The Way of Flight

Erika flees south. But not for Palm Springs, that oasis of green golf courses where plump Northwestern snowbirds strut and old ladies ferry pomeranians about in baby strollers. It’s too… fake. No, she seeks the authentic California experience; the mythic, redemptive spirit of California. The Kerouac sort of San Fran, the Fante flavour LA. Or perhaps Santa Cruz, where polite, enlightened folk in moccasins stroll forest trails, chatting about the Tao and Kundalini Yoga.

She thinks about this as she sits in stale Seattle traffic. Clouds cling to the sky like dead moss. A few hours earlier, she awoke in the single bed of her old childhood room, dim even with the curtains open. Downstairs, cold porridge sat on the stove.

“Eat before you go,” her mother said. “I’ll warm it up.”

As Erika ate, her mother tried again: “You’ve only been home a month.”

“It was a mistake,” she answered.

“Leaving won’t make you feel better. Maybe if you saw Doctor Karlsson again, you’d --”

“No!” Erika’s voice squeaked like a spoiled child’s.

In Olympia, she leaves I-5 for Highway 101, which runs along the coast, quiet and curvy. She plays peek-a-boo with the ocean. Beneath the hum of wind and distant gull calls, the morning’s conversation beats like a broken record in a far-off room. Leaving won’t make you feel.… Erika flicks on the radio and finds a soft rock station. She isn’t sick -- she knows that much. She’s just been… unhealthy.

At a gas station south of a lazy little town called Lincoln City, she fills up, though her gauge shows half a tank left. Her gaze through the back window falls on a bruised banana lying next to rumpled grocery bags full of her clothes, books, and herbal tea collection. On a brown lawn beside the highway, she unravels the banana from the bottom before biting off and spitting out the black bits. A dense canopy of barren branches obscure any view of the ocean, but there’s a gap farther along. Erika saunters over and, sure enough: Peek-a-boo, Peaceful. Out over the water a cluster of clouds break apart. One thin sunbeam stumbles down to the water.