Driving Lessons

I was in the middle of my driver’s test last week when out of the blue the examiner asked me about hazard perception. I must have seemed confused, which is not a good look when you’re trying to pass a test. Name the potential hazards, he said, getting a little impatient. What are some of the things that can go wrong? 

I’d just turned into an empty residential street neatly lined with colourful, pretty houses that all looked different but somehow still looked the same. I couldn’t imagine anything ever going wrong on a street like that, so I said: squirrels. He raised a thick eyebrow and marked something dark on the clipboard balanced on his fat knee.  

Maybe I was embarrassed by what I said because I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. Even when I’m not in the car, I’ve developed a habit of listing all the things that could go wrong. Like last night when I was cleaning up after dinner, I thought about how I could drop the plates and they’d crash into the floor and shatter into a million pieces. Due to the noise, my cat Caro would definitely come trotting in and cut her foot on the green ceramic shards. Then I’d have to take her to the vet, leaving broken plates and red bolognese sauce all over the hardwood floors. And maybe I’d cut my foot, too, trying to step in and save her. So what I did was I gripped my plate extra tight until my knuckles went white. Nothing broke. 

This exercise has really made me feel better about things. It’s really broadened my imagination, too. I’m still not as sharp as my sister Claire, who―get this―is a crisis manager at the mayor’s office, meaning she is the person people turn to when something goes wrong.

Once, I asked her what it was like. She said it’s like putting out fires all over the place. So kind of like that video game we used to play, I said. And she was like, Kind of, yeah, some days it’s something small like someone saying something ‘off-brand,’ and other days there are more complicated problems that aren’t as easily solved. Like a sex scandal, I offered. Yes, she said, laughing, that kind of thing takes some skilful maneuvering to make it go away. I thought that sounded very taxing, but Claire is ‘tough as nails’ as my mum likes to say. I didn’t want to mention it to her then but last time we all got together for Claire’s birthday I'd noticed that even her expensive makeup couldn't cover up the darkening crescents under her eyes. 

I think my mum would be pretty great at Claire’s job. Maybe not the problem-solving part, but she’s good at pretending everything is OK, or what people like to call ‘putting up a front.’ Like last Sunday, I was over at mums for breakfast. I sat there while she paced around cleaning. I didn’t once see her use a duster or a hot soapy towel. She just picked things up she thought were out of place, like the paper towel holder, and moved them around. I swiped a finger on the kitchen counter and felt a film of dust, that kind you can’t see but you can feel in the air. I don’t know if this is relevant or makes sense to you or whatever. But that’s the kind of thing that she does. 

Mum says I never pay attention to the right things at the right moment and that’s the reason disasters happen around me. She brings this up during our phone calls, which are often. Her favourite story is the one where I’d forgotten to use a coaster and burned a hot white ring onto her precious cherrywood coffee table, which was passed down from her grandmother. She tells the story as if I’m not a part of it and she’s laughing but I know she’s still mad about it.

I have this idea that she’s angry about something else that has nothing to do with the table at all but we never talk about it. No one ever made a rule about it. As in, no one ever wrote ‘We can never talk about it’ on a post-it note and stuck it on the fridge. It’s just one of those ‘unspoken things’ that is obvious even to me because everyone gets real quiet and mum leaves for the kitchen and brings out some form of baked good on a plate, like she’s just performed a magic trick. My favourite are her oatmeal cranberry cookies. 

Last night, she was talking about the stupid table again on the phone. I didn’t mean to be rude but I interrupted her in the best way I knew how and said I was getting tired of hearing about it. I used my soft voice, but she stopped speaking for one whole stifling minute. Even through the phone, I heard her breath, hot with simmering rage. Dr. Yoon, the therapist I started seeing a few years ago, says there are different levels of emotion. She says anger that’s been brewed very slowly over a long period of time is the most potent and takes on the most complexity, which makes a lot of sense to me.

Finally, enunciating every word just in case I didn’t understand, mum said: You need to learn how to take responsibility for your actions, George. You’re not a kid anymore. 

She used to call me Georgie, but it’s been George lately. I said, I’m sorry. I did. I mean, I have. I’m sorry about the table, mum. I know it meant a lot to you. 

Yes, OK. Thank you. 

I’m also very sorry about, you know, like that summer― 

No. No. Please, you don’t have to.

I know, I’m...I’m really sorry. I just want to explain. 

There’s nothing to explain.

OK, and, well, I learned about hazards from my driving test last week and― 

I’m glad, darling. I only wish you’d learned it earlier. I suppose you’ve always been that way, you know, just blundering about. So careless. Drawn to trouble like a moth, she said.

My eyes were suddenly heavy with moisture, like a pregnant cloud, the bottom half of my face quivering with surprising violence. 

I could've told her that yes, I marked her precious coffee table on purpose, and yes it was me who lost her pearl earrings when I borrowed them for the high school dance and yes it was me again who scratched the car before I had all those driving lessons and yes it was me that summer at the lake. She’d go very quiet; she was loudest when she was perfectly silent, after all. And she’d hang up the phone and never speak to me again. Or I could've screamed into the phone, stringing all my words into one long piercing, unbearable sound, like one of those contemporary artists who express emotion with one single dramatic brushstroke across a blank, pristine canvas. It’d scare her, and she’d tell dad and Claire, and Dr. Yoon. And I’d have to stay with them for a while, just until I’m able to ‘control my emotions.’ What are all the things that can go wrong? 

I put my ear to the phone again and heard her say, I don’t know where you get it from, honestly. Your father and I, and your sister― 

But her voice was muggy now, like she was underwater and very far away. 

I covered my mouth with my hands and scrunched my face together to close it all up. Tough as nails. The tears came anyway, and I let them. I hung up the call without saying goodbye, which wasn’t my proudest moment. I dove into bed with my outside clothes still on and screamed into my pillow until I couldn’t make another sound.

I woke up in the morning in my clothes from last night. My pillow was still damp, but my skin was dry and pulled tightly across my face, like the last bit of cling wrap that’s been stretched over a bowl of leftover pasta. I glanced at my phone. No missed calls. A huge relief. I took a cold shower, changed into a fresh set of clothes, put Caro in her carrier bag, and started up the car. 

Being a new driver, I’m not confident on the road yet, but my understanding is that people tend to be more forgiving when they see the green N sign I’ve stuck next to my license plate. N apparently stands for ‘novice.’ Sometimes I think about slapping the green square onto the back of my shirt. A novice human. Give way. Stay away. Maybe, then, I won't have to worry so much. Ken, my driving instructor, knows I’m anxious about these things so he always says that when you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world and the important thing is to ‘shake it off.’ Don’t sweat the small stuff, kid, he would say. Look far and wide. When you’re only concerned with what’s in front of you, you’ll lose track of where you want to go. 

I kind of get where he’s coming from, even though it’s one of those things that people often say is 'easier said than done.' For example, the bigness or smallness of things is not always clear to me. And I don’t always know where I want to go, only just how I want to be. 

I pull into the small street by Sunnyside Park to see my sister, Caro. Some people are confused when they realise my sister and my cat share the same name, but I don’t think it’s so complicated. What happened was after my sister died, I adopted the stray cat that kept showing up in front of the house and named it after her because they both had chestnut-brown hair and I knew I would take care of her always to the very best of my ability.

Anyway, the park is on a little hill and split right down the middle with the graveyard on the left and a park with the greenest grass I’ve ever seen on the right. You would think that nobody would want to go to a park that’s attached to a swathe of land filled with dead bodies, but there are always people having picnics, throwing frisbees around and there’s even a playground with a sandpit dotted with little wet craters into which dogs have peed. It’s fascinating to me, the children―so whole, so brand-sparkling-new―running around topless, strawberries in their mouths, oblivious to the decay of rotting flesh just under the ground next to them. 

I sit on the dirt ground in front of Caro’s smooth marble stone and lift my face up to the sun, letting the dry July heat sear the flat of my forehead. A long time ago, in the summer, when Caro didn’t even know how to ride a bike yet, we’d lie flat on the front lawn like starfish. Dad had just bought us a solar lamp that only lit up at night after a full day of sitting out by the sunny window. Caro had the genius idea that if we soaked up all the sun, maybe we’d light up under the blankets at night, too. So we lied there until we were red and patchy. Mum pulled me in by the wrist and asked if I had any common sense at all. I didn’t tell her that I don’t think everything needs to make sense. 

Another thing that doesn’t make a lot of sense: I like to talk to Caro even though she isn’t here―hasn’t been here. In fact, she feels more alive to me than anyone else; she’s the only one who can’t pretend nothing happened. 

So I tell Caro about my driving test, which I’d passed, about the phone call with mum, which went badly. I tell her about all the things in between, too: the street with the colourful houses and the squirrels, the examiner with the fat knees and interesting question about hazard perception, the cherrywood table that mum’s still mad about, the summer we still can’t talk about, what Ken said about big and small things, that maybe her not being here could become a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but that actually whichever way I looked at it, her not being here was the biggest thing of all.

I tell her that if I’d known what I know now, things would be different. We wouldn’t have gone to the lake in the first place, I wouldn’t have pushed her in, I wouldn’t have laughed until I couldn’t breathe. I wouldn’t have waited until she didn’t come back up to run home. I wouldn’t have run through those woods alone, crying out for mum, dad, mum, dad, Claire, mum, Claire, until my throat was so scratched up it could have torn apart. Dr. Yoon always talks about 20/20 hindsight. I know it's her job to make me feel better about things, and I don’t disagree, but it’s hard to absorb the words and turn them into a feeling. The kind you can feel even in the softest part of your bones. 

I tell her how sorry I am, the sorriest anyone can be about the sorriest thing in the world, that I’m trying my best to shake it off, to look further and wider just like Ken said, and would she mind if I tried?  

Just then, in the quiet, I see a white seagull the size of a dog majestically perched on top of the stone at the end of the row. It could suddenly squawk the way seagulls from hell sometimes do. Caro―who’s gone wandering off nibbling on the rose petals in front of Gina Belsey, beloved mother, sister, and friend living two stones down―would be startled and scurry up a tree, then the seagull would swoop in and carry her away. I’d run as fast as I could, but I’d trip like I always do, and I’d lose her forever. 

Or the seagull could stay quiet, not squawk at all, and Caro could run away anyway. And there'd be nothing left for me to do.