by Al
He shrugged, looking away.
“Whatever,” he mumbled.
“Look,” I said, in a measured tone, knowing I was using the conciliatory tone they all knew a mile away. “I know the trip has been difficult so far, but I think we should try to get along better.”
Debra was silent, eyes closed, leaning back into the headrest. Rusty and Mona were looking out each of their side windows, lips tight.
“Christ,” I said, letting out my breath. I almost yanked the car into the right lane and then into the service lane, where I would slam on the brakes, but I had already tried that and nothing had come of it. I briefly studied my hands, tightly gripping the steering wheel.
“Christ.”
“Just drive, Harry,” Debra said, keeping her eyes closed.
I counted to ten and watched my hands relax on the wheel.
For a while I looked at nothing but the road in front of me. The radio had been turned down during one of the previous fights and I turned the knob back up, flooding the car momentarily with oldies music before turning it back down to a reasonable level.
“Sorry,” I said, but still kept my eyes on the road.
Suddenly the music started to annoy me, and I twisted the knob, turning the radio off. I studied the faces on the three people in the car with me.
I counted to a hundred, then said, “Anybody hungry?”
There was a brief silence, then Mona said, not too glumly, “Sure.”
“Rusty?” I asked, waiting for his reply.
“Why not,” he answered, sulkily.
“Eating now might be a good idea,” Debra said, opening her eyes with her head still on the headrest. She was staring at the visor in the up position in front of her. There was a little mirror on it.
“All right then!” I said, forcing cheer into my voice and beginning to study road signs. “Anyone spots a fast food sign, let me know.”
A few moments later Mona said, “There!”
Sure enough, a billboard for the golden arches had appeared, as if by magic. TWO MILES UP, it said.
“We’re on the way!”
I eased the car into the right lane, then, two miles on, left the highway and we ate.
The meal started well enough; the food seemed to revive everyone’s spirits, and Mona and Rusty, between sips of cola, had enough energy to begin sparring lightly. When it looked like it might go past the giggling-pushing stage I stepped in, since Debra wasn’t about to.
“That’s enough, kids. Save it for the park.”
“I still don’t think we should go,” Debra said, and I knew that we were on the same old path and that the moment of peace had ended.
“We discussed all that before we left,” I said, watching myself ball my napkin, squeezing it tighter and tighter.
“I know—” Debra began coldly, but then the kids chimed in.
“You said we could, Mom!” Rusty cried, almost simultaneously with Mona, who reached out imploringly, without touching her mother.
“You said we could!”
Debra was silent, seemingly studying the empty, grease-stained fries carton in front of her.
“Then let’s go,” she said suddenly, getting up, not waiting for the rest of us to catch up as she pushed through the glass door to the parking lot, where, arms folded, looking away, she waited for me to unlock the car door.
~ * ~
It didn’t take long before the fighting began again. Like a virus, it spread from the back seat, where Rusty and Mona continued their giggling and pushing but soon started jabbing and yelling at each other. Then it spread into the front seat where Debra, lips clenched, said so that only I could hear, “I told you this was a bad idea.”
My knuckles where white on the steering wheel. The road constricted in front of me, and I could feel the blood roaring through my veins and into my temples, where a rhythmic pounding began that I knew might not end until I lay down with a cold, wet, folded cloth over my eyes.
There was a break in the highway divider just ahead to the left, a turnaround for the highway cops, and I nearly twisted the wheel towards it when I suddenly spied a sign, in cool green with white letters and an etching of pine trees above it, for the park.
“Hey!” I said, my headache abruptly vanished, my spirits lifted, “we’re almost—”
“Dad!” Rusty cried suddenly, from the back seat, in a voice that sounded as if he had been hurt.
I twisted around and said, “Mona, if you harmed your brother—”
Rusty was looking out the window, his eyes tracking a car that was in the right lane, fading behind us.
I turned back to the road as Rusty said, with worry in his voice, “It was that guy again.”
“Who?”
“The one I saw before, in the car like ours—didn’t you see him?”
The headache was coming back, a pounding that grew quickly behind my eyes. Again I was gripping the steering wheel hard. Debra was feigning sleep beside me.
I took a deep breath and answered, with my teeth clenched, “No, dammit, I didn’t see him.”
In the rear-view mirror Rusty’s eyes were large with fright. Guilt pushed through my rage and I evened my voice. “I didn’t see him, son.”
Almost as an afterthought, I glanced away from Rusty and, in the mirror, saw the car with the plastic-chromed grille far behind.
I could not make out the driver, but it was definitely the same car, blue-gray, nondescript except for its cheap chrome trim.
“I think we should go home,” Debra said suddenly, in the calm, cruel voice she sometimes used because she knew that it cut through my head like a knife.
“What!” I screamed, the pounding in my temples accelerating to a heat that made me literally see red for a moment. I yanked the wheel hard to the right, cutting across the thankfully empty right lane and then onto the shoulder of the road, at the same time braking to a screeching, fish-tailing halt.
My vision was slowly clearing, but I could feel my head about to burst as the children in the back seat began to howl.
“You can’t!” Mona whined. “You promised us the park! You can’t turn around!”
“Nooooo!” Rusty added, making the din complete, his wail circling and tightening around his sister’s moaning. There was a roar in my ears that only added to the near unbearable level of noise in the car.
I fought with myself, tried to control my breathing and then, unable to keep silent screamed: “ENOUGH!”
The car quieted, Rusty’s wail spiraling down to hitching sobs. I turned to face Debra, who was sitting like stone, lips tightly clenched, eyes staring through the windshield.
“Are you happy now?” I hissed.
“We never should have come,” she said, her voice infuriatingly matter-of-fact. “Turn around and go home.”
“You should have said that an hour ago. We’re two miles from the park!” I replied, unable to speak in a calm tone.
Mona suddenly leaned over the front seat between Debra and I and wailed, “Only two miles, Mom! Two miles! Pleaaaaase?”
I kept my eyes on my wife, who sat like a statue in the seat beside me; a vein pulsed in her neck like a separate live thing and her lips remained pursed until she said again, her voice a tight whisper, “We never should have come.”
Rusty’s mewling began to increase in volume, and then Debra turned her face abruptly to me, blank and unreadable as pond ice, and said quietly, “All right.”
“Yayyyy!” Mona said, throwing herself away from us and into the back seat again. Rusty’s mewl vanished instantly, as if a switch had been thrown.
“Yayyyy! We’re going to the park!” Mona exulted, and in a moment she and her brother were poking and giggling at each other as if nothing had happened.
“You’re sure?” I asked my wife, who’s face was as impassive as it had been.
“Drive,” she said, and I nodded, letting out a long breath, feeling my whole body unclench, and signaling to pull back out onto the highway. I watched a car
pass close, and then the road was clear.
“Dad!” Rusty shouted, “that car—!”
I looked and saw the car like ours, the vague outline of passengers through the rear window.
“The same one?” I asked, turning to look at my son.
He nodded, his face pale.
The car was gone, far ahead.
I turned my attention back to the still-empty road and carefully pulled out into the right lane.
“Park, here we come!” I said, with the heartiest of false cheer.
“Yayyyy!” Mona shouted, too loudly, making me wince.
Debra was staring out through the windshield again, her statuesque mode complete, even the throbbing vein in her neck absent.
I pushed at the accelerator with my foot, and we passed a sign that said, PARK, ONE MILE.
“Yayyyyyyyyyy!” Mona said, and I recoiled at the way her shout assaulted my ears.
“Dad!” Rusty screeched suddenly, making me jump, and I reflexively turned to hit him but he was pointing to the right and ahead of us. “Look!”
I turned my head forward and saw the car with the cheap chrome grille parked in the service lane, it’s doors open, its emergency blinkers flashing.
“It’s—!” Rusty began.
“I know,” I replied.
I slowed down, hearing the tires hiss quietly on the roadway, and as we glided by I stared at my car, at the man who was killing his wife and two children on the side of the road.
So I pulled off the highway and did.
Hedges
By Al Sarrantonio
I thought, Will I finally belong?
I passed the boy at dawn on my bicycle. He was standing in the middle of the road, his backpack slung over one shoulder, the way students do. He was reed-thin and tall, a little hunched at the shoulders, with a cranberry colored baseball cap on backwards. Grinning slightly, ironically—again, the way students do.
There was no danger of hitting him, but I wondered why he was standing in the middle of the street. Then I saw the school far ahead on the left, set back off the road, in the middle of a cleared field. There were lights on in the windows that looked like they had burned all night. They may have been bright in the darkness but now, with the sun rising behind the school, they looked defeated and dim. After giving me a smirk as I passed, the boy slouched toward the school.
I peddled on.
Before the school on either side was a short packed line of small houses, bordered by a thick hedge. Suddenly the dawn was banished back to night. Overhead were crouching, overarching oak trees, their branches brushing like the fingertips of lovers.
The hedges grew thicker to either side, a wall of April green buds on winter-sharp branches. It was dark gray as midnight, and the air had cooled. I was suddenly tired, and I slowed, and then the bicycle, urged by my slowing, tilted to the right and leaned me over against the hedge.
It held me pricking, a wall of sharp sticks and tiny faintly perfumed wet buds, and I heard a faint voice I could not make out. It sounded like it said, Yes. The voice was very close. I pushed myself away from the hedge, my hands sinking momentarily into it, branches scratching, and something else, something that felt almost liquid and very cold, drew over my hand and then away.
I pulled my body back in disgust and fumbled at the bicycle, which caught against my straddling leg and again moved me over into the hedge.
The voice was right next to my ear, whispering, Yessss.
I flailed back, pushing my left foot against the bicycle pedal as I straightened the machine with a scrape and pushed off, back out into the road—
A car passed, close by in the gray darkness, horn bleating. It’s lights were dimmed, swallowed by the encroaching gray, and a pale oval face, hairless, lit with a green inner light, peered out at me from the rear window as it drew roaring away.
The hedge was next to me again.
I heard the whisper and felt cold pushing toward me and lurched back, dragging the bike sideways, making its tires scrape with complaint. My feet fumbled and found the pedal and then I was off again, straightening the front wheel.
But now in the grayness I saw the hedge narrowing in front of me.
I began to fight for breath.
The oaks had disappeared overhead and the hedge had grown up around into a crowning arbor. The air was chilled, damp, sick-sweet smelling.
The hedge narrowed into a closing dead end; I heard beyond it the fading roar of the car I had seen with the pale green face staring—
I thrust my feet backwards against the pedals, making the bike stop with a screech, then forced it around. Already the hedge had grown down from above, almost touching my head.
It was narrowing on all sides ahead of me, like a closing wedge.
With a shout I hit the pedals hard, keeping low, and shot through the narrowing opening even as it closed. I felt the scrape of budding branches like grasping bony fingers on me, and smelled something wet and lush and fetid, and heard what sounded like a sigh—
Gasping for breath I tore ahead, blinded by sudden sunlight. Ahead of me on the left was the school, its windows filled with rising sunlight now, the field in front of it full of milling students.
The loud blare of a horn made me stop short; in front of me was a school bus grinding to a halt, its brakes squealing. The driver was shouting at me behind the huge windshield set into the massive yellow front.
In a daze, I moved the bicycle off to the curb as the school bus ground into gear again. The driver glared at me as he drove past, then pulled into the long driveway toward the front entrance of the school.
I looked behind me.
The street, dappled in tree-shaded new morning sun, stretched straight behind me, lined to either side by a row of neat houses, cape cods and cute ranches. There was no sign of a hedge as far as the eye could see.
In the far distance was a cross street, a busy one by the look of the traffic at the intersection.
I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Wha—”
An equally startled face peered back at me: a crossing guard, an older woman with a white cloth bandolier across her jacket holding a small red stop sign.
“I’m sorry,” I began. “I’m new here, a Chemistry teacher, I start today—”
“You could have been hit by that bus,” she said, concern and scolding in her voice. “You were tearing along in the middle of the street—”
“Can I ask you something?” I interrupted. “Has there ever been a long row of hedges in the street back there?” I pointed to the spot from which I had come.
“Hedges?” She looked confused.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and began to pedal away, turning in toward the school. “I’ll be more careful.”
“Do that,” she said, the scolding tone coming back into her voice. “There are children around here, you know…”
~ * ~
“So how did it go?” Jacqueline asked, with, as always, neither concern nor interest in her tone. A fresh vodka tonic in a clear tall glass lay on the kitchen table before her. Beads of cool perspiration freckled the glass. She did not offer me one but instead sipped her own, looking out the kitchen window to the backyard, a riot of green trees and untended bushes.
“About as expected,” I answered.
“You mean like all the rest?” There was an undercurrent of venom in her voice now. I told you so and I knew it and Here we go again, her tone said, without her saying it.
I tried anyway. “Have you ever felt, Jacqueline, that you just didn’t fit in? The children in this school are even worse than normal. They didn’t show any interest at all. It was like I was talking to thirty sacks of potatoes. And the Vice Principal was almost unfriendly. I have the same bad feeling, Jacqueline. Just like all the other times. Like I don’t belong. Haven’t you ever felt that way?”
She sighed heavily, and turned her near-perfect face, framed in long black hair, slowly away from the window toward me. She pinned me with her violet
eyes. “I’ve always belonged, Howard. The only question I’ve ever asked myself is why in hell I married you.”
I opened my mouth but she turned her attention back to the window and her drink.
“The back yard needs tending,” she said, tonelessly. “Every one of these houses we’ve rented, in every one of these rotten little towns, always has an overgrown backyard. This one’s worse than the rest. Do something about it.”
I said nothing.
As I turned and left the kitchen she called out casually, “I’m going out for dinner. There’re TV dinners in the freezer if you want something. And I’ll need the car again tomorrow.”
~ * ~
The next day was no better. When I entered the classroom all the desks were facing the back of the room. The day before, every student had been staring intently at the ceiling, which made me look, too. The boy in the cranberry colored baseball cap was among them. From that moment on, when they all broke into laughter, they had me. Today was no better. I should have made a joke, but nothing came to mind.
I tried to teach the day’s lesson, to ignore them, but instead they ignored me, kept their desks turned around.
Soon they began to talk and joke.
The chalk trembled in my hand. I closed my eyes, leaned my forehead against the cool blackboard and then turned around, trembling with rage.
“This isn’t right!” I stammered hoarsely, but they ignored me.
I dropped the chalk and walked out of the classroom.
The Assistant Principal was there in the hallway, and I almost ran into her.
“Having a bit of trouble?” she asked, and I couldn’t help but detect the near-disdain in her voice.
“Yes. I—”
She moved around me and stuck her head in the classroom door.
“That’s enough!” she shouted. “Get those desks back where they belong!”
There was instant quiet, followed by the shuffling of moving furniture.
The assistant principal confronted me again in the hall.
“Just treat ‘em like animals,” she said, giving me a smile that told me what she already knew: that I wasn’t capable of treating them like animals, or anything at all.