Join The Club By Roy Dorman

The light turned green, but the car in front of me didn’t move.  Probably texting, I thought, so I waited a second before giving a short, polite “Let’s go” tap in the horn.  When the car still didn’t move, the car behind me backed up a bit and pulled around me into the oncoming traffic lane, which had cleared by this time.  Car trouble?  With a sigh, I put on my emergency flashers and got out of my car.

I was not prepared for what I saw when I got to the window of the misbehaving vehicle.  A woman not much older than me had both hands on the wheel and was staring straight ahead.  She didn’t turn to acknowledge me as I came up to her window.

The window was down, and after doing that clearing of the throat thing people use to announce their presence, I said quietly, so as not to startle her, “Is there a problem?  Something wrong with your car?”

She continued to stare straight ahead as if she hadn’t heard me.

“If it’s stalled, I might–” but before I could finish, she slowly turned her head and gave me a look that told me, yes, there was a problem.

“I just saw my ex-husband,” she whispered as if she were afraid someone other than me might hear her; afraid he might hear her.

“I’m divorced myself,” I said with a lightness I didn’t really feel.  “It can be upsetting running into your ex unexpectedly. Creepy even.”

At that, she allowed herself a little smile.

“Thank you for that,” she said.  “He was an awful man.  But I think I’m ready to move on now.  Thank you, again, for your understanding . . . and for inviting me into the group.”

© 2014 Roy Dorman

Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for almost 60 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer. He has had poetry and flash fiction published recently in Burningword Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, The Screech Owl, and Lake City Lights, an online literary site at which he is now the submissions editor.

Comments are closed.