Coffee Table Queen − 1 October, 2004

Theresa was beginning to come unwound. That is, if she had been keeping it together in the first place. One could argue that she wasn't. I'd lost track of how many beer cans she'd opened, but I knew that her stockpile was diminishing rapidly. I sped on as she drank, hugging corners and flying across night blackened concrete. The headlights of my car cut through the darkness and led me on like a team of sled dogs as I drove home.

"I swear to God, Josh," I could hear Scott saying from the backseat, "that was the scariest thing I've ever seen." I spied him out of the rear view mirror eyeing his own beer can disgustedly. With a scoff he threw it, nearly full, out of his window.

"Fuck that shit."

I couldn't help but laugh.

Theresa sat heavily in the passenger seat next to me, pausing momentarily from her drinking. For the first time during the trip, she was silent. From her window she seemed to be counting the stars, and the street lamps periodically illuminated her features with pale orange fire. She was beautiful in a painful way, and I wondered with a heavy heart what this poor woman must have wanted out of her life, and what kind of hell had her now, now that her dreams had left her. It wasn't hard to imagine her as a teenager, her eyes not yet darkened and hollow and her hair untouched by cheap bleach. When did she first realize that her life had arrived and that it hadn't brought with it what she thought it would? Had she even realized it at all?

She turned away from the window to look at me, saying in a voice that was heavy and deliberate, "It really happened, you know."

"Oh, I believe you, Theresa," I said, trying not to sound condescending. I found it to be a difficulty.

"But he only does it for me, because I'm his sister."

"It moved, I swear to fucking God it did," said Scott sullenly, hitting the back of my seat. "You don't believe it because you didn't get out of the car and see it, but his picture on that fucking gravestone moved. Like... it smiled, and the eyes moved. Ugh." He shuddered.

"He died four years ago today," Theresa spit. "He was killed by a police dog in his own fucking house." She was looking down at the beer in her hand as if she didn't know how it had gotten there. She spun it slowly as she spoke. "Wasn't doing a damn thing but eating supper. Said they were after drugs. My brother never did any drugs."

"That's awful," I said. The wind roared outside the car.

"My brother never did drugs," she repeated, to herself more than to me.

Theresa grew quite then, and the night grew thicker.

Tags: car rides, Goose chases

People: Scott

Posted on February 13, 2007. and has been viewed 608 times.

Comments:

pepero (February 13, 2007. 07:34am)

at times i'm so consumed by your words that i forget for a moment that i'm not reading a novel that was featured by <i>oprah's book club</i>, but i am a voyeur peering into the life of real person. then my heart skips a beat as i'm submerged in a flood of emotions.