Precious Pear #1
The batteries to my CD player died around 2:00.
I ran out of things to say by 2:18.
We should have had dinner an hour ago.
An endless line of farms come and go. Each a little more empty. A little more grey. They all look like the one in the picture, and I start to wonder if she will just have to guess which one it is or if there’s some landmark only she remembers. A tree she climbed or a pet’s grave she dug… I’d be happy to spend the rest of the drive imagining what will set his farm apart, but my body is violently shaking the thoughts out of me. I pull out another “therapy stick”—one of my hippy mother’s attempts to wean me off the Marlboros she found in my sock drawer last month. A wad of leaves, herbs, and vitamin supplements rolled in lumpy rice paper. It tastes like piss and black pepper, but at least it gives me something to do.
Finally we stop and she gets out of the car without even looking at me. I follow. Not because I care really, but it’s hot as hell and she left the windows up.
It looks completely unremarkable.
It looks like a tornado could lift everything up and set it back down at random and nobody would be the wiser.
It looks just like what someone who’d never been to North Dakota would expect.
But she sees something else.
Tears are rolling down Mom’s face and the fading sunset makes her hair glow.
I should hold her hand.
I should tell her how beautiful she looks right now.
But it all feels too sentimental, so I inhale another cloud of spicy urine and stay behind her. She’s still quietly sobbing and smiling and thinking and just for a second I feel embarrassed. Then empty. Then jealous. And I wonder why I can’t make myself feel things the way everyone else does. I imagine crying in front of my parents’ house fifty years from now and accidentally laugh out loud.
She must have heard, because she walked back to the car and started it without waiting for me.
Nobody ever remembers what it’s like to be 16.
I ran out of things to say by 2:18.
We should have had dinner an hour ago.
An endless line of farms come and go. Each a little more empty. A little more grey. They all look like the one in the picture, and I start to wonder if she will just have to guess which one it is or if there’s some landmark only she remembers. A tree she climbed or a pet’s grave she dug… I’d be happy to spend the rest of the drive imagining what will set his farm apart, but my body is violently shaking the thoughts out of me. I pull out another “therapy stick”—one of my hippy mother’s attempts to wean me off the Marlboros she found in my sock drawer last month. A wad of leaves, herbs, and vitamin supplements rolled in lumpy rice paper. It tastes like piss and black pepper, but at least it gives me something to do.
Finally we stop and she gets out of the car without even looking at me. I follow. Not because I care really, but it’s hot as hell and she left the windows up.
It looks completely unremarkable.
It looks like a tornado could lift everything up and set it back down at random and nobody would be the wiser.
It looks just like what someone who’d never been to North Dakota would expect.
But she sees something else.
Tears are rolling down Mom’s face and the fading sunset makes her hair glow.
I should hold her hand.
I should tell her how beautiful she looks right now.
But it all feels too sentimental, so I inhale another cloud of spicy urine and stay behind her. She’s still quietly sobbing and smiling and thinking and just for a second I feel embarrassed. Then empty. Then jealous. And I wonder why I can’t make myself feel things the way everyone else does. I imagine crying in front of my parents’ house fifty years from now and accidentally laugh out loud.
She must have heard, because she walked back to the car and started it without waiting for me.
Nobody ever remembers what it’s like to be 16.
posted by Anonymous at 11:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home