Leaving Paradise

Bobby had no memories of leaving Paradise. He had only just taken his first steps when they left, but to hear his mother tell the story of their exodus he had been tramping around the pine needle blanket in the front yard just waiting for his dad to notice.

“Your father,” she told him, “didn’t even have a car seat in the truck for you. So I put you in a box with blankets and slid you on the little jumpseat behind Jack. Jack always sat in the passenger seat like your dad had trained him. That dog went everywhere with him, and he abandoned him, too.”

He imagined his mother driving and could almost see her glancing at him in the rearview mirror, her eyes pinched and provocative. The little mole, coquettishly lazed at the corner of her mouth until it disappeared in the deep creases of her broad smile. Of course, Bobby could only imagine this because he did not have the memory. He had something else instead, a feeling, maybe, or an impression, perhaps. There it was, behind the glass of his mind, long since annealed to the opposite and untouchable surface of being and made into a mirror so that his memories were really just a reflection of his mother’s. And in this way, his feelings and his impressions were hers as well.

Not shared, though. Not entirely

“No, your father couldn’t be bothered to get a car seat for you, much less trade in that damned truck for something the other fathers drove.”

Bobby had no memories of the hours-long journey he and his mother and the faithful terrier Jack made, but he could not be convinced that he didn’t have any either. If he closed his eyes, he could feel her reach back behind the seat and brush her fingers through his hair the way a farmer’s daughter dragged her hand through a row of short grain in midsummer. He could see the pinpoints of perspiration perforate her forehead, starting just below the widow’s peak that escaped the bandana with which she kept her hair back.

They left Paradise and most of what they owned after breakfast. Bobby’s father had not come back from work the night before, and his mom was up all night going through the house looking for some things and finding others, putting some of the stuff in boxes and others in the inexpensive luggage they used on trips. Some boxes went in the truck like her husband had instructed her, and the luggage and other boxes went in her car.

“This is the time to be sentimental.” Bobby’s father had implored her. “Get the stuff we can’t replace. The paperwork and the deeds and the licenses and jewelry and pictures. Like I said, if you feel sentimental about it, take it. We can replace everything else.”

She filled the back of his truck hastily because she had to, and even then she was loading and unloading the mismatched packages and suitcases to make a little more room when she could. When she had it all measured and had unlocked more room than a measuring tape would have found she ran the thick tarp they took camping over the inventory of years of dating, two tours, a marriage and now Bobby. Then she took a thick cord and tied it all down with clean, strong know-how that she dispensed with a minimum of knots.  

Her wedding dress and the Marine uniform he married her in were tucked into her car with wedding gifts, many of which were still boxed. These things filled her passenger seat and crowded around the car seat. They stayed in Paradise when Bobby’s mom put him in one last box and slid him behind her seat, snug. 

“Your father’s gonna come and get all that.” She told the boy. “Let’s go on a trip, me and you.”

Then she whistled at Jack to get in the car. The dog jumped into the bed of the truck only to find it full and covered with the tarp. Surprised, Jack stepped between the cords before shimmying through the open window behind the seats and taking his place in the passenger seat, panting. Driving away, Bobby’s mom could see Jack’s footprints in the thick accumulation of ash that had already settled. 

Bobby could never remember the terrible traffic of that day. They did not get very far before they could not get anywhere at all. Along Neal Road, the traffic slowed and thickened like burnt sugar taken off the flame. The two lane road was clogged and jumbled with fear and grief and cars overheating. Bobby’s mom listened to the drone of the traffic information station crawl through the speaker, urging calm instead of suggesting alternative routes or ways to share cars. Occasionally, someone would get inspired and drive on the opposite side of the road and a chorus of honks and a few scattered cheers would erupt from the other cars. A few minutes later a police car or fire engine would scream from that direction and chide the good, terrified citizens.

“No southbound traffic in this lane!” They yelled, their voices loud and uneven, blaring as if spoken through large brass instruments. 

Bobby can remember the color of trees out the window. The pine needles lashing against heated winds and filtering the sunlight into white lines that the acrid miasma curled through. And he can see his mother’s hands, threaded with cables of taut muscle that gripped the wheel. They crawled along the road in an inexorable line of frantic waiting while the fire behind them slowly darkened the sky and skipped and jumped between the trees and meadows all the while cackling, crackling.   

This was more than leaving. This was throwing the sands of time spent into the kiln, and Bobby would have to wait for all these uncountable pieces to come together and to cool. Most of what he had once had would reappear, vague in composition and others would remain forever shards of unknowable provenance. He could polish some smooth and see what they reflected, perhaps. The little pieces would be gone forever. He could not have explained to anyone else the strong smell of fire, but some time later it would present itself; suddenly, there it would be: the smell of someone burning leaves in the fall, but menacing and inescapable. The smell of twelve hours of sweat in a truck was not sour or foul, but full of love and fear in unequal shifting proportions.

* * *

“You never cried,” Bobby’smother told him. “Not once. You stayed in that little box behind the seat and never cried.”

“I don’t believe you.” Bobby would argue.

“You were my angel. You and Jack.”

He remembered then, straining, confusing then for now. Was this her recollection or his own, and if it was his then how? She lifted the clumps of sweaty, matted hair as he fell asleep in the little box in the seat behind Jack, the air conditioner humming loudly moved the ripe air wet with heat and loss. Before he falls asleep he looks at his mother. Her dark hair is uncoiling itself from the bandana. Long wavy stresses of hair so dark it might swallow the light are unfurling and they soak up the heat.

Her eyes are on the road now. Things are moving, and her eyes narrow. There are overheated cars on the shoulder. The road wended along ridges toward the valley which overlooked tragic coulees where the chaparral chokes a cluster of oaks that are leaning incongruously against the shadows they cast.

“We’re almost there, baby.”

Behind them now was the crackle of embers that had been Paradise. Distance had thrown some water on the flames but the malignant heat was in the ground now and inextricable. The great hot maw turned all that was into thick secretions of smoke, and what had not been consumed in full sat in clumps and was left to smolder. Columns of smoke fanned out, guided westward by the sun and set their course for the ocean where the roar of waves and hiss of mists awaited.

His mother scanned the radio dial for bits of news and information, and Bobby remembers that, but what he remembers most was the feeling of a song she paused on. A song plays and his mother cries, her hands close to each other atop the steering wheel and she makes as though she will lean her head on them and give up. Bobby coos.

“You like that song?” Bobby’s mother asks, regarding him in the little box, cast out of Paradise by nothing of his own accord.

Bobby cannot remember the song or the tune and neither can she. For both the music of that moment diminishes if either dares to approach. There it is, a chord floating in the ether or a timbre of someone’s voice, but just for a minute. Bobby knows that one day he’ll ask his mother to look at that memory behind his side of the untouchable glass.

“I remember that,” she’ll tell him. “Yes, here it is.”

Holding up her own memory to his, each reflecting the other, smaller and smaller until unknowable, what happened to who and what it had even been.