Malcolm Discovers Sixty-Five Miles per Hour

Sixty-five miles per hour is a death wish. I seriously don’t know how anyone does this without having a mental breakdown. I’ve almost turned around twice but you can’t turn around on a highway and only now that I’m driving do I realize I don’t know the roads around my town as well as I thought I did.

As a kid it was all about landmarks. The sign for the sheepskin store meant we were going camping. The road with the falling rocks sign and the river to the right meant we were going to the pool. Mostly, I counted mile markers.

Everything is different once you’re driving. Mile markers? I don’t think I’ve seen one on this road. Can’t read billboards. Have to keep my eyes on my lane.

Growing up must ruin everything.

By the time I’m doing sixty-five for more than four minutes, I make a promise to myself. I’m moving to Negril, going off the grid, and I’m never getting a car.

The GPS voice on my phone tells me to take the next exit. It’s a giant loop exit so I slow down before I get to the off-ramp and a car slides in behind me and lays on his horn so hard I go numb and my sinuses clear from the surprise. I pull onto the ramp’s shoulder and let him pass me. It was a her, actually. She seemed really angry for no reason.

Everybody rushing. Breathe in peace, breathe out stress.

Everybody complaining. Breathe in peace, breathe out stress.

Everybody dying. Everybody around me dying and me not allowed to feel a thing about it like I’m some kid who still counts mile markers. Breathe in peace, breathe out stress. Fuck breathing. Fuck peace. My family is dying and it’s the weirdest feeling in the world because I was already alone. What’s this, then? Ultra alone? Super alone? Mega alone?

If I was a superhero, my name would be Lonerman. My superpower would be the Existentialism—a ray I could shoot out of my hand that renders people powerless to face anything but their own personal pointlessness in an absurd world.

Lonerman pulls back onto the road when he’s sure no one else is entering the exit ramp. He gets to the stop sign. He follows directions all the way to the hospital. He parks in the parking garage and gets out of his grandmother’s car. He is alone in the world and not alone in the world at the same time. The responsibility on his shoulders is so heavy he can’t breathe in peace or breathe out stress. His diaphragm is crushed with the weight of knowing that if his father is dead, then he will be the only one left.

That’s a nice daydream and everything, but I can’t bring myself to pull out onto the road again.

I look around the dashboard and find the hazard lights and press the button. I can see the rhythmic pulsing of the lights and the BMW feels like it’s breathing. I turn up the heat even though it’s not cold outside. I’m cold inside. That’s my problem. Lonerman has always been cold inside. Even when he’s on Negril’s seven-mile white sand beach. Even when he’s kissing Eleanor.

I feel something familiar. Something like I ate bad shrimp. Something like I swallowed the weight of the world. I am digesting Dad’s cancer, and my system is rejecting it. I try to open the driver’s side door, but I’m locked in by BMW engineers. I can’t see the buttons on the armrest. Saliva starts flowing. I swallow.

Lonerman swallows it down. Swallows everything down. Lonerman has been swallowing everything for fifteen years like a wave hit and he’s bouncing around under the surf trying to find a way up. Salt water and pineapple. That’s what it tastes like—swallowing everything. Salt water and old fish. Salt water and force-fed lamb chops.

I lean into the passenger’s seat and it all comes up in heaves.

I have just vomited on Marla’s BMW leather seats.

The other stuff comes out of my mouth—the pineapple and the old fish and lamb chops. The salt water comes out of my eyes, though. Steady and streaming like tropical rain that doesn’t stop for days.

The car stinks and I turn the heat off. I find the window buttons, and I roll them all down. I close my eyes so I don’t see the flashing hazard lights, and even with my eyes pinched so tightly, the tears keep coming. I reach in the back seat for Marla’s tissue box and she only has four left. I use one to wipe my mouth and chin. I use another to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. I turn on the interior lights and I look at the puddle of vomit and know that two tissues won’t make a difference.

I take off my sweatshirt and clean up as much of the vomit as I can and then I toss the sweatshirt out the window. I know there’s a car wash near here. The kind with the rainbow soap bubbles. I want to go to the hospital, but I know leaving vomit to dry in an emetephobe’s car is like leaving a million spiders in an arachnophobe’s bed.

The tears stop. I can breathe again. It still stinks. I ask my GPS to direct me to the rainbow car wash, and it’s only three miles from the exit ramp.

I think I just puked out the last of my childhood because I feel like a man now.