In the five years I lived in Chicago, I don’t think I ever ventured to the end of the Edens Expressway, where the highway suddenly veers west and then turns northward into the I-294 tollway. This week, I spent hours and hours traveling from one northern suburb to another along that road, which is lousy with tollbooths. Most of them are unmanned, so I found myself repeatedly accosted for one dollar in change, a demand that I, eight times out of ten, was unprepared to meet. I had no recourse but to go right through the tollbooth those eight times, where cameras no doubt took eight pictures of my license plate and sent eight tickets to the rental car agency, the charges for which will be applied directly to my credit card, times eight.

One of my colleagues likes to tell what is supposed to be a funny story about me and a tollbooth. It was another trip to Chicago; this time, we were driving together from Indiana to O’Hare at the end of a business trip. We stopped at a big toll plaza on the Dan Ryan, and I threw some change into an automated toll booth. This booth had a gate, and the gate refused to open. I threw more change, and nothing happened.

I sat there, waiting for one of the attendants to notice, but the minutes ticked by and no one came. A big line formed behind me, honking. A man got out of the car behind me and tried to lift the gate. He broke it, leaving a gap wide enough for me to drive through. I did, but I was worried that the camera had captured my license plate and the authorities would assume that I had destroyed the gate. The funny part of this story is supposed to be my extreme distress at possibly being charged for ruining the gate.

At least, that may be what happened. I don’t remember this incident at all. The reason I don’t remember is because I found out the day before I left on the trip that I was having my second miscarriage, and I spent the whole trip dazed and nauseated. I may have overreacted about the gate; more likely, I didn’t, and my colleague is just trumping it up for the sake of the story.

The first few times he told that story, it brought back the unhappiness of those few days like a punch to the gut. To have him poking fun at me for how I behaved when I was just barely keeping it together was doubly injurious. The next few times he told that story, I pointedly said, “Oh, right–that’s the trip where I was having THE MISCARRIAGE and feeling so rotten.” I thought this might sensitize him to how I felt about the story, or at least embarrass him into shutting up, but he hasn’t taken the hint. Now when he tells it I just clam up and hope he’ll drop the subject quickly.

He’s not an insensitive guy, and I know if I approached him and said, “Look, I hate to be reminded of that time. How’d you like me to make jokes about the day when one of your kids died?” he would get it immediately. But I never feel like broaching it out of nowhere, and when he brings it up, I’m paralyzed.

Funny, the things that get you. Some people can’t stand to see pregnant women. For me, it’s a goddamned tollbooth.