She backs the black Subaru out of the driveway, shifts from reverse to drive, and inches slowly along the narrow dirt road until she pulls onto Route 4. She fills the gas tank at a full-service station in Cornwall and drives until merging south onto Route 7, with its swoops and curves and steep, grassy banks. On an empty stretch of road she fishes the three keys from the cup holder, opens the passenger-seat window, and in one swift motion tosses them from the car. She closes the window, presses her foot harder on the gas pedal, and speeds past two spotted fawns, stumbling several yards from their mother. For as long as she’s been driving between Connecticut and Manhattan, dozens of deer have grazed alongside this stretch of road, oblivious to the speeding cars a few feet away. How many times had one darted into traffic, she thinks, imagining all the close calls — the ones she’s had and the countless others everyone who’s driven this road has survived, thanking God and exhaling as they sped safely away. She thinks of the unlucky souls who didn’t speed away and the staggering catastrophes these stupid and beautiful creatures must have caused. She accelerates, pushing past the speed limit… 52, 58, 66… and as the wagon shudders, she considers how many people have actually died here, their bodies dragged from twisted metal, charred into objects no longer resembling human beings. Her palms get damp against the steering wheel, and she wipes each one on her jeans. Her light jacket feels tight and constricting, but she does not want to stop the car to take it off. She passes another grouping of deer — a doe and a young buck with their spindle-legged fawn — and as she does, she imagines the wreckage: shattered glass, smoking tires, survivors identifying bodies. Her breathing is quick and shallow and she broils inside her clothes. South of Kent village she comes upon an open stretch of road, fields of summer corn fanning out in tight rows from either side. The wagon approaches 70 and the windows rattle in their wells. She imagines, with more detail than she wishes she were capable of, a sea of yellow crime scene tape, police-car and fire-engine lights, the spark and smoke of road flares, ambulances lined up with EMTs standing by, useless.
She pictures the dazed survivors, aimlessly stumbling. She circles each one, agitating with questions. Who had been driving? Who looked away at exactly the wrong instant? Who fiddled with the radio instead of paying attention? Who leaned over to find a mint in a purse, or a lighter, and by doing so lost everyone that mattered? How many, she wonders, stepped from the wreckage without a bruise or scrape? And of these lucky and living, who had been in the middle of a quarrel just before the moment of impact? Who had been fighting with someone they loved? Going at it long enough to unleash the irretrievable words they knew to say only because they had been trusted to know what would hurt the most. Words that cut quick and deep, inflicting damage that only time could repair, but now there was none. These people, she mutters, somewhere between curse and consolation. She can see them crouching along the roadside, doubled over and alone.
Sweat soaks her clothes and her hands tremble on the wheel. An oncoming car flashes its headlights, and she remembers that a speeding ticket will end her flight. She has no identification, no Social Security card or birth certificate, which would be the least she’d need to secure a new driver’s license. She slows the wagon to 55 and lets a green pickup truck pass. Had the driver seen the flashing headlights? Judging by how fast he was going, she doubts he had. We never pay attention to the right things, she thinks, as she watches the truck vanish beyond the bend ahead, until it’s too late.
She opens her side window and air blows through the car, chilling her damp skin and tossing the shoulder-length blond and silver hair she’s worn in a short ponytail and not washed for weeks. To her right, the Housatonic River snakes closely alongside the unruly road, midday sun sparking off its lazy currents. She relaxes, less from the coolness in the air and more from its turbulence. She opens the passenger-seat window and, feeling the added chaos, opens the remaining two behind her. Wind explodes through the car. She remembers Lolly’s long-ago Etch A Sketch and how upset she became once when a friend shook it and the mysterious sandy insides wiped clean whatever careful scribble she had made there. She remembers Lolly’s screaming — piercing, wild, indignant — and how she refused to be consoled or touched. It would be over a year before Lolly would allow that friend back for a playdate. Even young, her daughter held grudges.
June closes her eyes and imagines the wind-blasted car as an Etch A Sketch hurtling forward, the rough air wiping her clean. She hears that particular sound of shaken sand against plastic and metal, and momentarily the trick works. Her mind empties. The imagined roadside calamities and their self-pitying culprits vanish. Even Lolly — tear-streaked and furious — disappears.
June settles deeper into her seat and slows the car just below the speed limit. She passes a farm stand, a newish CVS where a video store once stood, miles of crumbling stone walls, and a dusty white house with the same pink-painted sign in front that has been there for as long as she can remember, CRYSTALS stenciled in pale blue underneath black letters that spell ROCK SHOP. For years, these were the things she saw on this drive — each marking the distance between the two lives that had for so long passed as one. She tries again to summon the Etch A Sketch — this time to erase the memory of all the giddy Friday-afternoon flights from the city and the too-soon Sunday-evening returns with Lolly in the backseat, Adam in front, driving too fast, as always, and June pivoting between them, talking about teachers and coaches at school, which movie to see that night, what to eat. Those car rides flew by and were the least complicated part of their lives. The memory of them steals her breath, surprises her with an ache for a time she almost never remembers fondly. If it could only have been as simple as that: the three of them in a car, heading home.
The river disappears from view and she slows the car to 20 as she approaches the half-mile stretch that everyone who travels this road regularly knows is a speed trap. She crosses from Kent into New Milford and passes the McDonald’s she has long considered the unofficial border between country and suburb. In the parking lot, children climb from the open doors of a dark green van like clowns out of a circus car and stand restlessly before a row of elaborate motorcycles parked in front. A young man jogs beyond them, a sturdy chocolate Lab keeping perfect pace by his side. They cross in front of an old gas station, boarded up and empty, the pumps removed. June remembers stopping there twice, maybe three times, in the years she’s been driving this road but cannot remember its going out of business. Weeds have sprung up in the cracked pavement of its parking lot, and she notices the Lab circle a scruffy bunch of dandelions and grass, on which he lifts his leg and pees. His master jogs patiently in place a few yards away.
The light ahead blinks red and she slows to a halt behind another Subaru wagon, this one dark green, newer, and filled with what appear to be teenagers. She avoids looking at them and instead focuses on the blue Connecticut license plate and the Nantucket-ferry stickers peeling on the back window. A siren signaling noon sounds from a nearby fire station. It starts low and soft, like a French horn, and builds gradually to a high, wide wail so loud and overwhelming she covers her ears with the thin linen sleeves of her coat. The light finally turns green, and as it does, she closes all the windows. The bus driver behind her taps his horn — once, politely — and she eases her foot from the brake until the car begins to roll forward.
The siren dies. The air inside the car is still again. She passes restaurants and clothing stores and supermarkets she’s driven past for decades but never entered. OPEN signs hang from windows, garlands of tiny, multicolored flags snap in the wind above a Cadillac dealership. Through the rearview mirror she watches it all get smaller.