WEAK BUT WILLING
Who’s driving?” I asked. It’s not actually a question, given my car-related phobias, which include sudden starts, the possibility of a tire flying across the highway and smashing through both the windshield and my cranium, going backwards for any reason whatsoever, switching lanes, and traveling in just about any kind of weather or any level of traffic.
“I will,” said my brother Charlie.
We were headed to the village in which we grew up, and where my mother’s ashes had been buried a year ago, in a place he had not yet seen. The October day was slick with rain, and the trees that lined the street dripped and shook in a wet haze.
The trip came mid-way through Charlie’s annual two-week visit, when he flies from B.C. to see me and my kids. The rest of my family don’t talk much — if at all — to each other.
“Don’t drive too fast,” I said.
“No, of course not,” he replied.
Ten minutes later we were heading — slowly — north on the 404. Charlie passed hardly any cars and stayed clear of big trucks. I watched the damp city unroll in the passenger window like a reel of film, frame by frame, held for a moment and then assigned to memory.
As we headed east off the highway, the rain slowed to a patter and the wipers ticked like a metronome.
We came to, and passed over, the train tracks where Charlie and I had seen a horrific train wreck, when I would have been about nine, and he eleven. From the front seat, Charlie saw the train hit the truck, either because the driver skidded on black ice (so common on those roads in winter) or did not see the blinking warning lights in the blinding sunlight that bounced off acres and acres of snow-covered fields.
I was in the back seat, behind Charlie, staring out at the bleached landscape, and the bare, black trees, so I don’t recall a visual. I do remember what sounded like lighting bolts striking in rapid succession. I think that must have been the truck breaking apart and bouncing off the train.
My father stopped at a gas station a half mile down the road, told them to call the police, and we went home. Charlie shook for a long time.
I found out later that the occupants of the truck were a 12-year-old boy, and his father, on their way to a birthday party. I never think of this, except whenever I hear a sudden, loud noise.
Charlie and I arrived at the cemetery; the rain had turned it emerald, its smooth slope dotted with weather-smoothed stones laced with black stains that obscured the details of who lay beneath.
Beyond the cemetery, farm fields rolled out like green waves, their shrubby edges softened out of focus in the mist.
We walked to the far edge, where my mother’s ashes lay beneath a small, simple stone. Someone had been there recently and left a small pot of unremarkable greenery. Charlie looked down, and read:
“There is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
“Virginia Woolf,” I said. “I thought it worked.”
“Yes,” he said.
We walked back to the car and drove toward our childhood home. Soon, the clouds began to part, and a watery sun began to push through the grey.
“The sun,” I said. “It’s trying.”
“It’s not trying very hard,” he replied. “It’s weak but willing.”
The village crept up on us. We were both shocked by how it had sprawled and spread. Turing on to Dennison Street, we laughed about how short the distance was between the elementary school and the home we lived in.
“It seemed like miles,” Charlie said.
I looked down the street at a streetlight, under which on a bitingly cold winter night I had once seen our neighbour David standing, just another shadow in a snowy street and the black sky. As I walked toward him, a huge icicle detached itself from the light. David looked up, and then at me, before it hit him in the head and knocked him off his feet.
He got up and we walked together the rest of the way home and said good-bye. I can’t remember what we talked about.
I don’t recall any of this out loud because David was Charlie’s best friend from the time he was about five years old. When he was 40, David killed himself. I know Charlie misses him, but I don’t talk about David unless Charlie brings up his name.
Our old house was being torn down. The footprint of the frame indicated it was meant to be a Monster Home, a Faux Chateau. In the corner of the lot, tarps had been thrown over the building materials to protect them from the rain, and now corners caught by wind flapped and twisted like ghosts.
“Gutted,” my brother said. “They’re starting from scratch.” I liked the idea but was repelled by it too.
We zigged and zagged across the township back to the city. The skies closed briefly again, more rain came down, then let up, and it began to clear.
When we stopped at a crossroad, I looked out onto the fields, bisected by low shrubs and fences that had seen better days. I thought about how clean and clear everything appeared, and what a simple beauty it had. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture. Then we drove on, talking about the possibility of better weather the next day, of what to make for dinner, and which route would take us past a hardware store.
Later, I looked at the photo; it came out as a fuzzy smear of green, a play of shadows, an landscape I had only dreamed.