Carolyn Byrne

I was at the DMV, the intact middle finger of my mutilated country. My shoulder was broken      and I wore a sling to discourage jostling and ill will. Be nice to me, the sling said, I’ve been unlucky. It was three o’clock; all the pens had been stolen. I fished one from my backpack and scratched through a form at the table in the entry, then rushed to join the walk-in line. My husband called from the parking lot to ask if he should wait.

“No, go. Sorry I had to fill out a form,” I said.

The man in front of me spun around and left the line. He returned with a form, holding it to his face as if reading a declaration of war. I asked if he wanted to use my pen. He did. I shone with usefulness. When he returned it the woman behind me asked if she, too, could borrow my pen. Of course, I said. I glanced around, beatific, wishing it was a nicer pen and hoping someone else would need it.

The clerk at the ticket counter alternated four people from the appointment line, then two from the walk-ins. The lines sized each other up. Sometimes the clerk would send an applicant away within seconds of their approach for reasons we were too far away to hear. A shudder ran through the walk-ins whenever one of our flock was culled.

“I’m so worried I brought the wrong things!” the woman behind me said.

I reviewed the contents of my Ziploc, which contained every laminated, stamped, or notarized document I owned. This accounting did not reassure me, authoritarian caprice having lately superseded records and laws. Everyone in line was white, except for a Black woman in the appointment faction who asked me to repeat an announcement about test administration. She had an accent; whatever was happening to our country, it was worse for her. A man in Buddy Holly glasses and fun socks was arguing with the clerk over the validity of his birth certificate.

 “You know what,” he said. It was the windup of an inept man confronted with a capable woman and could only end in profanity or violence. “You’re a fuckin’ bitch.”

He snatched up his documents and addressed a man at the next window. “Am I right, am I overreacting? See he agrees with me.” Then he left, his outfit now telegraphing Tesla incel more than Ezra Klein fan.

 I couldn’t look at the clerk. I wanted to tell her I was sorry.

“Oh my God I have the wrong form, our forms are different!” the woman behind me said.

We compared forms. Neither looked correct.

“What should I do? They’ll send me back!”

I was now at the head of the line and therefore its leader. “I’ve seen this happen, they won’t send you back. They’ll have you stand to the side and fill out the right one.”

The woman turned to the man behind her. “They won’t send you back.”

“They won’t send you back?” he repeated hopefully.

At the window, the clerk spoke gently to a woman on crutches. I blessed my sling and noticed I was wearing it inside-out. When it was my turn it was too late to bring up the Tesla incel. The clerk was a tough broad and I sensed she would find me ingratiating. But even a tough broad must get scared.

My form was correct, my documents in order. When the clerk called me ma’am it felt like a hug. She gave me a ticket and I graduated to the seating area. No one was glad for me. On my phone I watched a man in a tactical vest smash a couple’s car window after they asked to see a warrant. The ticket screen jumped past my number, A65 to A71. What if it was malfunctioning?  What if my number never came up? I’d have to ask for a manager and deliver a persuasive speech. More likely, I would cry. After ten fraught minutes everything started moving in order and I handed another clerk my paperclipped documents. It was easy until the photo. I blinked.

“No,” the clerk said, as if I was too stupid to keep my eyes open. “Now you have to come back, we’ve got to do it all over again, all over, you have to review and sign.”

I did it all over and raced to the window, provisional license in hand. I searched for my husband’s car through the rain, imagining the soup we’d eat at home. He wasn’t there. I called him.

“How far out are you?”

Long pause. “Eight minutes?”

“Eight?”

Long pause. “There’s traffic.”

I rounded up. The rain picked up and the lobby thinned out. Everything was stuttering and strange in the greenish light. The digital chime of the ticket change marked seconds and minutes, then fell silent for long stretches. I started feeling woozy. It was closing time and the door locked behind me when I veered outside. The woman from line came out as I huddled under the overhang. 

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Got it.”

She looked me over. “I just put it together, you can’t drive can you?”

“Nope.”

“You got your license but can’t drive. I can drive but don’t have my license.”

“Oh Jesus, what happened?”

She explained that she was short a document but a clerk told her she could email it to the DMV inbox. Technical difficulties ensued; she’d have to come back and start over.

“That’s awful,” I said.

“How long were we here?” she asked.

“Hour and a half?”

“Longer than that.”

I looked at my phone. “Maybe two.”

“All for nothing.”

“It’s a terrible place. I think about the people who work here.” I glanced at the building and trailed off. “Thank you,” I said awkwardly. Meaning, thank you for being decent. 

She left. I tried not to be angry at my husband for being late, for not understanding how badly I needed to go home. But the news had been scraping my nerves all week and I was hungry. I was elated when he pulled into the lot and picked a fight when I got in the car, feeling disappointed in myself. He really didn’t understand why those fifteen minutes mattered so much and I did a bad job of explaining it, how fifteen minutes could become a lifetime, how anyone could be forgotten. We patched things up over soup. I showed him my license. I’m frowning like a sturgeon. Strings of hair are plastered to my oily forehead above bugging eyes. I look like a child who has lost some soft cherished thing.

My husband laughed. “It doesn’t look like you.”

“Yes it does,” I said.