I once saw my parents drive into a wall of sheet rain. I remember my father’s hat, my mother’s wig, I think the dog was watching out the back but I don’t remember growing up with a dog. The rear lights of the car disappeared into the gray thickness, this odd tempest which cut the street in two. I stood in the sunlight, where it was bright, hot and quiet. They disappeared into the rain wall, where it was deep gray, storming violently, and cold enough so that the thick falling water spattered like oil on the hot pavement.
They returned wet and laughing.
I also saw my parents drinking lemonade on the top of a balloon. They waved to me when the ropes let go and they rose high until they disappeared into the clouds.
My brother came up behind me and said, “I think I’ll be fifteen next time we see them.”
My parents threw tremendous parties. Policemen would come with cases of beer. Men would come with shovels and dig two big holes in the field in front of the house. Into one hole they’d put a cow. The other was for a pig the size of a small car. They’d heat stones in bonfires and bury the cow and the pig and cook them under ground. The mariachis would come. Friends would let us aim rifle bullets at distant cans and when the pig and the cow were raised, the meat was distributed on platters the size of the hoods of cars. My little sister ran to one of the tables. She grabbed a handful of napkins. One of the napkins got loose and in the breeze and the cooking smoke it tumbled over the grass like a rabbit until it became a white mouse then a grain of sugar and then an atom. The mariachis played until the sun came up. The silverware bore evidence of nibblemarks.
My parents held hands on walks through the mountains. They said, “Try this” and my mother father would share a forkful of whatever it was and they’d grin at each other and say, “Tomorrow’s the big day” or “Eddy’s in trouble” or “Deep sea diving could squash us but that’s not really murder.”
I remember a hill, more like the tail end of a mountain leading down to a cliff’s or escarpment’s edge, steep and stony, with boulders rising from the grass, localized stands of bare trees whose twisted limbs flung about in the wild air like giants in quick sand waving at their saviors. Looking down this hill, you could see the tops of clouds. There was something threatening about this place, something dangerous. Worse, the stones, the grass, the trees seemed aware of our presence, their awareness taking the form of a desire, a desire to reach up and grab and tear and toss what was left into the raw and distant depths beneath of the cliff’s edge. The lean of objects and the tilt of the environment dragged at my shoulders and ears.
My mother said, “Let’s drive down and see what happens.” My father, of course, had already started for the car, an old Buick not in any way equipped for this place.
I stood frozen. My mother and father took me by the arms. I pulled back, so that my heels dug into the ground.
“Come on,” they said. “We’re going down. It’ll be like the roller coaster just a hell of a lot scarier.”
I remember shouting: “I don’t want to go. I didn’t ask to come here. I did not give my permission.”
My parents loved to laugh and so they laughed and dragged me to the car whose front end was pointed downhill, I think at what must have been a near 30 or 40 degree angle.
