Читать книгу Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones - Lucia Perillo - Страница 21

Compulsory Travel

Not yet did we have personalities to interfere

with what we were: two sisters, two brothers.

Maybe our parents really were people who walked in the world,

were mean or kind, but you’d have to prove it to us.

They were the keepers of money, the signers of report cards,

the drivers of cars. We had a station wagon.

Back home we even had a dog, who was fed

by a neighbor kid while we toured the Jersey shore.

We waded in the motel pool and clung

to the edge of the deep end, because we couldn’t swim.

Maybe that’s why we never went in the ocean, despite

hours of driving. We could’ve just gone down the block!

Yet each year we made a ritual of this week

spent yelling and cursing and swatting each other,

with none of the analyses we now employ, the past

used as ammunition, the glosses from our latest therapist.

Back then a sock in the jaw could set anyone straight.

On Sunday afternoon, the homeward traffic would grind still

where the turnpike bottlenecked. My father

would slam his forehead against the steering wheel,

start changing lanes and leaning on the horn.

Without breeze through the window, the car would hold

our body heat like an iron skillet, skin peeling

from our burned shoulders as we hurled pretzels

and gave the finger to kids stopped in cars beside us.

My mother wouldn’t mention the turn we’d missed

a few miles back; instead she’d fold the map

and jam it resolutely in the glove box while we crept on.

Perhaps this was our finest hour, as the people

we were becoming took shape and began to emerge:

the honkers of horns and the givers of fingers.

After the sun turned red and disappeared, we rolled

through darkness, wondering if the world knew all its names:

Wickatunk, Colts Neck, Zarephath, Spotswood — in every town

there were houses, in every house there’s a light.