The Rollercoaster

Photo by Simona Sergi on Unsplash

It was huge.  Beyond huge, gigantic.  And the noise was even more overwhelming than the size.  The string of rollercoaster cars clattered and clacked as they climbed to breath-stealing heights, then plunged again, roaring.  The screams of the occupants barely rose above the clamor.

Summer, the late 1940s.  My father, my brother, and I, visiting the Santa Monica Pier in California, stood on the ground next to the grayed-with-age network of wooden slats that held the noisy machine against the sky. 

I knew about rollercoasters, of course.  I knew about them from pictures, from stories.  Perhaps from movies.  But the traveling carnivals that visited our small northern-Illinois town had never brought such a thing.

Daddy turned to my brother.  “I’ll buy you a ticket,” he said. 

Will shook his head.

“Even if I go with you?” our father asked. 

Willis shook his head again, clenched his jaw, looked away.  My brother, probably eleven or twelve, two years older than I.  A thousand times braver.

I stood beside my father and my brother, paying only the barest attention to the exchange.  I had just come off the carousel, also enormous in its own way, where I had spent every revolution thinking only of the golden ring I was supposed to capture.  (If you got the gold one, you got another ride!  Another whole ride!  Free!)  I had whirled past the ring-dispensing device again and again without the courage to lean far enough off my plunging horse to snatch at the thing. 

I’d stretched and stretched, but always at the last moment I pulled back, afraid of falling.  Only on the final revolution, I had managed, at last, to grab a ring.

It was dull … gray … not a touch of gold.

And then my gigantic horse had come to a stop, and I’d slumped in the saddle, knowing I had spoiled my ride on the world’s most perfect carousel.  I had been so intent on the out-of-reach rings that I had not enjoyed—had barely even noticed—a single revolution of this magical machine.  I wanted desperately to try again.  I’d proven myself now.  If I had another chance, I would enjoy every moment.  And since I was now brave enough to reach the rings, the gold—and another ride!—would surely be mine as well. 

Unfortunately, my newfound courage didn’t extend to asking my father for another ride.  We did not waste money in our family.  Ever.  Asking for another ride would have been like asking for a larger ice cream cone, the big ten-cent one.   Daddy warned us about that every time we stopped for ice cream on a Sunday afternoon “buggy ride.”  We must not ask for the larger cone unless we could be certain to eat every bite.  Since I loved ice cream right up to the moment when it turned into one-bite-too-much and my tummy began to hurt, I always ordered the five-cent cone.

So I’d left the carousel behind, saying nothing about wanting to ride again, though it was the only attraction I cared about in this enormous clattering, roaring, rumbling park, and now I stood waiting for the impasse between my brother and father to be resolved.

My father sighed, turned away from Willis, and to my astonishment, looked down at me.  “Do you want to ride the rollercoaster?” he asked.

The marrow ran out of my bones.

“I’ll ride with you,” he said.

That’s when I knew.  Daddy wanted to ride the rollercoaster.  My father, who, as far as I knew, had never done anything in his entire life that wasn’t grown up and responsible and serious, wanted to ride the rollercoaster.  And he needed me as an excuse. Grown-ups didn’t ride rollercoasters without the excuse of a child. 

He had never needed me before.  Not ever! 

“I’ll hold you,” he promised.  “The whole way.”

Hold me?  He would hold me!

I looked at Willis, at the stubborn set of his jaw, at the way his eyes, his blue, blue eyes, had gone distant and opaque. 

Daddy looked down at me and waited.

“Okay,” I said, the word squeezing out on my last breath of air. 

We stood side by side in line, climbed the steps together, sat next to one another in the open car.  No seat belts. No one had yet thought of seat belts.  There was a wooden bar, though, and we lowered it across our laps.  Was the bar supposed to lock into place?  It didn’t.  It lifted again as easily as it had descended.  Still, I grasped it tightly.

Everything would be all right.  Daddy would hold me.  He had promised.

Our car jerked, clattering into movement.  The long, slow pull to the top of the first rise wasn’t bad, one car rumbling after another.  Rather nice even, sitting next to my father, looking out over the park and the gray ocean.  It was my first time ever to visit an ocean. 

Then it happened.  The line of cars arced over the top of the rise, hung there for an instant as though this high point might be our final destination, then plunged toward the ground, the angle of descent so steep I rose right out of my seat.  My father rose, too.  And the worst, the absolute worst … the bar we clung to lifted, as well.

“Hold me, Daddy!” I screamed.  The forces pulling at me were too strong to allow me to turn my head, but out of the corner of my eye I could see his whitened knuckles gripping the useless bar.

“Hold me!” I screamed on the next descent.

And on the next.

And on the next.

And on the next.

Never once did he release the bar to hold me.

When the line of cars finally rolled to a stop, my father didn’t speak.  I said nothing either, just followed on spaghetti legs back to where Will waited.  Then the three of us moved on through the park in silence, not even glancing at one another.

Daddy was scared, too, I told myself as I wobbled along at his side.  He was as scared as I was.

But that didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered.

My father hadn’t held me.