11/22/2001 Geoffrey Ashbrook
Sally Marie leaned around to get a better look in the back seat of her car as she clicked in her seat buckle. Her fingers guided the key to the little chrome slot on the side of the steering wheel as her eyes assayed her daughter. Child-seat, bucked tight, checked that, feet still covered, small river of saliva adorable, coat hat and shoes in the well. She turned the key as she turned her head and looked at the back of the car in front of her and the engine roared. It was a small old blue sports car, and the top was down, and it was spitting a bit.
She pulled out of the spot, checking in the rear view mirror which she had tilted down at least every five seconds. As she came to the end of the block the spitting ceased and she turned off the wipers, who had begun to squeak jerkily. She pulled out, turning right onto a large road. She left the radio off. She heard Sarah mumble something. It sounded like something about ‘Saracen hooligans,’ though she doubted so grounded an attachment to football --and chuckled at the image.
The road moved out and got thinner like a train of taffy been pulled by friends all but altruistic. The hastily rushelled-up office buildings faded into old stone barns and twice she had to stop for sheep. Each time she took the opportunity to take a long gaze through the backward mirror. Sarah was still sitting there, reading intently, the old red book held carelessly and meticulously, never to loose a word never mind a ruffled page.
The road went on. Sometimes their eyes would meet in the mirror at once, always such a toss up. “You’ve got your lunch,” Sally asked her.
“I do, Mum,” came Sarah’s reply along with a short ruffling of a paper bag.
The wind blew across the road, blew the grasses by the roadside, and the trees here and there in clumps. They both eyed the punctuated walls that came and went by the side of the road. Stone, stacks of slate, toppled cobbles, round in mortar, gargoyles, old and moss covered, a corner. At one point the road dipped and went through a shallow creak, and after they were through Sally looked back to see Sarah looking back at a horse and buggy crossing the water the other way.
At a stoplight Sally glanced back, and saw her Daughter fussing with her uniform. She turned the radio on and crossed a busy intersection to the end of a piano concerto and then turned it back off. The tall pines and bulsive copper beaches streaked by opening and closing the view of the blue sky patched by low bustling stormy clouds in a terrible rush to be somewhere. Outside a new shop a man was replacing part of a fence.
Sally’s mind drifted onto chess games with her father, and her eyes caught Sarah rubbing off the lenses of her glasses on her lapel the way he used to. They used to play all the time. Did they? And it was always so quiet, and such riotous conversations that would likely sweep the game from time on their shoulders. She’d gone through this cranberry juice phase, both of them, really, always a tall glass, had to be a glass. She turned around at a stop sign and noticed Sarah wasn’t wearing her silver bracelet.
She watched her looking out the window through the glass again. She could see her unweaving the world of everything she saw back into perfect spindles of colored wool behind the eyes. She could also envision her daughter licking off envelopes baring slowly written addresses. How fearful a thing an envelope can be. The head that used to dart from side to side, the eyes that used to race from one thing racing by to the next, seemed to her to be absorbing whatever happened to be in front. A voice sinking between boatmen.
Chapter seventeen. Just under the covered bridge she realized she’d forgotten the question and turned a sharp left at the slightly uphill turn that always made her nervous when it was covered in autumn leafs. She could see the playground up ahead, and the long metal bars. Sarah was talking away about Gwen, who she had started sitting next to at lunch, and how nice it would be to see her again.
She pulled in the drive, stopped, undid her belt, hopped spryly out of the car and opened the back for Sarah, who stepped out slowly and looked about, the wind twirling her long silver hair over her mouth and back over the shoulder. A teacher in a white uniform came from the entry way and helped Sarah across the drive and up the curb. Sarah turned and began to wave as she turned through the doorway.
Sally took a deep breath and watched a few leafs skuttle over the pavement and got back in the car and drove off.