Drift

As I drive down the 101 to the school pick up, my mind drifts from the Boston song on the radio and how fast I’m going to the kid I’m picking up. His summer freckles and sneaky prankster smile peak through an arbor of memories that’s grown thick over the years. There he is hiding a can of coke under his bed and telling me he’s ready for bed. “You can go now, Dad. Really, you can,” he says with just enough delight to make me suspicious. “Really, Dad, I’m tired.” Now he’s eating a plum in the old apartment, digging into its ripe sweetness with abandon. I indulge in the stream of consciousness that opens like an endlessly blooming flower. And then, somewhere, between passing a dirty white pick up truck and being overtaken by a sleek dark-windowed Tesla, I somehow imagine losing him. There is no event. No visual. Just grief spearing mercilessly into my chest. The bleakness is full and complete and my insides dissolve to dust with with an imagined but nameless tragedy that runs to measureless depth. I’m tearing up when I think, “What the fuck is this? Why am I doing this? Why am I conjuring such loss?” And I get hold of myself and come back to the road. I convince myself it’s a sign of how much I love him as I turn into the school circle and see him yacking with friends, laughing under the brim of his scuffed baseball hat. He loads his bag in the back and comes around, all 14 years of him trapped in a gangly body that he wants to stretch out to over 6 foot. “Hey, Liam,” I say, heart still full of the memories of him as well as the terrible loss of him. “How was school?” And he turns to me: HIs smile gone, face impassive, eyes almost wooden. “Whatever,” he says and begins thumbing through his phone. “Seriously,” I say, “How was school?” And without looking up he says, “It was fine, Dad. Just like always. Now can you get off my back?” And I wheel the car out of the school drive, past all the other parents doing the same thing I am, and press my lips white because I just want to rip his face off.