A CAR WENT BY

by Luanne diBernardo

He drove by his house today. Not planning to, not even thinking about it really, just slowly approached the painted symbols on the curb, the white paint applied by the water company before he and Iris moved there, three markings that signaled when to turn the wheels of his too-big car in order to make the sharp turn of his too-narrow driveway, where in a moment he will leave the keys in the ignition, where he will then tease his kids at the screen door, waiting, where he will settle to a noisy dinner followed by a worn excuse that will find him sharing familiar lies with his old friend, Steve.

Maybe because he was thinking of other things, or maybe just to see if he could, but he drove past the painted symbols, past the too-narrow driveway, past where he maybe saw his two kids waiting, maybe not. Typically, he only drove this way on weekends, never before noticed how one direction led him to his office, the dentist, his mothers house; while the East-bound route let him straight to his favorite bar, to Steve and Martha’s, and to Syracuse when his grandparents were alive. He figured he felt inside-out because it was Tuesday and he was heading East, the direction for weekends, or was it because he’d just passed his house, and yes, those were his kids’ faces, his car already beyond the first stop sign where nobody stops anyway, no intention of honoring the next one either. Until a car comes from the other direction and he pauses to let it pass. Steve, his best friend since high school.

He waits for Steve to motion him over, meaning Iris had called wondering why Steve’s high school buddy passed his driveway today, why he was heading East on a Tuesday.

“You sure you guys didn’t have a fight or anything?”
“No; why would you think that”?
“He was headed East”.
“Oh”.

The conversation went something like that, he figures as he approaches a red light, the last signal before crossing the city line. He wondered when his stomach started squeezing into queazy waves, today’s fried Pike and slaw not sitting well. Iris will have some ideas about what he should take, he thinks without one thought to turning back. Like his grandmother used to, Sadie.

Sadie was large-boned, saucy, a man-hater, his mother would rant, though it was Sadie who looked after him when his parents dropped him by for a weekend visit, two years old, and it was with Sadie and Gilbert he stayed until his parents retrieved him three years later, better for everyone, she would tell him. And so she retrieved him from wherever he ran, from grade school, from high school, the Navy, from job after job.

No child of mine, he thinks as he loosens his tie while vowing to never retrieve what should never be lost in the first place: children -- a promise he’d share with Iris the minute he got back home. Crazy for her kids, their kids, she would love him for such a promise, this one he’d keep.

His mother had been jealous of Iris’s warmth, of her ability to woo him in ways his mother never could, never tried. Love expressed in bigger ways, his mother instilled, his father feigning to agree when not sneaking love at Thursday night bowling, on sales trips, while his wife fussed with brown-bagged lunches of meat, grains, and fruit, every meal balanced and well within budget. Her son she coddled with bristled scrubbings that reddened his skin, whitened his nails, shined his ears, her hygene insisting on closely-clipped toenails, and pjs worn over bleached white undies. She loved him with bleached terry towels that left no moisture, with consistency, routine, and with bible tales told while tucked between crisp, cool sheets. A horn beeps.

It beeps again before he starts through the now-green light, whatever he was thinking irretrievable, a memory good for some things, not others, as he tilts the rear mirror to see if his friend had turned to follow, when he realizes how seldom he looks behind, always forward like his mother had taught, a lesson well learned.

That doggone fish, he thinks as he attempts to quiet his stomach with his one free hand. Or the too-many stops, the barrage of interruptions, whatever he was thinking completely gone, instead those two small shadows behind his screen door, their hands and noses pushed to the screen, his daughter only three, his son barely four, too young to know it was their father’s car that drove past their house today, the same age as him when he’d wait for his gramps to return from work, remembers it like it was yesterday. Only when he’s tired, too tired to forget, do thoughts like those find him. If only he’d been like one of his own kids, just kids. They only know that a car went by, not his car, and then that feeling in his stomach again. Already it’s growing dark, Iris getting anxious and phoning his mother, his kids growing whiney for no good reason, and dammit, why did he order the Pike.

Up ahead is a turn-around, a road right before the toll road, a soft dirt road that curves around before rising into a smallish bridge before passing the park, then the river, certainly outlined with flowers by now. Before the turnaround, he checks his side mirror to see what’s behind him. Nothing, his car already clocking distance between him and a world that rattles from the force of his acceleration, a motion that makes him so sick that he vows not to look back until he’s stopped for good.

Something witty to brighten the toll taker’s day, then dawning before him, the sky spans over the birm of the highway. Faster and forward, his car works hard while he settles back against his seat, each movement jerking him further forward, further away, his pulse rehearsing for what he would come to know. His hands sweat against the steering wheel as the car inches forward, no way to turn back or to ease the erratic tugs in his gut like a thing remembered, when for one brilliant moment he reaches the crest, suspended, his mirror washed clean with sky, nothing behind, just the park and river below, all that was rooted now jarred and weightless, when suddenly, as if somehow he hadn’t known it would happen, he buckles his belt at the top of the thruway and rockets beyond the crest, no hands.