It’s not that I want to drive my car over the cliff, it’s just that I think about it every time I go into town. This two-lane highway offers a route from Flagstaff to Sedona, but it’s hardly a direct one; it holds so many hairpin turns that it feels as if the freeway 20 miles east must be the right path. This road, despite its beauty, always feels like the wrong one.

I take it 30 minutes south, through the construction zone on the worst part of the road, known as “The Switchbacks.” It’s a name I only learned a few months back: a cop stood in front of the highway entrance, using his hand as a stop sign. There was too much snow on The Switchbacks ahead; it wasn’t safe to keep going. I found this amusing at the time, because the road is always a risk, and no one holds their hand up to me when it begins to rain, or when I’m having a bad day. I often wonder how long I can keep going, keep letting my gaze wander from the double yellow lines in the center of the road to the single white line on the left, where the lane ends and the cliff begins. You’d think someone would have put a guard rail all the way through by now, but instead the rail starts and stops, leaving some of the worst turns open like an invitation.

On days like today when River needs me to clean her house, I descend into the canyon with my hands dutifully placed at ten and two, as if I’m 16 again, happy again. With the windows down, I have no choice but to acknowledge how good everything smells, and I breathe in the wet pine needles, the tourists’ campfires. On weekends, I often end up driving behind someone with out-of-state license plates, someone who has never driven The Switchbacks before; I know they’re white-knuckling the steering wheel, going 10 under the limit. Depending on my mood, I either give them room or drive too close to them—sometimes, tailgating is the only power I feel all day—but I never take advantage of the times during which the double yellow lane turns into a broken yellow line, indicating I have permission to move into oncoming traffic if I so wish. I can never feel certain that there’s enough space or time to overtake another CR-V that looks exactly like mine, so I stay in my lane, fantasizing instead about jerking the wheel left and being swallowed by the canyon, freed of every obligation and memory.

Today is another muggy July morning with grey and black clouds looming overhead, and, like any business, it’s only a matter of time until they open. There’s a romance to monsoon season, a passion to how quickly each storm descends. I look upwards and try to crack my left thumb, remembering when, years ago, a man pressed his two thumbs into mine in a way that made my knuckle crack for the first time. I’m not exaggerating when I say my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I moaned and I felt waves of pleasure shooting in every direction. How’d you do that? I asked him, and he said, It’s easy. But it’s not easy, and I can barely ever manage to find that precise release, though I try all the time. I’ll sometimes get a minor pop by pulling my thumb backward, but it’s not the same. 

My phone dings from the passenger seat. I keep one hand on the wheel and lean over to grab the phone and bring it eye level. Five texts from River.

A guy named Joe is gonna come take the lemon tree today

He just paid me

I gave him your number

PS do u like this chair for the living room

?

She sends a photo of a purple velvet armchair that, perhaps due to its shapelessness, reminds me of organ meat. I imagine the velvet, slick with blood. 

Yes, I text back with one hand.

When I agreed to clean River’s Airbnb in Sedona, I didn’t realize I’d also be managing the constant movements of items in and out of the house. She’ll do anything for $20 on Facebook Marketplace, and I’ll never get a raise. There’s a four-hour window I have each day to wash the sheets and towels, vacuum, mop, clean the dishes, take out the trash. When someone walks into River’s Airbnb, she once told me, they should think they’re the only person that has ever stayed there. What River didn’t tell me was how temperamental the lemon tree in the backyard could be. It was my job to water it; now it’s dead, and someone named Joe is coming to drive it away in the back of his pickup truck. He says he can bring it back to life.

I remember the dog I had in college that was driven away in the back of a pickup truck. I used to rush home between classes on my 10-speed in order to walk him—a black lab mix that used to lay across my lap so I could use him as a desk—around the block before locking him back in my duplex for another couple hours. He’d get bored and gnaw at my blinds, then my mattress, and then my box spring until his gums bled. I couldn’t take it, I had to give him a better life. I posted on Craigslist—Free to a Good Home—and let a man drive him away in the bed of his truck. The look that dog gave me as he left is one I will, unfortunately, never forget. I wonder now, how could I have gotten rid of him so carelessly? How could I have given up that easily? The answer is: I didn’t know how bad it would feel until it was too late.

Admittedly, I’m taking the lemon tree personally—not because I have pride in my job (I don’t), but because I feel like I can’t do anything right. I take my left hand and rub my stomach gently over my dress, as if the baby were still inside. Before I got pregnant, I never thought of my body as empty, but now that I’m not, all I think about is the lack. I imagine myself as a giant lemon tree, hollow and rotten, waiting to be moved and saved by someone else, unable to do it myself.

As I drive, my mind goes blank, and I’m nothing more than a defective machine in the shape of a woman going a little too fast down the highway. The apologetic doctor appears in my mind—she is so sorry, she wants me to know there’s nothing I could have done to prevent this—and I think of the way I looked at her as I absentmindedly folded the ultrasound photo in my lap, trying to close a door in my mind the way it had already closed in my body. Everyone says it’s not my fault, but I don’t believe them.

In the opposite lane, I see a man holding his phone with both hands through his car’s sunroof and steering with his knees. All along this highway, tourists pull off to the side of the road and take photos with their phones, trying to capture the view. The canyon walls, red with permanence, jut upwards like teeth or tombstones. Each layer of sediment in the rock represents a new era, a new change to the world, similar to the way the rings of a tree tell time. I think of the wrinkles on my face, the scars on my knees, and all the other ways a body holds its evidence. A photo is another kind of proof, but it can never accurately depict its subject, and so every photo is a distillation, a flattening. Every attempt at documenting this canyon is a different kind of failure—the colors fade, the light weakens. So, I can understand the tourists’ desire to hold this image for longer than a moment, but I know it won’t work.  

One of the most scenic parts of the drive is when the highway goes over an old bridge that connects the two sides of the canyon. Beside the bridge is a small parking lot which is usually overrun with cars idling, double parked, blocking other people in while they rush to the bridge to get a selfie. Once, I stopped to get my own selfie, but only later did I realize that the suicide hotline sign was in the background of my photo, which I found too embarrassing to share. There Is Hope, the sign reads, and I agree that hope is a thing that exists. I felt it once. 

Despite the storm brewing in the sky, traffic slows as cars full of tourists turn into Slide Rock Park, hoping for the best. I’ve never been there, but from the road I can see glimpses of families in bathing suits gliding down the creek on the slippery smooth red rocks. Some children throw their hands up in the air and shriek with joy. It hurts a little to see them, to be reminded of my body. Nature is ruthless, I thought last week as I made eye contact with a coyote while taking out River’s trash, Nature is a mystery, and I can never understand it.

I want to see what everyone else sees on this highway; I don’t want to feel numb to it. I want to be so struck by beauty that I can’t help but pull over and stand back in awe. I want to feel something besides the vibration of my phone when River asks what time I’ll arrive. I imagine myself curled up inside my own womb, feeling my own heartbeat, the soundtrack to my next life. I’m my own dog, gnawing on the blinds to get a glimpse at the light. I touch my chest and try to take a deep breath, but I fail to fill my lungs.

I drive through town to River’s house, which has an impressive red rock backdrop. Today, I see something new on one of the cliff walls—I’ve seen mountain climbers there before, but this isn’t human. As I get closer, I realize it’s a banner of some sort that’s been left high up on the wall. There is some handwritten message on it that I try to make out, squinting, but the fabric waves in the wind and flips to the blank side. Now, it’s nothing more than an anonymous white flag, waving at me. I park in River’s driveway and, without thinking, pull my thumb back. I hear the knuckle pop, I feel the friction of two small bones releasing pressure, and that old pleasure returns—the kind I’ve been trying to find for years.

A man in a pickup truck rolls up to the house, says he’s here for the tree from Facebook. I tell him to follow me around to the back gate.

Nice day, right? he asks, and I turn to see if he’s joking; the clouds are still threatening us from overhead. I love a good storm, he says. I tell him I do, too.