Roads

I got in the car, my rusty BMW from another age, and drove. A song from the radio wafted out the speakers and through the open window: “Everyone holds on to someone they loved – that’s when the trouble starts, that’s when it falls apart”. I wondered where my emotions had gone as the rickety car flew past the obscure countryside. Still I drove. I had to get away. I could never speak of what happened back there, not even to you. As I drove I remembered her, beautiful and unashamed. How we would roll in the grass on the sunny days and make sweet love inside on the rainy days. Making cheesecake with her. The feel of her back. Her laugh. She was my life. And now that she was gone, I couldn’t expect to keep living, could I?
I drove.
I remembered going to the lake with my family when I was a kid. There was a cabin we would stay at and enjoy the warm waters. There never seemed to be any flies. I remembered watching the thunderstorms. Winds so fierce the walls shook. No power, of course, so we would light candles and protect them so they wouldn’t sputter out. One time I left the cabin and stood outside in the frigid rain, watching the lightning scissor the purple-green sky. My mom got scared seeing me outside like that, but for me it was fantastic. That storm always stayed with me – I never forgot it.
On I drove. I never let up on the pedal as I tried to escape – was I succeeding? I refused to think about what was back there. The sun was sinking down in all its garish brilliance – it was hard to see the road, but I left my lights off. I wasn’t exactly preoccupied with safety that night.
I remembered a tornado, too. It wasn’t at the cabin, though. I was older then, out of high school maybe, and this girl and I took a drive. I hadn’t told her, but I knew we were heading straight for a storm. I never thought there would be a tornado, though. I think it scared her, because she got mad at me for bringing her out there. I said I was sorry, that I hadn’t known, but it didn’t really matter. She was through with me. I didn’t care overly much – the real treat that day had been seeing that tornado. Biggest display of natural power I had ever seen. Fury. You could sense it was mad. It raged, tearing the landscape and demolishing whatever it could. As we raced away from the pillar of death that day, I felt alive.
I drove without stopping. I don’t think I even slowed going through the town I passed. I finally turned on my lights. Somehow I found some smokes in. I didn’t smoke back then. I still don’t. But I needed them that night like I needed to drive.
Drive. Drive. Drive.
And as I did, I remembered.
I remembered all my classmates walking through the cold halls of the school, my parents and how they never fought – not ever; my beauty-pageant sister I never saw, going to see plays my wife was in, the gigs I did throughout college. I remembered road-trips and all the late-night talks with my buddy. I remembered living in Spain. I remembered my sister telling me what I was going to get for Christmas as a little kid and how I cried because I wanted a surprise more than the presents. I remembered disease and how it took both my parents who were still in their prime. I remembered feeling helpless when my sister wouldn’t let me take care of her. I remembered her moving off one day, “To the city,” she had told me derisively as though I had no such lofty plans to call my own. I remembered coffee. I remembered all the worthless grades and useless data. I remembered marriage. I remembered bliss. I remembered that every day was sent from heaven then. I remembered the fights. The struggles. I remembered the baby girl we never had.
I remembered everything.
everything.
Re-member. To put together again.
I remembered it all. I was trying to reconstruct my past – make some sense of the chaos that I was attempting to leave behind. It all crawled through my head – it wasn’t quick like they all said. It started earlier than death – long before you die. Or maybe I had just been dying slowly for a very long time.
I kept driving. I don’t remember why. I could never leave behind what had happened back there. It will always be inside of me. But maybe I didn’t know that then. Maybe I thought that by driving and never stopping I could escape what happened. What’s the good of being a hundred miles away? Eventually I decided that so few miles couldn’t cut it. So I flew. Maybe the more miles in between me and the chaos, the better I could forget.
Got to London. Gray melancholy. City of sorrows. There I was, waiting for life to rescue me. I felt nothing then. I didn’t bother to wash my clothes (why should I if I’m not alive? What’s a dead man need of cleaner clothes?), I barely moved. Once a man came up to me as I was sitting on a bench and put his hand under my chin as if looking for a pulse. I asked what he was doing, and he gave a start, surprised. “Looked dead to me, feller, sitting there on the bench.” I suppose it’s true, I hadn’t moved in probably a day. I don’t feel alive. But I’m not dead, or at least the coroner wouldn’t inhume me just yet. So then what am I? What the hell am I?
Maybe you can tell me. You might say I’m delusional and write me off. Maybe you’ll care enough to investigate and conclude that I am one of the undead of lore. Or maybe you’ll say I’m not here. You’ll say “What? Who? You don’t even exist! You’re a figment! Get out of my head!”
Maybe you’re my alarm clock next to my real-life bed in the real-life world trying to wake my real-life self up. But I doubt it. If that’s the case, then you’ve been trying to beep me out of bed for years, and I’ve been ignoring you for just as long. I guess it makes sense though. Maybe. I just haven’t figured out how to wake up. It explains why I never feel alive. Or why I’ve never had to keep a job for the past fifteen years since the incident. Or how I can change countries like I would my pants (if I bothered to change them). So that’s it, then. I’m asleep. In some other world someone is listening to my dreadful snores day and night, month after year, while all the real-life people go about their real days, really awake, really alive. Well…awake maybe, but not necessarily alive. I wish I could wake up and live. I wish I could just wake up. I wish. I just wish.
God.
I need to go for a drive.
***
Everyone here is just like me.
Everybody’s dead.
Sleepwalking. We’re all living inside of days that never happen. Not really. If no one’s going to remember today, if nothing came out of all this fantasy, it’s like it never happened. But it’s not just today. Every day. Nobody wakes up. I wish I could, but I can’t. All I do is find cars and drive forever. I keep the window rolled down and the smoke trail going as I head into the perpetual sunset. A never-ending gas tank and the same old melancholy song oozing through the speakers. Pretty soon it’s just me and the car. I haven’t seen anyone else for miles of years. I keep putting cigarettes in my mouth. Drive, drive, drive.
I drive on the wrong side of the road, but no one pulls me over. I drive backwards but there’s nothing to run into. The only things that are real are what I’ve left behind. Maybe I’ll go back. See how things have turned out. But I could never show my face. Ever. Could I? It’s been so long. It’s been years. Maybe centuries. I keep driving, refusing to remember, refusing to forget. It sticks in my head like a scared animal – too scared to stay, too scared to leave. When I think of that place before all the chaos, I only see her face. Going back would mean being there without her. I can’t do that. I couldn’t. Could I? They say that time heals all wounds, but I’ve been driving for years and I can’t escape!
Drive, drive, drive. Blah blah blah.
I don’t bother to watch the road. It’s like a movie – your eyes are fixed but your brain doesn’t work as the images flash by. You vaguely understand what’s going on, but not well enough to really participate. I say I drive, but I really just watch. Nothing I do could be considered driving. Nothing I do could be considered doing. I just sit. And watch. And the years go on, shown on some big silver screen. And I, the only member of the audience. Just me. It’s so dark inside my head. And I just sit. And watch. I don’t want to remember what I’m seeing, but they play it for me anyway, and I can’t do anything about it.
I wish it would stop.
Please. Please stop.
No more.
I can’t.
Anything but this. It’s so dark inside my head!
I’m sick of driving a car that isn’t here. I’m sick of smoking thin air. I’m sick of hearing the same song! Just wake me up! Please! Wake me up! I want to wake up, I don’t care anymore, I’ll go back, I will, I want to, I’ll remember, I’ll face it, I just don’t want to drive anymore, JUST PLEASE WAKE ME UP! WAKE UP!
***
It’s dark. I can’t really open my eyes. This is new…I can’t move either. I hear things. What is this place? Where am I now? There are people talking. Too muffled to understand what, but the words are real. Am I really back? Is this the real? They said something! My name, I think! Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve heard my name. I want to see the people. I wish I could open my eyes. It’s so dark inside my head.
It smells. It smells…cold. Sterile. It’s like a non-smell, but I know I’ve smelt it before. I wonder where I am. I hear other things, too. There’s that beeping I was telling you about. It doesn’t sound quite like an alarm clock, but I can hear the resemblance. Didn’t really work, though.
“James? James? Are you awake?”
Who is that? That’s my name! I can’t speak…I can’t see…I can’t move. Is this really what I wished for? Open your eyes! There! It’s dim, but there are people. I’m on a bed, and they’re all around me. I’m in a hospital. A real-life hospital, with a real-life machine beeping out my vital signs. They gasp when they notice my eyes opening. One rushes to me, too blurry to make out, but she touches my arm.
“James,” she says. It’s the same voice. I open my mouth, but I’ve forgotten what words are like. I run her name over and over in my head before the words come out.
“Julia.” I said it! I said her name!
“Oh James!” She bends down and suffocates me. I gasp for breath, and she pulls back; I realize it was a hug. Then I realize that she is my sister.
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I…don—I mean I do. But I wish I didn’t.” She nods.
“I know. It was horrible. But you’re back now. You’re safe.”
“Where was I?”
“You were in a coma.” Her words are like icy water down my shirt. Unbelievably sharp.
“I was? For how long?”
“A year.”
“Oh God. That explains a lot.”
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just – really? A year?”
“I know, I know. It’s okay, though, James. It’s going to be okay.”
Okay? She thought that? How? How could it be okay?
A drop of the hat and I’m back in the real world. I’ve been driving a dream car all the way to nowhere for an entire year. “It’s going to be okay” she says – she doesn’t know what it was like. It was a dream so real the other world slips away. The surreal becomes reality. The sunset becomes the only light you know. You sit on a park bench for a month. Always the sunset. The same car. The same song. The same road. All the way to nowhere. But of course it’s going to be okay. How could it not?
“I want to show you something,” Julia says to me. “The doctors say you’re in no condition to travel, but I think you need to see this.” I have no say in the matter as she and some other dark shapes transfer me from the hospital bed to a wheel chair. I hate that I can’t move. They bring me down the elevator to a waiting car. She gets in beside me, and I make her features out more clearly. I can move my head, and I turn it to look out the window. So this is what it’s really like to drive in a car. I smell the leather beneath me. It’s rich and strong.
It’s real.
The real world is strange. It’s so much closer to me. When I dreamed, everything was far away. I could back up and observe everything, even myself. But now it’s here. All so close. I make a promise to live in this world. I’m not going to waste another moment in motionless stupor. All I can think about is the horror of the endless sunset, and how glad I am that it’s the afternoon.
We finally stop. I can’t tell where we are, but I can see clearly enough. She wheels me down a path. Trees line the sides of the path in a vibrant green. Real green. It’s a green I haven’t really seen in a while. Farther and farther and deeper and deeper we go. I still don’t recognize the place. We come to the end of the trees but the path goes on. We follow it to the end. She stops me near the edge and steps back behind me.
I’m on a cliff. Beneath me the water is the bluest I’ve ever remembered. Each wave is so delicate, so sharp, so defined, so beautiful. Colors awake and jump into my mind like they never have before. The water stretches on and on beyond the reach of my vision. The sky is blue, but a brighter blue than the heavy blue of the sea. There’s a gentle wind. I look all around, taking in the scene. There’s something about the place. It’s more than beautiful, it’s…significant. I take a quick breath as it hits me.
“So this is where it happened,” I say. I stand up slowly. It takes a while because my muscles haven’t been used in so long. But finally there I am, standing on the cliff edge over the water. I turn to Julia. She’s crying. I am, too. I take a step or two to my left down the side of the cliff. The waves below me are hungry. They clamor for more. I turn and look up the slope at Julia, and I realize that this is exactly where I stood before.
Can I relive this?
“I can’t do this, Julia, I can’t,” I say.
“It’s okay, it’s just a memory now. It’s all in the past. Remember,” she says. “When you remember, let it be your last time. Let it go.”
“I can’t possibly! This is too much!” But Julia is silent, and I have no choice but to remember what put me into the deepest nightmare I’ve known. I turn and see the shadow memory of her, so beautiful, become fast and firm as if the event is happening for real. I tell myself that this is only a memory, I’m remembering – putting all the horror back together again for one last time. This was the last day I ever saw my wife.
She is standing on the edge of the cliff up from me. Her hair flies up in the wind. She stands alone, her hands at her sides. I am out of breath that day from worry, fear, and my desperate search for her. The sky is cloudy instead of bright blue. I stop and shout her name. She turns and looks. The tears are on her face, but she gave more than just her tears to the sea that day. I shout her name, a last plea to a tortured soul. The wind swirls her hair around her face. She lifts a hand, waves goodbye, and steps out into air. A scream escapes my lungs as I rush to the edge. She will never rise again. My love!
So she’s truly gone. It’s over. She’s never coming back. All I can do is remember everything she was. Her beauty. How we would roll on the grass on the sunny days and make sweet love inside on the rainy days. Making cheesecake. The feel of her back. Her laugh. She was my life. There isn’t any music this time. No car. No sunset. Just real memories. I remembered marriage. I remembered bliss. I remembered that every day was sent from heaven. I remembered the fights. The struggles. The baby girl we never had.
I remembered everything.
Re-member. To put together again.


end