Page 2 of The Business Trip

To make room for my ever-growing stash of cash, I removed the plastic holders from the circular metal hooks in the photo album, taking the aging pictures out of their liners and keeping those loose-leaf. With no full page holders, I had space for bills. Using a box of matches, I set the holders on fire out back while Glenn was at work, the scent of burning plastic and paper overwhelming my nose and making my eyes water, but also smelling like freedom to me.

It went on like this for over a year, me faking that things were normal with Glenn while plotting my escape. I had become a robot around him, a shell of the former lively Jasmine that I was. Jasmine Veronica was my name. What my mother was thinking I never knew. Then again, she had felt like a stranger to me for much of my life. Mom had three kids with three different men, and for some reason she decided early on that I was the bad seed. I must have been only eight or nine when I overheard hertell a friend that shenevershould have had a third, that my dad was the worst of the bunch, that I was too much like him. Rumor had it he was in jail somewhere. Not that any of our fathers were ever around. Mom resented being saddled with kids—that much was clear—or at least she resented being saddled with me.

I was five years younger than my sister and seven years younger than my brother. I grew up feeling like a constant outcast. Skinny and awkward, I needed years of braces while my siblings were blessed with near-perfect teeth. Mom complained constantly about the cost. I struggled mightily in math and science while they both seemed to find everything about school easy. It got so bad for me that I was almost held back a year. Mom told a friend, in front of me this time, how mortified she was.

Everything I did or wanted seemed like a bother, even basic needs such as food. “You’re hungryagain?” she would say with a deep sigh and a long stare, even at what felt like normal mealtimes to me. She nicknamed me “Little Piggy” and would call out “This Little Piggy went to market…” when I came hunting for a snack. My siblings were no help. They never seemed to find me anything but annoying, telling me to leave them alone when I tried to initiate play or talk about any emotions.

As I grew up, I had some run-ins with the police in high school. Wasn’t that normal? Then I got knocked up and had an abortion that Mom had to pay for when I was eighteen. Wasn’t that better than bringing an unwanted kid into this crazy world? So I didn’t go to regular college like my brother and sister. I tried cosmetology school because I had always liked playing with makeup, but Mom told me that she was done paying for stuff, and I had to drop out when I couldn’t afford tuition.

The truth was she just didn’t like me and never had. The fact that she worked as a nurse’s assistant at an old folks’ homewas the ultimate irony. She could care for complete strangers with tenderness, but not show an ounce of TLC for her own daughter.

Mom and I really drifted apart after the abortion and the cosmetology school mess. For some years, we exchanged perfunctory Christmas cards, the writing increasingly stilted and formal, as if we were talking to a long-lost neighbor, not a close family member.

“Have a very Merry Christmas,” Mom had written on the last one. It didn’t even have my name on the inside, and she had signed it “Your Mother” and not “Love, Mom.” I couldn’t help but mentally compare it to what I thought she would be writing to my brother and sister, and I decided then and there to stop exchanging cards, or words. When I moved to a new apartment in town, I didn’t give her my address. We hadn’t talked since. Last I heard, my brother lived in Chicago and my sister somewhere in upstate New York. He did something with computers, and she was one of those businesswomen who worked as a pharmaceutical rep and who I imagined jetting around the country to important meetings and stuff. I hadn’t shared my new address with them either. The same year I moved on from Mom, I moved on from them as well. It was just easier for me all around to harden my heart.

I tried not to think of them or Mom very often. It made me angry and sad. I was mostly OK being away from all of them now, but sometimes I wished I had a family to lean on. This was one of those times. Instead, I would have to rely on my own smarts. I might not have been book-smart, but I was street-smart, I knew that.

It was my time.

The city of Denver sounded attractive to me. I didn’t know why, didn’t know anyone there, had never been, but a placewith mountains and a bunch of laid-back outdoorsy people seemed glorious. Why not make a new start there? I didn’t have much of a plan beyond getting to Denver with enough money to live until I found a job. I just needed to leave Glenn safely first. I had my cell phone, the huge wad of cash that I had retrieved from the photo album after Glenn had fallen asleep, some clothes, and a plan to fly that afternoon.

My big dilemma was how to get from our trailer to the airport without a car. Having never used Uber before, I asked Anna, the high school friend who had secured me the job at the bar, to show me how to install the app. We did it in the women’s restroom after we were done cleaning up the night before. Anna was good at this sort of stuff, always had been. Back at Madison North High School, she liked to show us all kinds of technology that kind of blew our minds. At first it was stuff on a desktop computer. Now it was iPhone tricks, AI art, and what types of questions you could ask ChatGPT.

In the darkness of the trailer now, I nervously slipped my phone from my purse and cupped my hand around it so the light would not be too bright for Glenn. I was trying to summon a ride to the end of the drive where Glenn’s trailer was parked. If this Uber app didn’t work, I wasn’t sure what I would do. Maybe abandon the plan for another day or week until I could get Anna to show me what I had done wrong. But as I searched for nearby cars, it seemed to function perfectly. It put a dot on my exact location and said a car driven by someone named Carlos was fifteen minutes away.

Fifteen minutes.Breathe, Jasmine, breathe.Confirming the pickup, I looked over at Glenn. He was naked, the way he always slept, with a thin sheet haphazardly flung over him. I was always cold and needed warm pajamas and sometimes two blankets, especially in January in Wisconsin. He called me an“old fucking lady” and tried to get me to sleep naked too, but I would shiver all night if I tried.

Bending down, I pushed the bulk of my cash into the suitcase and started to carefully zip it closed. This might be the trickiest part, other than actually sneaking out the front door without making too much noise. Carefully, I inched the zipper a centimeter and waited to see if he had any reaction. Another centimeter and I waited again. I tried an inch the next time, but he flipped onto his back, his arm going up over his head, and I stopped and waited until he fully settled into sleep again.

I glanced at my side of the bed, and a fantasy flashed into my head: What if I grabbed my pillow and smotheredhisface while he slept? What if I didn’t release it as he had to me? I could just leave him there, dead. But I wasn’t sure I could overpower him, and the prospect of a life in jail was too much. Everyone would know it was me.

No, just pure escape was best. Back to the centimeter plan with my suitcase. It took me over five minutes to get it fully zipped. Picking it up in my arms so as not to roll it, I backed out of the bedroom like a thief, eyes trained on Glenn the entire time.

The front door was next. It had a heavy main door and a squeaky screen door, but I had played a trick on Glenn a few days ago, taking a box cutter from his toolbox and slashing a gash into the screen that I said was from the recent winter windstorm knocking it open. That forced Glenn to take it to his buddy at Monona Storm and Screen for repair. With the screen door out of the picture, the front door wouldn’t be as bad to open.

And I was the stupid one? I’d show him, my family, everybody.

Suddenly, I thought of the coming Uber and wondered if Ineeded to hurry. Would the driver honk if I wasn’t there right at the appointed time? My heart went even faster, and my hands began to sweat, causing the suitcase in my arms to slip for a moment. I righted it, wiping each palm quickly on my jeans as the other arm held the suitcase.

I could still hear Glenn’s rhythmic breathing down the hall of the trailer, the rasp of air in and out of his lungs. He was such a heavy breather. My right hand went to the door handle and turned it a millimeter at a time, listening for that final click as it yielded open.

An owl hooted in a nearby tree, and the sound both startled and calmed me. With renewed purpose, I pulled the door open and stepped outside the trailer. Breathing in the cold air, I shut the door behind me as carefully as I could. A blast of winter shouldn’t be the thing to wake Glenn.

It was so frigid outside that my breath crystallized, but it would be quiet weather for flying. A snowstorm would have foiled my plans. I had been watching the forecast on the local CBS affiliate for a week to be sure. Their main meteorologist was my favorite. He was good-looking and funny. Glenn had once asked me if I thought the meteorologist was sexy. I lied and said no.

There was the sound of a car rolling along the gravel in the distance, and I saw a sweep of headlights. Glenn didn’t like full-blown RV places—too many people, he said—so he had gotten a small plot of land and set up his trailer there. We had some neighbors within walking distance but not close enough to see on a daily basis.

Cocking my head to listen for any movement from Glenn over the gravel sound, I was filled with relief that the trailer remained silent. Wrapping my arms around my suitcase, I straightened up to walk as upright and confidently as I couldtoward this waiting Uber. I had to look in control, not like a madwoman on the run. Taking deep gulps of air and composing my face into a bright smile, I made my way to the car.

I planned to tell the driver I was going on a business trip if he asked. I thought of my sister with what I imagined to be fancy clothes and all the makeup she wanted and expensive shoes on her feet. I could act like I was important and fantasize that I would be wowing some room with my business savvy later in the day. Maybe it wasn’t too late for that life for real. Maybe I could take some business classes in Denver and eventually find my way to a job like that. This was the new me.

Carlos was a heavyset guy whose unkempt hair made me wonder if he had just woken up, but he was chatty, asking me lots of questions. I started in on the lies. Why was I flying? “Business trip.” What did I do? Channeling my sister: “I work for a pharmaceutical company.” Where was the trip? I didn’t want to say Denver, just in case Glenn somehow tracked this man down, so I picked my sister’s state too: “New York.” I figured there had to be plenty of conventions and meetings there.

Deftly, I turned the conversation to him, and he started droning on about his kids and their extracurriculars. Perfect. Zoning out, I stared out the window, making only small comments of affirmation when I felt I should be responding.

Carlos pulled up to Delta departures. As he was retrieving my bag from the trunk, I had a sudden flash of fear. What if I saw someone I knew at the airport who happened to be flying the same day? Someone from the bar or from my other previous jobs around town, including gas station attendant and maid at several places? I had a plan, but it didn’t feel very foolproof.

A blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap from a thrift shop sat in my purse. That, plus those fake round glasses, would bemy partial disguise. I could also hide in a corner chair or even in the women’s bathroom for as long as I needed to before the flight took off.

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