The Only Other Time I Truly Wanted To Punch Someone

We were driving back from a concert, just as the flood was hitting Iowa. It was me and her in the front, and in the backseat was her mother, her sister and her brother. Traffic was moving very slowly. We were listening to a mix cd I'd made of Okkervil River. The song "Maine Island Lovers" came on. It was quiet in the car as we listened to it. When the song was over her mother said to me, "That's a pretty song. Who is this?" Some kind of shyness swept over me, I suppose I was nervous being around her family, I wanted to belong, and I couldn't quite respond with an appropriate volume. The words "They're called Okkervil River," came out of my mouth but very quietly. The words felt awkward coming off my tongue. I looked to S to speak for me. S looked at me while I hesitated. Then she spoke for me. She told her mom the name of the band.

As we sat in traffic S was corresponding with her fiancé via text. Then he called. He was complaining about the fact that she was not back in town to pick him up from work and to pick their daughter up from daycare and get back home. He was really upset with her, as if we'd all seen the flood and the traffic coming. I did my best to calm her worries. She even texted my sister from my phone for me as I drove to get an update on the flood situation. I'll never forget what he said to her when he called. He complained about how she wasn't there to chauffeur him around (he got a D.U.I. and lost his license) and she didn't do anything but apologize. I could tell she felt she'd let him and their daughter down. She and I offered alternative solutions to his predicament, none of which met with his satisfaction, and the phone call ended with him saying to her, "Well what good are you then?!" And he hung up.

It made me sick with rage when she told me what he said. If he had been in the area I would've punched him unconscious.

What made me saddest is that after he hung up she held her phone in her lap and looked down, as if she'd done something wrong. I could tell she was sad and that she sort of believed him. She looked to be inside herself and feeling worthless and it made me disgusted that a man could ever do that to her. I wanted to hold her hand so desperately, but I couldn't because her mother, her sister and her brother were in the backseat.

I remember looking at her hands as I drove slowly with the traffic and longing to touch her, to make her smile. The feeling of being unable to make her happy was/is the worst feeling in the world.

And I remember as we drove on slowly in sad silence I recounted all the amazing ways in my head in which she was good and beautiful and wonderful and sweet and silly and incredible and I could never imagine asking her such an absurd question because she and heR were everything that is good to me.

"Maine Island Lovers" – Okkervil River