‘New world order? Mine is for children to leave home at nineteen,’ David looks in the rear vision mirror at his two daughters, hoping for a reaction. They aren’t listening, hooked into their devices. The car purrs along; the grey Trans-Am. It had seemed like an extravagance, but Luce had dared him. ‘It’s always been on the Bucket List to drive a Trans-Am on Route 66.’
The road trip on Route 66 had always been her dream; he just wanted the Trans-Am – the purest form of car.
Once they leave the sprawl of LA, the desert takes over. It has only been a couple of hours, but they are mesmerised by the flicker of distant neon signs, the shimmer on the horizon and the mountain range marching out with them.
‘Dad, I need to go potty.’
They’d been in the States for five days; the girls holed up in the Santa Monica hotel, watching too much TV and trying out American expressions when he came home.
The timing of this trip was bad, a business trip and 2 teenage girls.
‘Dad!’ Kirra’s call is desperate, and he checks the GPS for exits.
This dream trip of Luce’s – a present to them all. She’d told the kids, and they’d pretended to be interested, but he’d heard Pen say, ‘What is Route 66? Mum’s obsessed with a road.’
Luce was a planner; she’d always did their holiday plans. So, for this trip, she made the itinerary, favourited stuff on Google Maps and booked a show in Vegas. All this while she was losing her hair, throwing up behind closed doors and pretending life was normal.
An exit ramp looms up: Desert Hot Springs. Kirra is sobbing in the back seat, whether for her discomfort or her mother, he can’t tell.
Almost tumbleweed territory, he thinks as they drove past vacant lots and ramshackle houses. No sign of life except a group of young guys loitering outside a taqueria. The girls give them backwards glances.
‘I spy Golden Arches,’ said Pen. Or there’s that taco place,’
Not with those lotharios around, thinks David. It could be a front for white slavers and she’ll end up in a Mexican brothel run by the drug cartels. Luce would laugh at him, the drama he could wring out of one comment.
‘Palm Springs is just a few clicks down the road,’ David says. ‘One of mum’s places. Can ypu hang on a bit longer?’
They go south-west toward the Palm Springs lights. Luce’s list was in David’s pocket. They had time to work through it. The girls stare out the window, thinking of their future with no Luce – no mother in it.
Notes:
(1)This was a writing exercise in a writing class, one of those free-range exercises where you write for 10 minutes nonstop. The story has stayed in a file for years and surfaced a few days ago when I was looking for inspiration for a Mother’s Day blog post. It looks at grief, hope and resilience.
(2) Images are a tribute to my mother, Sylvia, and a couple of other grandmothers, Mabel and Hepzibah
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