The Tunnel

The car rolled gently on its axis as we drove through the urban curves of the I-90 highway. I was driving with only my left hand. My right hand was interlocked with Ashley’s, our hands hovering over the parking brake. Her hand was trembling slightly in my own.

Ashley drew in a shallow, hesitant breath, then spit it out, “I just don’t understand why you won’t just think about what we have left—”

“Stop,” I was almost yelling.

“We can forget about everything. Start over. I know we can, because I love you,” she was almost crying.

The words rolled off my tongue mechanically, “I love you, too.”

It was raining, the constant pattering on the hollow chassis of the station wagon drowning out the temporary silences between Ashley’s words, words that came crashing down like rain or hail or lightning.

“We can work with what we’ve got. Will you just give us a chance?” Desperate hope hung to her words. What we had left would never be enough, not enough to build on what this prolonged streak of bad luck had left us. Everything real had already been lost. Ashley was hanging onto the tiny ghost of memories that was pulling us apart. Her increasingly far-fetched hope was the thunderclap that would make the rain pour down; her spirit would break in the immediate future where we would find ourselves alone.

She leaned forward, stretching expectantly towards me, narrowing the gap of silence between us. I said nothing. I was lost in my own thoughts. I pressed down on the throttle, speeding over wet concrete as raindrops attacked the windshield. The rain blurred my vision of the road between the rubbery swipes of the windshield wipers. The speed amplified the harassment of raindrops, assaulting my eyes and ears. The rain along with the noise of the engine blurred my focus on our conversation, on anything that had to do with us. I let myself get lost in the myriad of raindrops, allowing my memories of that fateful day to be washed off and wiped away.

“Baby, I need you. I need you so much,” She was pleading now. I felt my heart drop. Ahead, the Ted Williams Tunnel approached.

She inhaled quickly, about to speak, or maybe cry. I cut her off, unable to think about everything that has happened, everything we had already lost, “Look, it’s the tunnel. Hold your breath for good luck.”

She wiped at her eye. We both took in breaths rhythmically, it was a long tunnel that ran under the Boston Bay, any buildup of oxygen would help us, give us a chance at luck, if nothing else.

“Look at me,” she whispered without a waver in her voice.

I turned to my right, meeting her stare. There was a look of fierce, hopeless determination in her eyes. We descended into the tunnel like this, blind to the road ahead, gazing into each others eyes. In the moment of darkness between sunlight and the tunnel’s fluorescents, I turned forward, facing the road and the impending future. I heard her draw in a final breath. I could feel her attempting to take in as much of the moment as she could, to hold it indefinitely. If only we didn’t have to breathe, if only we could get oxygen, like a baby still in the womb, from a cord attaching us to our mothers. If only we could retreat into the waters of the womb, where breathing is unknown, where luck and fate have no meaning.

The first half of the tunnel was easy. However as we sat, holding our breath, the silence became all the louder without the pattering of rain, and without words exchanged between us like raindrops bouncing off the roof of the car.

For a while nothing changed or passed between us. Our bodies were still flooded with oxygen, our lungs had not yet begun to panic, and everything was calm. Time and everything in it seemed to be waiting, holding still. The two of us could have stayed together in a state like this. I gave her hand a squeeze.

Traffic slowed. It became harder for me to lose my thoughts in the descending speed of the road. Memories of good times past and alternate futures cut off assaulted my mind like a steady stream of raindrops.

A series of red brake lights flashed in front of me. I pulled my hand out of Ashley’s, gripping the steering wheel as the wet brakes screeched to a halt. Ashley pitched forward. We, along with the rest of traffic, had suddenly come to a complete stop. We continued holding our breaths.

I didn’t look, but I knew Ashley was still staring at me with that same look of desperate determination. I could feel the heat of her eyes just as I could feel the heat of exhaustion itching from deep within my lungs. The silence began to scream in a shrill pitch like the squeaking of worn brakes. The cars on the far lanes began to merge onto the shoulders.

As the cars parted in front of the station wagon, the scene emerged. A huge section of the ceiling had fallen on a gray sedan, crushing it.

Later I read that an unlucky lady had been killed by the falling bridge. The article said the infrastructure was still safely intact. I scoffed at that statement. How can they claim it is intact again when someone has died inside of it? In the title of the article, it said something about fate, or destiny, or some other bullshit.

Water from the Boston harbor was falling onto the giant hunk of steel and concrete, leaking onto the surrounding highway. A uniformed officer, with a face of someone who has seen too much fateful devastation, was waving cars to either side, his eyes dismissive of the traffic. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Ashley struggling to hold in her stale air. She was reliving it all over again. Here we were, deep in an underground tunnel, a body of drowning water above us, the structure falling apart in front of us, as we suffocated for the sake of luck. Fate had nothing to do with it.

The car in front of me went to the left, then my station wagon was directed to the right with a quick wave of a baton. In this strange moment, I no longer felt the need for air. I was no longer panicked, only numb to everything that had and was happening to us. Ahead, sunlight sought the depths of the tunnel. The exit to the uncovered road was visible, we were almost able to breathe again, our first lucky breaths in a long time. I accelerated.

But she had reached her physical limitations. Ashley burst in a rush of inhalation, gulping down huge breaths of air. She could not wait; the feeling of suffocation must have been too real. I turned to quickly looking at her. Her face was bluish red from exertion. The look was gone from her eyes.

She pushed out her words between short gasps for air, “We can— still be— a family.”

I continued to hold my breath, although now it seemed to be in vain. I was beginning to see lights in the corners of my vision. I sped up with traffic, gunning it to escape the tunnel. Ambulances shot by heading down into the tunnel. Their sirens flared and their lights screamed. It was all to familiar.

When we shot out of the tunnel, ascending into the street, the first thing I noticed was the rain had stopped. I let out my breath calmly, waiting for good luck. I calmly took in my first breath as I picked up speed and choose my words carefully, “I guess… I guess we’re not that lucky.”

The ascent towards the airport was silent. Nothing needed to be said. Without the raindrops, the silence seemed more serene, more patient. The whole scene was different from above the bay. There was no implicit pressure weighing down on us, neither water nor fate, nor falling concrete. The shipyards were an endless stretch of red cranes extracting cargo containers from the bellies of ships. Closer to the road were towering office buildings, their mirrored windows reflecting the dispersing clouds in the sky. I imagined the clouds looking at the buildings as well, seeing the reflection of shipyards, roads, water and the top of the station wagon.

There was always a plane ascending into the sky, or coming into land. There was never a break in the movement of people in and out of Logan. I would soon be one of these people, ascending into the sky, departing, looking down into the vast urban mixture of concrete, glass, people, and machines. I reached out for Ashley’s hand. Our fingers interlocked, we squeezed until knuckles turned red, and later white.