"Visualize Whirled Peas," Evangeline read from the bumper sticker on the car in front of her. She hadn't moved more than a hundred feet in the last fifteen minutes, and was becoming restless, reduced now to contemplating the epigrams others felt compelled to plaster all over their homes-away-from-home.

She'd been caught in this traffic jam now for half an hour, late for work and in danger of missing her first meeting of the day. There was nothing but politics on NPR this morning, and she was in a dead zone for the other public radio station. She usually had audiobooks in the car, as it was nearly the only form of reading she had time for any more, and she'd considered putting a new one in the car this morning. But she had miscalculated how much was left of the current one and figured she could wait.

Wrong. Around her, others were opening their car doors and stretching her legs. Evangeline pulled the cell phone out of her purse and called the office, telling them of her predicament. The woman who answered the phone said she'd heard about the backup, caused by an accident where the two major interstates feeding downtown Albany converged. No one whose commute brought them near that intersection had made it in yet. Evangeline asked her to phone her contact for the meeting and let him know she was stuck, and the woman promised she would.

Her immediate problem solved, Evangeline turned off the engine to conserve her fuel and leaned back in the seat, trying to ease the tension she felt. She hadn't had any coffee yet, and she could feel the headache already beginning to blossom. When had her life gotten so out of control that an hour's delay could bring on a migraine? She wasn't carrying missile codes, after all. She was a mid-level bureaucrat in a small State agency. No one was going to go hungry if she didn't get to the office this morning. People would still receive medical care; prisoners would remain incarcerated.

There it was again, that wave of futility that she sometimes felt. Evangeline truly loved her job, but in the greater scheme of things, what difference would it make to anyone if she did or didn't do it?

When she was young, Evangeline wanted a Job That Mattered. Something vital, some kind of work that Made a Difference in people's lives. Now, she knew better. Jobs That Mattered usually came at the price of your soul, or something equally valuable. Not for her.

"Relax," she murmured. "This is probably the only free time you'll get today." Around her, some were visibly irritated. For others, however, a party attitude seemed to prevail. Men were leaning against on their hoods, talking to one another. A woman walked up next to her car, helping a toddler to take a few unsteady steps. In front of her, a man spread his morning paper across the steering wheel.

Delay appeared inevitable, so why not relax and enjoy it? Evangeline looked past the guardrails, past the three lanes of traffic speeding by in the opposite direction, and saw the playground. It was a school day, but there were a few moms with smaller children taking advantage of the perfect spring morning. "That could have been me," Evangeline thought wistfully.

She and Andy had tried to have children, and hadn't felt too desperate when it didn't happen those first few years. Both were busy with their careers, and The Perfect Time never did seem to arrive. Then it became a secondary consideration, just as sex had. When they finally fell into bed at night, they were both too tired to think about making a baby, much less muster the energy to perform the necessary exercise.

They'd been married ten years when Evangeline began having the awful pains. When they told her, after years of the agony that they could make the pain go away, she begged them to do it. Andy had argued, had protested that she didn't need such a radical procedure. But in the end, she'd insisted, and when it was over she could not have children.

Evangeline would have been satisfied to adopt. She wanted children. But she couldn't do it alone, and Andy wasn't interested in bringing up someone else's son or daughter. If they weren't his, he didn't want them. Evangeline suggested a surrogate arrangement. Andy thought the idea was repugnant. She accepted the idea that they'd never have children.

When she'd see women with children in playgrounds like this, she used to imagine how it would feel, to share the world with a child. She remembered her own mother, and how she'd played with her when she was young. She could still see the look in her mother's eyes, and even at that young age, she could feel that she was the center of her mother's world. It was a heady feeling, being loved so intensely.

She always wondered what it felt like from the other side. She closed her eyes and she was in the playground she'd built in her mind, from thousands of daydreams almost just like this one.

The swings, the slide, the sand. And there he is, her son and Andy's. Two years old, sandy blond hair, blue eyes, ruddy cheeks. Laughing convulsively as Evangeline scoots him up the slide backwards. "Watch!" he cries, and bucks his hips until he begins slithering down the slide.

At the bottom, he jumps up and squeals with glee. Running, he butts Evangeline's leg and hugs it tightly. She reaches down and tumbles him upside down, gently dropping him to the ground and tickling him until his laughter gives way to hiccups. Evangeline leans over him and breathes in the smell of his hair, his skin. He reaches up and pulls her face down to his and gives her a kiss.

Suddenly, Evangeline hears the sound of horns behind her. All around her, traffic is moving again and she is holding up all the people in lane behind her with her daydreams. She takes a deep, ragged breath, starts the car and puts it into gear. She wipes her eyes with a tissue and sniffs noisily. As traffic picks up speed, she passes a tow truck, crunched car hung from its the winch like a trout on a hook. Behind the tow truck, another weeping woman stands with a State trooper while an EMT works on a blond toddler strapped to the stretcher.

Evangeline can hear the baby crying through her open windows. "That could have been me," she thinks, then wipes her eyes again and weaves her way into the exit ramp for her office. She begins to think that maybe being childless isn't so bad. After all, her son will never be hurt or sick, and he'll never grow old enough to become sullen and rebellious. For the rest of time, he'll be cheerful and loving, two years old forever in the playground of her mind.

Props to the CHPercolator List for the prompt.
April 16, 2001
1170 words