Halloween and Other Seasons

THE MAN IN THE OTHER CAR

By Al Sarrantonio

I think I saw his face as we went by. We passed his car as you pass most cars, using peripheral vision and a vague radar sense of distance and speed. I think the car was blue, possibly gray. The plates were green and white, in-state, I think.

My son was the first one to bring it up. “Dad, did you see that guy?” he asked, and my eyes were on the road and my mind elsewhere because I grunted and said, “Why?”

“The guy in the car you just passed—the one that looked like ours—did you see him?”

My first instinct was to glance in the rear view mirror—at Rusty’s face, half filling it on the right, the features matching the worried tone of his voice—and then at the car in the right lane, now receding, almost as if it had stopped. It was at least a quarter mile behind me now. I could see the front grill, a lot of plastic chrome, squarish, just like my car and a million others on the road. There was a glint off the windshield.

“What about him?” I asked.

“He just looked…” Rusty left the statement unfinished, and I glanced at him again in the rear-view mirror. I moved my head so I could briefly study Mona, sitting next to him. She, too, had a strange look on her face.

“Did you see him, Mom?” Rusty asked.

“No,” Debra said, in a clipped tone.

“No need to snap at the kid—”I started, but she cut me off, as always.

“I’ll say any damn thing I like,” she said, and without looking at her I knew she wore the glare.

I took a deep breath and said, “Let’s try to keep the trip pleasant.”

“Pleasant as you like,” she said, only now I was studying the rear view mirror again, my kids in the back seat whose looks had turned stony.

“So what did he look like, Rusty?” I asked, trying to change the subject in the suddenly quiet car.

He shrugged, looking away.

“Whatever,” he mumbled.

“Look,” I said, in a measured tone, knowing I was using the conciliatory tone they all knew a mile away. “I know the trip has been difficult so far, but I think we should try to get along better.”

Debra was silent, eyes closed, leaning back into the headrest. Rusty and Mona were looking out each of their side windows, lips tight.

“Christ,” I said, letting out my breath. I almost yanked the car into the right lane and then into the service lane, where I would slam on the brakes, but I had already tried that and nothing had come of it. I briefly studied my hands, tightly gripping the steering wheel.

“Christ.”

“Just drive, Harry,” Debra said, keeping her eyes closed.

I counted to ten and watched my hands relax on the wheel.

For a while I looked at nothing but the road in front of me. The radio had been turned down during one of the previous fights and I turned the knob back up, flooding the car momentarily with oldies music before turning it back down to a reasonable level.

“Sorry,” I said, but still kept my eyes on the road.

Suddenly the music started to annoy me, and I twisted the knob, turning the radio off. I studied the faces on the three people in the car with me.

I counted to a hundred, then said, “Anybody hungry?”

There was a brief silence, then Mona said, not too glumly, “Sure.”

“Rusty?” I asked, waiting for his reply.

“Why not,” he answered, sulkily.

“Eating now might be a good idea,” Debra said, opening her eyes with her head still on the headrest. She was staring at the visor in the up position in front of her. There was a little mirror on it.

“All right then!” I said, forcing cheer into my voice and beginning to study road signs. “Anyone spots a fast food sign, let me know.”

A few moments later Mona said, “There!”

Sure enough, a billboard for the golden arches had appeared, as if by magic. TWO MILES UP, it said.

“We’re on the way!”

I eased the car into the right lane, then, two miles on, left the highway and we ate.

The meal started well enough; the food seemed to revive everyone’s spirits, and Mona and Rusty, between sips of cola, had enough energy to begin sparring lightly. When it looked like it might go past the giggling-pushing stage I stepped in, since Debra wasn’t about to.

“That’s enough, kids. Save it for the park.”

“I still don’t think we should go,” Debra said, and I knew that we were on the same old path and that the moment of peace had ended.

“We discussed all that before we left,” I said, watching myself ball my napkin, squeezing it tighter and tighter.

“I know—” Debra began coldly, but then the kids chimed in.

“You said we could, Mom!” Rusty cried, almost simultaneously with Mona, who reached out imploringly, without touching her mother.

“You said we could!”

Debra was silent, seemingly studying the empty, grease-stained fries carton in front of her.

“Then let’s go,” she said suddenly, getting up, not waiting for the rest of us to catch up as she pushed through the glass door to the parking lot, where, arms folded, looking away, she waited for me to unlock the car door.

~ * ~

It didn’t take long before the fighting began again. Like a virus, it spread from the back seat, where Rusty and Mona continued their giggling and pushing but soon started jabbing and yelling at each other. Then it spread into the front seat where Debra, lips clenched, said so that only I could hear, “I told you this was a bad idea.”

My knuckles where white on the steering wheel. The road constricted in front of me, and I could feel the blood roaring through my veins and into my temples, where a rhythmic pounding began that I knew might not end until I lay down with a cold, wet, folded cloth over my eyes.

There was a break in the highway divider just ahead to the left, a turnaround for the highway cops, and I nearly twisted the wheel towards it when I suddenly spied a sign, in cool green with white letters and an etching of pine trees above it, for the park.

“Hey!” I said, my headache abruptly vanished, my spirits lifted, “we’re almost—”

“Dad!” Rusty cried suddenly, from the back seat, in a voice that sounded as if he had been hurt.

I twisted around and said, “Mona, if you harmed your brother—”

Rusty was looking out the window, his eyes tracking a car that was in the right lane, fading behind us.

I turned back to the road as Rusty said, with worry in his voice, “It was that guy again.”

“Who?”

“The one I saw before, in the car like ours—didn’t you see him?”

The headache was coming back, a pounding that grew quickly behind my eyes. Again I was gripping the steering wheel hard. Debra was feigning sleep beside me.

I took a deep breath and answered, with my teeth clenched, “No, dammit, I didn’t see him.”

In the rear-view mirror Rusty’s eyes were large with fright. Guilt pushed through my rage and I evened my voice. “I didn’t see him, son.”

Almost as an afterthought, I glanced away from Rusty and, in the mirror, saw the car with the plastic-chromed grille far behind.

I could not make out the driver, but it was definitely the same car, blue-gray, nondescript except for its cheap chrome trim.

“I think we should go home,” Debra said suddenly, in the calm, cruel voice she sometimes used because she knew that it cut through my head like a knife.

“What!” I screamed, the pounding in my temples accelerating to a heat that made me literally see red for a moment. I yanked the wheel hard to the right, cutting across the thankfully empty right lane and then onto the shoulder of the road, at the same time braking to a screeching, fish-tailing halt.

My vision was slowly clearing, but I could feel my head about to burst as the children in the back seat began to howl.

“You can’t!” Mona whined. “You promised us the park! You can’t turn around!”

“Nooooo!” Rusty added, making the din complete, his wail circling and tightening around his sister’s moaning. There was a roar in my ears that only added to the near unbearable level of noise in the car.

I fought with myself, tried to control my breathing and then, unable to keep silent screamed: “ENOUGH!”

The car quieted, Rusty’s wail spiraling down to hitching sobs. I turned to face Debra, who was sitting like stone, lips tightly clenched, eyes staring through the windshield.

“Are you happy now?” I hissed.

“We never should have come,” she said, her voice infuriatingly matter-of-fact. “Turn around and go home.”

“You should have said that an hour ago. We’re two miles from the park!” I replied, unable to speak in a calm tone.

Mona suddenly leaned over the front seat between Debra and I and wailed, “Only two miles, Mom! Two miles! Pleaaaaase?”

I kept my eyes on my wife, who sat like a statue in the seat beside me; a vein pulsed in her neck like a separate live thing and her lips remained pursed until she said again, her voice a tight whisper, “We never should have come.”

Rusty’s mewling began to increase in volume, and then Debra turned her face abruptly to me, blank and unreadable as pond ice, and said quietly, “All right.”

“Yayyyy!” Mona said, throwing herself away from us and into the back seat again. Rusty’s mewl vanished instantly, as if a switch had been thrown.

“Yayyyy! We’re going to the park!” Mona exulted, and in a moment she and her brother were poking and giggling at each other as if nothing had happened.

“You’re sure?” I asked my wife, who’s face was as impassive as it had been.

“Drive,” she said, and I nodded, letting out a long breath, feeling my whole body unclench, and signaling to pull back out onto the highway. I watched a car pass close, and then the road was clear.

“Dad!” Rusty shouted, “that car—!”

I looked and saw the car like ours, the vague outline of passengers through the rear window.

“The same one?” I asked, turning to look at my son.

He nodded, his face pale.

The car was gone, far ahead.

I turned my attention back to the still-empty road and carefully pulled out into the right lane.

“Park, here we come!” I said, with the heartiest of false cheer.

“Yayyyy!” Mona shouted, too loudly, making me wince.

Debra was staring out through the windshield again, her statuesque mode complete, even the throbbing vein in her neck absent.

I pushed at the accelerator with my foot, and we passed a sign that said, PARK, ONE MILE.

“Yayyyyyyyyyy!” Mona said, and I recoiled at the way her shout assaulted my ears.

“Dad!” Rusty screeched suddenly, making me jump, and I reflexively turned to hit him but he was pointing to the right and ahead of us. “Look!”

I turned my head forward and saw the car with the cheap chrome grille parked in the service lane, it’s doors open, its emergency blinkers flashing.

“It’s—!” Rusty began.

“I know,” I replied.

I slowed down, hearing the tires hiss quietly on the roadway, and as we glided by I stared at my car, at the man who was killing his wife and two children on the side of the road.

So I pulled off the highway and did.