It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  “You in?” Caitlin wants to know. She revs the engine as if we’re at the start of a drag race and she plans to be first off the line.

  I pull my door shut and try not to think about how many car accidents I’ve seen or heard about. “Ten miles,” I remind her. She nods.

  I take a deep breath and look at Dan in the rearview mirror but can’t quite return his smile. “Okay,” I sigh. “I’m in. Go slow,” I caution, before her foot’s even off the brake. “Check your mirror first. Caitlin, watch it—”

  “Jeez,” she mutters as she eases out onto the road. “You’re worse than Mom.”

  I’m not sure if I should be offended or flattered by that.

  Chapter 12: Getting There

  With Caitlin behind the wheel, we creep down the road, easily twenty miles below the posted speed limit. “You can pick it up a little bit,” I tell her, resisting the urge to push her aside and step on the gas myself. At this rate, we won’t get to Aunt Evie’s until noon tomorrow.

  In the driver’s seat, my sister scowls but doesn’t dare take her eyes off the road to look my way. “First it’s slow down,” she mutters, risking a glance in the rearview mirror—we’re still the only ones on the road. “Now it’s speed up. Pick one and stick with it, Mike. I’m trying to drive here.”

  “Is that what you call it?” I reply.

  She ignores me, which is just as well. From the back seat, Dan says softly, “She’s doing fine, Michael.” Yeah, she hasn’t wrecked yet and we’re still alive, but that’s about the extent of it…

  “Pull over,” I say. When Caitlin looks at me, incredulous, I shake my head. “Just pull over right here, Caitlin. Cat. You’re making me nervous—”

  “You’re making me nervous,” she says. “I can go faster, see?” To prove her point, she leans on the gas and the car zooms ahead. “How’s this?” she wants to know. The car bucks when she lets up on the gas, leaps as she steps on the pedal again. “This fast enough for you?”

  I’m not playing this anymore. “Just stop.” She doesn’t listen, just keeps tapping the gas and lunges us up the road. “Caitlin!” I cry out, hands in front of me, arms locked tight between me and the dashboard. I don’t even want to think about what she’s doing to my engine. “You said you’d listen—”

  “You said I could go ten miles!” she yells back. Every time she speaks, the car slows down again, as if she can’t possibly drive and talk at the same time, and in my side mirror I can see a car in the distance behind us, gaining ground. We have to pull over, this isn’t funny anymore. My car almost coasts to a stop as Caitlin fools around with the odometer. “Eight point six,” she says, almost triumphant. “I’ve got a little ways left to go. Come on, Mike, you said ten miles. I’m almost there.”

  A full ten miles is an eternity away, and the car behind us races up onto my rear bumper like a demon from hell. “Caitlin,” I start, but I’m cut off by the other car’s horn, an angry blast that startles us all. My sister’s knuckles have gone white on the steering wheel, and suddenly I see past the punk façade to the frightened little girl underneath all that black make-up and silver jewelry. Covering her hands with one of mine, I force myself to lower my voice. “Cat? Okay, how about we just pull over and let him pass, what do you say?”

  Another blare of the horn—I feel Caitlin’s fingers tremble beneath mine. The steering wheel practically shakes in her hands. “Okay,” she whispers. She’s trying so hard to impress us, to be the strong, unaffected riot-girl, but it’s just a phase, it isn’t her. With pleading eyes, she looks at me as if begging to be told what to do.

  “Turn on your signal,” I say. I sound much calmer than I feel. Now she’s listening to me, and the steady clik-clikclik of the signal drowns out the low sounds of the radio. Keeping my hand on the wheel, I steer to the right, just enough to ease the car off the road. The car on our tail revs its engine impatiently. “Easy,” I say gently. We’re getting over, can’t the fucker see that? “Ignore them, Cat. Dan’s right, you’re doing good.” When the horn beeps a third time, I whirl around to glare at the driver—

  Through the window behind Dan, my dad stares back.

  Oh shit. Forget decorum, I twist the wheel hard to the right. The car bumps off the road and onto the shoulder, then into the grass. “The brake,” Dan’s saying, leaning past us to point at the floorboards, “Caitlin! Hit the brake. Michael, let go.”

  I grab Caitlin’s head and force her down as my mom’s Ford Escort charges by. Somehow, miraculously, my sister leans on the right pedal and the car jerks to a stop. I can’t get the pissed look on my dad’s face out of my mind—did he see us? Did he recognize us? Please don’t let him have seen Cat, I pray, even as my sister regains her composure and starts pelting me with her fists, struggling to sit up. Please don’t, just please don’t let them know it’s us. “Michael! Get the hell off me!”

  With shaky fingers, I reach over and turn off the car. “It’s Dad,” I whisper. Caitlin brushes the hair from her face and I stare at the taillights on the other car, heading up the road. In the rearview mirror, I catch a glimpse of Dan’s wide eyes and force myself to take a deep breath, another, anything to steady myself. “Holy fuck,” I mutter. “That’s my parents. Did you see…?”

  Dan nods—he saw.

  As if my dad realizes the car he’s just run off the road belongs to his own son, he comes to a complete stop in the middle of the road and sits there, idling. “Chinese fire drill time,” Caitlin says, unstrapping her seat belt. Then she’s crawling past me into the back seat of the car, the keys still in the ignition. “‘Scuse me, Danny boy. Scoot it over.” Plopping down beside my lover, she shakes the hair from her face and stares out the window at the car. “God, do you think Mom saw me? She’ll have a shit fit if she finds out.”

  “I don’t plan to tell her,” I say. Dan climbs over the gear shaft and sinks into the driver’s seat, buckles the seat belt across his waist, and gives me a tight smile that I can’t seem to match. Instead, I stare out the window and run a hand down my face, trying to wipe away the emotions trembling through me. I can just hear my mom’s reaction now, if she finds out I let Caitlin drive? Oh shit.

  Dan touches my knee, a comforting gesture. “Michael?” he asks, concerned. “You okay, hon?”

  I force a laugh at that. Okay would not have been to let my teenaged sister coerce me into letting her behind the wheel of my car. Okay would not be sitting here wracked with tremors while my parents wait for us to pull back onto the road. In fact, I’m quite sure that okay wouldn’t be anything at all like what I’m doing or feeling right now.

  When I don’t answer, he looks back at Caitlin, who stares out at the road and doesn’t say a word. Her dark-colored lips have disappeared into a thin line drawn across her face. She knows how my mom will react—she’d be lucky if she can get her driver’s license at eighteen if Mom finds out she’s fooling around like this, and she’d never be able to borrow the car, ever. Hell, depending on my mom’s mood? Caitlin might never be allowed to even look at a car again.

  “Okay,” Dan sighs, as if we’ve both agreed with him. He checks the road behind us, empty again, then manages to pull my car out of the tall grasses. Gravel crunches under the tires, and then we’re off the shoulder and back on the road. He glances at me, at the road, then at me again. “Michael? Talk to me here.”

  “My mom is going to kill us,” I say, my voice strangely distant to my own ears. Ahead, she’s already rolled down the passenger side window and leans out to watch us approach them. Yes, she’ll kill us all, Dan too, just because he’s supposed to be driving and wasn’t. What does she always say? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

  From the back seat, Caitlin says, “She’s going to kill me. My learner’s permit is in her purse.”

  I turn to stare at her, dumbfounded. “You’re not even carrying it? Caitlin, what the hell—”

  Dan squeezes my knee almost painfully and guides the car to a stop behind my parents. For a long moment, we just sit there,
none of us moving. “Go,” I mutter as if my dad can hear me. I don’t want to get into a family argument here, in the middle of a nameless street in the back roads of Pennsylvania. In front of us, the other car idles, waiting. For what, though? As if someone else might know, I ask, “What’s he waiting for?”

  Suddenly my dad sticks his arm out the window and waves us on. Does he want us to pass him? A solid yellow line bisects the road, we can’t just cross it. “Dan,” I start, confused, “what—”

  My dad hits the horn, motions with his arm again. “Go see what he wants,” Dan tells me, pulling up the parking break. That’s the last thing I want to do, but my lover gives me a quick kiss on my cheek that imbues me with courage. “Go on,” he whispers, his breath warm on my face.

  Unbuckling my seat belt, I tumble from the car and out into the road. I glance around us to make sure we’re still the only ones out here—we are—then I hurry around the front of my car to the driver’s side of the Escort. I’m not talking to my mom, even though her window’s already down. Of the two, my dad is far easier to deal with. I’d rather have him ignoring me than deal with my mother’s hysterics any day. Leaning down into his window, I give him what I hope looks like a sincere smile and say, “Hey! Jeez, we didn’t recognize you guys.”

  My mom leans past my dad. “Is everyone alright? I told you, Harry. You’re going too fast, running people off the road. Slow down, will you? I don’t want to show up at Evie’s dead.”

  “We’re fine, Mom,” I say quickly, before my dad can reply. Anger dulls his eyes and he has an open beer can between his legs so I know he’s been drinking. From the way he’s looking at me, like he’s not quite sure who I am or why he’s sitting here talking to me, I’m pretty sure he didn’t see Caitlin in the driver’s seat of my car. “You just surprised us, is all. We’re okay.”

  Now my mom’s eyes narrow in suspicion, and she starts in on me. “What were you doing to veer off the road like that? Can’t he drive?”

  “He’s Army,” Dad replies, as if that’s all the answer she needs. “Of course the kid can drive. Leave them alone, Laura.”

  “How did we surprise them?” she wants to know, talking to my dad and not me. “If you two were fooling around in that front seat with my daughter in the back—”

  “Mom!” I cry, frustrated. “Damn, no! It’s nothing like that.” Your daughter was in the front, I almost say, but I bite the words back before I can set them free. “God, what do you think we were doing?” When she shrugs like she doesn’t know but it couldn’t have been anything good, I shake my head, incredulous. “Just driving, Mom. We were going a little slow and you just appeared out of nowhere. It’s a no passing zone, in case you haven’t noticed. We only pulled over to get you off our tail.”

  In the back seat, Ray sits up to hug the back of Dad’s seat, a mean-spirited grin on his face. “Hey, Mike,” he calls, and I don’t even want to look at him but I see the gesture he makes from the corner of my eye—one hand curled in front of his mouth as if holding something, his tongue pokes out the side of his cheek in a blowjob parody. “What’s it like giving head when he’s trying to drive?”

  “I wasn’t—” I reach past my dad and smack my brother hard across the nose. Then I pinch his cheek and twist the skin as hard as I can—he howls in pain. “You’re a fucking idiot,” I tell him as he tries to pull away. “We were just driving, people.”

  My dad knocks my arm away. “If you’re just driving,” he tells me, his voice slurred from the drinks he’s already had, “then get your ass back in the car. We’re about ten minutes from Evie’s.” Revving the engine, he shifts gears and adds, “You two can fight there. Get back.”

  I level a finger at Ray and glare at him through the window. “You are so dead,” I promise. I’m not putting up with his shit. It’s bad enough I have to take it from everyone else—I’m not about to let him get away with it, too.

  “Get back,” Dad says again.

  This time he doesn’t wait, just gasses the car and roars ahead. I stare after him for a second, then jog back to my own car. As I slide into my seat, I sigh, disgusted. “I’m killing Ray,” I announce, buckling my seat belt. Then I point at the other car and say, “Follow them.”

  “You have to get in line,” Caitlin tells me. Dan releases the brake and we fall behind my parents, Dan easily matching my dad’s speed. Gathering her things together in the back, my sister tells us, “I get him first.”

  “I’m older than you,” I argue. My hands are fisted on my knees and one of my legs shakes in anger I can barely hold in check. “I have dibs.”

  “I live with him,” Caitlin points out. “That gives me precedence.” Noting my mood, she leans forward and jokingly asks Dan, “What about you? Don’t you want in?”

  Dan flashes her a troubled smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Me? I’m holding him down.”

  I laugh, releasing some of the tension built up between us. Another few miles and we see the sign for Sugar Creek—a tall stretch of fencing by the side of the road, covered with wooden signs from civic clubs and local chapters of organizations such as the VFW and American Legion, and above them, the words Sugar Creek like a banner proclaiming the entrance to a legendary land. A simpler place, something like a memory to me, a safe fantasy world when I was growing up.

  And it still looks the same. Weathered houses line the road like places I’ve seen in dreams, people outside with sweaters and rakes, a pumpkin or two already carved and lit on porches or along driveways. There’s the Robichaud home—or rather, the house where the twins used to live. There’s the “spook place,” a house whose front porch and yard is littered with trash and half-empty boxes and discarded lawnmowers, broken appliances, a battered Chevy up on blocks in the back. We used to dare each other to run into the yard and swipe something, just to prove our courage. One time I crept up on the porch itself, the rotten floor boards creaking with each step, just to get a rag doll peeking out of an old refrigerator whose doors were long gone. I remember sounds from a TV inside the house, something like a giant’s cough rumbling out a cracked window—I turned to make sure that Ray and Stephen and another boy we called Quint were still hiding in the bushes across the street, waiting for me. Then I snuck up to the fridge, intent on the doll. My plan was to grab it and run, and I was almost there…

  A face appeared in the window above the fridge, dark eyes, lank hair, lines like furrows gouged into gaunt cheeks. I screamed and ran back down the porch, empty-handed. Remembering the doll, I turned, almost twisting my ankle as I stumbled back up the steps—I heard the door unlocking, my friends calling me to hurry, get the hell out of there, now, the door opening, and I just barely managed to get the doll by the hair. Then I vaulted over the railing, landed in the scraggly azaleas that hemmed in the porch, and ran for my life, doll in hand. I don’t remember what I did with the prize, toss it away? I must have—I don’t have it anymore. Now as we drive pass the house, it doesn’t look as scary as it used to, and my adult mind sees the monster inside as an old, lonely man, nothing more. I wonder whatever happened to him. I don’t even know what his name is, or was, to ask.

  We drive through the center of town. There are a few new additions—the Wawa wasn’t here before, and there’s a little strip mall with a Dollar Tree and Chinese restaurant where an old department store used to be. A used car dealership, those guys are everywhere, and signs for a Ukrop’s coming soon, that’s about it. Everything else could have come straight from my memory, it all looks the same. And there’s Grosso’s, on the corner of Main and 7th, the parking lot still littered with bicycles and kids. “There’s Aaron,” Caitlin says, pointing at one tow-headed boy with an ice cream cone. “Aunt Lennie’s son, remember him?”

  To be honest? No, I don’t. I haven’t seen my Aunt Lenore in five years, and the boy doesn’t look that much older. He must’ve only been a toddler the last time I was up here. That makes me sad—I won’t recognize any of these people I’m about to see, I don’t know them
. They’ll hug me and kiss me and say my, how much you’ve grown, and I’ll just have to smile blandly, look around for help, I won’t know who they are. A hotel is starting to sound better by the minute.

  But when Evie’s house comes into view, all my fear and trepidation dissolves. Home, I think, surprising myself. The word comes unbidden to my mind and lingers long after I try to shake it away. “That’s it,” I whisper, awed, and Dan nods, his hand finding mine. The house looks smaller than I remember it, but there are people on the porch, cars in the yard, a bustle of activity that belies the nature of our gathering here. Anyone driving by couldn’t possibly know the sadness that clings to each of us at Evie’s passing—we’re too happy to be together again, too many children racing around, too many adults chattering like long lost friends.

  My dad pulls his car onto the shoulder of the road, where the grass has been scattered with gravel in a makeshift driveway, and Dan pulls to a stop behind him. The house looms above us and I can’t shake the feeling of open arms, welcoming us.

  Home.

  Chapter 13: A Room of Our Own

  I feel like a celebrity when I climb out of the car and find myself surrounded. My Aunt Bobbie gets to me first—a short, overweight woman in her late 60’s, she has mousy, flyaway hair and a smattering of freckles across her perpetually tanned face, a symptom of her sun-worshipping ways. She lives in Florida with husband number five, a Greek businessman named Sander something-or-other that I can’t pronounce. I don’t think she can, either, since the last I heard, she went back to using her maiden name. When she hugs me, she only comes to my shoulder, and she squeezes me so tight that I’m sure my ribs will crack. “Michael!” she cries. Before I can reply, she releases me and moves down a step, pushing me the other way as she reaches for Caitlin.