A man pulls his tired sports car into the driveway of his modest, duplex in a suburban catchall of mid-twenties, working class Midwesterners. He rotates the ignition to off and sits in the silence of the car’s settling, the warm air from the car’s heater slowing fading to cool as the late afternoon November air paints the car’s windows.
Upon the seat next to him is a shopping bag containing new packages of diapers and some form of multivitamin his wife instructed him to get from the drug store. Below and on the floorboard lays a fast-food bag and a single, small sneaker no bigger than a playing card. He wonders where the other shoe might be and if he may need it upon going inside. He scans the floorboard below the passenger seat, and upon finding nothing he shifts to the rear. The Sports car’s back seat, one of once rich leather that he used to oil and buff, now contains a navy blue and light green car seat with a folding canopy. A sippy cup, presumably containing rotten milk or juice, rests in its holder. The rear floor of the car held no shoe; but rather, there was a single french-fry smashed into the black carpet. Next to it was a purple sucker, half sucked and glued also to the fibers of the once beautiful interior.
He spun back to the front and settles his head upon the seat’s headrest. He closes his eyes and sighs heavily. This car, a black smooth sports car, that not more than six years ago was the trophy of the single man’s shelf, smells no longer like the first few months of fresh ownership; rather, it smells sticky and sweet. It smells musty and aged. It smells as if it were fading into the “I remember when’s.”
He places his hands to the wood-trimmed steering wheel and twists the wheel from eleven to one and hums quiet "vroom" sounds to himself, and he allows his chest to become heavy. He turns to the back of the car, peering out the window, and considers the “what if’s” if he were to just reverse and drive off…
…But, a hand went up, stopping him! Certainly no real hand, but a small, sticky print of a little hand upon the window next to the car seat in the rear causes the man to swell up and smile and turn and secure the shopping bag and grab the keys from the ignition and leave the car in the driveway and rush inside to the world that he and his wife created and strive to maintain, their world, his world, within a modest, duplex in a suburban catchall of mid-twenties, working class Midwesterners.
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