Trinity Miles, Sophomore, Writing, Colleyville, TX
Mark didn’t need the GPS to tell him which roads to take, he had made the trip enough times to know the route. Only his left hand guided their Suburban, which rested loosely on the bottom of the steering wheel. To his right was his wife fiddling with the radio, turning the dials again and again in search for a station that played music her teenage daughters would like. Sharon eventually gave up and settled on an obscure nineties station that played songs even she and Mark didn’t recognize. Anna was seated on the same side of the car she was always on, as was her sister, Erin. The two girls slouched against their pillows propped up by the window; the entire trip they had barely exchanged words that didn’t have a tinge of annoyance sewn into them.
“Arkansas,” Erin suddenly remarked, contributing to cut the tension in the car. Since they were little, the dynamic between the two girls had hardly changed; as the younger sister, Erin was always aiming to please because deep down, she felt it was her responsibility to make up for her sister’s caustic nature. Anna rolled her eyes and returned to staring out her window.
It was hour six of their annual road trip to Pensacola Beach, a normally exciting vacation that had been stained this year by the aftermath of a three-month-long hospital stay Mark had endured and Sharon had been subjected to. Anna noticed it in her father’s shoulders, his once muscular build weakened by all those inactive days in a bed; his skin still slightly sallow and thinned. She saw it in her mother’s thighs and hips as they had grown to accommodate all the fast-food dinners, bottles of wine, and sedentary life she had been forced to adopt months prior at her husband’ bedside. They were gripping onto their marriage by its threads, and much like their daughters, Mark and Sharon had not said a word the entire car ride that wasn’t dripping with resentment.
“Mississippi.” Another car drove by, but Erin was not as hesitant to name where it had come from. Usually during their road trips, the family would play classic car games to soak up the hours. This time, they were aiming to find all fifty states marked on the license plates of neighboring cars. The first two, of course, were easy finds: the cars at the junction of Louisiana and Mississippi aren’t often out of place.
Anna stared out her window, counting the trees as her father drove past them. It was a miracle he was able to drive right now, let alone walk. She knew she should be grateful. She knew it wasn’t his fault. Yet still, she blamed him and her mother for everything that had happened–all the responsibility thrown on her so suddenly, the unachievable expectations she was forced to meet, and the bitterness that now defined her parents’ relationship. Throughout all of this, she never even had the opportunity to process the idea that her father almost didn’t survive.
She thought about the night of his car accident and played through each memory as if they were scenes in a movie. She remembered everything: the cold, the call, the crushing realization her father was fighting for his life, alone in an operating room away from everyone he ever loved. She remembered the way her mother collapsed into a melted puddle of a woman when the police called her. She remembered the instant numbness that served her limbs when the doctors told them her father was in a coma, and they didn’t know when—or if—he would wake up. She remembered the way her sister sobbed and her mother screamed, but most of all she remembered how she just sat there, silent, stoic, still—waiting on the answer for her father’s life she knew would never come.
Eight days after his collision, Mark woke up, but it was too late, her mother had already been scooped out from the inside, leaving nothing but her shell behind; the trauma of a dead spouse ravaged her to nothing. Throughout the three months Mark recovered in the hospital, Anna and Erin hardly saw their parents. Sharon made her new home at Mark’s side and rarely focused her attention on her daughters, leaving them responsible for themselves. The distance made it exceptionally difficult for the girls to visit their bed-ridden father and hollow mother, so for all of that time, they only had each other.
But here they were just like every July since she could remember, packed into her mom’s car crossing the bridge over the Mississippi River. Now, she counted the cargo ships that overwhelmed the sides of the river. She had grown accustomed to counting, a habit she had developed to stop herself from falling asleep as she drove home from the hospital on the rare occasions she was able to visit.
Like a frog in slowly boiling water, she didn’t realize her father had been slowing down until they came to a complete stop. Mark’s foot pressed firmly on the break, stopping the car on a stretch of highway overlooking the swampy marshes of Mississippi.
“I wonder what happened,” said Sharon, breaking the silence that had characterized the road trip thus far.
“It had to have been a wreck,” replied Anna, removing her earbuds, “there’s no way we would be at a complete stop otherwise.”
Fifteen minutes passed and still, they had not budged. Ever impatient, Mark pushed the gear into park, throwing his hands off the wheel in frustration. Sharon scoffed at him, quietly scolding her husband for being angry at what was likely a severe accident similar to his own. Nevertheless, his lack of compassion and patience was nothing new to her; her husband’s violent childhood had rewarded him with a particular perspective on life that she would never understand. He hated waiting, he hated being vulnerable, and most of all, he hated feeling weak.
The July sun scorched the motionless car as well as the timeworn asphalt the family was stuck on. The engine of the car hummed, filling the silence, only to be interrupted by the return of bad nineties music after a commercial break. Time seemed impenetrable as it passed, especially as everyone in the car concluded that they would not soon be moving.
After nearly forty-five minutes, Anna noticed a swarm of people gathering on the right side of the bridge looking at something over the rail. She wondered what could possibly be so captivating that people would ditch their precious air conditioning and venture into the thick, heavy summer heat. The longer she studied the faces of those looking over the bridge, the more she was consumed with curiosity. Soon after she had first taken note of the crowd, her sister announced her intrigue in it as well.
“Anna look,” she said, “I wonder what’s down there.” Anna thought for a moment before ultimately letting her fervent interest and restlessness get the better of her.
“Wanna go find out?” she replied, a response that took everyone in the car by surprise. Anna, already anticipating her sister’s answer, was already re-tying her tennis shoes in an act of urgency Erin was unaccustomed to. While Anna’s enthusiasm was foreign to her, she was not reluctant to follow her older sister’s lead, something she had been doing since the day she was born.
“We’ll be back!” announced Anna to her parents, her lively demeanor confusing them as well. The two sisters left the car and joined the rest of the stranded travelers on the side of the road. As they watched their daughters walk away, Mark and Sharon exchanged looks of apprehension; their daughters’ shared eagerness was as unfamiliar to them as it was to Erin and Anna.
Anna approached the ledge of the bridge, placed her palms on the rough concrete, and scanned the swamp below her. Onlookers beside them shared similar expressions of astonishment and fear that Anna was aching to understand. It didn’t take her much longer before she finally saw it, gasping the moment her eyes fixed on the animal.
“Holy-shit!” she exclaimed, “Erin do you see that?” Directly underneath them sat a massive, ten-foot-long alligator. The setting sun perfectly illuminated the animal, as golden light effortlessly mixed with the green hue of the water that glazed the animal’s back. Anna stared in awe, dumbfounded by the peacefulness of the brutal creature.
“Where are you looking? I don’t see it,” said Erin impatiently, her eyes desperately searching the murky water. Anna, noticing her distress, delicately placed both her hands on her sister’s shoulders and gently guided her in the right direction.
“Right there,” she said softly, using her left hand to point out the animal. Erin’s eyes widened with disbelief the second she saw the alligator, her breath escaping her. The two sisters turned and looked at each other, their eyebrows pressed together and raised to frame their matching, almond-shaped eyes. In a sisterly sixth sense, the girls knew exactly what the other was thinking, and it wasn’t long until they exploded into a fit of laughter. The whole situation was absurd to them. Here they were, stuck on a random bridge in Mississippi and so intensely fixated on an alligator that was doing absolutely nothing. At the same time, however—and possibly subconsciously—they were finally beginning to understand the heaviness of losing a parent and just how close they had been to losing theirs.
“Let’s go get Mom and Dad,” said Erin, finally catching her breath. Anna agreed and together they ran back to the car—which still had not budged—giggling and waving frantically to their parents to come and join them. Awfully confused by his daughters’ novel behavior, Mark rolled down his window and asked them what they had seen in the water.
“You’ll just have to come see for yourself,” Anna said, looking over to her sister only to start laughing again.
“It’s a surprise!” added Erin, supporting her sister’s attempt at mystery. Mark and Sharon shared another glance, this time smiling at each other. Sharon joined her daughters at the front of the car while Mark twisted the keys out of the ignition, finally silencing the engine and the nineties music that was still playing.
Erin guided the three of them back to the ledge and pointed the alligator out to her parents as her sister had done for her. Mark and Sharon were amazed at the sight of the animal, and like their daughters, let realization and laughter consume them. Sharon looped her arm through her husbands and looked at him with overwhelming gratitude.
“Honey,” she began, as a calculated grin began to form across her lips. “Are there any sharks down there?” She, of course, knew there weren’t any, but she couldn’t help but ask. Mark laughed and shook his head foolishly, picking up on the inside joke that their daughters would never understand. He smiled, put his arm around his wife, and stood there silently next to his two daughters. Although Erin was distracted, Anna noticed his affection and her cheeks blushed bright red; for the first time since his recovery her parents seemed at peace.
They watched the alligator lay still in the sun for a few more minutes before giving their vantage point to another family. Anna looked around the bridge. The crowd initially engrossed in the alligator had dispersed and now participated in a slew of activities across the highway. To her right was a little boy playing catch with who she assumed to be his father, and behind her sat a small group of girls playing the same hand clap games she and her sister had enjoyed when they were younger. Those who had been driving alone sat along the concrete shoulder of the bridge, reading their books or finishing the crossword puzzle from last week’s paper. It was the strangest culmination of people she had ever seen, and yet, here they all were in the same place, stuck in traffic on a run-down bridge in Mississippi.
Eventually, the sun began its retreat beyond the clouds as the hot air finally cooled to introduce the night. The people on the road slowly made their way back to their cars, and traffic began to move again after nearly two hours of being at a standstill. Sharon went back to sifting through radio stations, this time managing to find one that played music everyone enjoyed. Mark began driving again, returning both of his hands to guide the steering wheel. As he drove, Erin and Anna reached into the cooler that sat in the space between them and pulled out four Cokes and a pack of powdered donuts. They passed out the sodas and split the donuts equally between themselves, snickering at white powder that was left on the tips of their noses after each bite.
Roughly two miles from where they had been stopped was the wreck that left them stranded. Fire trucks and police cars still crowded the area in a failed effort to block the wreckage from those passing by. As they drove past, they were only able to manage a small glimpse of the wreck, but it was more than enough.
A bright red compact car was resting upside down with its tires sticking straight up, mimicking a dead cockroach. All four sides of the car had been crushed, and shattered glass littered the surrounding road. They could not see the other vehicle involved, but they didn’t need to—they knew this wreck was not survivable.
No one in the car said a word. They were silent for the victims of the wreck and, perhaps more appropriately, silent for each other. For the first time since it had happened, Anna let the full weight of the previous months overcome her and she began to cry quietly in her surrender. She thought of everything that almost never was, then of everything that would still be. Her father would still get to see her graduate; he would still get to walk her down the aisle; he would still get to meet her children one day; he would still get to do everything a father was supposed to do.
She leaned back into her pillow and closed her eyes for the rest of the drive to the beach. Sharon turned the volume of the radio down and looked back to see both of her daughters sleeping. She smiled contentedly at her husband, who then lifted his hand off the wheel and grasped hers tightly, not letting go until they reached their destination.