When the music dies

“Next up, we’ve got Love is Strange by Sylvia and Mickey!” The radio announcer’s cheerful voice filled the cold empty space inside the 1957 Chevy parked on the empty highway road.

Love… love is strange…

“Ugh, I can’t stand to listen to that coon crap.” Letting go of the steering wheel completely, the man shot for the dial and jerked it hard to the left. Immediately, the crooning sound of Sylvia’s voice was replaced with piercing, incomprehensible static.

The woman in the passenger seat instinctively clutched her ears first in shock and then in pain, but didn’t turn to look at the source of her suffering. Instead, she continued to stare out into the bewildered world around her, wishing for the hundredth time she had stood her ground and refused to get into the car almost half an hour ago. She knew this would happen.

“God damnit!” The man was fiddling with the radio trying to get a station - any station - to come through, but the static noise persisted no matter how gently he turned the dial on the dashboard.

 “Great! Now we don’t have any music at all. Stuck here in a damn blizzard without even so much as music to listen to! Well how’s that?”

The woman continued to stare straight ahead as if she hadn’t heard a thing.

He shrugged his shoulders, not really caring whether she had heard him or not and went back to trying to make the radio work. He kept switching between the same handful of stations he knew, but the static persisted as tireless as the storm around them.

After what felt like an hour of snow and static, she turned to her husband, her fingers almost knuckle deep into her ears and begged him to turn the radio off. The static noise was splitting her head open, and she longed for the peace of quiet. 

“I want to listen to some music. It was just working a second ago, I just need to adjust it right.”

He continued to fiddle with the dial and the static felt like it was boring a hole into her already cracked skull. He continued on with the radio, convinced he could make it work, until she offered to sing for him instead.

“Well alright then. But only if it’s one I like.”

Put your head on my shoulder…. whisper in my ear… baby….

He closed his eyes, enjoying the soothing melody for several stanzas before joining in.

A game you just can’t win… if there’s a way…

I’ll find it someday 

I’ll find it someway

“Wait, stop. Sing that last part again.”

If there’s a way… I’ll find it someday…

“No. You’ve got the lyric wrong, it’s ‘I’ll find it someway.’

“No, I’ve got it right, it’s ‘I’ll find it someday.’”

“No, it’s not. It’s ‘I’ll find it someway.’”

“It’s someday, not someway.”

“No it’s not!” Although they were only inches apart he was practically shouting at her by this point. “You know what,  if you’re not going to sing it correctly, I don’t want you to sing it at all!”

She continued to stare out the windows into the empty white world around them. The blizzard was wild with rebellion, and forceful… it clearly had no intention of stopping anytime soon. 

Beside her, her husband fidgeted in his seat, itching to try to get the radio to work once more. He lasted all of a minute in the quiet of their car before the static once again assaulted their senses..

Her hands whipped up to either side of her face and she tried to bury her entire fists in each ear.

If it was even possible, the static seemed to have increased in volume. And whether it was possible or not, it had definitely increased in (elephant). 

“How about a game?”

She was staring straight ahead but it could have been directed at no one else.

“A game?” The radio went silent for a moment,giving her a moment’s respite from the pain.

“Yes, like a car game. Like ‘I Spy’” she looked around her as she spoke, realizing the absurdity of her own suggestion. Even if he agreed, how long could such a game last when the entire world was white?

Mentally preparing herself for a rejection and the subsequent assault on her psyche, she was surprised when he responded “My brother and I used to play a game called alphabet categories. Let’s play that.” 

He didn’t wait for her reply before starting the game with the first category: apples.

“Granny Smith”

“Red”

“Goldspur”

“Yellow”

“Gala”

“What color is a gala apple?”

“What?

“What color is a gala apple?”

“It’s red.”

“Well then it doesn’t count. I’ve already said red.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t count. You can’t repeat an answer I already gave…”

“... but it’s a different answer.”

“No it’s not. You just said gala apples are red. I already listed red apples so I win this round and now it’s your turn.”

She wanted to stop right then and there but she couldn’t stand the thought of returning to the sound of the static, so she bared her teeth and continued on.

“The next category is…. Radio stations.”

“But you skipped Q.” 

“And?”

“You can’t just skip letters.”

“Everyone knows you can skip Q and X because those don’t have enough words to make categories.”

“There’s queens and...”

“Queens? No one gives a damn about the names of any queens. We don’t even learn about them in school because they never did anything worth teaching. Like I said, the next category is Radio Stations.”

He waited for her to supply the name of a radio station, but she sat in complete silence.

“You can’t take longer than 30 seconds to come up with a word.” He said, adding another rule to their game.

He clearly thought this would spur her to action, but she continued to sit in stony silence, barely even blinking as she looked out into the frozen wasteland in front of them.

“Oh c’mon, this one is easy!”

The words escaped her mind before she could stop them: “that’s not the point.”

“The point? The point?! The point is that we’re stuck in a fucking blizzard with nothing else to do! That’s the fucking point! For Chrissake Charlotte!”

Her silence filled the space between them, making itself comfortable in the already cramped car.

With a sound that let her know he was still angry with her, he reached for the dial of the radio once more.

“Please don’t. There will only be static.”

“I’m just going to check.”

It was as if thousands of angry wasps were trying to burrow deep inside her mind. And then, out of nowhere, they all vanished at once. 

“I’ll try again in another ten minutes. We had music before, so it’s bound to come through again.”

She looked into the abyss just outside her window and seriously doubted that.

The blessed silence was broken by a low rumbling sound. A pathetic groaning that demanded to be heard.

The man clutched his stomach thinking about how long it had been since his last meal. Hours, at least.

“I think chicken for dinner tonight,” he belches out into the car, picturing biting into a fat, juicy leg. “But use my mother’s recipe, your fried chicken isn’t as good.”

Receiving no response from the wife beside him, he raises his voice, “Hey, did you hear me? I want fried chicken for dinner tonight.”

She continues to stare calmly into the fury of snow and ice that surrounds them. Without fully consciously deciding to, she responds, “I want a divorce.”

Shocked into a choked silence that lasts only as long as it takes for the anger to build. “What!?”

“I want a divorce.” 

A volcano of fury erupts in their car, no less dangerous for being in the middle of a blizzard.

“Well you’re not getting one. I won’t agree to it!”

He grabs her and turns her body to face him, holding her chin in his hand so tightly she can’t move her head even a centimeter in either direction.

“Now, look here. You and I made vows to one another. Until death do us part, do you remember? And you’re going to honor those vows.”

He let go of her head, tossing it aside as forcefully as he had held it.

“Now I don’t want to hear any more nonsense out of you. And when we get home, I want my mother’s fried chicken for dinner.”

He went back to fiddling with the radio as they waited for the storm to pass.

The tear that had begun to trail its way down her face froze in its tracks as she pressed her cheek to the window. She slumped in her seat, pressing herself entirely against the cold metal of the car door, welcoming the blizzard into her body, allowing it to deep into her brain, dulling her overwrought senses and making each moment trapped inside that car slightly more tolerable.

Her husband and the static continued on, but her mind had frozen in a peaceful silence.