Susan's Choice

The Scream

After Dave left, Susan stared into space for a few minutes then grabbed her car keys and and headed for the parking lot. She needed to go for a drive and highways were not far away. She loved highways because they offered escape, adventure and a private place to scream.

Inside the car, a battered Toyota she had stolen from her father, she lit the one cigarette she allowed herself per day and headed out. On the highway she drew a big lungful of air, ready to let loose. But instead she blew it out softly in a long, thoughtful sigh. It didn't matter. She could scream when she was ready. She cranked the window down and stuck her arm out. Vancouver was so different from Halifax. The trees, speeding past, were greyish green and the water, glinting between the branches, was greyish blue. The trees back home would soon explode in a riot of colour and people could scream in their cars if they felt like it. Here the colours were subtle. They encouraged quiet thoughts and reflection.

She had been the only child of parents who didn't like each other. They'd taken turns babysitting her through childhood. Susan, hoping to keep them together, tried to be cheerful all the time. It had been a lonely household. "You have to find yourself dear," said her mother, engrossed in her new-age lifestyle. "You can do whatever you like."

She had tried to do what she was told and swallowed every new age idea she could find. She burned incense, threw the I Ching, interpreted Tarot cards. She had her palm read, ears candled, her body rolfed and even submitted to mysterious treatments by a certified accept-no-substitutes raindrop therapist.

And that's when the screaming started. She was in the kitchen, the dutiful daughter, washing the dishes from the dinner she had eaten alone. She was thinking about yet another new age technique she had heard about. Her mother was reading in the living room. Her father was upstairs on the computer.

She thought, why not?

She grabbed a thatch of hair on either side of her head and screamed with all her might. Then she put her hands over her mouth and screamed even louder. She stomped on the floor and screamed. She hit her head with both fists and screamed. She fell to the floor screaming, banged her head on the linoleum and screamed. Then she rolled over and kicked her feet and screamed.

"What the hell!" shouted her father, standing at the top of the stairs. Her mother looked up from her book. "That's all right Tom, it's just a primal."

Susan sat on the floor, bug-eyed and grinning. Her throat felt like it had been scraped with a wire brush. She ran up the stairs to her father and screamed again right into his ear as loud as she could: "Yeah, right, Dad, 'IT'S JUST A FUCKING PRIMAL'!!!"

The little family gathered in the living room, looking at each other and shrinking away at the same time. Susan held her hands over her face to keep the tears from bursting through. She refused to cry. "I'm going out," she said.

She headed for the park, about 5 km away, at a dead run, finally slowing to a fast jog, bounding up and down between the street lights, her long legs casting weird shadows in the evening light. She had scared her parents. Even her mother had looked shocked despite her forced calmness. She felt powerful. She had looked at them both and, like the proverbial two-year-old, said 'no'.

She slowed to a walk along a gravel path in the park, the moon shining through the tall trees to light her way. She heard the surf ahead and found a pathway to a small beach. Filled with the drama of the moment, she walked straight into the freezing water until she had to swim. She ducked her head under the waves, turned and floated on her back, gasping with the cold, looking up at the fading stars.

How many people would miss her if she didn't come back? Basketball practice would start in a few hours and they'd wonder where she was. She was a good player and had made the starting lineup this year. She had loved her teammates, mostly for the easy ways they had of touching each other, arms lingering around shoulders, towels snapped in the changing room and their shyness as they turned away in the small shared space.

She wanted to throw her arms around the quiet young man who might have been on the point of asking her out had she not jumped on the wrong school bus in her eagerness to escape and then had to walk halfway across town to get home.

She'd even miss her fusty old science teacher who didn't care if anyone had the right answers as long as they had the right questions and Susan always had questions.

She'd miss her long, therapeutic talks with Gemma, her best friend from childhood, who had grown rangy and athletic, always busy with her jock friends. Even though they rarely spoke it was astonishing how easily they could pick up a conversation that had started two years earlier as if one of them had just walked out of the room a minute ago.

And especially she'd miss Nicole, who had kissed her impulsively as they sat on her back deck, thinking of careers, universities, boys and adventures. They'd been drinking her mother's vodka and she spewed it all over the sidewalk on her long, staggering walk home. Susan had played the moment over and over again in her mind, bathing herself in the memory of Nicole's soft lips not on hers but on her check. A gesture of pure affection. Nobody had shown her that much love in years, certainly not her parents.

She wouldn't miss them. It was time for her to go. She rolled over on her belly and breast stroked to shore. She whooped and hollered on the long walk home in the early morning sun and her clothes were nearly dry by the time she got there.

She showered noisily and changed into dry clothes. She thumped downstairs to the basement and scrabbled about among bundles of frozen meat in the freezer. She found the envelope her father kept and nobody was supposed to know about. It was gratifyingly thick. She counted the bills inside. More than $25,000. She whooped again and thumped upstairs to the kitchen. She grabbed the car keys from the table and got the registration documents from the car outside. Back at the kitchen table she sat and practised her father's signature, then signed the vehicle over to herself.

And then she sat quietly in the room where she'd grown up and stared into space. It was just after 7 a.m. Her father would snooze for hours. Her mother would wake up, go to the bathroom and then back to bed so she could be alone and read. She had made more than enough noise so that they would know she was home but they hadn't roused themselves to ask if she was okay, offer to make breakfast or drive her to school.

She knew what would happen. The car would be gone and her father would rush downstairs and look for his precious cash envelope. Her mother would pace in her bathrobe and finger the plants in the kitchen. Then she would sit in her reading chair in the living room while her father would check his invoices on the the downstairs computer. Eventually he'd enter the living room and stand in the middle of it, hands shoved in his pockets. Her mother would would turn away and maybe roll her eyes at his intrusion. He'd tell her that he'd be able to move out on a certain date as long as certain clients paid their bills on time. And she would agree, still looking out the window, that his calculations sounded about right. And that would be it. She was an adult. The police would tell them that she was free to go wherever she liked. Nobody would look for her.

The car thrummed along the highway, heading into the haze of downtown Vancouver. An exit ramp would appear shortly, and she would have to make a decision. She could go to the beach and see what opportunities presented themselves, or head back to campus and study.

She had driven across the country, all 6,300 km of it, feeling angry, defiant, scared and lonely. She didn't feel like that now. Somebody loved her and she felt full.