Backseat

We left Wisconsin just before ten this morning. We should’ve left earlier — would’ve, if the parents had been pretty much anyone but us — but we didn’t, and that’s why I’m in the backseat, at least an hour from home at 7:52 pm.

It’s my daughter's shift, her first one. First on a roadie, first in an SUV and the first at night. The Boss is on the playlist, and she and my husband are singing, and for the first time this Thanksgiving trip, I don’t feel anything is expected of me. I don’t need to work, like on the way up. I don’t need to navigate or keep company. Drive or socialize or offer to dry, catalog the things not to forget when we pack or not mention at the dinner table.

I’m just back here, looking out the window at the stars and the dark trees, listening to the rattle of a gas station cooler and a shot suspension. Ari and Taylor and Elton and Lita, just like those shirts I’ve never really understood.

The back end of this Nitro sways like a cat with no back claws. It smells of cheap disinfectant because my husband spilled gas on his shoes. Roadside cottonwoods give way to Christmas lights at the frayed edges of the northern suburbs. Freddie Mercury tosses the mike to Vivaldi, culture lite in a minor key.

In the back of my mind, the pandemic rolls over and stretches out a talon, reminding me of last Thanksgiving, of all that crazy shit that went down in 2020 when it rose up and ruled the world.

But outside the window the lights battle for attention, and inside the truck my daughter sings about a lift kit, and we’re rounding the back stretch of her childhood. I swat the talon with a Twizzler to drive it back down deep until a different night as the city yawns before our headlights and we are home.