Listen to Me by Hannah Pittard Page A

Maggie drifted into the rumble strip because the wind was so strong. Gerome had whined each time, but Mark didn’t say a thing. He’d been silent since their pit stop.
    Out of nowhere, the GPS system—which they used primarily to count down the miles, since they knew the drive inside and out, backwards and forwards—started beeping. Maggie had just taken exit 1 off I-70 in the direction of Eaton. Gerome shifted behind them but didn’t get up.
    â€œIt’s mad at me,” Maggie said, tapping the monitor. She said this more to hear a voice—any voice—than to be heard by her husband.
    Mark punched a few buttons. “It wants us to stay on 70 until 75,” he said. “Then go through Dayton.”
    â€œWe never go through Dayton.” She watched the screen images change while Mark continued to push buttons. “What did that mean? That last message?”
    Mark didn’t answer, just turned the system off altogether. “We can keep track of the miles on the odometer,” he said.
    â€œBut what did that mean?” said Maggie.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œ
Restricted usage road
—what did that mean?”
    â€œIt didn’t say that.”
    â€œIt did,” said Maggie. “Turn it back on.”
    Her neck went hot. Mark was staring. She could feel his attention, though she refused to look his way. He’d caught the tenor of her voice, its unsteadiness. But if he thought she was imagining something awful, he was wrong. This time he was wrong. She simply didn’t see why they couldn’t consult the GPS every now and then. Wasn’t that why they had it? For instance, what if there was a required detour or a road that was freshly out of service? All she hoped to do was save them time, avoid preventable trouble.
    On the Enneagram, there was a pair of statements that perfectly summed up the current situation, as well as their opposing takes:
I’ve been careful and have tried to prepare for unforeseen problems
(Maggie).
I’ve been spontaneous and have preferred to improvise as problems come up
(Mark). Or so Maggie imagined; Mark had never taken the test.
    Fine, then. Forget the GPS. Hope, after all, was the confusion of desire with probability, or however the saying went. But if they ended up having to “improvise” by taking a detour or turning around, getting back on 70 and going through Dayton—well, if they ended up having to do that, she’d have a hard time not gloating. That’s for sure.
    â€œRestricted road usage,”
said Mark, “is a ploy to keep away through traffic from smaller towns. It’s just a way to funnel us to a toll.”
    He was probably right, but she’d never seen such a notice before when they’d made the drive, and she knew he hadn’t either. No matter. Just then, she didn’t feel compelled to engage. She’d learned that winning was often about who could be quiet longest. This wasn’t a theory she had discussed with her therapist—in part because she suspected it might have been deemed morbid, perhaps even destructive—but in silence was power. In Maggie’s ability to ignore her husband was the added bonus of occasionally making him feel as though he’d been dismissed or, better, as though he’d been the one to overreact, not her. And so she focused on the road—on its double yellow lines, its faint bend to the east—and said nothing.
    After a little while, Mark turned away from her. Maggie cracked the front window and the car howled. This got Gerome’s attention. He stood, stretched, then sniffed at the air, at all the midwestern smells filtering in. Chickens. Hay. Cows. Manure.
    They were on US-35, headed southeast into Ohio. The sun was slanted low and bright to their right, in spite of the copper clouds ahead of them. The air itself was tea-toned, a pinkish brown, almost shiny. The angle of the light seemed funny, somehow off, as though