[First published here and now, just trying to gradually fill in some gaps.]
It
takes about three hours to get from Phoenix to Seattle, not counting
airport security, the fact that half the time your bags have been
mailed to Hawaii by mistake (didn't happen, thank all gods
non-fictional and otherwise), and everything else that goes wrong.
Forks
is, of course, on the corner of “no” and “where”. That's why
you don't fly to it directly. You don't even fly to it indirectly. From Seattle you take a smaller plane, called a “puddle jumper”
thus finally allowing me to get the joke in Stargate:
Atlantis,
to a smaller airport at Port Angeles, which is still not Forks.
Port
Angeles bills itself as “The Authentic Northwest,” sorry rest of
the Northwest, you're knock-offs, apparently. Then again, Forks
bills itself as “The Logging Capital Of The World,” when I'm
pretty sure it's not the capital of anything anywhere. So you can't
judge things based on what they say about themselves.
More
important is probably Port Angeles' official motto: The
Center of it All on the Olympic Peninsula. The peninsula is mostly national park, which doesn't give a lot of
opportunity to hit an airport and probably explains why “The Center
of it All” happens to be located on the north shore. The point
here being that “The Logging Capital” was located about an hour
down 101 West from “The Center of it All”.
And
that's how you get to Forks: take a big plane to a small plane; take
a small plane to an hour long drive. Give or take. It depends on
traffic conditions.
Three
hours on one plane, another hour on a second one, that didn't bother
me so much. An hour trapped in a car with my mother, Charlize, was
another matter. I'd had no idea what to expect.
I'd
only talked to her about this over the phone and via email. She'd
been nice enough, even seemed genuinely pleased that I was going to
be staying with her on a permanent basis for, basically, the first
time in my life. But there had also been a lack of questions. Not a
word wondering why I was leaving my entire life behind. No concern
that my father's new girlfriend might be somehow abusive or otherwise
bad for me.
There
didn't seem to be any of the drama that should accompany such a major
change in my life. A part of me was grateful. I didn't want the
drama. I didn't want to be forced to offer explanations. But at the
same time, part of me was wondering why it wasn't happening. Shouldn't Charlize, my mother,
care enough that the drama would be inevitable and unavoidable? What
did it mean that it apparently had been evited and avoided?
When
we touched down in Port Angeles and I stepped out into the rain, I
reminded myself that, while I might not be sure where she stood
emotionally, Charlize had already started to help on the practical
side of matters. She'd gotten me registered for high school and
smoothed out the details involved in transferring schools in the
middle of a term so that I wouldn't have to. She'd set up a bedroom
for me in her house. She'd even promised to help me find a car.
That
didn't stop my nagging feeling that things were going to suck,
though.
Charlize
was well aware that, like my father before me, I hated Forks. She
had to be confused by my decision to come. She'd yet to bring that
up. Not bringing it up at all would confuse me. If she brought it
up inside the car that would be worse. The last thing I wanted was
to be trapped in an awkward conversation because I was trapped inside
a speeding car.
Not that Charlize was likely to be speeding, not too much at least. As the head cop in Forks she was outranked only by the mayor and even off duty and in her own car she tried to set a good, law abiding example.
My
point is that as a passenger in a car I am always acutely aware of
the fact that I'm trapped in an oddly shaped metal box that I cannot
escape no matter how much the driver's actions or words might make me
want to. An hour of going through that can be Hell.
On
the other hand, car rides can be not-bad as well. Several hours of
driving can be just fine.
*
* *
The
back and forth thinking ended when Charlize gave me an awkward,
uncertain, one armed hug as I stumbled out into the rain.
“It's
good to see you, Ben,” she said. She didn't mention it but I could
feel her subtly adjusting the touch to keep me steady. Wet ground
and I are not friends. She helped me with luggage and asked, “How's
Ren?”
“Dad's fine,” I said. With Charlize I didn't have to lie, but I'm still not into long explanations and I'm not sure how much Charlize wanted to know about my dad's new girlfriend. “It's good to see you too, mom.”
I
never could get into the whole thinking of people as “mom” and
“dad”. Add a “my” to it so it becomes clear which mom or dad
you're talking about and I'm there, but without a qualifier it always
struck me as impersonal and odd. And whenever I tried to explain to
anyone I struck them as odd. Such is life I suppose.
That
said, if Charlize liked me to call her “mom” rather than her
name, I was capable of that. Thinking about her as mom,
on the other hand, not so much.
Everything
I had fit into the trunk of her car. I travel light.
-
New Edith & Ben - always good.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of under the weather now (not real-life things, don't worry - fictional things. Fandom stuff), but still capable of positive emotions. Liking something is nice. And I liked this fragment. Thank you.
---Redcrow
Somehow this feels Raymond-Chandler-esque to me. Maybe it's the element of seeing behind the facades. I like it
ReplyDeleteDawnM
evited
ReplyDeleteis this a word that makes sense but not to me, or maybe a typo?
is this a word that makes sense but not to me, or maybe a typo?
DeleteIt's playing with language to make up a word.
The opposite of inevitable must be evitable (not a word) and if something is evitable it must be able to be evited (also not a word.)
ahhh. I would have been fine with "evitable" but I couldn't follow both steps. Plus there's "e-vites" which are totally not the same.
ReplyDeleteIt was actually originally going to be "evitable" but then I looked at the potential parallelism betweeen:
Deleteinevitable --> evited
and:
unavoidable --> avoided
After that I decided to take the word one step further/farther* down the not-a-word path so that the parallel could exist.
-
* I'm always hazy on the rules when it's a metaphorical distance used to indicate degree.
If we focus on "distance" then "farther".
If we focus on "metaphorical [...] to indicate degree" then "further".
Yay, Edith and Ben! (Well, Ben anyway.)
ReplyDeleteSeconding the yey Edith and Ben. :-D
ReplyDeleteThirding.
ReplyDeleteIs that title a reference to something? It's tickling some sort of association in my brain, but the closest I can get is a line from Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis": "Touched down in the land of the delta blues, in the middle of the pouring rain."
(J. Random Scribbler)
It was "Walking in Memphis" that I had on my mind when I decided on the title.
DeleteThis is good stuff.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, and the compliment too.
Delete