Garage Humble - Presenting Life In Racing Spirit!: June 2009

Below is a short story I finished recently, a look into the processes of collapse and healing in the mind of a woman after seeing her husbands death.

Hero

A woman stood frozen beside the fence. The dull gray pavement shone across her eyes without hurry. Wisps of snow stuck upon her cheek occasionally, in light blows. She absorbed the blackness but could not comprehend it; it had been his; his strain, his lines looking into her. Bay after bay echoed and reechoed into a thick burble breathing the cold air, offset enough to move the bones harmonically inside her. It was familiar but it was not the same. The uneasiness was not there. The dread she annihilated selfishly did not rise. Occasionally something loud obscured the black from her. She should have worn her coat, it was cold this winter; always cold here, and it was full of the leaded smell. Deliberately she walked back to her car. Opening the door and finding the ignition with her key, she briefly sorted a few documents on the passenger seat, flipping the license in her fingers and wondering if she should change things back to just Neko Kassiuni.

Once the car was started and in motion, Neko could hardly separate herself from the time spent inside the carpark to the time in park before her home. The relatively short motion across Tsukuba into the residential district was a mixture of moisture, snow and the blurring of her eyes. Flashes of light, stop signs and street markings; things were blue and illuminated and the street shone clean here at home. She walked inside and firmly shut the door, thinking of dinner, wondering what time it had become. She slept. She woke. She lay. She lie. The blackness of the room, was their, was inescapable and she shut her eyes but prayers and the walk through the temple and the time on the coast, the walking when he had asked her, when he would always ask her, she separated from it but loved how concrete it seemed in her mind, he asked, he asked, he asked, and he always would, it couldn’t change it couldn’t go back no matter what he couldn’t have it back, she wouldn’t loose that.

Jon had smiled at their home on Monday. Neko thought him simple, he could act like a fucking child. But that childloveamusement had a charm to it, and Neko almost wished to understand it once. To separate out the passion, to see inside the veins love and hate and that gentle way that he forced into a mastery. He had wanted to show her once. It went like this to him:

As Jon felt the bolster assure the side of his body, he faintly separated Neko’s voice from the string of data unraveling the tighter portions of the tunnel. “Always zoning out on me when we get into the hard stuff” Neko was small and secure. Bright green eyes, and deep brown hair, some concerns and uneasy times had wrinkled the space beneath her bangs. Jon clunked into fourth and set the nose into a conservative line, letting quick white flashes slow to more distinguished dividing lines. The kind of rhythm that made her more clear. “Darling you know I’m lost when I drive. It’s overly absorbing. I’m sorry.” Neko was shimmers in the eye and bruised interest. “I know Jon, I forget. We don’t have much time together and I’m just sitting and it seems natural, natural to talk. I’ll wait, till the road is simpler, when we leave the tunnel. How can you find so much to put into it? You always seem so vague.” His response was automatic; almost bellow the realization of creating speech. “There’s so much to it Neko, and it builds with you. Each corner, each section continues into the next and to be really exceptional you have to find the line that shifts everything closest to straight.” Jon had dug through fourth, clicked into fifth and was moving higher into the gear. He sat far outside and darted in only to snap back out almost touching the wall. “It’s really all rhythm. The more you can feel that, the pulse of the corners together, the faster you can draw the lessons and reasons out, see more; learn where to be faster and where to slower in order to be faster still.” Exploding out into the sunshine above the bay, sixth was placed into its gait and the moment was blue and sun and echoes over the water.

Neko saw this art necessary solely to transport herself. The drive had been frightening to her, just as the private days had ached her stomach with fear. She loved him, she lied, “Thank you” wondering how she would find her shared office after the weekend staff had left. The uneasy stomaching of another woman’s perfume lingering on her desk. The water looked lovely and she longed for another walk down the shore with Jon and he would stop to ask.

One month prior there had been a personal day held by Tsukuba Circuit. Jon glowed. Neko always came along, never wishing too and never offering resistance to stay. She had learned to struggle silently with the comfortable enthusiasm that replaced all of his awkward distant manners. She had thought before to disallow these days, to claim him fully and force an offering of his alternate passions into her control, but she knew that it couldn’t wholly work. That no weekends would over time lend his self to the midnight battles and the darkness and the rest stops filled with adrenaline breaths just reaches from the massive weight of sleep inside the town. A chubby doctor, Waitai, had always gloated over her, an infatuation of desire for spousal companionship and inaudible approval of the sport, keeping Jon encouraged and cautious when the midday adjustments came and a glance outside of the wheel well yielded the lonely desperation blabbing into Neko’s ear. These times he could be her hero, and he always came to the rescue.

Years ago Neko had foreseen the time she must spend among irrelevantly loud machinery and the sweaty smiles of fabricators and drivers, less she was able to place so strict a budget that the continuation of Jon’s project prove as embarrassing slow as hopeless. This plan had failed entirely in its purpose but accomplished a truly telling portrait of Jon’s love for her. He adapted to the budget quickly, and with good reason, they had little money and little more lay in their dreams. Neko worked part time as a receptionist, responding to calls concerning the employment of those who no longer worked for the company. The dilemmas Neko faced on the phone were almost exclusively dreary, the constant repeating that a Mr. or Mrs., Miss or Dr., was in fact regrettably no longer a part of the corporation. The corporation itself took on this distinct character of regret, every floor seemed heavier than the last and the office in which she worked seem so pained with melancholy and the mist of reflection that the gray carpet almost contained a liquid blue overtone, or some color that gave the illusion that carpet had been chosen over polished wood to save any misstep from the idle tears cried from the ceiling.

Freshly married Neko had decided it best that as long as separate hobbies existed they might as well be as blur the idea of separation as much as possible, and thus became a lone cheerer upon primarily empty bleachers, the silhouette of adoration standing along the fencing of the circuit, and most often of all, the terribly anxious spare hand along side him in the pits. Neko regarded the tools as if they were made of crystal, simply pulling one too quickly form the carrying sack could result in the shattering of whatever Jon had asked for and she had learned to identity with a consistently reducing mist over recognition. His hands were magical here, and she tried loving that too. She wanted to claim those objects as the hands of her husband but they retained no semblance aside from a slight harshness and the texture of bone and muscle and the marks on the skin. What was shy crossing the softness of her neck, or occasionally squirmed in the hollow of her palm was confident, defined and alarmingly exact. His mastery needed only slight verification, wheels always torqued twice after being set in place with the agile flurry of fingers spinning to find that snug familiar end. Always so gentle and confident she thought amazed, that there must be some magic to be so gentle and strong with steel and aluminum and carbon when it didn’t need finesse but his motions could not work without it, the adjustment of the alignment of the front wheels the half smile and cautious selective slide of a violinist fingers loosening and tightening and setting the eyes burned with intensity and some gauge would be produced to show him that he was entirely right where he had felt it.

It had been a beautiful Sunday evening less than a year before now, when Jon had taken Neko to the shoreline outside of their home. The sun hung above the mountains and the water blue shone and reflected and played before them, rolling and spitting the chunks of foam at their feet. Jon had been her eyes then, and he was a shadow in the moment, a shade to be adored in the blinding sensation of water and cloudless sky. He had walked alongside as silent as ever when the crash of sea and rock had spontaneously energized the connections in his heart and he grasp Neko and he humbly kissed lips and open palms found each other and the photos of the mind captured such radiance and the inappropriate beauty found in the truest moments of satisfaction in love that Neko had pounded again and again into her mind that you couldn’t plan it, you couldn’t plan it, and it was always new and he pressed a thank you and a love and some words of hope some syllables of encouragement and adoration mixing in her head. He had told her that he knew what would change soon and that he was so pleased. He had told her and he hadn’t forced it, he had been gentle and simple and full of confidence as his eyes reflected the sunlight and drank the water. And he told her of the ocean and how it always fought the land because it need to show that it was living too and that it wouldn’t just be forgotten that each wave would pull its memory back into consciousness of even those who could not hear. And that struggle had been in Neko’s heart but she hadn’t told him and she wouldn’t tell him ever but she wished that, she couldn’t find it sometimes, terror, but she could always remember the sunset and the ocean reminding her to, even when she was no longer near it.

The house still moved without Jon and Neko lay between working until she sickened of rest. And the things bothered her most because she had always hated a mess but it made her dizzy to move them and she often would only change the rooms in which they lay without ever accomplishing a sense of success or failure or relief from the haunting stillness or their presence. The decisions inundated her mind and her associates were never short of help and suggestion and ideas for what she should have done especially; and sometimes even offering the suggestion of a proper decision to whatever had been most recently determined. Lack of effort blurred sensation. “I’m sorry he/she is no longer with us” reechoed from her mouth from morning to night and when she was unguarded she would step into the house and perform some startling action such as the accidental knocking over of a shoe that Jon had left sitting out. For Neko, simplicity was the monster that horror movies could never capture.

Sinking her teeth into her knees she had watched the championship white Integra dissect each segment of Tsukuba one February afternoon in bitter cold. FEEL’S appreciation day. Neko had felt that her stomach must have separated into more than just one physical object; uneasy terror manifest itself tightly through her whole being and slight nausea dispelled any glimpse of enjoyment. She mentally compelled the white car to bring him back safely, to care for him, that his love for it should not be misplaced in any trick in any breaking in any flaw that it must bring him back to her. An unspoken pact between wife and vehicle, a prayer of worry and strain.

The car seemed to promise, had promised with her but with only three laps remaining a tie rod, something or a spindle, a component inside of the body that someone had explained to her in the vaguest afternoon following, loosened and cracked, the whole wheel for that matter separated from the car and Jon could have been fine but another car in passing had gone ahead and he shouldn’t have he should have known better for some fucking reason he had and the driver found a course inside the door and he reached Jon, reaching through metal and glass and the burn of rubber and through the stars that fell from the window glass, separating into a billion suns just to touch him and with that he was ruined and she knew as she watched her heart had swelled too large.

Instantly she thought of what it had felt like and then she thought of herself, how she would carry and how she could begin a family and the strength she would need, would money even be possible but what could I do, we had never planned for this to happen, it seemed like it would be so sick to even mention it, when my sister and I played once in the spring I touched a cut in her knee, if Jon was bleeding oh god was he was he would he suffer oh god oh god if I could just touch him, if I can see him get to him I could possibly but the fence, where had the fence come from hadn’t I been sitting, the fence was part of her hands too and she could not break the attachment, and someone was coming for me now, and I remember that explanation of the breaking and how it was so randomunlucky and how shouldn’t have been passed. I remember the tears, I remember the blue that the light swelled in, the tears, and I could smell the ocean and the fuel and the burn and him, I had smelled him and he was gone but his scent, it was there and only I could find it.

Somewhere there were lights on the way and singing by the radio but I cannot tell where, I cannot see the trip but I can feel the movement. When I returned home I had emptied my thoughts into the sky, as simple as that, my head just gave itself into a brilliant birth of fear and realization and futures and death, and the infant born swum from me to the clouds and I watched it leave. That made it okay in my mind. Once it was okay I went to the bedroom and I fastened the belt and pulled as hard as I could but my head, it was light and stronger than the forging of my resolve and I could not hold the air out. It would tease but I could not keep it from me, I was fixed not too.

When I awoke I had been cared for it seemed, inside of sheets and the lights dimmed and still I was left alone. If he could only come in even to say something stupid, my god the things I hated were the deepest treasure to see again. I tried to think as he would wish, but I was so poorly fit to read him, to understand him, and what I amounted too in him, what was I or he and how did the connection fuse I had to realize that and in the moment I needed to know where his feet would take me. He was always there but what had he wanted, what would he have wanted to show, why couldn’t I know it.

The wind had blown over Jon for two weeks without so much as shrug from him, as it would for the remainder, and Neko could no longer feel that breeze. At times she was misplaced entirely, and time that was missing from her formed the darkest questions and vibrant wonder for where it had gone and all that really changed, all that really mattered was now it was she. It was she. Neko repeated in her history and her present the trinity of ultimate muteness. She had lost what was left of him with the belt and her reaching out for him and tragic faced doctors spoke inedible words that made her gag and she could taste the filth of what she had done deeper in her bones than taste could dream. And somehow Neko went alone in residence with such ghost and no kindspirit to oversee her.

Once feeling had entirely abandoned her heart she could only seek it through the skin and the routines started. In the kitchen at the white sink she would roll the sleeves of her blouse and in the sun the ivory of her arms blinded its perception, and without sensation or hurry she drew the lines, some kind of admiration for him, she had her own lines now, and the sink carried her awfulness away and she could almost get the sickness that the track days had felt in her but it would still be completely different but at least the feeling could be friendly together and the feeling was at least that too, and that was not to be misplaced.

Thursday 17^th of the following month Neko unlocked the garage and the odor of sanctuary filled her nose. Tranquility had left tools cleaned, parts oiled for use and the air burst with apprehension of freedom. She carefully unlocked the door of Jon’s neverfuture project and brought the heavy idle of all six cylinders to life. They moved and breathed and clicked, swirling down carbureted funnels the air that Jon had often breathed out and Neko thought of the beauty, the creation swallowing, consuming the creator aura and she slid the nose of the Datsun 240z into the daylight gleaming against the royal blue of the metal hood. No more than fifteen minutes lay the touge where Jon had instructed Neko to properly control and learn and respect the machinery he adored, and the shell that was left around her knew inside that this would be the last of his solitary adorations to loose his presence.

Here the grass and trees fell from the curvature of the tarmac with grace and purpose. What had been removed had only been done to allow the passing and as much as possible was retained to allow the flow of nature to swallow unobstructed the driver and attention inside the greenery of lush experience. He had always come here to think and now she came to find any thoughts that were left behind. She new they could be anywhere, the road itself subtly shook the car around here just the same as it had when he showed her his land at first, a secret groan of his against the tires, transmitted into her body, the movements of her mind.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the road tightened and slowly my mind forgot entirely the purpose of my coming. I carried Jon alongside or rather he carried me, he had grown so large, indefinable. He swelled out of my head to the passenger seat, and filled my ears with the ambience of his voice. His arms held me still while his heart encouraged those cyclinders, kindred spirits beating on for me, to bring me somewhere I wished with everything they could offer. There was something so ringing in the sound, something grabbing my mind, massaging calmness and shattering peace all at once in violent storms of beauty and focus.

In the sunshine all sensation blinded to one, and that was Jon. Enveloped I saw that there was nothing here not in him, and nothing natural or created not sharing the dream or himself. Of nature he was sidelined, fresh and fragrant and a walking shade for myself. And finally my mind locked into his path, if he did not find me already and his work shone through my heart so clearly. I had seen in purest light the mass of effort, continental focus for my satisfaction so intricate that the lands had been seamless. The most basic of life’s courses weighed through his palms as salt, and neither discouraged nor fatigued him. He continually refashioned them into a gift for me. And the gift had not been finished and my amazement saw that it would never be, that it was as continual as he, and as long as lay my mind with his that was love, that I had something better than films, and it had really been mine even if I hadn’t seen it as best I could. I breathed his air for him, brought the racing line tighter for him, and he continued to show me that path neither fast nor slow, but consistent to my heart for momentum ever on.