The Dangerous One

The air is sticky with the floating moisture of mid-summer in Nebraska when my mother visits me. My father is out of town on a business trip—his annual vacation from the abnormality of a wife who, more and more frequently, calls him “dad” because she cannot remember his name-- and those few days away is too much time for my mother to be alone. A year after her diagnosis, my mother no longer drives or goes outside alone, so she sits in my apartment for hours while I am at work. She cannot work the television, so when it’s not left on, she relies on her own devices for entertainment. I lock her in the living space like a dog or cat, too afraid that she will get lost in the city or forget my apartment number. While I am at work on the evening of the third day, she cleans everything in my apartment, including meticulously picking out the strands in my hairbrush and scrubbing the brush used for the toilet.

When I return from the closing shift at eleven p.m., my mother has stuffed all of her clothes in her suitcase, folded the spare sheets on the futon, and tied her shoes on. Since she does not know how to work my television, nor read non-digital clocks, she has no sense of the time.

I ask if she wants to wait until morning to travel the sixty miles to her house, but she says she is ready to go right now.

“Dad will be back in the afternoon, so we can go in the morning,” I repeat, trying to persuade her.

“Oh,” her face falls and the corners of her mouth turn downward. “I got this wrong, too.”

We breathe in the silence for a few minutes before her eyebrows arc and she asks, oblivious to the previous conversation, “Are you ready to go?”

Unwilling to cause more disappointment, I pack a few things of my own. The rumble of four-lane traffic has been muted in the night, and we load my mid-sized sedan with no distractions. My mother struggles to work the seat belt, but once clicked in, she squirms in her seat and pokes the nearest air vent.

“I’ll turn the a/c on when we get going,” I say, adjusting the mirror. She nods in comprehension, blinks, and then resumes poking the vent expectantly.

***

The night is a cool relief from the ninety-degree day, and the sky treats us to a show of cloud lightning as we travel over the deserted roads. Rows of knee-high cornstalks fan out on both sides of the highway, the only witnesses to our passing. My mother points out the full moon every time it makes an appearance between the clouds. Between lunar-sightings, she asks if I see the flashes in the clouds. I tell her I can, and then she points out the moon again.

One mile south of our destination, I drive over a large hill along the bank of the Platte River. A set of headlights pull out from a dirt road and face us. As I approach on the highway, not only do I realize that the headlights belong to a full-sized pickup, but at fifty feet and quickly approaching, I see that it is in my lane.

Riding the break, I try guiding my car onto the shoulder to avoid the vehicle, only to be followed in that direction by the oncoming truck. Still facing a head-on collision, I crank the wheel to the left and finally stop in the other lane.

The pickup swerves at me in that direction, too, and our right bumpers make contact. This interaction takes only a few seconds, but my mother can only repeat, whoa, whoa, whoa from the passenger seat.

Coming to a complete stop, I turn to the passenger seat. “Mom, are you okay?”

She is breathing hard, and the only reply she can whisper is, “Are you okay?”

“Mom, are you okay?”

I see the truck’s reflection in the rearview mirror. It has halted as well.

“Are you okay?”

I nod and look out the back window: the truck still idles, and I wonder about the driver. As soon as I open the door, the pickup’s tires squeal and the vehicle races into the night.

I stare stupidly at the pickup as it tears off in the opposite direction, a range of emotions swelling inside of me. General irritation at their recklessness is replaced by anger at this obvious cowardice. I could have handled an accident to myself or car, but endangering the already-shortened life of my mother ignites a rage in me I have seldom encountered. From the depths of my soul comes the word bastard that I scream at the fleeing vehicle. The scream fades into the night, solving nothing. Racing back into the driver’s seat, I throw on my seat belt and whip the car around.

My mother is silent, too scared or confused to get her mind to produce any words. I floor the gas pedal, intent on catching up to the truck and unleashing on the driver a wrath of fury I don’t yet know the scope. This is my chance to confront an outward source of danger to my mother, unlike the incurable brain disease of which I only experience the effects. The anger spewing forth now is a combination of new injustice mixed with emotions about my mother’s illness that has been fermenting for over two years.

Livid, I whisper a continuous string of expletives that even my ill-tempered father would blush at. I have long heard stories of my grandfather losing his fingers in a job-related accident, and how he swore for the entire thirty-minute drive to the hospital. It is this genetic temper that pulses through my veins now.

Flying over the rolling hills of the river valley, the speedometer needle increasingly overshooting the speed limit, I can only focus on finding a certain set of taillights.

My mother grips whatever surface she can hold on to as the car’s mass and speed propel it briefly off the road when we crest hills. Finally, whimpering, she asks, trying to understand, “Are we drunk?”

My foot instantly recoils from the gas pedal as the question forces my brain to reset. I look at her for the first time in miles and see the fear and confusion reflecting in the moon’s light. My mother’s words swimming in my head forces the unsuccessful search for the truck to end.

A sickening thought flashes in my mind: who is the dangerous one now?