I'm sitting in the front seat. I'm sitting in the shotgun
seat, even though I'm never allowed; I'm not even twelve
yet, only eleven and two months, but Mom wants company for
the drive to the train station and it's not the same if I'm
sitting in the back. The world is dark outside, even inside
the car there is darkness, and only the engine makes noise,
though even the engine is relatively quiet. The roads are
empty. My mom wouldn't have allowed me to sit in the front
seat, next to her, but the drive to the train station is
long, and dark, and quiet. So she's letting me sit next to
her in the front seat, just this once. We are driving to
Darien. Julianna is waiting for us there with her things,
the suitcases that got her through the last year in Glasgow
and Ireland. When Mom answered the phone I saw her eye lids
fall, her brows lose the happy, anxious, arch: "Julianna
doesn't want to be picked up from the airport," she said
when she put the phone back in its place on the wall. The
cord bounced a little, and then settled.
"Do me a favor, will you? There's a bag of butterscotch
candy in the glove compartment," Mom is saying now, her eyes
on the road and both hands on the wheel. I take a piece of
candy out of the bag and unwrap it, and then hand it to her.
She's watching the road, the candy already forgotten as I
hold it out to her over the space between our two front
seats. I wave my arm, and her eye catches the movement.
Next, she's putting the candy in her mouth and there is a
muffled "clink, clink" sound when the candy hits her teeth.
She's moving it in her mouth with her tongue; I do this,
too, sometimes.
Julianna took the subway from LaGuardia to Grand Central,
and then she took the Metro North from there. She's waiting
in Darien with three suitcases and a carry-on, and all of
the things she won't tell us. I know this because my mom
hasn't told me.
We are zipping by highway lamps, orange pools of light in
the great dark. I'm listening to my mother's butterscotch
candy clink and to the quiet engine of the car. One car is
approaching us on the other side of the highway; now it's
passing us; now it's gone, far behind us, or far ahead of us
on the way back home. The dark sky is tinted with orange,
shaped on the sides of the world by darker trees.
The radio isn't on, so I'm listening to the butterscotch
candy and to the quiet engine. And I'm listening to all the
things my mom isn't saying.