Single Car Collision
by Brian Coughlan
With the euphoria of some chemical released to prepare me for impact, of held-down car horns announcing, with the high-pitched whine of brakes shrieking in distress – the car veering towards a stretch of grassy median before performing an elaborate skidding manoeuvre, as if all grip conceded by the four tyres at once, kicking up earth from back wheels spinning sideways, as a low moan escapes my mouth, as my arms lock either side of a steering wheel that has just recently spun, entirely of its own accord, like a roulette wheel – the car turning over and over and over again.
Until finally no longer behind the wheel, no longer sitting in the driver’s seat but contorted into a bizarre body position; dumped into the rear footwell – thrown there as absentmindedly as a bag of unwanted clothes. Rearview mirror dislodged and dangling from its wiring, like a bird with a broken neck, muck splattered across the windshield, with wipers spreading it over and back over and back, an alarm dinging, slowly, agonizingly, ringing and ringing and ringing.
Uncontrollable sobs of ecstatic near-death relief collapse into long deep breaths, in through the nose out through the mouth. Before I know it the first responders converge, and all of my personal items are unearthed and carefully examined, turning them this way and that, shaking away the glass and debris, until they find my driver’s licence, and with a bizarre transmission of ignorance they mispronounce my surname over and back, one after another, as the little piece of plastic imprinted with my surly expression gets passed along from one pair of gloved hands to the next.
***
Hours earlier I’d paid a visit to my Aunt Fran in her nursing home. She was the last remaining member of my extended family who might, who just might, be receptive to my questions and to discussing what had happened – where others had closed the door in my face or pretended not to know since it really was so long ago, and Jesus why go dredging up all that again. Suffering from dementia she had been consigned to a place of long white corridors, and breakout rooms, crammed with other immobile residents, strange-smelling rooms in a building that was once part of a grand country manor. She was my Godmother. When I was small she used to send me birthday cards with money concealed. The banknote would silently slip out when I opened up the card and flitter to the floor and one or other of my parents would invariably say I was throwing it away, as if it were a sign that I was feckless and had no regard for money.
I’d brought a fresh, cream-filled, sponge cake with me. Aunt Fran seemed lucid at first, as we exchanged pleasantries. She’d recognized me when I came in and seemed happy to have a visitor, but when I opened the box to show her the cake – she unceremoniously reached in and flayed at it. A four-year-old would hardly have made such an impatient mess of the situation and I felt utterly powerless to stop her. Within a few minutes, she had the entire cake gone, pulling it apart like a savage, dusting her face with the icing sugar. Cream everywhere. All over her hands and her clothes; by the time I was ready to get down to the real purpose of my visit – I was confronted by a powder-faced harlequin, gurning with queasiness, and looking around her in a faintly distressed way – as if she had no notion of her place in the world.
Knowing that I didn’t have much time, I moved closer to her and held her cold, sticky hands in mine while I asked her a series of questions relating to my childhood, and specifically around what had happened to my shadow. Since childhood, I had been haunted by her sudden and permanent disappearance. Did she ever exist in the first place or was it all in my head? Was she actually a family member, a sister, a cousin, or just a girl we had taken in? Had we fostered her? Why had she been taken away so abruptly and why was her existence and then her disappearance treated as a shameful family secret never to be spoken about? What had happened to her after she was taken away? Was she still alive? If so, where was she…?
When I had presented my case, the questions I had, a few desperate conclusions I’d made, based on the scanty evidence, and asked her straight out if she knew what had been done to me and to her all those years ago – Aunt Fran’s considered response amounted to nothing more than a long, bleary-eyed, yawn; the longest yawn of all time, followed by a loud disgusting burp of indigestion. At this point, a member of the care staff approached to ask if I’d by any chance given her sugary things. The branded bakery box was a dead giveaway. Surely I was aware of her diabetes? She wasn’t allowed to have anything with sugar. I didn’t know. Wasn’t aware. I would never have given her something sweet had I known. Stuttering an apology I had to scrape and bow profusely to this self-righteous stranger, while my aunt fell into a contented, open-mouthed doze.
This care-assistant, or whatever she called herself, must have been eavesdropping on our conversation, for no sooner had I collected my things, already resigned to yet another failure, she muttered something under her breath, something along the lines of get over yourself or something to that effect before turning her full attention back to my aunt, wiping her face with a wet face cloth to take away all the powdered sugar, throwing a thick blanket over her knees, undoing the brakes and shoving the wheelchair straight at me, forcing me to step smartly out of their way. With the face paint removed I saw that the very old woman underneath was now floating in a deeply delirious coma.
I left the retirement home with my cheeks burning. I pictured Aunt Fran being wheeled back to her room and assisted into her bed. I was too appalled, too angry with myself, too ashamed, to think straight. The summation was so thoroughly fitting that I felt exposed – like an earwig, her stone overturned, caught in the unbearable glare of sunlight, scrambling for the sanctuary of some other dark place. “Idiot!” I shouted into the stale air of my car when at first the key refused to fit itself into the ignition because of my shaking hand. How dare she speak to me like that! As I slowly reversed out of the tight parking spot I fantasized about attacking her, screaming abuse in her face and demanding an immediate apology, or better still telling her that her supervisor would be my next port of call, and waving away her half-hearted apology.
Having failed to notice a sizable speed bump, due to the increasingly ridiculous nature of the fantasy, the underside of my car scraped – a long, horrific-sounding abrasion, to something that was mine, and that by extension I considered an integral part of me. There was no end to the abuse and damage being inflicted on me, and all because I wanted to take control, all because I dared to seek answers to questions that had remained buried for decades.
How many times as a child had I screamed those three self-pitying words: ‘It’s – not – fair!’ whirling like a pint-sized dervish in an agonized display of anguish, only to be reminded that life wasn’t fair and to get on with it, by a mother who was unwilling to listen to what she described as my never-ending whine about just about everything. She would then try and explain to me in a calm and rational voice how incredibly fortunate I was – until my high-pitched whine started up again. It really and truly wasn’t fair. I wanted her to fully acknowledge that it wasn’t fair when I could see other children my age living in a carefree and thoughtless innocence, while I was saddled with this…with this constant shadow…who insisted on denying me access to the simplest of pleasures.
There was no getting away from her. I was forced to concede every experience to my shadow’s constant merciless scrutiny. We were joined at the hip. It wasn’t a question of not loving her, that was entirely beside the point, it was rather a question of having no privacy, nothing to keep for myself, and no room to figure out who I was, without her ruining everything, upsetting other people, demeaning the both of us – because no matter what she did – it was always my fault! Everything had to be shared with her, which in reality meant saying goodbye to it. Share it, then watch it disappear, get pulled apart, broken into pieces, pulled asunder, spat on, shoved into her mouth, thrown down the toilet, or just abandoned somewhere – once she’d finally grown tired of mauling it with her filthy little hands.
One time on a trip to the seaside, I made the decision to give her the slip. She’d been getting on my nerves all day. Throughout the train journey she’d insisted on sitting so close that our legs touched every time the carriage swayed and every little gesture I made, she mimicked. Every utterance, no matter how inconsequential, she felt compelled to parrot, which made me sound foolish, so that the strangers around us on the train laughed at me, not her.
Then we get there; we’re walking along this endless stretch of fine white sand; she follows me, a step behind, and stops when I stop, inspects everything I inspect, drops her towel right next to mine on the sand. The usual thing. I vow to get away from her this one time. So, I lounged back on my towel and, putting my hands behind my head, closed my eyes. With the sun beating down on my face I exhaled noisily and performed a series of endless jaw-cracking yawns. She did the very same and when I went silent with pretend sleep she checked in every so often to make sure I was still out cold. I could tell she was doing it because of her blocking out the sun on my face. I started to snore. Big old wide open-mouth snores. Pantomime snores. By all accounts I was out for the count and no longer needed watching.
I waited until I was sure she was sleeping. When I was certain that she was asleep (bubbles forming from her nostrils) I slipped away noiselessly, then bounded out to sea, along a causeway of perfectly positioned boulders. I had to be sure-footed. The boulders were right by each other, but one mistake and I would end up in the water. That was the exciting part. I was free to be reckless and wild, for a change. Not holding her hand or watching her behaviour. When I figured I’d gone far enough, the sea spray hitting my face, I sat cross-legged on a flat section of rock, basking in the sunshine, wiggling my toes, emitting one great sigh of relief, the feel of a rough surface rubbing against my clothes. A moment of pure bliss.
Next thing, I hear a sound. I turn round, to see her lose her footing on the boulder behind mine, to watch her slide down the greasy surface of the rock, a look of abject horror on her face, all the way up to her neck, in the cold seawater, still dressed in a polka-dot covered Sunday dress. Identical to the one I was wearing, of course. At which point adults came charging out with hollers of concern and she was rescued, lightly scolded, and then guess what – I was the one forced to ride all the way home in the train in wet clothes because we hadn’t brought a change with us (which even now I find unfathomable).
The trip had been absolutely ruined for everyone and it was entirely my fault, they said, therefore I should be the one to suffer. Because I was supposed to be the good one. A role model. I was supposed to be perfect and reliable and caring and nice and to look after her and stick up for her and mind her and play with her, while her behaviour was unpredictable and violent, such as the hair-pulling, pinching, and the biting, which naturally isolated us from all the other children in the playground. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to be like everybody else.
One day she just vanished. Without any warning. Gone. No mention made of her again. As if she’d never existed in the first place.
Initially, I welcomed her absence as a blessed relief and an opportunity to finally become my own person. It was such a novelty I hardly knew what to do with myself. I remember existing in a kind of light-headed daze most of the time for that brief honeymoon period. I was so unbelievably happy, so deliriously happy that I didn’t know what to make of it. I kept waiting for the catch, waiting for her to suddenly reappear – I was thoroughly convinced that her absence was just a temporary respite. When I had time to properly grasp it was permanent: incredible as it might seem I couldn’t help but feel saddened and bereft.
After her departure, people would tell me that I was really starting to come out of my shell, that it was great to see it happening, and at long last. I knew what they meant, they meant well, and yet I felt powerless against sliding in the opposite direction, I couldn’t help but merge into the background. People ignored me, talked over me, repeated what I’d just said as if they were the ones who had said it. I waved my hands in the air and tried to draw attention to myself, I tried raising my voice and stamping my feet, I tried creating a scene, but nothing worked. I became angry and withdrawn and bitter. At some point I remember them saying she’s not to be trusted, she tells lies. Which is why I developed a certain mentality, as a form of self-defence, to remain detached and objective no matter what.
Of course, I got on with it. What choice did I have? I made the best of the situation. There were worse-off people than me out there. I was just feeling sorry for myself. I had a tendency towards that kind of behaviour. It was pointed out to me. My mother would ask my classmates if they knew what was wrong with me. She couldn’t seem to figure it out for herself, she needed to be told by other sixteen-year-old girls, and when they tried to state it plainly she lashed out at them, called them jealous and spiteful, and encouraged me to make new friends who wouldn’t talk about me behind my back.
After I finished school I drifted from one thing to another. I tried my hand at various college courses and different careers, but it was a distinctive lack of presence or charisma that always seemed to hamper my progress. Similarly, in my relationships, it was impossible to hide the fact that I was fundamentally different. I was dull and withdrawn, listless and reserved, bashful and introverted, sad and lonely and unwilling to do anything to change my position. I appeared to wallow in my insignificance and take a perverse pride in my status as a disappointing placeholder for a person. It felt like I was forever watching myself go through the motions of living without ever actually feeling present.
Something about me was missing. Something impossible to put your finger on. Friendships inevitably withered because of my clinginess. My career prospects continuously dwindled no matter what. I became stuck in a self-imposed rut, convinced that nothing would ever change for me. And nothing did. I would always be like this. I would always be miserable and convinced that everything was futile and worthless because it was a state of mind rather than a condition. Finally, after years and years of self-loathing and anger misdirected at every part of myself, I sought professional help and explained or at least tried to explain what I saw as the root cause of my issues.
It was all about my mother as far as the therapist was concerned. She tried to convince me that this whole missing shadow business, while certainly interesting from a psychological point of view, was entirely irrelevant when it came to stepping out of my past and escaping the pull of its prison walls. It was nothing more than a confabulation: which she explained as being a convenient veil obscuring the true underlying issues that needed to be unearthed and examined. As part of the process, she encouraged me to write a lengthy letter to my mother and to list out all the grievances I could think of. To get them all off my chest and to seek proper closure through a process of open two-way communication.
I spent a very long time agonizing over that letter and how I imagined my mother would react to its contents. I made countless drafts before I finally forced myself to drop it into the postbox and wait for the explosion. Life went on. Stuff happened to distract me from the letter. In any case, she never once mentioned having received it. I dropped hints and acted touchy but there was no way I was going to ask her outright and every time I tried to engineer a proper confrontation I buckled and convinced myself that it was pointless and a waste of time and that it wouldn’t achieve anything. I was proved right. The letter never served any purpose other than to drive a wedge between us that widened to a chasm as time went on until she passed away unexpectedly; after which my sessions with the therapist descended into a grim and repetitious game played out week after week in her gloomy little office.
***
All this was re-spooling through my head while knowing vaguely that the exit from the motorway was coming up soon. I pressed down on the accelerator to overtake a seemingly endless oil tanker; the windows in the car all fogged from my angry breath. A previously lashing rain had changed abruptly to hailstones bouncing off the windshield like miniature ball bearings and piling up in the recess below the wipers, impeding their already tortured squeak of over-and-back. I started to think that maybe I’d left it too late to switch lanes.
Much later on, men in green and yellow uniforms untangle and slide my body into the back of an idling vehicle, connecting me to the blinking equipment by looping wires and sticky-ended probes, ferrying me at breakneck speed to the nearest hospital. The lights are flashing, I hear the sound of the siren, it takes forever to suddenly arrive and when the double doors fly open, they pull the gurney out of the back of the ambulance and push me inside the building all smothered in plastic bags of fluids and strapped down with a neck brace fitted so that I can only look straight up. They carefully transfer me to a trolley and wheel me into a cold corridor. It’s all very well the nurses making a big deal of me on account of my being in a critical condition, but what if I survive this? What if I make it through the surgery? What then? I don’t suppose it’s her waiting for me, or holding my hand, telling me that everything will be fine, whispering into my ear to stay strong, mopping my brow with a damp tissue – but somebody is looming over me – I can tell because of their intermittent blocking out of the blinding light emanating from the ceiling of this endless corridor.
WENSUM 