I'M WRITING THIS BECAUSE MY BROTHER WILL NEVER READ THIS
“Release the clutch slowly,” Dad says from the passenger seat.
I try. The car stutters forward and stalls. I’m twenty-four, too old for this, and I curse the fact that getting a driver’s licence is cheaper with a parent as your supervisor.
“It’s okay,” Dad says. “Let’s try again.”
“Fine,” I mutter.
“That tone won’t help you.”
“Fine.”
I adjust the mirrors again. A reflex I want to get rid of. The reflection reminds me of Dad every time. Eyes, concrete. Cheeks, sandpaper from teenage acne.
The parking lot is empty yet swollen with traffic rules I still don’t remember. Dad has been trying to tune my mind to the laws of asphalt for weeks. He is not a bad teacher – he is just a bad father.
✯
Dad killed his best friend. Motorcycle and alcohol. They were eighteen. Dad was driving. The train struck them to their side and gnawed its shards of glass into Dad’s back, and they are still there as a reminder, and maybe that is why he decided to live fully, limitless, without compromises.
✯
“Slow down,” Dad says.
I know without looking that his foot is not on his brake pedal. He has always trusted people – ironic since his own infidelity still keeps scarring Mum, five years after the divorce.
The last three years of their marriage were excruciating. Every other night, Dad would come home at three in the morning. If he smelled of menthol cigarettes and strawberry vodka, I knew he had been at the bar where all twenty-year-olds spent their Saturdays. If he smelled of cigars and vinegary sparkling wine, I knew he had been at the bar where all half-single fifty- year-olds spent their Saturdays.
When I met him in the hallway, he smiled like someone who had just won a game of chess, eyes opaque as alabaster. In those moments, I wanted to hit him.
“You’re a natural,” Dad says now. “Turn right. We’re hitting the road.”
I glance at him. “What?”
“You heard me. Let’s go.”
“No,” I say. “I can’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Dad, I’ll hit someone.”
“You won’t.” He smiles. “I know what you’re capable of, Olivia. You’ll be completely fine.”
✯
I moved out when I turned nineteen. Dad helped, organising my things into strict stillness even though he is chaos embodied. Rose vines climbed the window, their thrones knuckled against the glass like an urban erosion, and I thought of Dad’s own erosion, non-existent, the cryostasis of his wisdom, his glass-back and minute-radius-cyclicality and bitterness and torment and friction and anger, anger, anger.
At first, he called every week. Then he stopped. He said he didn’t want to disturb. I cried even though this was what I wanted. To be the apple that fell far from the tree, to powder my land with seeds he wouldn’t touch.
✯
Dad names every traffic sign we pass until he finally breaks.
“How’s Jacob?” he asks. My brother’s name bites like petrol.
“He’s fine,” I reply.
“Is he still with that girl?”
“No. They broke up six months ago.”
“Oh. And his studies?”
“Graduated with and undergrad.”
“Oh. Didn’t he just start?”
“Three years ago.”
Dad swallows hard. “Has he said anything about me?”
“No,” I say, cold as metal.
✯
On their last night together, Mum and Dad cooked and argued. Our home was a tear-stained blue and gin-scented. It wasn’t about the truth, it never was. My father is a mathematician; truth is in his spine next to the shards of glass. He never lied.
Jacob and I spied on them from the hallway. Mum yelled, cried, threatened to kill herself, but ultimately it was Dad’s blunt chuckle that made Jacob snap. He lunged at Dad. One fist to the eye, another to the jaw, a third to the gut. Dad retaliated.
After that, Dad moved out, and Jacob vowed to both Mum and himself that he would never forgive him.
✯
“That went well,” Dad says when we return to the parking lot. The wheel has scraped my palms raw.
“Thanks,” I murmur.
“Same time on Thursday?”
“Sure.”
“I just moved,” Dad says. “Want to come and visit? I have a guest room, too.”
“No, thanks,” I say because that’s what Jacob would say.
I’m meant to go, to leave Dad once again as I do every week, to savour his loneliness.
Instead, I grip the wheel tighter, refusing to let go.
Veera Laitinen, 27, Finland ✯ IG: @veeralaitinen
“Veera Laitinen (they/she) is a queer writer and avid reader from Finland. Their work has previously appeared in Literally Stories, Nowhere Girl Collective, and Pom Pom Lit, and is forthcoming from Vagabond City Lit in August.”