Sitting in the Parking Lot
by Ashton Russell
I’m thinking of calling you in the Publix parking lot but the woman in front of me is crying in her car. And also, I couldn’t call you anyway. What would I do? Listen to your old voicemail again. The woman doesn’t even have tinted windows. I’m not sure why that thought comes to me, like you can only show emotion in your car if you can hide behind the dark. She was on the phone when I pulled into this space. I came here for wine, in a desperate way. In my dream last night, you were there, and you told me to look around. Look at it all. Look at what the living had done. And it felt so real, like I could wake up and call you to talk about the environment, the state of the country, we could ramble about our thoughts on the younger generation. How everyone is a victim now, but haven’t we always been. But this woman is distracting me. I can’t get out of the car. I can’t stop watching. She is letting the tears run down, not wiping them off. And then she falls forward with her head on the steering wheel. I can see her shoulders shaking and I think yes, look at what the living has done.
Ashton Russell’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Literary Orphans, CHEAP POP and Southeast Review. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Sitting in the Parking Lot”? Well two things – the phrase ‘what the living has done’ and the image of a woman crying in her car both came into my life separately – and years apart. I was driving and listening to NPR when an old lady in an interview said, “when the dead see what the living have done.” And then earlier this year I sat in my car and saw a woman across from me crying alone in her car.
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