The Shine Journal

Impossible to Imagine

by

Janet Yung



Anna woke with a start, the overwhelming feeling something wasn’t right.  Stretched rigidly on her half of the bed, she reached over to Henry’s side and finding it empty, began patting the mattress to make sure it was vacant.  Before she could say anything, the creaking of the kitchen door leading out to the garage filtered down the hall.

Henry was making his midnight pilgrimage to the vehicle he was no longer allowed to drive.  It hadn’t been Anna’s idea, fortunately, but the verdict handed down by Henry’s physician at his last exam.

“Henry,” the doctor told him, “you’re going to have to quit driving.”

Henry not driving was impossible to imagine.  The progress of their life together could be  measured by whatever vehicle was currently propelling them towards a bright future.  Barreling down the road in a sub compact, compact, hatchback, mid-sized, full- sized and once a van till Anna complained she felt nervous trying to park the thing, and back to a sedan. 

The most memorable, a small sports car Henry saved for one summer during college and then spent the next couple years working on to keep it running.  Anna thrilled every time he pulled up in front of her parents’ and honked the horn, signaling his arrival.

Anna would have dashed out to meet him, screen door slamming behind her except her mother and father insisted Henry come to the door, ring the bell and step inside until Anna made her entrance.

Anna chafed under the antiquated idea, but went along with it because she loved the thrill of being seated next to Henry, his full head of light, brown hair blowing in the wind as the car lurched away from the curb.

“Don’t you worry about getting whiplash riding in that thing?” Anna’s father asked one evening, when she returned home after she thought everyone had gone to bed.

Their current car was purchased the previous year after their ten year old car was totaled in an accident Henry still protested was not his fault.

“She came out of nowhere.”  Of course, the driver had been a woman and she’d been talking on the phone or fixing her make-up.  Henry wasn’t sure which and since it was one of the few times Anna wasn’t riding shot gun, she couldn’t corroborate his version of the incident.

Now, Anna strained to hear the sound of the engine turning over.  Her left ankle began to ache.  The one she’d broken last spring.  Lately, everything began to creak.  The house was quiet and she stared at the ceiling trying to decide if she should toss off the covers and see what Henry was up to.  There was the possibility he’d start the car without opening the overhead door.

Once the mandate was issued by the doctor, Henry had no recourse but to let Anna do all the driving.  He’d developed an annoying habit of unlocking the car with the remote, continuing to click it even inside the car, making Anna‘s entry difficult.

“Will you stop that,” Anna chided and immediately felt remorseful when he responded with a look and “You don’t need to talk to me like a child.”

Inside the car, he’d hang onto the door when she turned a corner at a speed he thought too slow or too fast.  He’d shout out, “Watch that car,” making her jump in her seat.  Or, “The light’s red,” when it was still amber as she tooled through an intersection.

“You’re tailgating,” he told her one particularly harrowing trip to the nursery to find a new tree for the backyard. 

“What?”  She took her eyes away from the road for a second to see him, fingers itching to snatch the wheel out of her hands in the middle of the highway.

“You’re following too close,” he said and she slowed to what seemed like a crawl till the car that had been several feet away from her sped off into the distance.

“I can’t take much more,” she muttered under her breath and when he asked her to repeat what she’d said, she replied, “Nothing.  I’m thinking about the yard.”

“Well, that explains why you’re driving the way your are.”

Suddenly, the horn tooted, startling her from her reverie.  “What’s he up to now?”  She sat up and pushed her feet into fluffy slippers stuffed under her side of the bed.

The house was dark and she switched on lights heading down the hall.  Bad enough he was roaming around the house in the middle of the night, but he was doing it in the dark. 

“Did I wake you?” he asked when she opened the door to the garage.

“Not exactly.”  She stood next to the driver’s side of the car.  Henry had chosen this car because it was sporty.  Somewhere between the subcompact and small sedan of their early years together.  He’d spent weeks researching it before they finally made the decision, the purchase more urgent after the sudden demise of its predecessor.

He looked up from behind the wheel, the saddest expression on his face she’d ever seen.  “I don’t want to be old,” he said in a low voice.  She studied his worn features and thinning gray hair, somehow not seeing the way he looked today, but the way he looked on the afternoon he pulled away from her parents, waving. 

“I don’t either,” she replied and settled into the seat next to him.  “Would you like to drive around the block?”  He nodded and she said, “Okay, just this once,” and they slowly backed out of the garage.

Motivation: A piece in the paper regarding a husband and wife debating the husband’s surrender of his driver’s license and the ensuing sense of loss.  A difficult decision in a mobile society where a man’s vehicle is often a reflection of the man.

Bio: Janet Yung has been fortunate enough to have had two stories previously published in “The Shine. Journal”.  Short stories have also appeared in “Tertulia”, “eMuse”, and “Postcard Shorts” among others.