Dear Women Parked on Ocean Avenue

Dear Women Parked on Ocean Avenue:

This is not a letter to crab, but rather a letter of inquiry, for you have piqued my curiosity. I see you, without fail, on weekend evenings, around 6:00, parked at by the crosswalk at the intersection of Ocean and Georgina Avenues in Santa Monica. You sit in a newish Beetle convertible with the top down, but the tall, bulbous windows raised to protect you from the strong ocean breeze. You never get out of the car.

Driver, you are attractive, maybe around 40ish, your face hidden behind sunglasses and your blond hair under a black fisherman's hat with the red and tan Burberry band around the brim. You sit pivoted, leaning against the door, your back against the raised window and traffic passing behind you, facing your passenger. She sits looking directly forward, making no effort to look at you.

Her frail passenger sits propped up in her seat, rigidly uncomfortable, as if there is something somehow supporting her delicate frame. Her head is forced awkwardly against the headrest, and there is a long, elaborate scarf tied around her throat, the consistent presence and bulk of which makes it seem like it masks something beneath, a ventilator or breathing tube. What little is visible of her skin is fiercely pale, and her hair is short and unkempt, her glasses unnaturally thick; I can't tell if she is twenty or forty. The handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror most likely confirms that she is in some way disabled. MS? Cystic Fibrosis? Developmental issues? All these possibilities flit through my mind, as they inevitably do when one sees the overtly ill.

I wonder what you talk about. I wonder if you even put money in the meter.

The situation I imagine, Driver, is that of a delicate invalid taken out for some fresh air by her unlikely care-giver. You're not her nurse, you're not a home health aid; perhaps you are her sister. Perhaps you stop by once or twice a week for a visit, and perhaps getting some fresh air is what you do to pass the time. Your conversation in the car seems earnest, even strained; perhaps you revisit the same issue every week, some bastion of melancholy, of disappointment. I envision your conversation attempting to skirt the subject of, but inevitably coming back to, the sadness of the one your passenger-perhaps-sister's plight, somehow your guilt over being powerless to change her situation. I imagine this not because the handicapped or ill and those around them are inevitably unhappy, but because you both so very much seem that way.

One cloudy Saturday, stretching after a run against the railing overlooking the ocean, I watch you for almost half an hour. With the sounds of the Pacific Coast Highway rising from below the ravine, the ocean-effect mist is tangible in the air, thick as smoke, hiding the trees as it drifts upwards. The top of your convertible is down, but you both wear heavy coats. Woman in the driver's seat, you sit as usual, your back against the door, wearing sunglasses despite the gloom. But you take them off as today, you start to cry. Your companion sits, pale, swaddled, staring straight ahead, her lips barely, but still visibly moving.

What tragedy is this that has its hands on you? Is this ritualistic ride to the ocean, this time spent together, a source of comfort or an act of self-flagellation? To what are you paying homage?

I cross in front of your car and walk back up Georgina Avenue, with its gracious craftsman mansions and orderly palm trees. As I proceed further and further east, I turn back to see you still sitting there, your car almost hidden in the fog. Although I wonder at all the questions I have, I know I'll most likely never get the answers. What I do hope is, at the very least, that I'll see you again next weekend.

Best Regards,
Dear, for once, not so Crabby