Between Then & Now || Currently Editing for Wattys 2022

43.

My foot presses on the gas pedal. The yellow dashed lines in the middle of the road pass by beside my van's front wheel, blending into one dark yellow line. We've all spent long enough letting this hang over us like a dark cloud. just pretending like it isn't there. And, in the back of our minds, all of us- my Ma, Tata, me- have just been subconsciously glaring at it, hating it, loathing it, but not doing anything to get rid of it. As if, this whole time, it hadn't been in our own hands.

I turn my blinker on and turn left down some residential road, a few miles away from the hospital. It's time to get rid of that cloud. To stop letting it just cast this huge shadow over all of our lives, over my life. It's time to move on. And forgive him. If not for him, at least for me.

My phone starts vibrating in the cupholder next to my seat. My eyes glance away from the road, down at the screen casting a bright, white light in the dark van. The sky above is pitch black- I'm not even sure if visiting hours are still open. But, as I grab the phone, answering the call from an unknown number, I set my eyes back on the road and I just keep driving.

The voice crackles through from the other end of the line before I can say anything. "Hi, this is Patricia McDonald from Hope Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. May I speak with a Miss Ola Murphy?" The voice on the other end is feminine. Unfamiliar, yet familiar at the same time. My mind flickers back to a stray strand of gray hair on the back of a woman's head. Red fingernails on a keyboard.

"Yes, this is her." My blinker flicks on, beeping somewhere in the distance.

For a moment, there's a pause on the end of the line and the van continues to move but, suddenly, I am not steering it and my heart stops.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news." Another pause and my hands are steering but at the same time they're not, and the streetlights are passing but at the same time they aren't because I am not here and I do not exist because I know what she is going to-

"I'm sorry. Tomasz Kaminski has just passed away."

And I am steering and I am steering and there's noise coming out from the other end of the line but I'm not sure what it's saying because I am steering and I am steering and my foot is pressing on the gas, faster and faster and faster. Because I am half a mile away and maybe if I press down hard enough I can go back and tell him and tell him. That it is okay. That he is okay and I am okay and everything is going to be okay.

But it's not and my foot is pressing on the gas, because it's not and the entire world is falling apart, and there are no more streetlights and there are no more roads and no more miles because there is no more destination. There never was a destination.

Somehow, my thumb has found the red button on the phone and I'm hearing my name coming through from the other end of the phone but I do not care as I slide the call to an end. Because there are no words that will change the destination because when you multiply something by zero it is still zero and no matter how hard my foot pushes on that pedal, there will still be

no more destination.

As the phone clicks off, my foot slowly pushes against the brakes, the pressure of the pedal against the sole of my shoe. It is cold. I am cold. Suddenly, my car is in park, and the empty street around me, cars lining the curb, lights still on in some houses, off in others, stares back at me. The dim rose-tinted pavement mixes together with the line in the center, with the grass on the boulevards, with the yellow light of the street lamps, and suddenly my vision is blurry.

I punch my steering wheel.

"Damn it." My voice isn't my own. My face isn't my own, my mind isn't my own. My cheeks are wet, and my hand hits the wheel again. "God fucking damn it."

There is no van, there is no road trip. Suddenly, I am screaming at the top of my lungs in the middle of some street at midnight in some town in Washington I had never been in in my entire life yet holds nearly half of my potential memories.

"Fuck you," I scream. My eyes stare outside. The streetlights are dim. My chest hurts, a stabbing pain that, for a moment, I wish would just kill me. "Fuck you."

And, all at once, I am bawling and there's a paw scratching at my arm, and my head is in my hands, and my hands are soaking wet, and my whole body heaves with waves of hurt I thought I wouldn't have to feel again for at least another few decades. In an instant, the half of my life I had just regained slips between my fingers, dripping onto my jeans and the floorboards and the driver's seat.

There's a tap on the top of the van, and for once in this whole godforsaken trip, I do not look up. I don't check if it is some rouge serial killer who has found me by chance. Because I do not care. There's another one. And another. And I still do not care, but when I finally do look up, the entire street is wet, and my windshield is an oil painting. And the rain begins pounding and pounding and, suddenly, everything is just far away and it is all just background noise. And my hand is on the door handle, and my foot is on the pavement in the middle of the street. And it is still cold and I am sure that all the people in the houses lining the street are looking at me like some lunatic because their father did not just pass away, because they did not just leave them with a sense of permanence that they had thought was already a close friend. They did not just lose someone without being able to say goodbye for the last time, and their chests are not tight and they are still afraid of rogue serial killers.

But I am sure they already think I'm insane so I do it. I look at the gray sky above me and I let the raindrops fall into my eyes and into my mouth and into my ears and I scream. I scream at whatever God is supposed to control this trap of life and death and our inevitable beginning and our inevitable ending and all the inevitable beginnings and endings we are forced to see in between our own. I wrap my arms around me, and then, I don't, and my fists are punching that God.

"Fuck you."

The street is silent. My chest is heaving, and I'm suddenly aware of the pace of my breaths. I am aware of the way my clothes are sticking to my body. I sniff in a useless attempt to clear my nose, and my eyes trace my shoes that are still very much on the ground as I wish to be anything but grounded. I sniff again. And I mutter, "fuck you."

Thelma has climbed over the center console into the driver's seat and she is looking at me. And I look at her, and her one light, watery blue eye winks.

I blink. In the fleeting moment between the shut of my eyelids and the opening of them, I realize that

the rain is still pounding

and the streetlights are still on

and there is still no destination.

And Thelma is still looking at me.

The world feels no change and everyone else's lives around me are still happening and there is some random woman standing in the middle of the road outside of their house for God knows what reason.

I push my hair out of my eyes, and walk back over to the driver's seat. Down the street, a street light flickers. Thelma whines as I place her back in her seat and take my own, putting the car back into drive and placing my foot back on the gas pedal. But it doesn't press down any more than it has to because there is no destination, anymore, and there is no reason to be somewhere that is nowhere anytime soon.