methinks

Looking Back

The mini-van was stopped across the middle of the intersection before me. Tired profanities littered the night.

"F*** you, you asshole," she shouted out the driver's window as he, shoeless and in shorts, rounded the back of the van from the passenger's side, finished crossing the intersection and headed for the sidewalk on his left. He replied with mumbles.

"You hit me first," she continued to shout, while parked on the bit of pavement I had intended to use.

"Oh, I hit you first," he incredulously retorted. In his version, she had undoubtedly hit him first.

Once he was on the sidewalk, she let off the brake and slowly idled forward.

"Pack your things when you get home and get out," was the last thing she said before pulling up to next light a short block away.

"God damn straight," he shouted over his shoulder as she drove away.

I turned and pulled up behind her at the next light. At that instant, the whole scene seemed so clichéd, so routine that I had trouble empathizing with either of them. Other than speaking loudly, neither of them seemed to be emotional. She didn't speed away or run the next light. He wasn't a stranger to walking home at night. Then there was the fact that they would be, after the left turn she intended to make, headed in the exact same direction but just one block apart. Clearly the car would get home first, and - were this cliché to continue - clearly this fight would be repeated once he got home.

As she began her left hand turn I could see her face in her side mirror. Her right upper lip was slightly broken, as if he'd backhanded her from the passenger seat. Physically it wasn't severe, and emotionally she didn't seem disturbed. She wasn't sobbing or, from what I could see, even crying. She was angry but in control and driving home. Then in an instant, one flash of the eyes, everything changed. Looking back, she saw me in her mirror and knew that I saw her. And she became ashamed. She dropped her head and let her shoulders fall with a quick heavy sigh. She didn't look in her mirror again.

Driving the rest of the way home, I began to wonder what - if any - effect our brief encounter would have on the inevitable conflict she faced when he arrived. Her shame signified that she did not want to be the woman who gets hit and shouts curses in the middle of the street. That shame was a link to a memory of a time without that shame. I wondered if her shame would stir her pride and overcome her hurtful routine. I'll never know.