His dad rolled the grime-caked winterblack S.U.V. to a slow, ice-conscious halt at the glowing red light and released a long, guttural, idling, pent-up sigh.
It was the sigh of a father who didn’t want his son to take this the wrong way, but… so much time and so many sleeplesstossingandturningnights had gone into these bone worries that he could no longer contain within himself.
His dad straightened up his posture behind the wheel and stared ahead.
“I-“
His dad stopped, abruptly. He took in a large amount of air and paused for a moment of consideration. Exhale. He decided to continue.
“I’m…worried about you.”
A second sigh. This one was the sigh of a father who didn’t want to be…like that…but he knew he must continue, just two miles from the airport, just twenty minutes after the flight arrived from NYC. These feelings he’d been having were urgent and important. These feelings he’d been having were A Beast That Needed To Roar.
His dad thought about what his son was making of this – was he tuning out already?
His son said nothing as he stared out the passenger side window, watching a puddle of water turn to ice in small, hardening waves - right before his eyes!
“You’re thirty-years-old now…” his dad continued, delicately.
The light turned to green and the car began a slow acceleration through the intersection, then past one of a thousand Omaha strip malls that had not changed at all in twenty years.
“Yes?” his son replied, with a mini-squirm.
Here we go, the son thought…just two miles from the airport, just twenty minutes after the flight arrived from NYC…
Dad continued: “You know… money isn’t the most important thing in society – not by a long shot! But, unfortunately…it is how success is measured here.”
“I know it,” his son replied, gamely. And he really did.
They made eye contact with each other, saying more than words ever could. Same blood! Same fears, scattershot across Generations and Time.
Same Love - tempered with acrimony that dated back past the dawn of humanity.
“I just can’t understand why nothing’s happened for you, it just kills your mother and I,” he said.
His son concentrated completely on regulating his tear ducts.
“Why doesn’t anybody else see it?” he honestly wanted to know. “How can they pass you up?” Crushingly sincere. “I mean, it’s just…”
Silence.
For minutes.
His son had buried the needle well below “E” in his rationalization tank over the course of another failure of a year. Yet another year of false starts, of no follow-through, of being this close, of debt and excuse making, of never hearing back…
He didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing.
“When we don’t hear anything positive from you, we just picture you sitting in your room, just, existing,” his dad said.
His son, still silent and unsure, pondered a response as a digitally enhanced gruff voice said something in the background about the continuation of a “93 minute commercial free ROCK BLOCK!”
His son couldn’t give the same tired song and dance routine he’d given the Christmas before that and the Christmas before that and the Christmas before that and the Christmas before that ad infinitum – those treasured old holiday chestnuts like “there’s a big cultural change a-comin’” and “you know it took _____ a long time, too!” and “there’s some influential people checking out the material right now” and “once this economy clears up” and “you can’t put a price on the experience” and “well it’s gonna happen for somebody, may as well be…” and and and…
A new one came to the fore, without premeditation. “I’ll win ‘em over one at a time if I have to, I don’t really know what else to say. I can’t sell you any grand scheme… it kills me, too. A little bit more each day… Word of mouth is just as potent in showbusiness. You never know.”
But sometimes you do.
As the S.U.V. gingerly climbed the top of another snowcapped hill, his son stopped, took in a large amount of air and looked out ahead. For as far as his eye could see in every direction there was nothing but ice and snow and bitter, lonely cold.
This storm was gonna be hell and it wasn’t gonna be ending anytime soon.
It might never end.
He wondered if he was in a trap! In a cage predetermined by fate! In a karma dungeon!
Exhale.
———————————————————————————————————————-
His son stepped into the shower and soon tears were flowing as if he’d turned it up full blast on a high pressure shower head inside his eyes. These were tears of loss and mourning. These were heavy tears, so powerful the tongue’s pink bumps tasted like white mounds of salt dumped by the spoonful, as all shame circled down the drain, as the knees buckled, as the arms grasped the shower curtain in a feeble attempt to brace themselves…for the future.
These were tears of regret.
Regret that he’d ever set foot in the imposter’s mirage known worldwide as “New York City.” He smirked through the tears as he thought about a recent story he’d seen that put New York as the least happy place in the country. How true! How unhappy everyone there is! How soul crushing the neverending quest for money, sexcess and power is! How shallow and wrong and ill conceived that wretched place is! You have to be unstable and emotionally comatose to live there!
Ambition is a curse. A tough one to break, as it is…
These were heaving sobs of acceptance and responsibility and accountability.
It wasn’t New York, it was him. Plain and simple. He’d had the chance, and wasn’t good enough.
Plain and simple.
These were not freeing, cathartic tears - they were tears that tightened the noose as they streamed down one by one by one…
He shut the water off and stepped out, quickly grabbing a towel to fight the chill.
———————————————————————————————————————-
His son, surveying the snowy, stormy, ice-laden landscape from the passenger seat of his dad’s S.U.V., thought back to something his dad had just said minutes before.
“You’re thirty-years-old now…”
And he’d paused a moment to decide how to reply – because… he was actually thirty-one. But he didn’t have the heart to reveal the truth then and there. As with so many other things… like how beat down he was and how scared he felt and how every time he played out the string in his mind on any move he could make, the remainder was the same: Nothing.
“How’s your credit card debt – it’s not too bad, is it?” his dad asked.
A tense smile overtook his son’s face.
“Nope.”
“What is it?”
His son gulped as the number hovered in his mind in flashing Times Square glowing neon lights: $18,225 (and counting) and he couldn’t summon the strength to reply. So he said what he felt inside, what he felt could actually turn the tide on this whole thing, what he felt would help him get ahead…
Nothing.
He stared, beady-eyed, towards the horizon and watched the snow come down hard as the S.U.V. edged slowly down the steep hill, beat back by the frigid gusting wind across the plains.
