The shortcut

We were late. We're always late. We were late today because Mom couldn't find her bag and my brother couldn't find his left shoe. I told Mom to forget about the bag, since she doesn't keep anything in there that she ever needs, she just likes carrying around a bag, because it settles her, I guess. Settles? Meaning it makes her feel calm; she likes it. I mean, some of the time she'll have a pair of glasses in there or a roll of film or some gum, but most of the time it's empty and she looks absolutely ridiculous carrying this big empty bag around town. And it's clearly empty--it's shriveled up like an old dying liver, like she's carrying an old dying liver around her shoulder. And every once in a while she'll check it, just to make sure it's still empty, I guess, to make sure nothing fell into it. But she finally found the bag and my brother's left shoe was inside (like I said, she has stuff in there some of the time), so we were off, though by this time we were like fifteen or twenty minutes late.

"Stay calm," Mom said, because I was pretty upset about the lateness, and also my brother was kicking my seat and smoking out the window. I was calm, though, 'cause I knew a shortcut.

Because of certain quirks like poor suburban planning, one-way streets, etc., the "official route" calls for a lot of zig-zagging. But if you drive up a couple driveways and through a few yards, you can totally cut out the zig-zagging and jump right onto the highway in no time. It cuts at least 180 seconds off your commute, it's wonderful. You have to take the driveway at 24 Spencer Street, but I almost missed it with all the kicking going on behind me, so I had to jump the curb and kind of maneuver around the yard.

"Here we go," Mom said. She doesn't like the shortcut. Or, this might've actually been the first time I ever took her on the shortcut, because I knew she'd hate it, I don't remember.

I cut hard right to zip around the first house, then it's pretty much a straight diagonal through a couple other yards right to the street I was aiming for. I had to dodge a few people and balls and swingsets, and such, but I've taken the shortcut so many times I'm an old pro at it. In a lot of the soggier yards, there are muddy tire tracks from where I've driven before. People recognize me by now, I think, but they don't wave.

Except today I got to the next-to-last yard and these people built a fence, so I couldn't get into the last driveway and back out into the street. A big wooden fence! I was making beautiful time, and now I had this fence to deal with (I nearly crashed right into it). I didn't have a lot of time to figure out what to do (we were quite late) and I could see there was no way around this fence, so I didn't really have a choice but to turn around to the beginning of the shortcut and go back the long way, zig-zagging through all those one-way streets. I went in reverse about half the way before I got to a nice, spacious yard that allowed me the space I needed to turn around.

We were just about back on the street, back at the first house, when I saw this crying little girl and her mother standing over her, trying to figure out what was the matter. I was just going to drive around them (they were in the yard by their front walkway), but then the little girl saw my car and stopped crying and frowned and just looked very angry generally and pointed right at me and said "him." Not at the car, mind you, but she pointed right at me, through the glass.

The mother glared at me then walked off, inside. She was secondary by this point, anyway.

This girl kept glaring at me as I crept past, so I figured I needed to get out and figure out what had gotten her so ticked off. Because what had I done? To her? Nothing. I put the car in park and got out. Mom said "what's happening?" but I just ignored her.

"Hey there," I said, in semi-babytalk, bending at the waist so as to get closer to eye-level with this little girl, who was probably like three or four, in that ballpark. "Somethin' wrong?" She just pouted and folded her arms.

She had been playing with a little pail, I saw. "Wha'cha got there?" I asked. I kicked at the pail. She kept frowning.

A little white kitten came over and rubbed up against her. This made her smile; she liked that kitten. "It's a little kitten," I said. I scratched the kitten a little bit on the top of its head and it arched its back and purred and walked over to me and rubbed up against my leg now. The little girl was starting to warm to me, I could tell by the way she watched me and that kitten. "Hey there, little kitty, what's your name?" The kitten meowed and the little girl smiled.

Ma hit the inside of the window with her bag. She was anxious to get going, I figured, and also I hadn't rolled down the window for her when I got out. Satisfied that the little-girl situation had been taken care of, I walked up the driveway and lit a cigarette and looked across the yards, trying to see if there was another new shortcut available to me, one that wasn't impeded by fencing. But Ma kept hitting the inside of the window with her bag and when I turned around to tell her to take it the heck easy already I was coming, I saw my brother and a fox in the street, just kind of sizing each other up, and then like a split second after I looked my brother hauled off and punched the fox right in the face.

Well the fox didn't like that, as you might imagine. It jumped right up on him like it was trying to give him a hug, except it was scratching at him and tearing at his old red varsity jacket from high school. He loved that jacket (my brother, not the fox, though the fox seemed pretty fixated on it, so maybe he liked it too). The fox quickly overpowered him and my brother started screaming and Ma was whacking at the inside of her window with real panic now, so I thought, well now what am I going to have to do.

"Throw the kitten at him!" I shouted to myself, right when I had the idea. That's the only thing I could figure--this fox was clearly pretty angry at my brother and wasn't going to let up unless he had a compelling reason: namely, a delicious kitten tossed into the middle of the street for easy pickins. I regretted saying it out loud, though, because that's how the little girl heard my idea and she was none too happy about it, obviously. The kitten was sitting in the girls lap now, eyes closed, flipping its tail back and forth. I wanted to tell her, look, this is cat vs. human now and human always wins in that equation, and besides I can get you a new cat in like fifteen minutes from the pet store (twelve if I used the shortcut) but I have but one brother etc. but the little girl wasn't putting up a stink about it anyway. She just looked at me frowning, eyebrows creased, like she was saying "go ahead." Not like, "go ahead, do what you have to do, I understand the difficult situation you are in and support you"-like, and not like "well you're going to do it anyway, so just go ahead, asshole"-like, but more like "go ahead I fucking dare you." It was a threat. What could the girl do to me? I don't know. Nothing, probably, unless she had a knife on her, which three-year-olds rarely do.

My brother was on the ground by this point, just covering his face and yelling, while I sized up the little girl and her little white kitten. My mom kept whacking on the inside of her window with her bag. My brother kept screaming and my mom kept whacking, even as I stood there, and even the fox stopped attacking and turned its head to watch me, to see what I was going to decide about that kitten.