A Sunday in a Civilized Society

Eli Trenchard | Oct 2, 2023

The ignition flips open and the engine screams for breath. Soon it realizes there is an endless supply and falls into a tranquil monotony. My fingers curl around the dial and the song breathes life into the space. The old, stained seats, the musty carpets, and the defaced upholstery vanishes. In its place, a breath of melodic life. Longevity dances across the odometer and sparks something inside of me.  

My foot presses the clutch to the floor and my right hand slips the car in reverse. We are off. Me, myself, and I, I mean. We go everywhere together. We move through haze, excitement, and peace hand in hand. We are a team; we are a family. One cannot live without the other and the other without the one. At the bottom of the drive, I twist the wheel and straighten. Once again pressing the clutch into the floor I slide the transmission into first and begin my journey. 

Errands, they fill my Sundays. Groceries, dry cleaning, laundry, mail, and cleaning. They are the things I cannot stomach. They tell me that I cannot break free of my 9 to 5 cage. They tell me that between the white lines of society I will live, suffer, and die. The tires pull the asphalt past me. I watch behind me and to both sides, lazily drifting back and forth from the road ahead. I see small cars, large caravans, screaming children slamming on the windows and the balding head of a man whose soul has broken. I slide the car into first at the stoplight. To the side of me there is a woman; beautiful, flowing golden hair cascades down her shoulders. Her makeup, perfect. Subtle red nail polish glints in the morning sun. Her lips move softly, speaking to the voice on the other side of the phone. I envy this woman; given the proper opportunity I would walk hand in hand with her until the day I die. The perfect figure, the crisp blouse and quietly tanned skin. I can almost smell the expensive fragrance she wears waft from the sliver of a barely opened window. Her Mercedes purrs beside my beaten conveyance. I look back to the light; it is red, holding me in my place. I look back to her. Her lips move in a slightly more urgent pace, but she looks rather calm, maybe even bored with the conversation. 

A moment is all it takes. I look to the car beside me on the right. A small man, thin hair combed over his head trying to emulate a once great empire of prospering follicles. He sings along to the generic radio song he has heard a million times.  His eyes sparkle with happiness, it disgusts me. I turn back to the woman and see a shift, her makeup, a once perfect blend of sexy, reserved elegance, runs. Rivers of the black wax mask carve their way down her face. Her eyes no longer bored or at peace. They are now wild, fierce, a cornered wolf in the place of a woman. Her weight jumps in her seat, and she screams. Over the gargle of my engine, I cannot hear her cry of pain, and helplessness. But I can see it painted across her cheeks, very apparent in the red cast by the light above. It is an invisible, locked cage, temping her to break through. Her hands tighten on the wheel and the car lurches forward. Other cars fly by forming a horizontal wall of death, but she has lost all reservation. She has broken free. The tires rip at the asphalt and soon the passenger door is crushed beneath the weight of the white lines society has so permanently painted. Her perfect body, crisp blouse and golden blonde hair is splayed across the asphalt. The light flips and I advance underneath the neon green light, I have errands to run.

My car slows at the curb, and I step out, list in hand, ready to cross off the first errand of the day. The quiet bell jingles as I step through the threshold. 

“It’s shrunk, can you not see that? For fuck sakes Sal! This is bullshit, I’m not paying for this.” The woman screams at the dry cleaner as she brandishes the suit in his face. 

“Mrs. Ignotus, this is not our fault. This is the risk you accept when you bring your clothes in.”

            “Fuck you, Sal! You don’t know what he will do, you don’t know what this is going to mean for me. Fuck you!” The suit in her hands is thrown in the face of the drycleaner and she kicks the door as she leaves muttering something about buying another suit.  

            “How can I help you Ma’am?” 

            “Just picking up for Henry.” 

            “Of course, one minute.” 

I look around the small shop, the walls are adorned by cracking paint, cardboard is taped over a broken window while grime clings to the rest of them, as if the cost of water is too much for the drycleaner to stomach. The register is dated and in need of replacement. I watch the man in front of me, he holds my suit in his hands, his face long, eyes underlined by dark bags created by the sleepless support of his eyelids. 

            “$25.85. Will that be cash or card?” 

            “Twenty-five? Last week it was fifteen and the week before, ten.”

            “You know how it is, inflation. Tough to keep up.” 

            “Yeah…. I get it. Card, please.” He hands me the machine and I insert the card. I press okay and hear a rumble from behind me. It is getting closer; it is rage filled and fast. As I press the last number of my pin into the machine, the front of the shop explodes. My right arm flies up to protect my eyes and my head keels into my chest. When I look up, I can see the river of oxidized life seeping from the gash in the drycleaner’s forehead. A tear forms in the corner of his eye and he looks over to me. The rumble of the car still growls from behind me. I turn around and look at the driver. The woman has the same wild, desperate look lurking behind her irises as the woman caught in traffic did. The driver window slides into the frame, and she pokes her head out. 

            “Fuck you, Sal,” she screams as a hate fueled smile creeps across her lips. Her Cadillac pulls away and filters into the steady stream of society. I feel something drip down my jaw and realize a shard of glass is lodged beside my chin. 

            “Do you have cameras?” 

            “No, I will be paid more by the insurance company anyway.”

            “You’re probably right,” I say as I shake the glass from the garment bag. My feet crunch against the shards of glass strewn across the floor. I pull the deformed door open, despite the car shaped hole bore through the wall to its left and step out onto the sidewalk. Pieces of bumper are scattered across the cement, but I continue to walk. I have errands to run.            

The transmission slides into park again without a slight murmur of defiance. I wipe most of the blood from my jaw and place the Kleenex in the cup holder. I look out at the grocery store. The front windows are covered in signs. Lays, Coke, Pepsi, Coors, and Budweiser. Opening my car door, I start to make my way across the lot, towards judgment. I know what the look on every cashier’s face will be as I walk up with my bottle of whiskey, bag of chips, flat of soda, pieces of fruit, cut up vegetables, slabs of steak, and loaf of bread. But I don’t have the energy to care. The dusty, squeaky doors slide out of my way as I make my way towards the entrance. I look to my right, an old couple hand in hand looking up at the display of Pepsi, official sponsor of Super Bowl LVII. A superstar quarterback looks down at me from his perch above the soda he never drinks. The old man looks to his wife and kisses her gently on the lips. His smile crinkles the edges of his eyelids and his wife’s eyes return the shimmer. 

            I turn away. Looking straight forward, I walk up to the second set of doors, and they slide away, just as the first did. I pick up a basket and begin my shop. To my right there is a man. He is quite tall. Heavily tattooed arms push at his shirt and tight jeans cling to his legs. He speaks into a phone.

            “What? Paraben free? What? Okay…. okay…. okay.”  A small bubble of laughter creeps into my chest and forces its weight through my lips. I cover the chuckle with a cough, but he looks at me anyway. I turn my head and continue. Aisle 4, the natural section. Cart after cart is lined against the shelves. Some carry children, playing and fighting and looking off into space. They don’t understand what their mothers and fathers are doing. They don’t understand the pressure of parenthood. They don’t understand the pressure of the natural section. The mothers chat with one another, the fathers push the carts, praying they will be allowed to leave at some point. The single mother with four children keeps a faux smile stapled to her face. Her eyes, which are supposed to shimmer with fulfillment and happiness, are filled with anxiety and desperation. She looks towards the shelf. Baby food, the screaming child wails, pulling the mothers sanity and rationality away with each chorus. The children seated beside the screaming child tetter on the edge of chaos. They look to their mother, to their father, around at the other adults towering above them. A grocery clerk comes over to the woman and her children. 

“Would he like a cookie?” The clerk asks.

The other parents turn in apprehension, praying she will say yes, praying she will give in to the quick fix if only to keep their own children from falling off the cliff into the pit of screams below. The woman looks to the clerk, to the parents, to her child, down to her purse and slips her fingers into the depths of its containment. 

“A cookie? Would you say he deserves a cookie?” 

Now it is the clerks turn to look to the child, back to the mother and around at the other parents. Tension snakes its way across the cleverly coloured tiles. Its breath of ensuing chaos drifts into the clerk’s nostrils and entangles his head in a crown of misspoken offers of assistance. He is innocent, he is just trying to help, but I can see that in the mothers’ eyes he is the enemy. He has insulted her ability to control the child. He has unintentionally questioned her ability as a single mother. She slides her hand out of the purse. Her crisply pained nails, moisturized palms and loving fingers are curled around a gun. The trigger depresses and the boy is launched onto the floor, the clerk lays sprawled across the tiles that have now been painted with the fallout of a misspoken sentence. The cookies are fallen soldiers on the battlefield of parenthood. The shot rings out in my ears and leaves chaos in its wake. The burnt, acrid smell drifting hand in hand with the smoke poisons my nostrils as it curls gently out of the barrel. Parents look to each other; the crying hasn’t stopped. I move away from the natural section. A gust of fresh screams propelling me forward.

I walk around the store placing items in my basket and make my way to the counter. The cashier looks at each purchase, eyebrow twitching as each criticism passes through her synapses. I tap my card on the machine and grab my bags. I don’t need the receipt; I know my total. As the doors roll away from my path, I see the blue and red flashing lights. I see the squad car and the ambulance. The cry of the sirens become entangled with the voice on the loudspeaker. I walk past, I have errands to run.