Car Wash
by Steven Arcieri
A Family sits in a filthy car in a procession of filthy cars. A sign displays the prices of four different tiers of Soapy-Scrubz treatment. The Father clenches the steering wheel. The Mother fiddles with radio knobs—cutting off every DJ shout-speaking about Back-2-School Deals. The car is still caked with muck from the summer’s final camping trip. Its floor is littered with: soda cans, dirt clods, beach towels, pine needles, library books, sand, pizza crusts. The Son’s and The Daughter’s butts warm granola crumbs stuck in the grooves of their seats.
***
Last month, The Father went to the dermatologist and learned the freckle on his forearm was just a freckle on his forearm. At home, he cracked a beer to toast his lack of cancer. The Mother’s phone pinged from the countertop. “Myles WORK” thinkin of u… From the bathroom, a toilet flush. Then The Mother, anxious-eyed and asking, “Well?” Another ping.
“Not just a freckle.”
The next day, The Father took The Daughter to her absolute favorite place. It had mini-golf and ice cream. She got a Hole In One and Mint Chocolate Chip. The Father thought of the eighteenth hole, its efficiency. How it swallows each neon ball to keep miniature miniature golfers from pocketing them in cargo shorts. He thought of the final hole as a portal to somewhere safe and secure. Somewhere absent of whoever the hell Myles was. Somewhere where The Father could eat Moose Tracks in peace. His frustration cracked small fissures in his sugar cone. “What’s gotten into you?” The Daughter said.
He looked at his normal freckle and said, “Mortality.” The Daughter didn’t know what that meant but didn’t care enough to ask. The Father brought up summer reading. Had she started yet? She pulled back a slingshot on her phone screen, released. “I literally told you so many times,” she said. An animated rock whizzed at an animated window. A sound effect shatter. Animated shards fell to an animated lawn.
***
The evening before The Daughter’s first day of middle school, while her classmates wrapped up summer assignments and went to bed early, she fought sleep and schemed to burn the whole building down. In the foyer, faculty with stupid smiles welcomed students. The Daughter brushed past with her new backpack that held her new folder that had a family of pandas on it. In the folder, spattered with chocolate milk, a manifesto.
The document outlined not the plots of the two assigned novels, but rather the plot of how she’d get away with having read neither. If all went according to plan, the school would be cinders. But unfortunately, her homeroom teacher found the gel-penned blueprints. They fell from the panda folder when The Daughter excused herself to the girls’ room. The teacher tore off her heels and trotted the hallway in nylons. From the classroom a student boomed, “Teacher’s gone! Everybody party!”
The teacher found The Daughter knelt beside an unlit pyre of toilet paper and paper towels, hell-bent on rubbing twigs together until a spark happened.
The principal laughed when The Daughter sat sulky and fidgeting in his office. He laughed so hard, it seemed he would choke. Good, The Daughter thought. Let him choke. If she knew the Heimlich, she wouldn’t perform it. He slapped the desk and shook his head. Then he called home. Shortly after, the minivan, still perfumed with campfire smoke, arrived. Then The Daughter was not to emerge from her room until dinner.
***
The Son spent his summer leading platoons of younger kids into the woods. Closing in on the brooks, he commanded them to remove their socks and shoes. “But watch out for salmon! Those things’ll bite ya so fast and I’d rather not waste my whole entire afternoon sucking poison outta you brats.” The pipsqueaks looked excited but also nervous.
The Son wasn’t an idiot. He’d done enough marine-life book reports to know fish simply do not have what it takes to survive in an environment like this. But these twerps didn’t need to know that. Out here, The Son’s word was gospel.
At the middle school, he was socially irredeemable. Two years back, he’d been victimized by the rumor mill. The kid with all the zits made something up about The Son shitting his pants on the bus. Well, that part actually happened. But when one person tells two people and those people tell three, soon enough even the lunch ladies won’t shut up about the time you shit your pants, then ATE IT so no one would find out.
In the forest though, he was a prophet. The kids ate boogers from their fingertips like Eucharist and listened. When they got to where he’d found the fort, he warned, “This up here’s uncharted territory.” The boy with the mom with the big boobs broke from the herd and proceeded without caution. “Hey! What did I just say?!”
The boy reappeared pale-faced, saying, “Um, yeah, just remembered I gotta get home, for uh, yeah.”
“What is it? What did you see?” The girl who wore boy clothes asked.
“Z-zombies,” the boy stuttered, “It’s zombies. There are zombies in there.” The Son and the kids who weren’t little bitches pushed forward in a single mass.
The holey blue tarp was held taut by bungee cords tied tight around the necks of trees. The Son shushed the kids and lifted the flap to peek inside. Piss bottles and needles everywhere. These zombies weren’t normal zombies. They looked much sleepier. Way sadder.
The flap flapped back down. The kid with the cleft lip whisper-asked what the zombies were doing. The Son honestly wasn’t sure. It looked like when he got his tetanus shot, but they weren’t screaming their heads off. “Nothing,” he said, “They’re just having naptime.”
One by one, each child peeled back the tarp to see for themselves. The kid who wasn’t allowed to watch TV said, “Naptime? Where are their teddies then? You can’t have naptime without teddies. And why are the zombies giving themselves chickenpox shots? I got one at my checkup and–”
“Well, uh, it’s not a chickenpox shot. The zombies, they uh, they’re injecting themselves with a serum that makes them more powerful .”
“You call that powerful?” No TV said.
“Well, the serum takes a bit to kick in. But trust me, when it does, they’re gonna be hungry. And not just for Pop Tarts…”
The Son made them swear on their Xboxes they wouldn’t tell a soul. Even when safe inside their homes, windows and doors locked. Even when breathing in the aroma of boiled water in their kitchens while their parents asked how playing went. Even when spaghetti looked like bloody brains on their plates.
***
Myles pulled all the strings to land The Mother a hefty promotion. Then asked her to dinner. “No thanks,” she said, “Married,” and flipped him the ring.
When the heart-shaped chocolate box found its way to her desk, she Sharpied over the To:______ Love:______ sticker, then brought it to the break room’s Up For Grabs table.
The man from Human Resources who reeked of horseradish rubbed his hands. “Oh boy! I feel so loved!” he said. The other employees laughed Obligatory Workplace Laughs. Horseradish ripped the cling wrap to have his way with truffles and nougats.
When Myles walked in to nuke his kale panini, the smell of horseradish knifed his nostrils. When he went to grab his kombucha from the fridge, Horseradish’s hand unfurled right up in his face. “Good afternoon! Perhaps I might interest you in a raspberry cream?” The water cooler blooped.
Packing the minivan the next morning, The Mother spotted Myles’ car parked at the end of the block. Sunrise glinted off binoculars. It disquieted her. But how could she mention it? The Father pushed a sleeping bag into the trunk. His freckle squirmed.
At the campgrounds, fire still kicking, The Mother scratched The Son’s head. He was burrowed in her lap, sobbing. Dandruff snuggled under her fingernails. The Father and The Daughter were dead asleep in the tent. The Mother made hushing sounds and assured The Son, and herself, they were safe. Nothing could touch them.
They stabbed marshmallows onto sticks to hold over the pit. The Son got upset when his grip slipped and his marshmallow caught flame. The Mother pressed her perfect gold against his burning. “Tastes better this way,” she said. They picked off char and ate it like popcorn and slurped the sweet goop of marshmallow guts.
The Son asked, “But what if a grizzly bear attacks while we’re asleep?”
“I’m not gonna say it never happens, because it does. But I will say it won’t happen to us, because it won’t.”
The Son smiled. His tears dried to salt on his cheeks.
Far away, the grizzly slept in a cave, dreaming of blood red berries.
***
Soon, it will be The Family’s turn to enter the forest of soapy brushes. The Father will turn the engine off to let the conveyor belt take over. The Family and the minivan
will take their well-earned rests. It will become too loud to speak. The radio will cut out.
Darkness and air blasts.
Out the other side, not one will say a word. The Father will shoo away the men who approach with rags and expectations of a tip. They won’t talk on the drive home. Or when they pull into the driveway. Or when they file through the front door and branch off to separate rooms.
The unwiped suds will turn to ugly white streaks.
When the neighbors fetch the morning paper, they’ll look up and think, “What a filthy car.”
Steven Arcieri lives in Boston. His work has appeared in New York Tyrant and The Nervous Breakdown and Hobart.