Expedition

The mobile homes are lined up facing the sea like docile mammoths.  By the wheels of one, a woman and a man sit in the sun, tanning and reading paperback novels with strong young couples embracing on the covers.  They spend their days sipping coffee from plastic mugs and going for walks on the beach and trying to fix the broken shade that hasn’t rolled out properly over the double windows for six months now.  In the evening when the sun sets, they sit inside and watch sitcoms on their satellite TV and cook macaroni and cheese.  One morning soon, they will pull up the stairs, crank in the broken shade, start up the motor and be off, slowly rolling down the paved street out to the highway, arguing over the map, gassing up at Texaco, squinting to keep out the sun and the dust, replenishing the macaroni and cheese supply at the Super.  When sadness creeps in, on seagulls’ wings, or with the earnest sweep of an elderly man’s piece of greasy newspaper across the windshield while they wait for the light to turn green, or with the receiving of the news over the scratchy telephone connection that their grandchild started to walk, they become testy with each other, bothered by all those microscopic habits formed together over the years.  Silently they will each retreat to their windows, watching the road roll by and wonder what it would have been like to marry someone else - not because they really wish it, but because they like how the fantasy is edited in surround-sound and Technicolor - with singing and dancing in every scene.  But for now, they are here, on a hot afternoon, reading pulp novels.  When it cools, they plan to fix the broken shade.  Meanwhile, they turn to each other and say, "We're so lucky," and peck at each other's lips, two, three times, as their skin turns red in the blazing sun of another town whose name they have to mention several times a day, least they forget where they are parked.