Strength and Embarrassment Meet on the Street

by Sarah Fucci

He sits in the backseat of his family’s car. His father presses the pedal and turns the wheel, his mother “fake-brakes” and holds onto the door handle. His girlfriend, dubbed that only within the past week, sits to his right. They all make the effort to squish themselves comfortably onto the glen-plaid wool upholstery – an attempt to settle in and prepare for the obvious discomfort of a two-hour car trip back to their high school. His father turns on the radio and switches channels obsessively until he reaches something that could be dubbed acid-jazz, or more aptly “muzak”, something that can be heard piping through any random elevator of a hotel lobby. He is thankful for this, however, at least it isn’t his father’s usual choice of overly patriotic country, which at its mildest tends to border on racist and imperialistic spoutings concerning war, ass kicking and a bottle of Bud. His girlfriend looks stiff, slightly disconcerted but trying her best to mask it with every changing facial expression and shift of her legs. She slips out an IPOD, at first a moment of shock and then a moment of insecurity – her parents buy her an IPOD for her birthday, his parents a gift-certificate booklet to Arby’s – but soon his financial insecurities give way to relief. At least she can block out one sense in this car ride. Momentarily, she closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the void where the missing headrest belongs. He cracks his knuckles. His mother lights a cigarette. His girlfriend sniffles and coughs. The windows do not roll down.

The ride continues this way for a while. At the hour mark his father pulls the car over at the rest stop McDonald’s and they all tumble out reeking of Marlboro’s, ears buzzing with the inescapable ting-ting lurking behind the afternoon’s musical selections. He whispers a faint apology in his girlfriend’s ear, she is a vegetarian, she hasn’t stepped inside a McDonald’s since she was seven. He leaves her waiting outside, sitting defeated on the hood of the car with a faint hint of expectation, wishing the family to go faster, move, move, move. The family piles back into the car. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke is soon overpowered by the smell of first boiled and bubbling grease. She sits, hands clasped, patient, as a Big Mac passes, a fried Filet-O-Fish and multiple orders of fries. She sips her Sprite, and he imagines her worrying that somehow beef oil has splattered from fry-o-lator into syrup container and an impending cardiac arrest is tick-tick-ticking, smiling furtively, waiting for the digestive process to take hold. The meals finish, the garbage gets re-bagged, the mother rolls down a window and tosses the food onto the freeway. His girlfriend closes her eyes and wills herself to sleep. He cracks his knuckles again and vividly imagines the impending breakup. His longest relationship, also his shortest. Eight days of wonder and surprise, smacked down by two hours of his family. It could be worse. His father flips the radio back on, his mother lights another cigarette and the car continues its complacent ride down I-9.

Five minutes pass, ten minutes pass. His father unexpectedly cracks his jaw and curses. He knows what’s next. He prays his girlfriend is asleep. He looks up to the familiar sight of his father’s dentures resting in the middle of the dashboard. His mother appears unfazed as usual and he has to admit that save for the presence of his new girlfriend, the sight of his father’s teeth gathering dust in the middle of the dashboard probably wouldn’t have him this agitated. This is typical though, this is his family. He glares at the dentures, they stare back at him contemptuously. Bits of shiny drool dot the encasing. He imagines the dentures mocking him, no words, just locked-jaw, hinged movements and a nasty cackling that absorbs all other sounds and senses within the car. He imagines a sort of Luke Skywalker-Darth Vader fight with the dentures; the essence of good vs. evil vs. personal sanity. His father looks into the rearview mirror to speak to his girlfriend. She looks up and sees a gummy pink hole, and probably imagines herself being sucked into his toothless, phlegmy vacuum. Her eyes widen and go white. She screams. He clasps his hands together, stiffens his back and exhales. Life, he knows, will continue this test; all he can do is hold firm.