Fall In Love With Everywhere

Mal wrinkled her nose as she inhaled, her senses assaulted by the stench of mildew. She stood in the bulbous cab of a hideous bright red campervan, one eyebrow raised as she glanced at the salesman, who she could only assume was having a laugh.

“How much?” she asked, knowing that if the answer was anywhere north of the price of free her reply should be an emphatic no.

“$1,500. It runs and drives. Might have a little hitch in its step, but there’s a converted bed in the back and a kitchen sink.”

She sighed. $1,500 was just under the entire contents of her savings account, the bulk of which had taken her six months to collect, working at a diner for minimum wage while she slept in her car to avoid paying rent. Turning, she scanned the interior of the van again, a knot in her stomach. Of course she was going to take it.

“I’ll give you $1,400 if you throw in a full tank of gas.”

“Sold,” the salesman grinned at her from beneath a thick white mustache. “I’ll get you the paperwork and the keys. You’re paying cash?”

“Yeah,” Mal said. “Cash.”

She watched him hop out of the van and turned back to stare at the moldy interior. The seats were covered with ugly brown upholstery. The carpeted floor was dirty with years’ worth of mud and unidentifiable dark stains. Her fingers itched to scrub every disgusting surface. But as she pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, she concealed a wide grin with the palm of her hand. Though the van was ugly, it was hers. The first place she could truly call home in as long as she could remember.

The salesman returned with the title, a temporary license plate, and instructions to have the van registered with the state of Ohio as soon as possible. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and handed him a fistful of wadded up cash amounting to $1,400.

“I’ll drive it over to the gas station to fill her up, then she’s yours.”

At the age of nineteen, Mal was a statistic. After being rendered homeless two days before her eighteenth birthday, she started sleeping on friend’s couches and sharing cheap hotel rooms until one of those wonderful friends gifted her a rusted sedan. Now, a full year later, she felt like her place in the world had moved on up substantially. The van might have been older than she was, but a dry place to sleep was more important than luxury.

Three hours later, in a parking lot downtown and with several rags and a bottle of disinfectant, Mal went over every surface of the van. She scrubbed the edges of the cheap laminate on the counter in the areas where it had begun to peel away from the pressboard underneath. She doused everything in disinfectant: the dashboard, door handles, light covers, coils of the propane stove, and wood frame of the bed.

It wasn’t until she began wiping out the cabinets and drawers that Mal found it: a neatly folded leaf of paper, torn from a spiral notebook. She took the paper over to the musty bed, where she sat down with enough force that a pouf of dust wafted around her. Mal unfolded the paper and read aloud a list of fifty points handwritten in a messy scrawl:

1. Swim in the Colorado River

2. Touch a Redwood

3. Dance under the milky way in South Dakota.

4. Visit Canada, twice.

5. Build a sandcastle in Florida.

6. Hike part of the Appalachian trail in every state.

7. Have lunch at the base of Mt. Rainier.

The list went on to include major destinations in every corner of the country, until it reached number fifty:

50. Fall in love with everywhere.

As she lay back on the bed, her long brown hair mingling with the dust, the words “fall in love with everywhere” drifted through her mind. She wondered latently who it was that had written this list. Did they do all of these things? Had this van, this old rickety van, traveled so far?

In truth, she was envious. Mal had never left Ohio. She was born here, to a family that was largely unconcerned with the fact that they had a daughter. Her mother gambled away the rent money every month, and her father was a notorious drunk, only finding a reason to work when the booze ran dry.

She flipped over onto her stomach on the bed and stared out the back window of the van. It was early spring, with small gray mounds of slushy snow melting in the parking lot of the supermarket she had purchased the disinfectant from. The sky was clear though, bright blue with only the occasional wisp of cloud drifting by. She inhaled deeply, accepting the moldy scent of the carpet; it was evident now that what she might be smelling was thousands of miles worth of adventure.

A shrill chime from her phone jolted Mal from her daydream. Her shift at the diner would start in thirty minutes. She jumped off the bed and climbed into the front seat of the van, turned the key in the ignition, and the marveled slightly as the engine roared to life again. Everything that was gaudy and run down, was suddenly very impressive. The odometer read 243,461 miles. 243,461 miles…where?

The diner was busy that day. From the breakroom, Mal could hear the clinking of dishes and silverware as she tied a forest green apron around her waist and tucked a little black book and two pens into one of the pockets.

The first table was easy: three elderly women that Mal usually saw on the weekends, one of whom refused to call her “Mal,” insisting instead that “Mal is a boy’s name, to me you are Mallory.” Irritating but tolerable. They were always otherwise kind, and tipped well, so Mal rather thought they could call her whatever they liked.

As she leafed through the little black book in the kitchen, reading the orders off to Carol, the cook for that evening, Carol stopped her midsentence.

“What’s troubling you, lovie?”

“I’m fine,” Mal said, smiling at Carol as she lifted the book to her face to read off the list again.

Carol gave a light laugh and turned back to the stovetop on which she was grilling a couple burgers.

“That’s the secret language of women, isn’t it? We say fine, but we mean anything but. I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

Mal set the book against the counter and contemplated the older woman. She didn’t know Carol all that well. She looked to be in her late fifties, maybe early sixties if age had been particularly kind to her. Her long gray hair was tied into a bun at the back of her head and concealed beneath a hairnet. Her face was wide, her body plump, and her skin dry from years of standing over the hot steam of the cooktop.

“What made you decide to live here in Fairborn?’

Carol smiled as she flipped the burgers one last time before stacking them on a plate and handing them to Mal. “I was very lucky. I fell in love with the town before I moved here. We visited a few times, my husband and I. I always think I loved it more than he did, but he was a kind man and he put up with the cold winters because he knew it made me happy.”

“You like it here?” Mal asked, feeling incredulous. It was amazing to think that anybody would choose Fairborn, Ohio, when the whole rest of the world was waiting, ripe with possibility.

“I love it,” Carol said. She took one look at Mal’s face and grinned in spite of herself. “I know what you’re thinking. I have been other places. But I fell in love with Fairborn and made a promise to myself that, when I was ready to do so, I would settle down here. Is that what is bothering you? Being here in Fairborn?”

“I hate it here.“ Though she quickly added, “I do understand why some people like it. But it isn’t for me.”

“You aren’t in love,” Carol said with a knowing smile. “It seemed like I felt the same way everywhere I went when I was your age. I always looked for adventure and never felt like I could be happy with where I was. Content, maybe. But not happy.”

“At this point, I’d be happy with getting out of Fairborn,” Mal said with a frown, somewhat relieved that Carol’s response wasn’t the usual ‘you just need to give it a chance’.

“Excuse me, miss?” somebody called from the dining room. “We need more drinks out here.”

Mal turned on her heel and rushed out of the kitchen, the two burgers no longer steaming but still hopefully warm enough that their patrons wouldn’t notice the difference. She delivered the burgers, refilled drinks, and welcomed three new guests to the dining room- one, a young woman with a child, the other an elderly man who was dining alone.

“That your van parked out back?” the elderly man asked Mal. “Thought I saw ya come in from across the way. Nice old rig. My father had one when I was a boy. Used to go camping in it.”

“It is.”

“Do you travel?”

“Not yet,” Mal admitted. “I just bought it. I haven’t even put five miles on it.”

“Boy, if it were me, I’d be getting out of here,” he laughed. “I’m Mark Ulmer. Own the mechanic shop over across the street there.”

Mal smiled at him and led him to a table, listening and nodding politely as he chatted about his travels across the country with his father’s old van.

“So when do you plan on taking off?” he asked Mal as he sat at one of the booths and took the menu she was handing him.

“When I’ve got the money, I guess,” Mal said sadly. “Maybe someday.”

“Ah, I hear ya. Sometimes I think that’s the only reason any of us stay here in Fairborn. Too broke to leave.”

“Tell me about it,” Mal said. “I’ll be back for that order shortly.” She returned to the kitchen where Carol was busying herself with another serving of burgers.

“Did I overhear correctly?” Carol asked as Mal took two more plates from her. “You bought a van?”

“Earlier today.”

Carol smiled. “My husband and I used to have one. Saw the whole country together. We lived in it for three wonderful years before we settled down here.”

This left Mal with a sense of wonder as she finished out the rest of her shift dreaming of seeing the rest of the country, and whether that ancient van would be able to get her there one day. She pocketed her tips from the day, a measly $15, with the realization that it would take more than six months to save up enough to leave. Maybe a year. One more year in Fairborn and then it would be her turn to find the place that felt like home.

As she climbed into the van, Mal noticed a small red envelope that somebody had slipped through the cracked windows. It had bounced off the passenger seat and landed on the floor. She bent over and picked it up. The writing on the back was vaguely familiar and it was addressed to her.

She opened the envelope and gasped as she examined its contents.

In her hands was a bank check made out to $20,000 and a note jotted quickly on a piece of folded paper, torn from a spiral bound notebook:

For your travels, so that you too may fall in love with everywhere.