Familiar

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She’s driving. A Monday morning in July, hot outside, the windows of her Honda are down and the highway air is rushing in. It’s the sixth hour of a daylong trip from the town where her dead son is buried to the town where she lives now with her husband and living son.

Her name is Elisa Macalaster Brown. She makes this trip once a year: drives to Wisconsin, stays in a motel, drinks coffee and reads magazines in the places she used to go, when both boys were alive and they all lived there together. She visits the grave, never for long. She watches television in her room. She remembers people from when she lived there, and if she sees them she says hello, but she never seeks them out. They know why she’s there and they don’t want to talk about it. When she’s finished she gets back into her car and goes home, and that’s what she’s doing now.

Interstate 90 is a dull gray strap laid over brown land. There’s a drought here and everything is dead. Somewhere in Ohio. Other cars can be seen far ahead and far behind, but nobody passes anybody else. Soon she’ll have to stop for lunch, but for now she is content being hungry.

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