A Critique of My Apocalyptic Driveway by David Cotrone
A Critique of My Apocalyptic Driveway
My doctor said that the approach should be cautious. Meditative. Slow. For the first week, go to the garage. Open the basement door and face the gray Mazda. Do not imagine it as staring straight back at you. Pretend it's asleep. Get comfortable with the idea of opening the driver's side door. Get comfortable with the idea of sitting in the driver's side seat. Pull the seatbelt over your shoulder. Pretend to work the pedals. Pretend to shift gears. Put your hands on the steering wheel and peer through the windshield, back at the basement door. Pretend to see a horizon, a highway, a stretch of pavement. Hit the directionals; feel in control, in control of something more than the wheel, more than the dashboard, more than the backseat, the trunk.
*
I have just awoken from a recurring nightmare. In the nightmare, my family is trapped in a red jeep. We have careened off San Diego’s Coronado Bridge and are now drowning in the Pacific. The doors are locked and the windows will not break. We cannot hear each other’s voices; they are gurgles and purls; they are imperceptible.
*
By the second week, you should back the car out of the garage into the driveway. Once there, shift into park. Unbuckle and open the driver's side door. Step out onto the driveway. Walk to the driveway's end, onto the street. Notice the slope of the surface, the cracks in the tar, the roadside dandelions. Imagine yourself driving here, farther, farther, still farther.
*
My mother once told me about her childhood pet, a collie named Barney. Her neighbors loved Barney; they thought ahead and prepared extra food for him, scraps from dinners and lunches. On his jaunts to the neighbors’ houses, my mother would accompany him. The two — Barney and my mother — were inseparable. But when he was older and in the throes of decline, Barney broke from my mother’s hold and fled to the woods. According to her, he wanted to die alone. This is the word she used: wanted. Not he was running scared, or, his animal instinct took him into the wild. No, it was as if he knew he was dying, and breaking free from a tether was part of the experience.
There is a lesson here: even the most tantalizing fear — death — can be met with abandon and spirit. When it was his time to die, perhaps Barney made for the forest to wrestle with oblivion, to look up and see the light shimmering through leaves, the rusty bark of trees, the expanse of dirt and underbrush — this despite the looming quietus.
*
It's not that you're afraid of driving. Okay, well, maybe you're afraid of driving. But maybe there's some reason. Maybe you're afraid to move in a vehicle that's not your own body because your body is exactly what you're not yet comfortable with, rather, the thing that controls your body. Speak to this thing at night. Converse. Get to know it. Make peace. Repeat.
*
Often, my father took us to the beach. We went in his car, and since my brother and I were too young to ride shotgun, we sat in the backseat. The road leading to the beach was a combination of sand and rocks, craggy and pitted. It was not uncommon to hit the edge of a pothole, to jounce in the backseat, as if on a turbulent plane ride. In fact, it was a game my brother and I played: we wanted to see if we could hit the roof of the car with our heads. Our father egged on such games and he laughed every time the portable grill jostled around in back, joking that the car’s engine was falling apart.
On the other side of the road was the beach itself, and in the distance a precipice, trees and houses spotting its surface. The elevated land jutted out, and was prominent in its stature, a landmark. It gave the beach a certain aesthetic, as if it were cove, beach-goers not gazing out into the wide and vast Atlantic Ocean, but into a small, innocuous bay.
One time, Dad instructed us to avert our eyes. Instead of looking out the window, he wanted us to focus on the floor of the car, on our feet. He wanted our seatbelts to remain fastened, our attention to stay on the floor of the car, this instruction repeated, not so much an order, but a plea.
I was sitting still, gauging the temperature of the air, taking stock. I could see my father’s shoulders tense as he gripped the wheel with two hands instead of one. His neck was stiff and he locked his jaw. Then my brother poked me, and I poked back, and we bickered, and my father did not say a word.
Years later, he told me what had happened that day, as if what he saw had never stopped playing in his head. There, on the other side of the road, emergency responders were pulling a woman out of the water. She had fallen from a relentless height and had finally drifted ashore. She had jumped.
*
By the third week…well…you’ll figure it out.
* * *
David Cotrone is from Plymouth, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Fifty-Two Stories, The Rumpus, elimae, Moon Milk Review, New Plains Review, Union Station Magazine, and elsewhere.
His chapbook, Reasons Why I Let A Killer into the Building, can be found here.
Find more out about David Cotrone here.
(Author Image, courtesy the author; story image: copyright Gregory Crewdson)