The Long Road Trip

The trip had started so many days ago. I had watched the scenery change as the miles flew past. What began in the congested traffic of San Francisco over bridges and bodies of water had given way to hills and valleys. We had passed the flower fields with acres and acres of daffodils and poppies and the redwood trees towering majestically overhead.

All the exciting scenery had passed and the monotonous forest felt like the only thing I had seen for hours. We had visited Grandma on her ranch, played with the animals, read books by the fire pit, endured hundreds of questions from relatives I had never met before, stolen frozen Twinkies out of the freezer in the guest room and begged Uncle Stephen to saddle up the old mare so I could ride. All that was left now of our grand adventure was the monotonous drive home. Three days of driving. We had listened to all of our books on tape and now the car was silent without even radio reception to break the stillness.

My 12 year old self was tired of the trip. What had started as an exciting journey had long since become tedious. I longed for home, my own bed, my own pillow – my own summer days to fill as I pleased. Not with family obligations and forced interaction with people I barely knew.

I wanted to go to the library and continue my journey through the fiction titles. My goal was to read them all and I was already on the letter J. I wanted to curl up inside the lawn chair that I liked to fold into a triangle – making my own personal fort where I was hidden from the world.

The road slipped by – mile after monotonous mile with barely a road sign with which to continue the alphabet game. I had been stuck on Q for what seemed like 3 days but was probably more like three hours.

The forest was misty – rainy and dreary. The sun hid behind a cloud – contributing to my lackluster pre-teen angst. Occasionally we would pass a random shoe on the side of the road or even an abandoned piece of furniture which would give me a few minutes of imaginative wondering on how they could have found their way to such a godforsaken lonely place.

The curves of the road seemed endless. The pine trees enveloped the red car as it carefully navigated the turns. I stared out the window, the beauty of the trees and the forest had long since been noted and dismissed. All that was left was the boredom of the drive.

My little brother sprawled across the backseat tangled in the seatbelt, reading something, always reading something. I don’t think he even looked up for the last 400 miles. The map creased and wrinkled from hours of pondering spread out on my lap forgotten.

Mom drove steadily, her hands positioned properly at exactly 10 and 2. Anxiously glancing in the rear view mirror every few minutes. The road was deserted. It had been forty five minutes since another car had passed in any direction – I was timing it just to pass the time.

I stared aimlessly out the window. The bug splatters smeared my vision, but I didn’t even notice. I didn’t care about anything anymore, lulled by the monotony of the long drive.

The blue smudge that came into my view was just another distraction. As we rounded each bend in the road, it gradually changed from a shapeless blue blur into a station wagon- stopped on the side of the road somewhat crookedly. I considered it idly as it approached – noting the figure standing beside it. He was a scruffy, unshaven man wearing a standard issue brown trench coat and a sinister smile.

I felt a sudden tension in the air as my mother stiffened beside me.

It was raining gently now so the brown trench coat the man was wearing didn’t seem out of place at all. But the way the man was standing struck me as odd. As if he was waiting for us, anticipating something. But he didn’t seem to need a ride.

The road trip had been my mother’s idea, perhaps the most out of character idea she had ever had. It was surprising that she would even suggest it as she feared going to the local mall lest she or her children be kidnapped by the mall predators she heard about on the news. A road trip from California to Washington with only a map and 2 kids and no man to keep them safe was a huge risk. But seemingly a rite of passage.

I was in middle school, old enough to read a map. And despite one detour on an unpaved gravely road that had looked like a solid line on the map, it had gone well so far.

But now, in the forests of Washington with no one but this man in sight, this whole trip seemed like a crazy notion. Despite the windy roads and the ever present fear of crashing, my mom gave a little extra push on the accelerator and kept her eyes straight ahead.

As our tiny red car passed the station wagon, the stranger suddenly opened his trench coat revealing a flash of pasty white skin. It happened so quickly, I was unsure it had happened. I hadn’t really seen anything more than the suggestion of nakedness and thought maybe the tedium of the trip had finally fried my brain.

I spun my head towards mom to see if she had seen anything. My mom couldn’t even say the word “butt” so surely the sight of a naked man on the side of the road would elicit some sort of horrified reaction.

But mom was placidly driving, hands at 10 and 2, just as before, albeit slightly faster. My brother turned the page of his book, just as he did every few minutes oblivious to any drama playing out in the front seat. I glanced out the window again, blinking my eyes rapidly as if to clear them. It must be time to get out of the car. I am hallucinating now.

Years later, I remembered this random incident. Without any context at all one night at a family dinner I said, “Mom, I have a weird memory from my childhood and I wanted to ask you if it actually happened.”

“It did,” she said without hesitation or explanation.

Dumbfounded, I explained briefly what I remembered, certain we must be talking about something else. “Yes, that is what I was referring to,” she said.

“Why did you never acknowledge it at the time? And how on earth did you know that is what I was going to ask you?” I said.

“I didn’t think you noticed and I didn’t know what to do so I stayed silent. But I always wondered if you would someday ask.”

This struck me as such a waste and so dreadfully sad. It had been thirty years since the crazy brief flash of flesh in the deep woods of Washington. Thirty years of denial and hiding something that didn’t matter much in the scheme of life. I didn’t see anything I could identify, it didn’t scar me for life. I didn’t even remember it very clearly.

But what had happened is that it had become one more in a collection of memories that I didn’t trust because it was never spoken of, never acknowledged.

While it was not conscious on my part, this played out in a verbally manipulative marriage. I lived in silence when things got bad because that is what you did. You didn’t acknowledge anything that could be construed as distasteful.

This could have been a funny childhood anecdote to add to our list of things we pull out at holidays. Like the time my brother caught his sweater on fire or the time my mom dropped the turkey or when the lamb cake’s head fell off on the way to the church picnic.

But instead there was silence.