Commuter Belt

Commuter Belt

The motorway glistens in the pre-dawn, a beautiful black worm sleeking and sliming its way across the green peripheries, shooting offspring into the cemented hinterlands as it twines towards the city. The sun hiccups on an unseen horizon: it shifts, becomes pensive, a thick lazy trickle of molten tar, then condenses and cools under the weight of the clouds, the futility of its form, the imperfect nature of its design. A Medusian quality takes hold; the road becomes paralyzed by its own reflection in the myriad rear-view mirrors of the multiplying cars and their divided passengers. In the central reservation, beneath the signpost for Exit 22, a mare and foul graze serenely on dew-glazed saplings, oblivious to the contractions of traffic.

The woman in the white Peugeot heaves an internal sigh as the speedometer plunges. Her life, she thinks, is like one of these long, unavoidable traffic jams, constantly in slow motion. Occasionally, there is a sense of things speeding up, the suggestion of a soon-to-be-reached destination, but inevitably the next tailback is just around the corner and as her life inches along, her youth evaporates into the noxious fumes; she has missed all the exits, and nothing lies ahead but a series of soulless semaphored roundabouts, a viciously regulated circle from which there is no breaking free. Thoughts clump up around her like the jam of cars: the blueness of a vase in her grandmother’s house, Treasa’s perfect nails. Poor Maria. Martha proudly showing off her photo album, the aluminium-flavoured instant coffee at The Corner Bar. Seamus, laughing at another of his own bad jokes… Seamus. Looking out the window, wanting her insignificance to be swallowed up in the endless black bristle of tarmac.

The man in the dark blue Seat is drumming his fingers in time with the music. Music-lite. Politics-lite. Reality-lite. Early morning radio. On the other side of the world, people sleep. Life speeds by, he is content to take his foot off the accelerator as he hits the backlog, visibly relaxes, shifts down a gear. He enjoys the commute, the ritual of it, the sense of slow arrival. He runs through the day’s schedule, and finds it is much the same as any other day. He likes that his life is mapped out, with all the exits clearly signposted. He sneaks glances at the surrounding cars, wondering what kind of worlds their drivers are encapsulated in. Now and then, he tries to lock eyes with someone, but it is hard to pierce through all that metal and glass and rubber. He imagines himself as others see him, likes what he sees, hides deeper what he doesn’t. Darker thoughts beat around him like the wings of tiny moths: he swats them away.

The woman in the Peugeot blinks at the horses, incongruously corporeal on this somnambulant road. Their heads are nuzzled low, tails synchronized, swishing at imaginary flies. Something tugs: not absence exactly, but the emptiness where absence should be. A void.

‘It’s just not… natural.’ Her mother, eyes brimming, ‘I mean, what if you meet someone? Change your mind? You’re so young, darling. What’s wrong with you?’.

When she first met Seamus - years back, not long after the operation - she told him everything, what she hadn’t been able to tell her mother. He understood. She could see that he was drawn to tragedy, but it didn’t matter. She was in love. At Christmas, a colleague had given her an orchid; it sat on her desk for the best part of a month, until someone had the compassion to remove it (the cleaner? Or her Secret Santa?). She had willed it to suffer, seen each wilting petal, each browning stalk, as a triumph. When the secretary had offered to water it, she declined, with no explanation. She had mentioned it one night, suddenly ashamed, seeking absolution. ‘So water it, then,’ Seamus said, then lower, ‘what the fuck is wrong with you, anyway.’ He had gotten up, walked out of the room.

The man in the Seat sees the horses too. He is struck by the bond between them, tangible as the small hot clouds that form as they exhale, rising to mingle with the exhaust fumes and the endless grey sky. They look fragile but peaceful on their small green island. They, eat, they sleep, they love. He thinks of Sally, the children. Schooldays and bedtime stories, Saturdays and swimming lessons, lazy Sunday mornings. Routine is what binds them together, to each other. They need him, of course they do. He provides. Why had she been crying? The day had been like any other; there was a party, at Ron’s. The steaks were overdone. The children clung to her like wasps as she drifted out to the garden. Later she tried to explain:

‘You’ve never changed.’

He is the same person she married. He wonders what it would be like to be beaten to death by butterflies.

The Seat and the Peugeot are side by side, she in the slow lane, he in the fast lane, parallel versions of carbon-fibre souls. The cars behind flash their lights: things are moving again. Exit 22 looms hard on the right-hand shoulder. The Seat indicates, smiles a perfunctory smile as a woman in a white car allows him through. They each do a slow semi-wave, the motorist’s salute. He branches off smoothly, accelerating into the asphalt horizon, watching in the mirror as the horses recede into the distance. The woman in the Peugeot continues on, deeper into the hungry city, trying to forget the mare and her foul. She concentrates instead on the road she now traverses: how it unites, how it splits the country in two, forever connecting, disconnecting; a thousand lives, fragmented; a million waking dreams, crushed into the tar and stones.