Road Trip

My car keeps asking me if I want to take a break. I’ve been driving for four hours with no stops, so this is probably a fair question. The words pop up again on the dashboard. Do you want to take a break? No. Because I’m driving through New Jersey and I don’t want to stop in New Jersey.

Nothing against the people who live in New Jersey, but a few months ago, my husband and I were driving through the state and got a toll charge. Ten bucks. But the problem was we never got the notice in the mail. We were in the process of moving and the bill slipped through the change of address cracks. When I finally received it, it was past due. They’d turned us over to Collections. 

Now we owed one hundred and ten bucks. I was enraged and had a pointless argument with a customer service person at the collections agency before giving up and sending them the money. I will never drive through New Jersey again, I vowed. But here I am, driving through New Jersey. My neck pangs. My shoulders cramp. My calf throbs. Do I have a blood clot? My mind spins around that for fifteen miles. 

And then it’s back to the conversation I had with the collections agency lady. I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I kept asking her to repeat herself, and she did, patiently. I was a customer service person myself, so I know the drill. Listen. Affirm what the customer is saying. Don’t take things personally. 

But on the other end of things, on the customer side, it’s all personal. Why was New Jersey shaking me down? Oh, and listen to this: Last week, within a twenty-four-hour period, both of my credit cards were compromised, used fraudulently, and shut down. I was out of state when it happened and stuck with the two worthless plastic rectangles. Luckily, I have a debit card, but I haven’t used it in years. Does it still work? What the hell is the pin number? 

I feel like I’m an unnamed character at the beginning of a dystopian thriller, the rando person who tries to access her bank account and the balance suddenly shifts to zero. Next thing she knows her email goes down, she’s locked out of her phone, the lights overhead sizzle and glitch. Is it the end of the world? Blood clots. How would I know if I had a blood clot? 

It’s possible I have been driving alone for too long.

Outside, it’s still New Jersey. This little section is actually very nice. More woodsy and rolly-hilled than I would’ve imagined. I switch on my audiobook, but I can’t focus on it. Technology has fried my brain. Modern life has pickled what’s left of it. And Oh My God, New Jersey. 

How can you sleep at night, tacking a hundred dollars onto a ten-dollar toll? You should be ashamed of yourself. I’m so sorry, ma’am, the customer service agent told me, and it sounded like she really meant it. But there was nothing she could do. It sounded like she meant that too. She wasn’t a machine. She was a human, weary and ground down as the rest of us. 

After I hung up on her, I regretted it. I wish I could call her back. I didn’t mean the things I said about you and the state of New Jersey, is what I would tell her. You’re doing the best you can. We all are. 

Do you want to take a break? My car asks me again. 

This time I do.