Full Circle

"Why do you do it, Mom?" I said, staring out of the windshield. The weight of what I was asking hung heavy in the air like a pregnant cloud full of rain, right before it opened up to birth its gift of water on those down below.

My question was met with silence.  Exactly what I predicted she would answer.

Eight hours ago, we were in another state, in a real home. There were friends to call, shopping to do, and videos to look at. A typical weekend day in the life of a teenager. Mom and I were finally living a degree of normalcy we hadn't been a part of since time began.

Now, we were on the road again. The confines of the car closing in on me as the desert landscape, painted a soft orange, flashed by. Our belongings were in the trunk, haphazardly stuffed in trash bags, my friends and shopping forgotten.

"Mom," I said, turning to look at her for the first time in several hours. "Answer me."

Tendrils of her auburn hair escaped through the cracked window along with her cigarette smoke. Her two o'clock grip of the steering wheel was a claw with blood red nails. Her mouth, lacquered with bargain bin lipstick in a faded shade of pink, folded itself into a thin line.

She was angry. I had upset her with my impudent tone. Fear struck my chest like a hammer folding steel. I didn't dare move. I couldn't breathe. And when she turned, I flinched, expecting the worst.

But nothing came.

"You are too young to understand," Mom said. She brushed her hair back, exposing her face. It carried the destruction of a million years, her slumped shoulders the weight of the world. A woman resigned to her fate.

Would that become me, too?

"I do understand, Mom. I really do." Even at the age of fifteen, I understood my mom was someone whose life I didn't want to emulate.

Mom took a heavy drag on her cigarette, chest rising. Her normally flat stomach puffed out with the effort. She rolled the window all the way down to expel filter and the carcinogens in one long exhale.

The smoldering tip bounced off the side of the car to lie on the road for years to come until it broke apart and disintegrated. Just like Mom's hopes and dreams had a long, long time ago.

"I'm sorry," she said, deftly lighting another Slim500 with one hand.

I waited for her to say more. I hoped for it, but nothing else was forthcoming.

Out of the windshield, even at this hour, the road was blistering in the sun. A mirage on a lonely stretch of road that would lead us full circle down the same path.

We stopped for dinner at a truck stop. It was the kind where a slap on the back was a greeting and flannel shirts, even in this weather, were the norm.

We picked up menus from the hostess stand and chose a booth some distance from most of the noise and chatter. The sunlight came in through the dusty blinds, making perfect horizontal lines of gray and white across our table. I only had time to trace a couple of planes with my finger when the waitress came over.

She was straight from a 1950's movie. Her candy striped uniform and starched white apron fit in well with the weathered decor and cracked pleather seats. She took a pen from her bleached blonde hair and a pad from her pocket. Her drugstore makeup couldn't hide the kindness in her eyes as she peered at my mother and me.

"What'll it be girls?" Her West Virginian accent was slight but unmistakable.

"I'll have the tuna melt with coffee. Lots of cream and sugar." Mom's hair hung in her face as she spoke. It was a futile effort. Everyone could see what was going on with her—with us. Her face told the tale with its shadows and bruising.

"The condiments are on the table, hon'." The waitress directed her pen in a not unkind jabbing motion towards the back of the table where the creamer and sugar stood, neatly stacked in a metal basket. Soldiers propped up against the scuffed wooden beam that ran under the window.

"Fine," Mom said to the innards of her purse, ignoring everything and everyone as she searched for some elusive object like a Conquistador for gold.

The waitress, Denise (according to her brass colored name tag), gave Mom a look before turning to take my order. Her shiny silver St. Christopher's medal caught the sunlight, causing me a bit of discomfort as the flash hit me right in the eyes.

"And for you, sweetie?

I rubbed the pain away with closed fists. The involuntary tugging of my lips into a smile at Denise's endearment helped my sour mood to lift away like a helium balloon with a lover's note.

"I'll have the cheeseburger, rare. Hold the pickles and the onions, and a vanilla milkshake."

"We serve our burgers well done, hon', but I'll tell the cook to leave off the pickles and onions."

"Thanks," I said, handing her our menus.

While I retraced the planes, Denise tucked the menus under her arm and wrote our orders down with a flourish. She smiled down at me as she placed a plastic table tent with the number 13 on it, ignoring Mom who was still on a mission deep inside her purse.

"I'll be back with your drinks in just a minute,"she said to me, tucking the pencil back inside it's cave.

As soon as Denise left, Mom pulled out a pack of cancer sticks as if that were her quest all along. 

Just the lucky cigarette was left, its end facing up. A lone wolf in the pack of comfort.

Mom liked to smoke before eating. She said it helped curve her appetite, but I never bought it. Smoking helped her steady herself. The smoke going in, covering the insides of her lungs before being blown out of her nose was an act of contrition for the things she had done—to others, herself, and to me.

"I'm going outside," she said, scooting out of the booth to stand up. "You stay here and watch the stuff."

The stuff consisted of her old brown bag with a partially broken strap, a cracked cell phone, and the black leather wallet Tony had given her for Christmas with two crumpled tens and one five-dollar bill inside.

It was something to watch, it truly was.

Mom moved past me down the aisle, slim hips swaying from side to side. Three pairs of hungry eyes followed her every move. The truckers poked each other with beefy elbows as she headed out, enticing them with a swing of hair over her shoulders. When she lit up, her lips curled into a pale smile, head tilted, looking up at the sky as she contemplated everlasting life.

Denise came back with Mom's coffee. "Hey," she asked, setting the steaming mug of brown liquid down. "Are you two all right?"

"Sure. We're just fine," I said, lifting my attention from my absentminded tracing to meet her eyes.

Denise's pupils dilated, her St. Christopher's medal danced as she held it to her trembling lips. She stumbled back from me, feet nearly tangling over one another. When there was enough distance between us, she turned on her heel, walking away without a backward glance.

I knew ol' Denise didn't mean any harm, but it was better to steer clear of the troubles between Mom and me.

Outside there was a show going on. Mom had two of the truckers by the arm, and the third followed behind, stepping on the heel of his buddy's shoe in his haste. Mom's head was thrown back in laughter, eyes glinting red in the dying sun. 

Time was passing quickly. Too quickly. The planes on the table had now disappeared.

Mom came back when it was full dark. Her tuna melt had long since grown cold, her fries weak and floppy. My burger laid in its grease, my milkshake melted.

"You ready to go?" Mom asked, opening up the compact she kept in her pocket. She dabbed at her now rosy lips with a napkin, and it came away red. I zeroed in on the minuscule spot of blood on her right cheek. It was too tiny for any others than for those of our kind to pick out.

"You are getting sloppy in your old age, mom," I said, mirroring the speck on her face with my finger.

Mom smiled, her full belly making her joyful once more. She wiped away the blood and cleaned her two front teeth with a razor sharp fingernail, sucking what had been between them with a slimy, slurping sound.

"Is there any left?"

I hated myself for asking. It made me seem weak…desperate.

Mom laughed at me, a tinkling sound like a million tiny bells.

"Sure," she drawled. Mom's accent, more hidden than Denise's, was ancient. Whittled down to almost nothing over millions of years.

"You don't want to eat, do you?" she said, pulling out a crisp twenty from the wad of cash from her now bulging pocket. She placed it on the table between our uneaten plates.

I shook my head. "Just asking is all."

The pleather on the seat creaked and shifted as I stood up to look out the window and into the night. The truckers' semis would still be parked in the morning, and their owner's well-hidden corpses would turn to dust as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon.

Mom spared the rest of the patrons and staff of the diner the same treatment, but their minds were forever altered. Those souls would never remember us or what happened. It was better for them that way.

We gathered our meager belongings, leaving the same way we came in, two weary travelers on the road to nowhere. And when we walked out into the night, Mom made time stand still.

©Jess Wylder