Exit 18 – The George Washington Bridge
connects the two ledges that rise from deep water in constant motion. On the New Jersey side, one hundred feet had to be blasted out to make it level with New York. Someone is always trying to cut us down, I tell Anna. She says I have a chip on my shoulder.
Exit 17 – The Vince Lombardi Service Area
is the only place to stop and rest around the city. Anna holds my hand in the night. We watch the clouds clear and skyscrapers pop over the Palisades. Her face bathes in the orange sodium light. Beauty contrasts with crushed Burger King cups and the cigarette butts that litter the potholed parking lot.
Exit 16 – The American Dream
defaulted on its obligations, was bought and sold several times—the mall that is. We never go. She’s feeling ill. After seven years of marriage, I stand by those beige handrails on her hospital bed. I gaze at the cords to the TV and the IV and the on-call nurse. The steady beep beep tells me my Anna is still alive.
Exit 15 – The Darkness on the Edge of Town
hits me when I walk out into the hot New Jersey night. I move behind the silhouette of dreams that haunt our mess, how naïve I was to believe that it would never envelop me.
Exit 14 – The Turnpike Extension
was our exit to Jersey City where we had some of our best years. Our landlady fried zucchini blossoms for us one evening every spring. We carried our wine into the cozy cafe on an endless night we thought we would pass beyond to something more—past the new condos and back-office building that filled in the longshoreman’s docks.
Exit 13 – Newark International Airport
where we made plans to fly to the Danube, the Dardanelles, and Kyoto.
Exit 12 – The Linden Cogeneration Plant
to drive past at night is to see the inner workings of hell—open flames venting steel pipes bending smoke rising. Anna’s sister Val talks some sense into me. She uses words for Anna like metastasis, cell counts, and stages, so scientific. Val leans in towards me. I angle away, noticing her white blouse missing a button. Or she had left it open. Val pushes on.
Exit 11 – The Woodbridge Mall
we went a few times after we moved out to the suburbs, a two-story house with landscaping. More plans, more dreams.
Exit 10 – The Last Chance for New York
white accentuates Val’s tan skin, which, as she speaks, grows red like a time-lapse of sunburn. I think of traveling with Anna to the mountains where the slate river moves slowly until the rapids begin churning it white, then blue, picking up speed and launching over the edge into free fall.
Exit 9 – The Middle
doctors are always counting people out. But not before they run some more tests.
Exit 8 – The Rest Stops
a dream that I was on the shore of a swamp surrounded by beige cattails in the middle of the night. A pale highway light gives me enough sight to see Anna drowning. Then Val instructs me. Eventually, we pull Anna out.
Exit 7 – Six Flags Great Adventure
where the turnpike takes a sharp left and I go straight in my old car that I used to pick Anna up in when she lived with her parents. Val would watch us from her bedroom window as we’d pull out and head down to the reservoir. There we took in each other’s skin reflecting the moonlight on the banks. We pulled each other close.
Exit 6 – The Bristol Amish Market
conjures images of an imagined idyllic life—leisurely cups of coffee, sourdough, apple pie.
Exit 5 – The Pine Barrens
the depression in the bed next to me feels lighter and shallower and I wonder whether it was all a dream or just parts.
Exit 4 – The Streets of Philadelphia or Atlantic City
sounds like a Springsteen playlist, I’ll admit. On those reservoir nights, I could feel the pulse in my neck beat with Anna’s heart. But now Val sits in the front seat, I sense her wider presence. I turn to her. I want to say …. But instead, we go over the concrete barrier into the swamp.
Exit 3 – The Light at the End
shines on narrow footholds and slippery handholds with our bodies fastened on the slick concrete. One wrong move, a weight shift, a hand moved too fast slips and we’ll fall from the overpass, dashed. Above the slate water against the sedimentary sky our we meet on the horizon like my body against hers, hers above mine.
Exit 2 – Power Plants
as she moves into my arms, she feels real, radiant.
Exit 1 – The Delaware Memorial Bridge
has a safety unit to escort drivers hit by the sheer open expanse of the highway towering over the river widening into the bay. Most of the suicides come from the Delaware side. I know that in some hospital bed on the end of the turnpike Anna will pull through.
Dave Nash (he/him) is lucky to live off Exit 13 with his family. His work appears in places like the South Florida Poetry Journal, Bulb Culture Collective, Jake, and The Hooghly Review. You can follow him @davenashlit1.
Image: wikimedia.org
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