The Car Wash

It's a Wednesday evening, and on the way home from work I fill up and take advantage of the car wash in the rear of the lot before heading home. A long hump day today... work more mundane than the meatloaf every Tuesday I knew growing up. The swashswashswash of the car wash's thick plasticky tenatacles lure me into staring blandly at a point beyond the steering wheel, spaced out and into a day long ago: I'm six years old now and the car has become Grandma's brown Fairlane. Solid and unadorned, the car is an unsure and alert area for me. I have learned to pay attention when you're with Grannie- maybe it's her palpable anxiety that I'm intuitive to, or her nack for talking to all the other drivers- something my Dad never does. Grannie's a two hands on the wheel at all times driver. We pull into the car wash and I know right away this is not going to work. The water begins to spray each side simultaineously and Grannie is looking out the rear view mirror then ducking low, chin first to peer deep through the windsheild into the daylight beyond. She is tapping the seat next to her rapidly with fingertips, and they stop intermittantly to a prayer's pause I cannot hear. "I don't think this is working right. Do you think the machine is going to hit the car?" The directional stop light near the exit of the car wash is clearly red and has STOP written there, but the gear changer on the steering column drops to D and we slip at first, then catch and lurch into the bright sun of a summer afternoon and the safety of a clear day. I feel sorry for Grannie and know she will never speak of this; just a bygone occurence that never meant anything. We don't speak of these things...
I recognize my own interior... wrappers on the floor mats and the GPS on the seat next to me. The swashswashswash is louder now and they are hitting the car really hard. "Hey!" They have smacked the window next to me violently and the car rocked to the side for a moment. I hear a poof, poof , POP and the bar holding the wax spray has bent and is aimed directly at the windsheild in front of my nose. Things have gone awry inside here and the entrance is closed with a garage door that will open automatically when the dryer is finished. A Camry blocks my rear. Another squeal of metal and another POP. The plasticky tentacles are neon green but there is a red fluid dripping from them and at first the effect is bright but the red hits the car windows and the bloody resemblance is beyond frightening. Am I my Grandmother after all? I drop the gear into D.