The Engine Running

My wife Dolores used to wait in the car outside the hall in Toledo with the engine running. She never honked. She sat there with the dome light off, and I knew she was out there the way you know a clock is in the room.

One night I looked at the window and told myself, one more. I had been playing a stranger for hours, and something in me had decided the night was going well. That was the trap. A man who feels he cannot leave while things are going well will not leave when they turn, either. The feeling has no interest in the scoreboard. It only wants you to stay.

I played one more. Then I played one more after that. When I finally came out, the engine was off and the car was empty. She had walked home in the cold, eleven blocks, rather than come in and ask me to my face.

She was not angry when I got there. That was worse. She said, "I wasn't waiting for you to quit. I was waiting for you to want to come out." I have thought about that sentence for fifty years.

Here is what I know now. Walking away is not a decision you make at the worst moment. The door is only easy to find while you still want to find it, and that is usually early, when the people who love you are still parked outside. Every round you stay past that point, the door moves a little farther off.

So go when the window is still lit and somebody is still waiting. Do not wait to feel finished. You will not feel finished.

If walking away has gotten hard, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET.

Somebody is out there with the engine running.

Sal