Transporting Memory
Saying goodbye ... again.
The hit came a month before things got bad.
The roads were wet from the squall that had already passed, but it was still daylight, and the light mist didn’t hinder visibility in the least. I’d caught the red light, so I let myself relax into the lull of conversation with my father, who sat in the back seat, right behind my stepmother in the front passenger seat.
Dad insisted Arlene sit in the front. For half a minute, I thought he might be afraid to sit next to me, thinking me a bad driver. But my father wasn’t one to withhold criticism, so that momentary insecurity was squashed by his truth: it was easier for my less mobile stepmother to get in and out of the front seat.
We were on our way to dinner that early October night, to Dad’s favorite barbeque rib joint on the edge of the Everglades. I don’t know where the kid in the pickup truck was going, only that he wasn’t paying attention. He was probably looking at his phone when he realized the light was red. Rather than slam into the car in front of him in the middle lane, he maneuvered to the space between that car and my own, stopped in the right lane. He missed the other car but sideswiped the entire driver’s side of my RAV4 Hybrid.