THE RIDE

TIPPING POINTS • WRONG INDICATIONS • sHORT CUTS VERSUS DEAD ENDS

The scene is laid out. You get a feeling of what to expect. And it is wrong. What follows is different. You notice the signs on the way. You think you know how it will end. But you don’t.

When is an alternative route a short cut - and when a dead end? This story is about the tiny, but crucial differences between things turning out bad and things turning out okay, even better than okay. Woven into it is a theme of tipping points and indications. It shares a focus on light in the dark with other IMAGINARIUM stories.

INFO:

Read it or listen to it (11 minutes). No questions will follow and no exercises. This story stands alone; just take it with you.

Relevance: The Ride is part of a series of stories that circle around fundamental, existential matters. Relevant for all of us.

Prefer listening? We’ve prepared a recording of The Ride for you. You can hear the full story below.

I remember the sleet. It fell from a dark sky and melted instantly. It landed on lawns and lamp posts, on abandoned playgrounds, on our picket fence that had been broken by the garbage truck in the summer heat and still needed repairs.

It was a few days before Christmas, and it had rained for weeks: a cold, salty rain rolling in from the ocean and leaving white stains on the windows. The sleet was a change from the rain, something new. We lived out by the old lighthouse, and on silent nights we heard distant ships sound their horns. We had the horns, the ships, the wind, the geese, and the stiff, rattling grass. And at the end of the road, we had the lighthouse that hadn’t been used for years but had once been featured in a guidebook. I wanted to show the lighthouse to my father. He would spend Christmas with me. He worked on oil rigs and had another family down the coast. That was where he spent his time off.

“I wish it would snow,” my brother said. It was his birthday, and I had nothing to give him. He was my half-brother, from my mother’s second marriage. He looked nothing like me.

“That’ll never happen,” I answered. “Because of the sea.”

“What is?”

“The rain is. Or the sleet is. It’ll never be cold enough for snow.”

I watched my brother most afternoons and evenings. He was four years younger than me. I just let him play whatever he wanted to play. Our mother worked two jobs, one at a warehouse shipping printing supplies and one at a chicken joint by the highway. She had a weird smell when she came home. My brother said that she smelt of fried computers. Whatever they smelt like.

It was past seven when my mother came home. The wind was picking up. My mother wore her striped shirt and the cap with the happy rooster, and she had stains on her sleeves and shoes; she looked more dead than alive. Her makeup was a mess, her eyes red from the greasy smoke and ventilation.

“Where’s Valdemar?” she asked.

“In his room,” I answered. “PlayStation. What did you get for his birthday?” 

“Nothing. I haven’t had time. Get dressed. I need your help. Tell Valdemar he’ll be alone for a while.”

“But it’s late. We’re hungry.”

“Karen, please” my mother said, and her voice didn’t sound as if she were angry; it sounded as if she were about to give up. She wore a bandage on her right hand, red and dirty.  

I got dressed and told my brother that he had to watch himself. He barely noticed me. My mother sat waiting in the car with the engine running, and the sleet was falling from a winter sky that was nowhere and everywhere. I got in. The hot air from the ventilation had a nauseating smell of oil and gasoline. The engine light had been blinking for a month. One of my mother’s colleagues at the warehouse had told her that it probably wasn’t important, and that the world had two kinds of people: those who ignored the engine light and those who didn’t.

We ignored the light, as we ignored most things in our life.

“So?” I asked.

My mother’s face was lit by the dashboard and by the headlights from the trucks passing by our house day and night, following the blue line on Google Maps falsely showing a shortcut between highways; they would end by the sewage treatment plant and have to make their way back through town. The road was too narrow for them to pass, and that was probably why the garbage truck had hit our fence. I didn’t like the fence, my mother did.

“So?”

“I don’t know,” my mother yelled. “Goddamn it! Just give me a minute, will you?”

“Just asking,” I said. “You’re the one wanting to go.”

We sat in the dark with the trucks passing by and the engine light blinking and the sleet falling from the winter sky.

“Let’s go,” my mother said and squeezed my hand. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s been a long day.” The bandage was gliding down her hand.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Just a cut. Nothing serious.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

She reached over and found a scrunchie in the glove compartment. She pulled it over her hand, fixing the dirty bandage in place. “It’s Valdemar’s birthday,” she said. “Let’s celebrate.”

We drove through darkness while the radio played Christmas songs and commercials. We pulled over whenever a truck needed to pass on the narrow road. “Someone should put up a sign,” she said. “Someone should tell these Google people that this is a dead end.”

“I’m not sure there are people involved,” I said. “Isn’t it just computers and satellites?”

“Maybe we should write a message on the lawn,” my mother said. “’Please do not send more trucks down our road.’”

“Like that would work.”

“Or we could write: ‘Please send only trucks with cookies and handsome men.’”

I smiled. My mother turned off the radio. “The same four songs,” she said. “Every year they play the same four songs. How was school?”

“Okay,” I answered. “Valdemar was in a fight.”

“I know. They called me. Did you see it? What happened?”

“Some kid calling him names. During lunch break.”

“I’ve told him not to,” my mother said. “I’ve told him not to listen and to keep it low.”

“It’s not his fault,” I said. “It’s such a shitty school. I hate it.”

“It’ll get better,” my mother said. “I promise. There must be nice people, too.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. ”Why can’t we just move? You hate this place.”

“I don’t hate this place.”

“That’s what you said.”

My mother smiled and waved at one of our neighbors. She lowered her window and wished him a merry Christmas. He waved back and asked if we needed anything. She shook her head and smiled her smile. My mother had her hair and her smile. I knew that men liked her and always tried to be mannered and helpful around her. She had once told me that she would have been like one of those very beautiful women from the magazines if her life had been a bit different.

She had her hair and her smile and her figure.

She was still a kid when she became a mother.

Maybe that was what she wanted to change.

We pulled up to the back entrance of the supermarket near the highway. The town was preparing for Christmas; the last days of shopping were coming up. The wind blew trash over the parking lot, seagulls were busy with a container left open, there was a steady, sorrowful murmur from the highway.

“What now?” I asked.

“Wait here,” my mother answered and stepped outside. I saw her making a call and noticed that the bandage had come loose again, flapping in the wind like a soiled flag of surrender. Time passed, and then the supermarket’s delivery gate was opened. My mother waved at me, and I followed her to the gate. The wind smelled of salt and wet cardboard.

A man in a supermarket uniform stepped out to meet us. I had seen him before. He was older than my mother and had children at my school.

“This is Leo,” my mother said. “He runs the supermarket. Say hello.”

“Hello,” I said.

Leo nodded and went back inside to fetch four bags filled with food, sodas, beers, flags, and hats. He helped us carry the bags to the car and load them in the trunk. My mother hugged him and kissed him, not in a creepy way but just a kiss of joy, and maybe of gratitude.

“Don’t tell anybody,” he said. “We don’t usually do this. Happy birthday to your son.”

We got back in the car and rode home through the deserted streets. Lights and decorations were blinking from windows and front yards. Christmas was just a few days away, and we hadn’t begun preparing. Maybe my mother just lived from day to day, jumping from rock to rock, always grasping for something firm to help her move a few steps forward.

Would she change that if she could?

Would she rather be one of the beautiful women from the magazines, busy with small things that only seemed important to people in expensive hotel lobbies and nail salons?

And was she just waiting for the right moment to tell me that my father had decided to spend Christmas with his new family?

We rode in silence, and there was a faint, comforting smell of bread and tomatoes and pale flowers from the trunk.

“Look,” my mother said and pointed out the window as we turned down our road. “It’s snowing.” She pulled over and opened the door. Large, soft snowflakes drifted from the sky. The road was quiet and dark.

“But it never snows here,” I said.

My mother shut the door and turned on the radio.

“They’re even playing a new song,” she said.

And then we rode home.

Credits:
Written and produced by The Empty Square
Illustration: Samuel Toi
Voice artist: Mercy Maya