Backseat; or, Two Stories About Driving

1.

This fall Margaret started kindergarten at a school that requires uniforms. In fact, technically she started school in August at one school that requires uniforms and then switched in October to another school that requires slightly different uniforms. Her second day at the new school was also picture day, and she didn’t have the right navy blue polo shirt for the class photo, which meant after dinner I had to drive out to the only Target east of the 405 that stocked the right shirt in the right size.

I left the house right as the day was exhaling and watched the last streaks of afternoon pink and orange mellow to violet over the 210 freeway. I pulled into the Target parking lot right as the radio launched into “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” the sky all streaky and swollen, and I was right there in the immense center of things, light and singular, inhaling the blank possibility of a big box parking lot at 6pm on a Tuesday.

I could have gone anywhere then, but I went into Target.

Inside the store, other parents were sifting through the jumbled racks of post-back-to-school sale items. A dad with tired eyes was filling a hand basket with packages of extra-small ankle socks. I thought about all the times as a child I had suddenly remembered at 8pm that I absolutely had to have graph paper and glitter glue and unlined index cards by 8am the following morning, and my father put back on his shoes and left after dinner to drive around Los Angeles looking for the one Ralph’s that had…