Driving Under the Influence

Corinne O’Shaughnessy

Word Count 896

“Mom, we’ve been drinking too much. If I send an Uber for you, can you drive us home in my car?” my older son Seamus asked. I was just about to click off the TV and head to bed when my phone rang.

Why Seamus had not anticipated drinking too much at an Irish wedding was not for me to harp on, though it was my first thought. My husband Jimmy and I had raised both our boys with the directive that drunk driving is never an option. It was one of our directives they actually seemed to hear.

“Of course,” I answered. It was close to midnight, I was already in my pajamas, and they were at Bear Mountain an hour away. 

My sons and daughter-in-law were enjoying the wedding of their cousin, who had been my nephew for 23 years until I divorced Jimmy and ceased being Aunt Corinne or Sister- or Daughter-in-Law Corinne and became…Jimmy’s Ex-wife.  

Jimmy’s struggle with addiction had undone us. Then it completely undid him. He passed away a year before this cousin’s wedding. After Jimmy’s funeral, my former relatives said kind things to me. Said they understood my leaving him. Wondered how I’d hung in there so long. But invitations to family events remained addressed to my sons only.

I wrapped a long, thick sweater over my pajamas and stood on the sidewalk awaiting Ahmed, my Uber driver, to take me on the hour-long ride north of the city. The drive up the Palisades Parkway was quiet and smooth and I watched as Ahmed consulted the GPS carefully. The sky was dark in a way one forgets when living in a city. I kept my eyes ready for a sudden deer so I could shout a warning, figuring Ahmed probably had little experience with country driving.

The snaking tail lights pulled my thoughts to the last wedding I’d been to. It had been our nephew Sean’s marriage to another man, the first wedding our young teenage boys had gone to. 

Jimmy drove, his suit jacket carefully hung on a hanger in the way back, the boys in slacks, polished shoes and loosened ties, and me in a dress with heels. Tension mounted as we got lost looking for the venue. I was reading the MapQuest print out, but not quickly enough to avoid missing turns. We circled around and found the entrance and pulled into a parking space. Outside our van, we donned jackets and straightened ties and tightened and adjusted shoes, and then entered the hall as a family. I was so proud the celebration was like any other marriage between two people in love, full of hope and promise. 

 The exit for Bear Mountain appeared and Ahmed veered to the right, the road curving slightly, then meandering into a deserted parking lot surrounded by dark, skeletal pine trees outlined in wispy-covered moonlight.

“Oh God, this is where he offs me,” I thought as he slowed to a crawl. I suddenly regretted my pajamas. If I were offed, my pajamas seemed to announce something nefarious and deserving. Ahmed’s focus darted between the GPS, the black asphalt, the skeletal trees, and then, our eyes met briefly. 

“Oh God, this is where she offs me,” he was clearly thinking. Fortunately, he found his way out of the parking lot, turned right into what looked like a driveway, but somehow ended up in front of the Bear Mountain Inn. 

As soon as the car door clicked shut, Ahmed sped away. I stood in front of the entrance and texted Seamus, I’m here.

A few minutes passed before the reply, Come upstairs. Mary wants to say Hi.

Mary was Jimmy’s sister, mother of the groom.

That’s ok, I texted back. Please come down.

Carolyn and Bob want to say Hi, too. More of my sons’ aunts and uncles, the former in-laws I had raised my sons with.

No thank you, Seamus, it’s cold, please come down.

I swayed from side to side trying to ward off the chill. 

Finally, my sons and daughter-in-law appeared flanked by some of my former relatives who had been drinking for hours. I was warmly and wobbly welcomed. Hugged. “You’re family!” one sister-in-law proclaimed. “La familia!” She threw her arms in the air and danced a few steps forward and back as she repeated, “La familia!” I pulled my sweater tight around my chest, and smiled. Laughed a bit. The speed of my promotion from taxi driver to “la familia” was amusing, and heart wrenching. If they even remembered, I knew I’d be back to taxi driver as soon as their eyes throbbed opened in the morning.  

When I married Jimmy, his family had become mine. They weren’t in addition to my own, because I’d never had a functioning biological one. When I made the gut-wrenching decision to leave him, it didn’t occur to me, I’d also be cast out of my borrowed family. Looking back, I’m glad I hadn’t realized it. If I had, I might have chosen to remain with the perpetual dull ache of loving someone who couldn’t quite love me back. But for me, all the chest crushing pain and loneliness eventually forged a path to feeling joy and passion again.  Two emotions I’d longed for for years.             

Corinne is a retired New York City public school literacy teacher. Her essays have appeared here and in HerStry.com, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and reideasjournal.com. She also recently participated in Read650.org's presentation of Haunted, true tales of the macabre. Her short fiction has been published in SurvivorLit.org and BookofMatchesLit.org. She currently lives in Mexico where she finds people so much more gracious.