#16: Sway

John took a deep breath in, straightened his spine, and thought of his happy place. A beach with crystal blue water stretching as far as the eye can see, sand crisp white and the colour of freshly baked bread and a coconut tree.
Opening his eyes again, he saw the 'customer liaison officer' smiling meekly at him. Her eyelashes extensions extended over her eyes like the leaves of his coconut tree, except at one end, the glue, or whatever kept it onto her face, had peeled away and now flapped every time she blinked.
"Please," John said. "My mother knows how to drive. That's not what is at issue. It's that she forgets she's driving. And then... I've already told you what happened this morning." He proffers the phone once again, showing the photos from this morning's bingle. She'd been driving down the street until she wasn't. Unsure why she was suddenly in a car, she let go, screaming, as if the steering wheel was too hot to touch. She didn't, however, take her foot off the accelerator, possibly even pressing down harder. The car veered to the side and clipped a couple of parked cars before colliding with the car in front of her.
"Your mother's statement to the police says the accelerator got stuck." John wants to reach across the slit in the glass and pull the lash off her. Why can't she feel it as it sways?
"She told me she didn't know why she was in the car. She's like a goldfish sometimes. Simply forgets. She'll be going into the kitchen for her morning coffee, and then come back thirty minutes later having cooked a dinner."
"We can't take her license off her for wanting to meal prep." She says this and finally feels the eyelash flapping. She taps it down with her small finger. It seems to have done the trick.
The woman looks over John's shoulder, willing the end of the conversation.
John gives her a tepid smile, resigned to resorting to hiding his mother's car keys.