Valuable
By Jenny Berkel
“Every movie is made for a reason,” he says with the ivory sky leaning over nubs of golden cornstalks. We race down back roads and hurtle into half stops. A crack of window opens to let new spring in. He scratches his left lobe and finds a drop of water in the curved shell of his ear. It is Sunday and on Sundays, we drive. Highways, beat-up rural lines, potholed gravel roads. There’s nowhere we can’t go.
There are places we won’t go. We won’t go to Mcdonald's. At least not for their meat. We might go if it’s late at night and nothing else is open. Or maybe, we might go, possibly, in the summer. But only for the ice cream, and only if the fries are fresh. We also won’t go to Walmart. Not if anything else is open past nine o’clock on our way back through town. We might go if the box of condoms is empty and we’re protesting the corner store for their inflated prices. We might go then, or maybe we’ll go if a flyer lands in our SAVE THE TREES mailbox with a sale on cereal. But only for the cereal, and only if the condoms are the right brand.
We won’t go home, either. At least not until the tank of gas is almost empty. Not until he has rocketed over enough little hills, our stomachs flip-flopping and mine dropping in the heat of his anger. We’ll only go home once that anger has cooled enough for him to face another new week. On Sunday nights, when we finally get home, we crawl into bed and he watches movie after movie after movie. He watches so many movies that we end up watching the sun rise too.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him look at me, waiting for a response. “Every movie is made for a reason,” he says again.
I look back at him this time. I want to say but what about The Ridiculous 6, Movie 43, Home Alone 4, every Canadian made-for-TV holiday movie? In his eyes, I see him say even these, all of these, they all have a reason, a purpose for being. We watch them because they are made valuable by our viewing. Instead, I nod begrudgingly and blink my eyes rapidly. This means I am lying. He knows this, so I turn my head to the passing fields and take a napkin from the balled-up Mcdonald's bag scrunched beneath my feet. I rub my eyes and will them to stop their fluttering. I imagine myself as a child, surrounded by classmates cheering as I stare down the competition. My lashes slow down and I silently thank my childhood for preparing me to navigate an adulthood riddled in white lies.
On our drive home, we stay silent. I think about the first time I met him, at the cinema downtown. Ten minutes in and I was walking out of Zoolander 2. He was late, just arriving, arms overflowing with Skittles and popcorn. He paused and looked at me intently, asked where I was going. “Nowhere,” I said, blinking rapidly.
THE END