Sad Car

At a local stoplight recently, I happened to look to my left, where the next guy was stopped just like me. And just like me, he rode alone in the front seat with a passenger in back. (I had my two, actually, heading to their final acting class at Zach Theatre, a “performance,” of sorts.) I did a double take, because instead of a baby or small child in the back seat, he was transporting a very old woman.

The other detail of this picture was that she had the exact same profile as her driver – a slightly hooked nose, and deep-set blue eyes. Both had mouths with thin lips, turned down in frowns. Both looked straight ahead, no words being exchanged between them.

Being the person I am, my mind began painting a scenario. I imagined this was the ride they’d known would someday come, when son had to put mother in the nursing home in Northeast Austin, the one just a couple miles further west from this very traffic light. Maybe the few things she still cared about -- and that would fit in her little room in the rest home -- had been stowed incautiously in the trunk of the car.

The notion saddened me, and I wanted something to happen to tear down the cliché I had created in my imagination. I wanted the woman to break up laughing, or for the two of them to start singing to the song on the radio that I couldn’t hear. I wanted one or both of them to look over and catch me staring and flip me the bird.

But the two of them just sat, looking forward, one identical profile behind the other, until the light turned green and I eventually lost track of which car was theirs, as we made our way west, down the long highway.