Costa Mesa, California kept scrubbing away at its uniformities.
Like toxins they flew off the 55 freeway, penetrated the town’s skin and sank into what had once been the town’s soul.
Numb uniformity dissolved orderliness. Driving north she saw the soul was gone, fried to a crisp by chain stores, big boxes and small thinking.
She too felt numb. Too numb to do anything other than drive.
What a funeral down in Laguna. How wretched her mother and sister had been, their behavior even more rude than she had expected.
She had underestimated the cruelty they were unable to temper and the power they were unwilling to surrender.
They dressed her down for the way she dressed. Still that same little girl with no idea of how to behave in public.
They won. Pungent retorts she had planned, somehow the opportune moments to launch her prepared rebuttals never appeared. The way her sister laughed at her and repeatedly asked why she would wear such an outfit to such a solemn event hit so hard she never recovered.
Her sister reprised an old family theme, how she would never grow up and never amount to anything.
From her mother, the usual attempt to feign sadness and to attack with questions. Where had they gone wrong? Why couldn’t she behave as a respectful member of the family and appreciate all that had been done for her?
Reservoirs of self-confidence it had taken days to build up spilled into the airless room of the gray funeral home.
Nobody spoke of her father. The conversation with her brother was brief. All she told him was she had to leave and she would call later, maybe once she’d driven through Costa Mesa, California.
Her mother blocked the way out with a fresh flurry of insults.
She broke off eye contact, lowered her head and looked down at all the brass buttons on her green velvet jacket.
Their shine had gone away, each brass button tarnished by her mother’s malevolent breath.
