The Great Disillusionment in a Cocoon

             
Three hundred miles is quite a distance to travel with only a brief argument over the worth of the Shenandoah valley in the Civil War to occupy the time. We pushed the needle past one-hundred miles per hour to help pass the time. It only took us three and a half hours to get from Salinas and Monterey to Santa Barbara and Ventura. Roughly three hundred miles of highway 101 that goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The Pacific Ocean was a sea of glare hit by the lowering sun. The road was a curving bending strip of solitude and tranquility to be shared with millions of Californians and not more than one cop per every one hundred miles to patrol it. Each traveler set in his or her own cocoon of Californian refuge that is his or her car. Even the thought that each mile traveled put another cough of toxic gas in the polluted Californian air to destroy the beauty didn’t kill the motif of the beach side drive. The surfers were each a playful seal running in the waves, orchestrating the show of the sea. The waves seemed to obey their every command turning and rolling inwards bringing them closer and closer to me as the car sped further and further away. The sun’s rays warmed the soft leather of my seat and the palm trees waved hopeful greetings. California wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the constant clash of natural beauty with man-made destruction.
         
“It’s not that I’m afraid of being alone, I’m in love.” She said but I didn’t believe her. Kids don’t fall in love, they get enamored by the first real thing they see when they step outside the doors of their school.
         
“It’s not that I’m afraid of being alone.” She repeated herself after some disbelieving silence had passed in the car.          
         
“I heard you the first time.”
         
“I’m sorry, the music’s just so loud and the way you were looking off I didn’t think you did. I’m sorry.”
         
Nothing makes me angrier than when people assume you didn’t hear just because you don’t make any affirming noise or statement.
         
“Forget it, I’ll come, I’ll go to the damn thing.” I said just because I felt how uncomfortable she was getting sitting next to me.
         
“You’re still mad about that whole Johnny thing aren’t you?”
         
“No I liked Johnny, I’m mad about this new Greg thing.”
         
“Greg’s really very nice, you just don’t know him.”
         
“Just shut up.”
         
“Well you’re being very rude today. Is this about the Shenandoah thing? Look I’m just saying a lot of historians believe that it was the key to the south. I’m not saying the Confederacy would have won for sure if they’d hung onto it. This is about the Shenandoah thing isn’t it?” She asked suddenly.
         
“What the hell is ever about the Shenandoah valley? This is about nothing, just forget it.” I said staring straight at the sun that was about two and a half hours away from setting.
         
The Shenandoah valley is in north-western Virginia, or somewhere around that area, it was a fertile rich farmland that the Confederacy had hung onto for quite some time during the American Civil War. Stonewall Jackson had become quite legendary while fighting there, it was kind of a perfect example of what the Confederacy had been fighting for, plenty of rural farms based around poor white families with a few rich white families with plantations and slaves. The Shenandoah valley wasn’t even worth arguing over, but it was easier to argue about this than about her new fiancée, so we gave this obscure valley a shot as a conversational piece. She had taken a class on Civil War tactics and thought she could have won the war for the South if she had been given command of a division one hundred and sixty years ago.
         
“Christ, why the hell would anything be about the Shenandoah valley? This isn’t about history, it’s about…” I stopped before I said what it was really about. “It’s about nothing.”
         
“You’re trying to be my big brother, give it up. We’re hardly even related, technically we could get married if we wanted to. We’re not even family through the eyes of law.”
         
“I don’t have to be your brother to know a bad idea when I see one.”
         
“Aunt Andi likes Greg.”
         
“My mother would like anyone who you said was nice, that’s hardly a point in your favor. Besides what right have you to call her aunt if we’re not even related?” That was a low blow, telling me we weren’t related. We were something like third or forth cousins, I don’t know which, but we’d always treated each other like first cousins.
         
“What are those big ships out there?” This question only proved our family ties, it’s a favorite art of women in our family to change the subject when arguments get personal.
         
“They’re not ships, they’re oil rigs. They get all the oil out from under the ocean.” I said flatly, a little angry that she would cut off the argument so quickly.
         
“Would you rather be driving?” She said very quickly after I answered her first diversionary question. Digression is an art.
         
“No, I like staring at the sun, it’s hard to do it while driving.”
         
“Safety was never a priority of yours.”
         
I didn’t respond to her, she was just trying to put my mind as far away from where it was, I don’t like people trying to manipulate my mind. I started whistling along with the tune of the song playing on the radio because it always annoyed her when I did that.
         
“If they had thought the song needed back-up whistling they would have added it.”
         
I kept on whistling anyways.
         
I wished there had been someone else in the car with us, I was putting on a good show, my whistling was perfectly on tune and I didn’t miss a single note. I’m always a better whistler when there’s no one, or just someone who doesn’t want to hear me, around. I could have made a CD of me whistling while alone and it would have become an instant classic in a week. A CD of me whistling in front of an audience would just be a joke. A man who once lived near my mother when she was a little girl made good money whistling in movies and songs, it was his only job, whistling. It was back in the fifties and sixties and practically any movie where there was some actor whistling it was really this man doing it. The actor would just put his lips together and make funny facial expression when he was supposed to be whistling and later on in editing they would sync up his funny facial expressions with this man’s whistling. He did all sorts of whistling in musicals and things like that.
         
The beach was gold and the water was made up of tiny dark sapphires and diamonds. Each bug that smashed against the windshield was a carrier of a deadly disease and we were doing a great service to mankind in killing them. The smog in the south was concentrated progress. There was not a single death in the entire world while we were driving home. Somewhere kids were joyfully playing tag in a school playground on a recess that would never end.
         
“Tomorrow will you come with us to get a Christmas tree, your grandmother already asked me along.” She said cautiously after prolonged silence.
         
“The tree will be half dead before Christmas eve.”
         
“No it won’t.”
         
“I’m against the ruthless slaughter of helpless Christmas trees.”
         
“You’re impossible.” She said with the emphasis of an added ten miles per hour on the speedometer.
         
“I’ll come.”
         
“Who’s your favorite Civil War general?” She said randomly.
         
“Oh, I love them all so dearly, I can’t possibly choose.” I replied sarcastically.
         
“Please be nice.”
         
“I’ve been nice for so long. I’ve been civil and courteous for so long that it makes me sick. It makes me sick to the point where I’d like to put a cigarette out on the face of humanity and society. However, Stonewall Jackson is my favorite.”
         
“Everyone chooses him. How about someone else.” She was nice enough to ignore my first comments.
         
“Reynolds, John Reynolds.”
         
“Which one was he?” She hadn’t had the advantages of an early fascination with the Civil War and she was trying desperately to make up for it.
         
“He was the one whose last words at Gettysburg were, ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this range.’”
         
“And then he was shot? Talk about irony.”
         
“Let’s not, that’s such a depressing subject.”
         
There is not a cloud in the sky world-over. Tomorrow they will cure cancer and AIDS. They’ve found that a three-day work week is much more efficient and everyone makes more money off of the new work week. Everyone is home for the holidays. People marry for love and not for fear of being alone.
         
“How is your girlfriend?”
         
“We’re engaged.” She hates my girlfriend.
         
“Really?”
         
“Honestly.” I lie and she’s convinced.
         
“I don’t mean to pry but, is she really anorexic?”
         
“Well she must be, these days you’re either that or morbidly obese. I don’t think she’s obese so I guess she must be anorexic.”
         
“How can you talk about your girlfriend like that?”
         
“Because I’m not blind to everything.”
         
“Neither am I!” She protested loudly hurting my ears as her indignation rang in our little Californian cocoon.
         
“Never said you were, my little cousin.” It was implied however, again she was kind enough not to note this.
         
This day was so productive that everyone in the world got and deserved the Nobel Prize. This day was when the world finally became perfect in all ways as viewed from a cocoon driving in the heart of human imperfection. There is no more pain for anyone. And tomorrow a beautiful race of super humans will spring forth from their isolated cocoons to join with the gods together way up in the sky.
         
“The waves are breaking out on the reef.” I said aloud to myself.
         
“Looks like a good day to surf.”
         
“How would you know, you’ve never surfed in your life.”
         
“Oh, Jesus, shut up.” She said finally fed up with me, but still keeping her eyes concentrated on the winding road ahead.
         
“Okay.” I was content because now I had my precious silence again.
         
The Shenandoah valley was about as useful to the Confederacy as a bullet proof vest is to a man strapped to a nuclear bomb. The Shenandoah valley couldn’t pull the weight of the entire Confederacy against the mighty industrialized North. Maybe if the Shenandoah had been a valley of Industry it might have been more useful, but it wasn’t. The Shenandoah wasn’t even worth anything during the Civil War, it’s worth even less now.
         
The drive was a precisely choreographed ballet, with cars simultaneously switching lanes and dancing around one another. Everyone speaks the same language, everybody lives in the same nation and cocoons have been made illegal. The man next to us in a silver roadster hasn’t been informed of the change because he is picking his nose thinking no one can see him. Or maybe he has but he just likes to share every aspect of his life with everyone else. Nobody is crying anymore.
         
“I think Greg can really grow on you if you give him half a chance.”
         
“Greg is a phony.”
         
“Now, no he’s not, he just genuinely likes all of you guys. He really does like you a lot. He’s not at all a phony, he just wants to make everyone happy. He’s sincerely a good guy.”
         
“I wish you wouldn’t marry him.”
         
“Well, who else would I marry?”
         
“I liked Johnny.”
         
“Johnny had an alcohol problem.” She said patiently.
         
“Johnny had a personality.”
         
“So does Greg.” She insisted.
         
“I mean Johnny had an original one. Greg has pieced together his personality from every successful man he’s ever met.”
         
“Can’t we just drop it and enjoy the scenery.” She pleaded her hands tight on the steering wheel.
         
“I’d love to drop it for the rest of my life.”
         
“Then, that’s just what we’ll do. Well never speak of Greg again.”
         
“I think our relationship as family members is due for a major comeback.”
         
“Yes. We’ll be just like first cousins again.”
         
“We’ll be like brother and sister.” I corrected her already feeling better.
         
“No, not that close. If we get that close then we’ll always be talking about Greg. Just like first cousins.”
         
“I wish we were kids again.”
         
“Everyone wishes that at some point in their life.” She said with empathy.
         
“Not me I’ll never wish that. Wishes never come true, I’ll pray that we’ll be kids again.” I had even less faith in prayer, though.
         
Somewhere there are kids playing a limited game of tag on their recess and somewhere else there are people marrying for fear of being alone. But never again. Loneliness no longer exists. Just looking out the window can convince you of this. There is no loneliness in the long stretching beach and winding highway full of day-trippers. For just this one day at least everyone has a friend to go to the beach with.
         
“Ooh! Are those islands out there?”
         
“They’re the Channel Islands.”
         
Soft low silvery fog defies the sunny warm day and partially veils the almost purple hued islands miles off shore. The natives that once lived there and were chased off have returned in their tree-trunk canoes and they are hunting the seal and dolphins through the undulating waves once again. They’ve rebuilt the villages and forgotten the modern civilization that pours black smoke out into the sea. The black smoke has gone away. The highway disappears and so do all the cars, we disappear and they’re happy out in the waves fishing and hunting.
         
“Do people live out there?”
         
“No, it’s a national park and nobody lives out there. Tribes of Indians used to, a long time ago. The Spanish and Russian sailors that went up and down the coast killed all the seals and whales and the Indians had to leave.”
         
“How long ago?”
         
“Three hundred or more years ago. Those who lived got sent to one of the missions.”
         
“How much farther is it to Aunt Andi’s house.”
         
“Forty-five minutes.”
         
“Oh, your mother is just going to be so happy to know we’ve patched everything up, that’s all you really need to make things better, a long car ride to talk everything over.”
         
Her words only reminded me of why we’d needed to patch things up in the first place, it put a bitter taste in my mouth. And I had nearly been able to forget it, but I felt the tearing inside of my stomach again, the hopeless helpless bitterness eating away at my insides from knowing what this Greg guy was up to and being unable to stop it. I couldn’t stand the thought of her marrying that son of a bitch. It made me physically sick when I thought about it, she was so innocent and trusting and he was going to absolutely destroy her, in time. Johnny may have been an alcoholic but he meant well.
         
“We haven’t patched anything up, we’re just ignoring the hole.” I told her, this must have put a similar bitter taste into her mouth because the needle on the speedometer jumped quickly again after settling back to a safe seventy-five.
         
“You can’t ever let anything stand can you? You just have to keep on picking at a tiny scratch until it becomes a wound. What disgusting thoughts you have to think to turn this marriage into what you’re making it out to be.” She wasn’t crying but I got the feeling she was going to.
         
There is no more hunger. There is no more cold, no more hot, everywhere it’s seventy-five degrees and beautiful, just like it is on the southern coast of California. There is so much beauty in the world. There is so much to die for and still no reason to die. Perfection is not far off. Every last person we pass on the highway is content, every person is going home, finally. The sun’s rays are cleaning everything, making the dirt pure. The wheels rolling under the car are rocking us to sleep and the wind rushing by is signing us a lullaby.
         
“You could do better than Greg.”
         
“Why do you talk like that? I love him.”
         
“What do you know about that? You loved Johnny too, remember, but you didn’t marry him.”
         
“Johnny was different.”
         
“I’m sick of that. I’m sick of you, to be perfectly honest. Everything’s different when you look at it like that. We just keep on doing what’s wrong and then saying later on, oh well that was different. Nothing’s different. If you’re marrying for love and you loved Johnny then you should have married him, but you’re not marrying for love. You’re marrying Greg because he’s filthy rich. It’s not different, the only thing that’s different is the reason you’re giving for marrying Greg and the real reason you’re doing it. You’re going to be a trophy wife. He’ll show you off to all the neighbors, it doesn’t matter what you are, just how you look.”
         
“It’s not true.” She said, but it was because she’d started to cry.
         
“You loved Johnny long before you ever even met Greg, even if you did at some point love both of them why didn’t you marry Johnny when he was the only one you loved. What were you holding out for?”
         
“He never proposed.” She was trying to see the yellow and white lines through the tears.
         
“He proposed last fall and you turned him down.” I knew more about Johnny than she thought I did.
         
“All you ever want to do is tear people down. I know what I’m doing. Don’t you think I know? Do you have to do this? You have absolutely no faith in anyone or anything.” She was sobbing now and veering around on the road, it was making me nervous, I thought she would go right off the road.
         
“No it’s not that, it’s just that I’ve got too much faith. And all anything ever does is disappoint me.”
         
“Be quiet, you’re no martyr. Please let’s just shut up. Let’s just never talk about any of it ever again. Never.”
         
“Okay.” I said knowing we’d already promised ourselves this once before.
         
“God I hate this.” She said and I didn’t know if she was referring to the marriage or the argument.
         
She wiped her eyes and got her composure back. The rest of the trip was complete silence again.
         
We’d get back home and everyone would be happy again. The family would all be together and nobody would mention Greg or the marriage. The war in Iraq would be put on hold for the holidays. The war would be put on hold forever. I would go to bed and wake up feeling better, waking up in the bed I did growing up, going downstairs on the same stairs I did every morning as a child, and in fact, this time I would be a child again. Work would never start again. It would be Christmas forever.
         
That was really my problem. Everything was just so much better in my mind. Everything always just ended up disappointing me. I loved them all so much, I loved everything so much and then I ended up hating them. I’ve been so disappointed in people, my entire life has been desperately high hopes and then crushing disappointment.