I wrote this today as part of my commitment to the Clarion West Write-a-thon. A dedication means that person sponsored it by donating to CW, and then provided me a writing prompt that sparked the piece. If you would like something written especially for you, please consider sponsoring me.
Here’s all the work of the 41 days. You’ll also find these pieces cross-posted at Sterling Editing as incentive for writers to practice their editing and story-building skills.
Enjoy.
Drive
for Jude Berg. Thank you for your friendship and support.
Madeline is driving to her lover, and even now, Maddy loves to drive. Not the motorway parking lot, not the commuter creep; certainly not all those red lights. Red is for stop. Driving is for go go go.
She is driving to Lizzie. She has a bottle of water and a go-cup of coffee in the holder. She’s jacked on the starch of road food and the fear that her soul connection to a woman 500 miles away is fraying fast, and all she can do is drive. Give herself to the road, to the big blue hand of day, the huge dark mouth of night, the machine and the music, the journey and the destination.
Lizzie is the end of the road.
Don’t go, she said when Lizzie got the job. But Lizzie had seen more than a path opening before her: she had seen a racetrack, and Lizzie loved to move fast.
I’ll go with you, Maddy said when Lizzie planned the move. But that wasn’t Lizzie’s style. The company’s temporary apartment was so small. All her energy would be in navigating those first important weeks, getting up to speed. We’ve got email. We’ve got Skype. We’ve got instant messaging, Mads, we can reach each other anytime. You won’t even know I’m gone.
“At least let me drive you,” Maddy said when she had given up the hope of everything else, when she felt dull with confusion.
Lizzie laughed. “Flying is faster.”
“By the time you get the taxi to the airport, and go through security, and wait to board, and sit out the weather delays, and fly there, and collect your bags, and get a rental car, and find your way to the new place….” We could drive there, she would have finished, but Lizzie’s face was zipped closed over impatience and anger, the same way her bag was zipped over all her favorite things. And Lizzie was going going gone.
If only she had let Mads drive.
All of Lizzie’s promises. Going going gone. Emails short on detail and shorter in tone. The wrong schedule for Skype, too tired to talk. Instant turned into farther and farther between.
All of Lizzie’s fucking red lights.
But Mads is in her car now, and all the lights are green. She’s got her edge back. It’s in the bag.
Because there are things you can only do in person.
Love.
Rage.
Dayam, that’s good!
How many times have I driven like that? From Melbourne to Byron Bay in northern NSW and back again and across to Perth in WA. Driving 10 or eleven hours a day and feeling like that was home, the driving…just me and the car and the road ahead. North up the west coast from Perth to Broome and east from there, across the top through the Kimberley and Katherine to Townsville. North up the Queensland coast to Cairns and Port Douglas and south again to Mackay. West from there to Emerald… etc 1993 Corolla has been through floods and baking heat and dust, driven past emus, ‘roos, camels and wedge-tail eagles sitting on the road tearing at carcasses. The shock of leaving the long road and seeing a red light always disappointing… I think I need a long drive.
Make that two dayams. Great work. Captured it.