Detour
By John Kucera
The voice on the radio said there was an accident on the bridge. In rush hour traffic it would take at least an hour to use the alternate route. That’s the problem with harbor cities, there are only so many ways a man can cross the ocean, even if it was just over the basin. The voice directed commuters to take the long way round, driving the old highway that curved along the water’s edge, past the container pier, and finally take the last ramp onto one of the six lanes of the 111. You could get anywhere from the 111. The thought of all these single passengers, listening to the same voice on their car stereos brought thoughts of more idling, snarls, and angry middle fingers being displayed in rearview mirrors. If I was to make it home with any chance of supper being served without a plastic cling wrap cover, I’d need to find a shortcut through the neighboring borough.
I saw it before I smelled it. The plume of black smoke wafted up above the tree line. Traffic had slowed, though it was still moving and I wondered what was burning. Considering the size of the smoke cloud, the blaze would be much too large for a backyard fire pit. I hoped maybe it was a car or shed, but I knew it was too big for even that. I knew the area well. Moira and I had bought our first home in this borough on the outskirts of the city. We raised our girls here until they were in school, opting for a larger place nearer to my work at that point. We could afford it then when Moira went back to the firm. If I had to guess, I’d say the fire was in the vicinity of our old neighborhood. Perhaps the Burger Buddy on the corner had met with misfortune, or maybe some teens lit up the garage on the sports field. All that rubber and fiberglass equipment would make for quite a burn.
As I got closer, I rolled down the window and craned my neck outside. The traffic was at no more than a crawl now and I could see the steady flash of red lights reflecting off the large hamburger shaped Burger Buddy sign ahead. The smoke was on the other side, though, still further ahead. It appeared to be in the area where our old house was. I continued on, riding the brakes as a police officer directed cars into the passing lane. I left the window down to ask him a question but he waved me through without saying a word. The toxic smell of burning plastic wafted into the car now, sticking to the back of my throat. I rolled the window back up and flipped the outside air vent shut. Our house was set back a bit from the road. It had blue siding and a pine veranda, with a small flower garden on the right hand side. Moira liked to keep peonies and azaleas, though when the girls were old enough, she let them sneak in a few seeds of their own. Usually it was just carrots, but the year they chose squash, the vines grew so large we had to take turns moving them in off the driveway. I though Moira would have decided to just get rid of the thing, but at the girls’ insistence, it stayed and we had 23 acorn squash that year. Moira and I both had to get a little creative with our cooking in the months that followed.
The road was wet as I passed the first engine. Faded yellow hoses ran up the hill. I had one last hopeful thought that it might be a grassfire in the neighbor’s yard, but by the time I passed the second engine, I knew it was our place. The trees had grown up, and the tire swing had been cut down, but there was no mistaking where those hoses were leading. I squinted thought the smoke. Firefighters in yellow helmets rushed up the driveway, but not a trace of blue siding was visible though the flames. Only the shell of the house remained, the bay window had been smashed and the kitchen walls had already collapsed. They sprayed water into our old bedroom as the heavy black smoke turned to white.
I hit the brakes inches away from the bumper of a blue sedan. The traffic had snarled beyond the last engine as another officer directed cars back into the right lane. I looked back every few seconds in the rearview mirror until I could no longer see the flashing lights. I thought of the night we first moved in with barely more than a few crates of records and Moira’s old lobster trap coffee table. We got our first set of keys in the middle of a hurricane after the power had gone out. Moira and I bought Chinese takeout from the place two streets over. We ate on the carpet, staining it with blotches of cherry-pink sauce in the dark. We left everything in the U-Haul that night save for a few blankets, and slept on the living room floor as best we could through the thunder and lightning. Back then our furniture consisted mostly of plywood on crates, but that eventually gave way to Ikea self-assembly models, and finally that oak dining set from Sears. The table, the one with the removable leaf, still sat in our current dining room until just last June.
I missed the exit ramp. I found myself thinking of the girls’ first steps, their first words, the penciled in height marks along the bathroom molding. Of course the current owners had probably painted over that long ago. I hoped they were all right, the current owners. Perhaps Mrs. Kilty would help them out and take them in for a while. She always had a way of knowing when we needed a little help, babysitting when our oldest was in the hospital, or cooking us meals after my mother passed away. She would have been in her sixties back then, though, and I heard her husband had a heart attack only a few years after we left.
Two number sevens with a chow mien add-on. Extra sauce,” I said to the woman at the counter. The Chinese horoscope placemats and framed pictures of Shanghai hadn’t changed since the eighties. She handed the order to me in a logoed plastic bag and I headed for home. Our home now was a condo downtown that we moved in to last year after our youngest got married. It was stark white; we never got around to painting. Moira used to be obsessed with the wall color in our other houses, changing it every year. At one point, in our first home, the hall was about seven different colors painted in small sections so she could get a better idea of how it might look in blue, or pink, or eggshell, or lavender. We had to give away a lot of our artwork when we downsized, though we kept a lot of the girls’ keepsakes in memory boxes. Moira got the idea from some Internet website for empty nesters.
I parked the car and took the elevator up to the eleventh. I wasn’t sure if I should tell Moira about the fire or not. I walked down the beige hallway with its identical doors in identical colors and stopped at the last one on the left. I put the key in the lock, noticing the scratch in the gold façade. I had meant to fix that ever since I had chipped it after our anniversary dinner. I think we both had a bit too much to drink that night. Inside, I looked at our unmarked walls, our brand new loveseat, and our perfectly smooth countertops. I hung my coat on the rack, the one with the broken arm and relished in its defect. Toilets clogged with action figures and crayon covered wallpaper seemed like bliss looking back now.
When I walked into the living room, Moira was on the couch watching TV. She hadn’t looked up until now, eyeing the bag in my left hand. Without saying a word, she flicked off the news and slid down to the floor. She patted the carpet beside her. One by one, I removed the Chinese takeout boxes from their plastic bag and set them on the carpet. I pulled apart a set of disposable chopsticks and offered them to her. Moira clumsily stabbed at a chicken ball, dropping it onto the floor as it escaped from her wooden skewer. She looked for my reaction as I set out the napkins. The deep fried morsel rolled across our white carpet, crashing into two complimentary fortune cookies. Neither of us picked it up. The silence was broken by our laughter, as we stared at the cherry-pink stain.
THE END
Author Bio: John Kucera was educated at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in New Reader Magazine, The Sandy River Review, Connections Magazine and Friends Journal. He lives in Arizona, where he writes and teaches.