
Trailer Park Ocean by Josh Price
They’re driving up the pacific coast on the 101. Dad tuned up the Bel Air and it’s humming, along the highway, the Beach Boys singing those good, good, good vibrations, the sun nearing the horizon. Mom is sitting sideways in the passenger seat facing dad, hands folded in her lap like she’s praying in secret, her face serene-she could be high or she could be happy- Dad gazing at her, eyes shifting between her and the road. His hair is shiny; he’s growing it out again. His face looks like what it would look like if I’d never been born.
I’m a ghost in the back seat watching them. I like watching them this way, but hate when I’m a ghost.
Dad’s starts old guy dancing, bouncing his shoulders to the bass line, my mom rolls her eyes and her grin, says she wants to hear the Beatles again. I want them to put on my music but they never do and I refuse to complain, I’m a good ghost.
Dad drives the winding road to the parking lot at the beach. Mom and dad get out, careful not to slam the white and red doors too hard. I try to open my door but I can’t, I’m a ghost, my hand slips through the handle. I wonder at that, look around. I love the red leather interior and the smell of surfboard wax inside the car.
Their backs are to me, they’re facing the ocean, and the setting sun. Single wide trailers float out on the water, out past the swells and breakers. A wave catches a trailer, flips it over, and takes it under water.
I watch my parents. I’m getting nervous.
They take each other’s hands, walk across the footbridge by the big rock, out towards the beach, down to the shore. They walk upon the water out to one of the trailers, open the door and go inside like they own the place.
I watch the orange playful light of God shining on water. There are so many trailers I have a hard time picking out which one my parents went in; they all look the same to me.
I spot the trailer when its door swings open. I see mom and dad kissing inside, the trailer rises up on top of a swell, I’m wide eyed and the door slams shut again. The trailer flips over and is pulled under water. I could cry but there’d be no reason, deep down I always knew it would happen.
I bet it was fun for mom and dad when the trailer started to roll, when they bounced off the walls and furniture, right before the place filled up with water and they got tangled up in everything and went to sleep, more apart than together.
I climb into the front seat of the Bel Air. I grab the steering wheel (ten and two like dad taught me), it’s there in my solid hands, and I’m me again, just remembering. I touch the place where mom sat; my fingertips caress cool leather. I reach for the rearview mirror, check my hair: it looks fine. I’m growing it out again. The look on my face is the same as mom’s was, but I don’t remember how my face looked when I was a ghost in the back seat of the car anymore.
Josh Price is an avid gardener and an enthusiastic watcher of cartoons. His job resume includes: builder, musician, and martial arts coach. Josh lives at the foot of a volcano, on the shores of Northern California’s largest natural lake, with his wife and two dogs.
10 May 2023
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