law days—along with her favorite record albums and some household items she didn't trust the moving men to handle. She was permanently leaving her husband, her sprawling eight-room ranch, the safe secure life she'd decided was too stultifying and decadent. She'd been twenty-four and full of bravado on the outside, trembling with fear on the inside. During the one-hour drive, while she played alphabet games with the kids, half her mind was nagging at her, wondering how she was going to raise two children without Bruce's five-figure salary. When they'd reached the tollbooth, the collector nonchalantly informed her that the previous driver had paid for her. Lanie had burst into manic laughter; it was a sign from God, she happily told the children.

She smiled now, recalling the feel-good, hippie inspired sermon she'd given the kids about how this good fortune meant that "the universe will provide." The years were soon enough to rob her youthful optimism, proving beyond a doubt that the universe most certainly did not provide rent, food and the myriad of supplies it took to raise a family.

Still, the recollection jolted her to remember those struggling years, raising the kids with, as Grace Paley put it, "one hand typing behind my back." She still struggled to pay her rent, but doing it solo was like a walk in the park compared to the way it had been with two children.

In a burst of good will, she decided to repay that long ago benefactor by paying someone's toll now. Who knows, she thought, maybe I'll be giving a smidgen of hope to some poor mother who's leaving an abusive husband. Even if she paid for someone who could well afford it, she decided, it would do her spirit good. In fact, she wouldn't even check to see who was in the car behind her.

She reached over and pulled two dollars out of her purse. Well, she'd just check the rearview mirror to make sure it wasn't an SUV behind her--she did, after all, have some non-negotiable principles. The car was a Toyota.

At the booth she handed over four dollars and chirped, "I'm paying for the car behind me," feeling as if she were donating a million dollars to find a cure for breast cancer. The toll booth worker took the bills without expression, and Lanie whizzed on. She wouldn't look back; no, there was to be no reward, no waiting for a thank-you, that was the beauty of the thing. You just put good will out into the universe without any desire for reward. No attachment. That's what the Tibetan Book and most other systems of belief preached. Suddenly the Toyota was pulling up on her left, an elderly woman behind the wheel honking and waving madly. Lanie glanced over but decided not to acknowledge the gift, not to take in the woman's appreciation. Humility was the essence of giving, of goodness. From the corner of her eye she could see the woman growing more and more frantic, waving wildly, moving frighteningly close to Lanie's car. Finally Lanie nodded and smiled, but the woman apparently didn't notice. She closed in, her passenger side window open, her car just inches away from Lanie's, both of them going fifty miles an hour. Alarmed, Lanie swerved to the right to avoid being hit. Almost in time she saw the shiny blue SUV. Almost in time she saw the vehicle swerve, heard the high-pitched squeal of brakes. Then there was nothing but the awful, terrifying sound of crunching metal and glass as the mini-van bore down on her.