At Least They're Committed

Gabriel, I’m an idiot. I say the most ridiculous things. Why am I doing this?

We’re cruising, ya know? Red convertible Lincoln with a white rag-top circa 1960something and I’m wearing big, bold sunglasses and a silk scarf to guard my shoulder-length, perfectly coiffed hair from the wind at 70 mph. We’re speeding along Route 66 on the California coast and, turned toward him, I laugh at nothing but the wonderment of being and the seagulls and the coastline and the winding road and the turns we’re taking too quickly, but his hair isn’t moving in the wind and his white shirt is gauze and, like, something from the 70s and I’m not there yet and he smiles wide, with sunglasses that mirror my own and he says, “Cathy, it’s time.”

Cathy, Cathy, Cathy, I recoil. “I, I’m not . . . ”

“Yes, Tripping Raul, you’re Cathy, and it’s time.” He turns sharply into the corner, his golden locks laying perfectly around his angelic features, I turn and see the wall. A metaphor? It’s brick. And we hit hard and all I see is light and I feel my head, my soul, my tiny body fly against the dashboard. “No!” I try to cry, but it is nothing but an infant’s wail.

I don’t know if its the stories they told me or a true moment in life, but I remember my father, his piercing blue eyes wide and fearful, looking at me. They didn’t have seatbelts in 1962, nobody but the rich folk; babies were carried in their mothers’ arms in the car and in this case a relatively harmless rear-ender ended up with my little body flying from her grasp. I remember seeing my dad walk around the front of the car, apologizing, and the man in the car in front understanding. My dad grabbing me then, sweeping me up like something out of Kramer vs. Kramer and running, running, running me frantically to a doctor’s office blocks away. He was afraid, I was not. My head hurt, but my dad was holding me. I was fine.

You have to wonder if they wondered, you know? When I was so quiet. When people labeled me as stupid. When I often fainted and sometimes had seizures and was scoffed and ridiculed for being small, whether that scene played through my father’s mind, my mother’s. When I couldn’t hear so good and was labeled as dumb. When they told us years later the brain is a complex instrument and who knows what might have happened when I hit the dash. But they were wrong. Or maybe they were right.

It wouldn’t be the last time my father would frantically run carrying me in his arms.

Exhausted, I lean back. “Good girl, Cathy,” he says. This story has just begun.

Why am I doing this? I guess I need to find out.