Take the Wheel

Tara watched as the silver commuter car rounded the corner. If it were her in the driver’s seat, easing to a stop by the curb, her mom wouldn’t have had to come for her. If she could even just be a passenger in a friend’s car, none of this would have happened.

“You going to be okay?”

Tara shrugged. “Thanks for bringing me here and letting me stay,” she told her friend. She stood, already prepared for the argument on the car ride home.

Her friend smiled sympathetically and left her with a pat on the shoulder.

Tara didn’t say a word when she met her mom halfway up her friend’s driveway. The two of them went directly into her mom’s silver Civic, slamming the doors shut.

“So this is your argument now?” Tara’s mom asked once their seatbelts clicked into place and the engine hummed to life. “You think breaking the rules and getting in a car with a teenage driver and running away will convince me to let you drive?”

Tara bit down on her tongue.

“You’ve run out of real reasons so you’re running away now, is that it?”

Tara laughed. “Just as good as ‘because I said so.’”

She shot her mom a glare. Tara had come up with a million logical reasons to drive--the convenience, the practice, the confidence, the responsibility. Her mom had taught her to be a safe driver and she had her license. When that wasn’t enough, she compromised on paying for insurance and curfew and rules. She had refuted her mother’s ‘it’s dangerous’ and ‘you’re too young’ with facts and statistics. After that, her mother, an aerospace engineer--a literal rocket scientist--couldn’t come up with a better reason other than ‘because I said so.’ 

“It’s because I care about you.” Her mom let out a sigh as she pulled out onto the street and began driving. “You don’t understand how--”

“You don’t understand!” Tara was surprised at the force behind her words. She had always matched her mom’s even tone and cool exterior in their arguments, but she had been holding this in for too long. “Everyone my age is driving, Mom. And if they aren’t, they have friends taking them places, not their mothers.”

“I don’t have any issues taking you places. It’s really not that embarrassing.” 

“Except you don’t take me places! You couldn’t take me to the beach or the arcade or bowling. I couldn’t go and--” 

Tara bit back down on her tongue. She had lost this argument undoubtedly now that she had let the emotion spill through. Resigned, she leaned her head against the cool glass of the car window, letting the world rush by in the corner of her eye. It wasn’t the only time she had felt things rushing by, slipping away.

If she had learned anything in the past year of trying to get her mom to budge, it was that life went on with or without you. That people would go on to experience whatever they could even if you couldn’t. That they would grow closer to those they spent time with, and if you couldn’t be wherever it was where they were experiencing things, you would be left behind.

“I’m missing out, Mom,” Tara said finally. Her voice dropped back to its normal pitch and volume. “It’s the general consensus that your senior year of high school is the time to enjoy life while you’re young. It’s when you have the time and energy and very few responsibilities. Majority of the people I know are doing just that.”

Her mom’s gaze flicked away from the road and towards Tara for a moment. Her gaze softened. 

Tara closed her eyes and just felt the motion of the car. “I’m not asking for a lot. I’m asking for what you had in high school. Just to spend time with my friends when they go out to eat or hang out at the mall or the beach.”

When Tara opened her eyes, they were accelerating up a ramp and joining the other cars on the freeway. “What? Where are we going?”

Her mom didn’t answer any of her questions, so Tara finally settled into her seat and embraced the silence. The drive was smooth, so smooth that Tara nearly fell asleep before her mom had pulled over at the side of the road. 

Cars periodically shot past the window, barely recognizable blurs of color. In between, Tara had a steady view of an open road, slightly cracked from time, that stretched on for miles. Three lanes across, the other side fell off to a slight slope, golden and green with dry bushes and brush.

“Mom?”

“A group of my friends went to the beach for the Fourth of July. There were a lot of us, so we took two cars. We drove back home the same way we drove to the beach--laughing, blasting music, shouting. But on the way back, we were tired and some of us were slightly buzzed.” She pointed across the road to the other side. “That was where my friends got into an accident. They were speeding, lost control, and tumbled right over the edge. I watched it happen from the car behind. I watched the ambulance come. One died, one was paralyzed, and the other two were injured.”

Tara was quiet as her mom pulled back onto the road. “I didn’t know.” 

Her mom nodded. “I know. But now you should know that sometimes there is a thing as too much fun. You should know that teenage drivers are truly dangerous at times; it’s not just a statistic on the news.”

Tara noticed the white of her mom’s knuckles against the black of the steering wheel. It suddenly occurred to her how careful her mom had always been while driving and how strict she had been when teaching Tara to drive.

“I wouldn’t get in a car like that,” Tara told her mom. “And I wouldn’t drive like that either. I remember what you taught me.”

Her mom nodded again, her gaze brushing over Tara as she looked over her shoulder for a lane change. “I know you’re careful.” She didn’t say anything more until she parked again. 

By the time they arrived at the city’s nearest look-out point, the sun had already dipped below the horizon. The remnants of the day left only a faint cast of light from behind them. Their car faced the city, looking down on the lights that stretched to the silhouettes of shadowy mountains. Tara had seen pictures from this point of view before. It was just as breathtaking in person.

“Romantic, right?”

Tara nodded. Her friends had been here before to take pictures. She had been jealous at the time. She hadn’t been able to go. 

“Your father took me here for our five month anniversary,” her mom said. Her face was shadowed in the dim evening light. Her eyes stayed fixed on the mountains, reflective and luminous until she continued. “This was where we made you.”

Tara couldn’t keep the surprise off her face. “In a car?”

“In the bed of his pickup truck,” her mom said. “He drove me home after. He drove me wherever I wanted when we were dating… up until he found out I was pregnant. Then he just drove off.”

“Irresponsible jerk,” Tara muttered.

Her mother laughed. “He was a good driver though. Safe.”

“What does that matter if he couldn’t be responsible with other things?” 

Tara frowned, not just at the thought of her father, but also at the realization of where her mom was going with this. She had stumbled right into her mom’s point.

“He had been a responsible driver, but he couldn’t handle the responsibilities that came with the freedom of driving.” Her mom leaned back into her seat, looking out on the view pensively. “You know, you’re right about senior year of high school. We had all the time in the world and spent it doing everything we could.”

“I wouldn’t do everything that you did…” Tara said. 

The city lights sparkled brightly, some with a blue hue and others a yellow one. She wanted her experience to be bright and exciting too, just a different hue than her mom’s. Tara stared hard at the shadowy mountains. They loomed above her even from a distance, the same way the future seemed to. Was it so bad to want to enjoy herself just a little bit before the future came? 

“I know you’d be responsible and careful, but things change once you have freedom. It’s different once you can go places out of my reach.”

“I can understand that.”

Her mom straightened in her seat. She restarted the engine. “I’m not saying that you would do the same things that I did, but I do want something better for you. It’s harder to go through college with a kid. Then you really won’t have the same freedoms your friends will have.”

Tara watched her mom as they pulled back onto the road. Her mouth was set in a firm line, stubborn and rigid. Her mom’s stubbornness and discipline was the only reason she had managed to make it through engineering school and into the job she had today. Thus far, it had served her well and kept the both of them safe. Sometimes it was easy to forget what her mom had sacrificed in college when she had many exciting experiences in high school.

“It must have been hard,” Tara said quietly. 

“It was.” Her mom shook her head as she made the turn into the mall parking lot. “Especially since I knew what I was missing.”

Tara sank into her seat as her mom parked under the light of a lamppost. She had been wrong. Her mom had been on both sides before. Of course she could understand where Tara was coming from. Now she was making her argument, supporting her ‘it’s dangerous’ and ‘you’re too young’ and everything that went behind her ‘because I said so’ with the facts of her life. Tara had nothing she could use against that. 

“I know you would be responsible and careful. I do believe you’re ready for the independence. I could trust you to travel on your own,” Tara’s mom said.

“But?” Now Tara was just awaiting the finale of her mom’s argument.

“Even being prepared and responsible can’t stop what others choose to do.” Her mom turned over in her seat to face her. She gestured to the lamppost above them and the spotlight on their car. “My friend was mature and careful like you. She went to the mall to return a dress before closing. On her way back to her car, she was assaulted.”

Tara’s heart thumped hard against her chest as she traced the path from the mall exit to where their car was parked. It was such a short distance… and yet... “Did she--?”

“She was prepared. She screamed, fought back, and pepper-sprayed the guy. She made it to her car and drove straight to the police station. She did exactly what she was supposed to do.”

Tara let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Good.”

“Honey, there are things I can’t stop from happening.”

“But you’ve prepared me for them,” Tara said, more to comfort her mom than to argue. 

Her mom shook her head. “I still don’t want you to be in that kind of position. Especially when I’m not with you, when you’re too far for me to reach right away.” Her eyes flickered between Tara’s face and the space outside the car.

Tara nodded and took her mom’s hand. “You can’t always be with me though.”

Even if it wasn’t today or tomorrow or anytime in her senior year, or even in college if Tara chose to study locally. At some point, she would have to get around on her own and part with her mother.

They both knew that. It was a fact that they had been approaching for as long as Tara had been alive. But now Tara understood more of where her mom was coming from. She hadn’t realized how much her mother feared. 

“Or maybe you can,” Tara said with a sigh. She flashed a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “You could drive me around for the entirety of senior year; I guess it isn’t that embarrassing since you’re a rocket scientist. And I guess, I could apply to just the local college, nevermind studying engineering at M.I.T. or Harvard or Stanford. Then you could still drive me around. And I guess if I worked at the same location as you, we could carpool to work. You’ll just have to be okay with me living with you forever and treating you like a chauffeur all the time.”

Her mom snatched her hand away from Tara, glaring. “Absolutely not.”

“So… you’re saying that next year you’ll be comfortable with me driving?” Tara raised a brow. “You’ll be comfortable with me leaving for college?”

“I’ll never be comfortable with my baby leaving,” her mom said, an edge to her voice. “But I’ll learn to be okay with it. Maybe even within the month.”

Tara jumped in her seat. “What? Why?” She mentally smacked herself for questioning her mom’s change of mind. She shouldn’t question miracles.

Her mom shrugged. “Because I said so.”