The Wife of Bath

Pulling out of your parents' driveway, struggling as usual not to hit the bushes, destroy myself on the house, or end up digging a new drainage trench for the woodland creatures to drown in, I was relieved when you made me get out and let you finish the job. For once I dumbly kept my fat mouth shut and just got out of the car. The intensity with which I once arbitrarily picked epic battles has faded.

This made me vividly recall the sticky hot tears and screaming that once ensued because you dared to open your mouth while I floundered miserably to simply parallel park my car. I did manage to tell you that I'd never hated you more, as you zipped down the cliff (I exaggerate) with all the skill and precision of an ancient hermit, building a tiny ship in a dusty bottle.

As we drove into the night, I let my day unfold, slowly holding my cards further and further away from my vest, until I dared to bring up my mother, which these days has been a subject most easily pried from my lips by a bottle of whiskey and too many questions.

I asked you if you remembered the bitter night last February, as we drove the same road into the city from the suburbs, that we'd seen a car on fire. I told you that I thought of it often as though the soot and flame and ash itself had burned themselves into my brains.

I wonder if you remember that you hadn't been in my car for more than a block or two from that night until the question escaped my lips. I wonder if you remember what that car ride felt like, how I was literally falling asleep in my seat, eyes struggling to stay open long enough for me to figure out why exactly I had never hated you more in my life. I finally waved my white flag at the sandman and tossed and turned until you pulled into the gas station to buy some ginger ale, because, despite the late hour, our obvious disdain for one another, and a myriad of other reasons, there was no way we were not going to go home and drink ourselves to sleep. Oblivion is a friendlier alternative to the discussion we would inevitably have when drunkeness turned into bitter daylight, n'est-ce pas? That night I fell asleep alone with my thoughts and you built virtual cities late into the night.

Something tells me that you don't remember that night with the same painful clarity and detail, but I know you remember more than the flaming car that forced us off the highway, away from one explosion into another.

Instead, you knowingly kissed me on the forehead and I let you.