Riding in Cars
I
am marking a line in the middle of the car seat, karate chopping it saying
“Here. Here. Here,” down the blue naugahyde. This is my side and that is yours.
When my younger brother John’s toe illegally crosses the border I karate chop
again and alert the National Guard.
“Mom! John’s on my side!”
My
mother turns her head to regard my father’s profile without removing her
sunglasses. She grabs a loose strand of hair twisting in the breeze from the
open window and guides it behind her ear. Her shoulders slump. My father flicks
the butt of a burnt out cigarette through the open window and performs a karate
chop to the blinker. For the rest of our
annual drive to the outer banks of North Carolina, I sit alone facing backwards
with the brown paper grocery bags crowding me on both sides in the way back
seat of the wood paneled station wagon. I watch the world recede, rows of
tobacco plants flickering by.
He
WAS on my side.
The
week after that vacation my parents marked an imaginary line down the middle of
our lives. “Here. Here. Here.” This is
my side and that is yours. My father claimed the pretty young blonde and my
haggard mother got four rambunctious boys.
We
all shifted positions. My older brother
Chuck moved to the front seat with a red haired boy’s determination,
occasionally firing warning shots in the form of a stuck out tongue or middle
finger. The battle would escalate until
my mother would glance in the rear view mirror and catch me retaliating by
attempting to flip my brother the bird, holding all of the fingers on my right hand
down, except the middle one with my other hand. I learned to watch the road
pass behind me without ever knowing what was coming up ahead of me.
On
the rare occasion when I am in the driver’s seat now I am filled with anxiety
about what COULD be down the road. What
if there is no parking? What if the
traffic is bad? Oh, I hate turning left
on the Harvard bridge.
We
are driving down Mile Road, the marsh sparkling on either side of us. I am in the front passenger seat, Paul as
always is in the driver’s seat and a fresh set of troops are in the back.
“Dad,
let’s go to the beach closest to the restrooms.
I’m on my period,” a command comes from the back seat.
“Your
father is on his exclamation point,” Paul shouts back, referring to my constant
issue of warnings. Watch out for this car! That person isn’t looking! There’s a parking
spot! Everything around us a clear
and present danger.
When
I issue one more piece of advice Paul turns to look at me without removing his
sunglasses.
“What’s
your job?”
“To
sit here and look pretty,” I say staring ahead.
Isak
Dinesen said “God made the world round, so we would never see too far down the
road.” It’s a quote that appeals to me,
even if I cannot seem to embrace its full meaning. Paul angles the car into an
impossibly narrow parking spot.
“Have
I crunched you yet?” He says.
“Not
yet,” I say and I know he never will.
But
that doesn't stop me from worrying about it.
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