When You're Expecting Something Else Read Free

points. And then she adds, “Charming Hill is also the place where a little girl named Susan Hart was kidnapped from her bedroom window, but we try not to think about that. It’s really a very safe place to live.”
     
    Coffee splashes from my ceramic cup onto the table. How lucky for Meg; I saw that movie and she got married! I think about Alex again and my marriage that wouldn’t be, and how my dream babies flew out of my own window just like Susan Martin, as if kidnapped by Alex and Sandy, and then vaporized into thin air.
     
    “Are you okay?” the waitress asks as I swipe at my tears.
     
    “Can you put this in a take-out cup?” I ask, pointing to my drink. “I’ve got to run.”
     
    “Here,” she says, handing me a paper cup, looking at me with eyes of pity, which I cannot bear.
     
    “How long can I keep on running?” I cry to myself when safely ensconced inside my car, tears subsiding again. I bang the steering wheel with my fists, and then my temper tantrum over; I’m on the road again.
     
     
     
    Finally, I see the majestic orange towers, the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, just as I’m about to give up hope of ever getting there. Traffic slows and I join the others jam packed on the bridge, feeling an excitement I can hardly contain, like I am crossing the bridge to my future, leaving heartache and trouble in my past. I pay my six dollars to the lady in the tollbooth and then follow signs to Nineteenth Avenue where my dirty, red Accord mixes in with other colorful cars that crawl. Feeling brave, I turn right onto a one-way street leading to who knows where.
     
    And that’s where my excitement ends and trepidation begins. Where did these F’in drivers come from! Not to mention the one-way streets and vertical hills with stop signs on the edge. Fear threatens to engulf me as I hyperventilate to the sound of honking cars and screeching tires while pedestrians ignore the threats of large wheels that promise to crush their lives. Who are these people!
     
    I manage to avert a total psychological breakdown, just by luck, when I turn onto a street that suddenly has cars driven by sane people. Here I see colorful houses attached together that I believe are called painted ladies because they stand so tall and regal, houses I’d read about in a travel book once. I pull over to the side of the road where I catch my breath and reprogram my navigation system, knowing that living in San Francisco is not the place for me.
     
    I let the bossy navigation lady with the clipped British accent lead me out of the city onto the Great Highway, which snakes alongside the Pacific Ocean. Before long the Great Highway turns into Highway One and I see an opportunity to pull over onto a scenic overlook where I see white caps chopping through turquoise water, a mesmerizing view.
     
    Huge waves crash against large black rocks, sweeping dark colored driftwood and green tentacled seaweed up onto the beach, covering the sand with white, frothy sea foam. Colorful orange and yellow flowers with bright green leaves fan the edges of the beach in front of the expansive, crashing ocean, the whole scene looking so much like a painter’s masterpiece that it fills my heart so full I’m sure it can never ache with emptiness again. I linger here, soaking in the view and smelling the salty sea air until my head feels full with a promise, a beautiful new life.
     
    I drive on, but don’t get very far when hunger pangs and growls in my stomach beg me to me to stop for food. I follow signs into Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay. Suddenly, I remember a song, something about going to San Jose wearing flowers in my hair. Maybe I should go to San Jose next, I think, minus the flowers in my hair. I order clam chowder in a bread bowl from the corner snack bar and take it to an outdoor picnic table to eat while watching the fishing boats bounce up and down, the water rhythmically sloshing and splashing against their sides, while sea