The Drive

The Drive

           He didn’t want to go.

It was a bright, warm morning and the rays of dust were wafting through his fingers as Owen looped and pulled tight the knot in his tie, each particle daring him to open his mouth for a fresh breath of lint and dead skin. Why couldn’t I have just stayed in bed? It would be the first time he’d been to church since the Easter when Mom and Dad decided that God was best served from home, owing solely to the embarrassment caused by his father’s insistence that God would condone a little “holiday merriment” in the form of a cheap bottle of whiskey hidden in the pocket of his church-suit jacket. They’re going to want me to speak. They’ll all be expecting me to say something. Of course now Owen felt as though he would be doing himself a favor to pay homage to this tradition, but talked himself out of a quick drink because it wasn’t even ten in the morning and he still wasn’t dressed.

Owen stood in the mirror, retying his tie and fidgeting with the lapel of his jacket for what must have seemed like ages, even to him, but which amounted to only enough procrastination to make him late. Dad never did tie his tie straight…bothered me to no end. Thank God we gave up God. Or thank Dad, rather. It made sense that he was late. Who would really be surprised? He’d spent years without the ritual guilt and sense of obligation that seemed to have made so many other parents proud of their dutiful little sons and daughters, but Owen’s father, Burt, was a drunk; no amount of prayer on Owen’s part was going to protect him from those people so keen to notice their absence. So they hid – Dad in his bottle and Owen in his silence. He knew that today would require more speaking from him than he had done in weeks, and the thought made him cringe. To arrive this morning in a reasonably punctual manner seemed enough to merit some small clemency. Surely everyone would understand. If I just show up they won’t make me speak. They know, they all know by now. Maybe if I bandage my face…

The truth is that he wouldn’t have been late if he hadn’t, halfway there, turned around and started back home. All that time wasted reluctantly dressing and decidedly undressing had only partially delayed him, much as he wanted to lie to himself about the whole thing. We can’t all be in denial. Owen didn’t want to go and nearly didn’t so the fact that he arrived at all seemed, to him, more than enough reason to absolve him the terrible sin of missing the first twenty minutes of a thoroughly awkward two hour ordeal. Everyone would want to know where he’d been, if he’d gotten stuck in traffic, where he was working now, how long it had been since he’d visited anyone and oh, weren’t they just so proud to see him grow up to look so like his father, and my, hasn’t it been years since they’d heard his voice. He shuddered at the thought of each underhanded “compliment,” all meant to cut at shared points of weakness while reassuring him that affection, too, could be blunt and calloused.

Owen could imagine the disapproval dripping thickly in masked tones of sympathetic grief, disgustingly pious faces approaching to gawk at his misfortune. “Well at least you’re here now.” “We’d thought maybe you’d been kidnapped!” “Better late than never!” “The lord always had a plan for you, son.” “Who knew it would take this much to get you back into Jesus’s arms!” Yes, that’s right…I’m here now. He could imagine the women, in a gesture of feigned consolation, clutching his arm with fingers bulging with blue, veiny lines, tipped with nails yellowed from years of polish, rarely seeing the sunlight but through a tinted glow, and he wondered if he would be able to hide his suspicious discontent (he wouldn’t). You haven’t spoken to your daughter in ten years, Karen, but you want to know why I don’t call my grand-nephew’s soccer coach every Tuesday?

These people did not know Owen now any better than they had known him when his father had dragged him to their respective homes for visits, ones Burt spent the better parts of getting drunk and stumbling over himself, various aunts and uncles laughing cheerfully at his “silliness.” Owen had never found it to be anything less than humiliating.

Today, familiar cars lined the curb outside the parking lot that he approached slower than necessary, idling behind some long enough to memorize their tag numbers. Dusty bumper stickers that had once made distant relatives the butts of tasteless jokes over the years (“Honk if you’re Amish!”) were now inimitable marks that brought a new and foreign solemnity to their recognition. Owen could feel the intensity of the silence crushing his shoulders as he walked, alone, through the church doors. For once I wish it weren’t so quiet. Aged and vaguely recognizable faces turned to eye him critically, deplorably late for an engagement that many had spent the past few days soberly preparing for. Many had gone to the trouble to spend more than a few dull hours behind the wheel of a car in the early morning, headlights bright against the falling night sky, taillights to the rising sun, in order to arrive early. And as they all turned, save for the older few in the front whose poor hearing robbed them of the opportunity to glare coldly in his direction, Owen longed for a narthex.

Uncle Cliff was speaking loudly into a microphone as if he didn’t understand its function when Owen sat down next to his mother in the front row. She didn’t say anything as he took his seat. Just clutched his hand in a desperate sort of way and smiled knowingly before swiveling her thin neck, yielding to the raucous echo of a man who never seemed to tire of his own nostalgic jokes. Owen tuned him out because he’d heard them a million times. Everyone had. You could feel it in their laughter: more polite and reminiscent than amused. Gentle smiles echoed the compassion of the crowd Cliff was abusing with his volume. But Owen heard nothing as he searched the room for his father.

His casket was baby blue, the color of his Cadillac Convertible.

When his turn to speak came at last, Owen froze. Nothing in the world seemed more daunting than having to stand in front of all these people, open his mouth, and speak. What do I say? Why didn’t I write anything? His mother, Rachael, coughed softly next to him and gave him a gentle nudge, steering his gaze back to the podium. Sighing, he stood and approached the microphone, shaking slightly as he stared out into the audience, desperately trying to formulate some words of comfort, of love…

“Thank you all for being here today.” Keep going, just power through and get it over with. “Many of you knew my father as a loving, dedicated family man with a few…interesting hobbies.” You laugh now, but how many of you ever actually knew him? “When I heard the news that he had passed, I couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved. In his later years my father went through a lot, and I know it hasn’t been easy for anyone. If he could, I know that he would thank you all for everything you did to ease his suffering and to make his final days peaceful. I would personally like to thank you all for your kind support of our family, especially my mother, in this time of loss and let you all know how grateful we are. May he rest in peace.”

He went quickly back to his seat, and could sense the general disappointment in such an anti-climactic eulogy. At least Cliff told jokes. But they had to have known it would be this way. What else did they expect me to say? Rachael understood. She took his hand in hers once more, and Owen could feel her trembling, trying hard to be as accepting of his indifference as she pretended to be. He was suddenly filled with guilt, knowing that she had tried so hard. It wasn’t her fault, she did her best. No one but us knew what it was really like with him.

Finally the service ended and the people all filed out and the cars made their slow way behind the hearse. Burt’s body was buried and his casket was covered up. And when everyone had finished talking and remembering before beginning the process of tactfully forgetting, after his father had officially become no more than a memory and a few framed snapshots of ancient fishing trips, Owen returned to his apartment.

Any normal person wouldn’t be able to think of sleep at a time like this. Owen supposed that he must not be a normal person, because when he at last turned the lock on his front door and flung his jacket and tie across a chair, his body went limp and his eyes blinked hard against the falling twilight. Has it always been this draining to speak to people? He fell asleep still in his dress shoes, shirt half unbuttoned, almost as soon as he reached the couch.

That night, Owen dreamt his father was still alive, offering to take him to school, bottle in hand and a slur in his voice. Then the car door burst open and Owen was swallowed by a tide of empty beer cans and liquor bottles as they had in so many versions of the dream before. But unlike the dream had been in those years when he would climb through the torrent of his refuse to find Burt revving and laughing foolishly at his own terrible wake, that night Owen arose from the debris and saw only his father’s body laid inside his Cadillac as it slowly sank into the ground.

He threw a handful of amber shards on the hood of the car as Burt was consumed by the rubble, saying nothing in farewell, but honing his silence to address him. Goodbye, Bluebell. Goodbye, Dad. Suddenly his father’s eyes opened wide, pupils as waxen and empty as the mouth of a cave, and he began to shout “Speak, boy! What good is a dog that can’t bark? Say something, dammit! SPEAK!” His voice tore into Owen’s skin and threw him down into the current of glass and aluminum, echoing at the bottom of every broken bottle until the sound of him filled up Owen’s brain and pushed out every note of silence. He awoke with a scream in his throat, his mouth agape. When no sound came he lay back down, his father’s taunts ringing in his ears, that sour breath fresh in the air. I still have nothing to say to you, Dad.

The next day, Owen really went home. It was then that he was dragged by the meek urgings of his mother and his detached sense of duty to his father back, by bus, to the house he grew up in; a place where he had spent so many hours of his life breathing in and out, but where he could no longer find the strength nor facility to do so. His knuckles burned white beneath the tight pull of skin as his fists curled and his breath drew ragged and strained. Why does this house always make me nervous? He isn’t here now. Hell, he was never really here. The walls of Owen’s parents’ (now his mother’s) bedroom appeared warped and distorted, awkwardly ornamented with poorly hung photographs, some lopsided and caught in mid descent. Memories dangled there as if waiting patiently for time and gravity to close the space between their dark-stained wooden frames and the worn, shag carpet that may have once been stylish, but now seemed eerily old and smelled of mildew and dust.

She’s talking to you, Owen. Don’t be an ass.

Owen smiled wanly, attempting to be compassionate as his mother reminisced of a time when her children were young and she was still beautiful. She was looking for a set of keys, rummaging through a drawer in a way that only mothers can: quickly, but with regulated precision and thoughtless order, a habit shaped by years of prevention and awareness of each miniscule untidiness that must at some time be remedied. If only she could see my closet, she may not be so forthcoming. Finally withdrawing a jangling mass of metal from the cavernous recesses of a wooden desk, her voice grew resolute and relieved, although Owen hadn’t heard a word of what she’d said. She smiled and, reaching for his hand, gave him the keys and closed his fingers firmly around the sharp metal of their angular bodies.

“He always meant for it to be yours,” she said quietly. Owen raised his eyebrows briefly, and looking down to the floor, smiled with reluctant understanding. Perhaps it wasn’t truly his father’s intention, but she would never say that. Just say it, Mom. Just say “it’s yours now”, and that you never want to see it again. Say you hate it. Say you wish he’d never bought the damn thing. Say something so I don’t have to.

When he finally left, it was in the driver’s seat of his father’s livelihood, his most prized possession, and the last remaining piece of his life. Although Owen could not help but feel a vague jealously for the inanimate object that won the affections of his otherwise dispassionate father, he admitted to himself silently the satisfaction of finally sharing with Burt the joy of the magnificent vehicle, even if he wasn’t technically there to share it. This was his true legacy, his son be damned. He could feel him in the white leather seats and in the purr of the engine, a soul escaping through the tailpipe in heated plumes of translucent vapor. But Owen was filled with a feeling of vacancy, as if the wind was not rustling his hair, but pulling at the raveling hem of his consciousness.

He sped down the familiar road and his mind began to wander as he senselessly contemplated apophonic words and the smell of rain.

Now…now…new…naw…song…sing…sang…sung…

It was in this moment, when he had begun to sense the lingering clouds and realized, with regret, that he would have to put the car’s top up, that he saw her. A woman with brilliant red hair in a white dress was standing casually beside the road, wind whipping at her legs and rippling the fabric of her dress, her hair thrashing about the side of her face as if alive, and when Owen craned his neck to look behind as he passed, she was gone. His eyes searched the cloud of dust left by his own rotating tires, but found her nowhere.

Suddenly, from somewhere in front of him, a car horn shrieked and as his head turned, arms locked, eyes widened, and foot slammed desperately on the brake pedal, he could not pull his mind from the vision of her face. A car he could not see, could only feel, pushed its way gracelessly into the front end of his father’s beloved Cadillac.

Screeches pierced the air and cacophonous shudders rattled Owen’s teeth and pounded in his head as his body was flung toward the windshield. He felt the cold glass cracking against the impact of his skull (or perhaps it’s my skull that’s cracking) and a warmth that he thought must have been blood spread slowly down the front of his face. Somewhere deep within the shadows of his subconscious, Owen felt pain. Not just pain, but a terrible agony that consumed his entire being like a rush of fire, burning and melting and scorching his body, gnashing its dull teeth ceaselessly against his brain. It gnawed at his nerves and raked rough nails against the imaginary chalkboards between his ears, deafening him with strident screeches that did not come from outside, but emanated from within. Owen could not escape these sounds because he was making them. Am I screaming? Or just screaming in my head? His back hit the seat with a momentum that felt as if it had been building for years, for his entire life, waiting to be harnessed and then unleashed upon the fragile marrow of his most critical bones.

But this awareness was trapped deep inside, and even amidst the penetrating resonance of the metal-on-metal crush there was peace. And when the movement had stopped, not more than ten seconds after the horn of this other car had wailed in its vain attempt to preserve its passenger’s safety, there was no sound. The traffic of the tiny particles of air seemed to have stopped and there was only the aeolian breath of aftershock and the fluttering leaves in nearby trees anticipating rain.

Owen’s mind grew blank and dark. His consciousness began to slip rapidly away, and just before the darkness of sleep overtook him, he thought of a strange woman standing beside the road, a woman whose face was indistinct and vague in his mind, but which shone more brightly than even the most powerful stars in his mind’s galaxies, that stood apart so definitely from even his most cherished memories, and Owen knew that he was not dying. He did not see his life flashing before his eyes, did not think of his father or the fact that he was being crushed beneath the body of his legacy. He thought neither of the pain nor of the fear that gripped the cavernous recesses of his agnostic doubts. Instead, he thought of a stranger, a woman he may have imagined, and her red hair, and as he closed his eyes and allowed his body to surrender in hopes that the torture would subside, he felt his heart beating and imagined the wind rustling her dress in time to reverberations in his chest. But then, it was very dark, and very quiet. So he slept.