I went to back out but it wouldn’t move. I checked the gear; it was in reverse so I tried again. Nada. I shifted into drive; it jerked forward. Okay, good. So, I put it back into reverse but again it just revved. Damn thing. After a while, I just quit, threw my hands up as they say, dropped the thing into neutral, and got out. It looked awful, a big, sloping dent on the driver’s side door, a spider-web crack on the windshield, growing colonies of rust bubbles on the hood. I lit a cigarette and, with a bunch of smirking faces looking on (motherfuckers!), I pushed it out.
I went straight to the Texaco. The mechanic, a woman in a form-fitting jumpsuit named Monica, told me to leave it. “I’ll put it up on the rack, hon.” The next morning, when I showed up, tired and anxious—I needed the damn thing—she was in the garage behind a clunky desk, heavy metal blaring from a boombox. She was painting her nails red, the fumes from the polish mixing with those from the pump. Barely looking up from them—they were as short as mine—she told me I needed a new transmission. “A rebuilt one will be cheaper and I got this guy in Southie . . .”
I had finals that week, and no other way of getting to and fro. Sure, I could walk, but five miles each way? It wasn’t realistic. There was a bus. But where I lived, way out in the boonies, there was no direct route; a ride on the 86, its blue plastic seats filled with a lot of gloomy-faced misfits, involved a number of time-consuming transfers and my roommate Danny, who could’ve and would’ve driven me, had already left for Buffalo. Then of course there was the financial angle. Even a rebuilt one was going to be expensive. “Like eight hundred bucks,” she said, blowing her nails dry and then with a pencil scribbling on a calendar pad. And I was already close to maxing out another Visa. And why spend the money on the hunk-of-junk? I wasn’t invested. My Dad had gotten a new car and had given me the Impala. Anyway, all along I was planning on dumping it. Right when school ended. So what was the point?
“I’ll have to think about it,” I told her.
She stood; she was wearing a tight tube top with no bra; her breasts were thick-nippled and remarkably even. “Well don’t take too long,” she replied, grabbing my keys from the pegboard. “He’ll only hold it for a short while.”
“Is it safe to drive?”
Handing me the keys, her green eyes seemed to smile. “Unless you need to back out of a burning garage.”
She really thought that was funny and if she hadn’t looked the way she did—she had a blaze of red hair to go with the smiling eyes and thick-nippled, remarkably even breasts—I probably would’ve said something snide.
As I headed toward my car, feeling a bit oppressed, all I could think was: if it’s not one thing, it’s another, and the entire year had been that way, first with the pipe underneath my sink bursting and flooding my apartment, then with my university placing me on academic probation, and finally with my Dad being diagnosed with colon cancer.
On my way to school, late and rushing so as not to miss my American Government exam, I thought about how much I actually used reverse. It wasn’t that often and so I figured it shouldn’t be that hard to work around.
The campus parking lot was full. It wouldn’t be a good idea to go in there so I hung a right and the wipers dragged across the windshield. (The Impala also had an electrical problem, which every time I made a right hand turn caused the wipers to momentarily activate.) I started looking for a spot along Comm Ave. There was one in front of the Swanson Deli, where I’d occasionally go for a meatball sub, but I’d already rolled by it and I figured that by the time I drove all the way around the block it’d be gone.
Eventually, I found a space by a curb on a quiet residential street. There were no other cars around. Most were in driveways. It was quite a distance from campus, about ten blocks, but I took it anyway and after the test had no problem.
I have no business being here, I told myself, as I headed home. I’d transferred from a community college and in the ranks of community colleges mine was near the bottom. During the second half of high school, I’d grown bored and disillusioned. Of course, a lot of that had to do with my mother running off on us. It was quite unexpected and painful. She’d found parenting and homemaking too confining and so had taken up with a fast-talking, twice-divorced, holistic veterinarian, who had come to town to visit his sister, Mom’s good friend Beatrice.
So I was probably just in need of attention. My B average, lack of athleticism—being flatfooted, I was even cut from the indoor volleyball team—and cystic acne ensured my invisibility in high school.
I let my hair grow. To hide the zits, not to look like our disheveled, chain-smoking Geometry teacher, as some kids teased, I stopped shaving, and instead of doing homework and studying, I began reading books on a wide range of subjects: zombies, UFOs, circus stunts, mail-order Filipino brides, tree climbing, anything that would tug on my imagination. I had a job as a bus boy at a Brazilian steakhouse and, needing the money—I was saving for a hog and had fantasies of revving up and riding cross country—I began working four nights a week instead of two, and double shifts on weekends. I did absolutely nothing to prepare for the SAT, except pop two hits of mescaline the night before.
* * *
The next morning, my mind on my Statistics exam: the mean, the mode, the standard deviation, I left my house and found a car parked in front of mine. It was the downstairs tenant’s Mary’s Buick. Since she usually parked in the driveway, I hadn’t anticipated it. I got into mine, put it in neutral, got out, and pushed it back. That night, hoping to avoid a repeat, I parked across the street, but in the morning, not only was hers in front mine but an Iroc was behind it.
Assessing the situation—there was about a foot of space between the Iroc and my car—I lit a cigarette, got in, dropped it into neutral, jumped out, and pushed it back. I then got back in, put it into drive, turned the wheel all the way to the left, and inched forward until my front end tapped the Buick. (Mary from Oklahoma’s bumper sticker read: Insured by Smith & Wesson.) I then turned the wheel all the way to the right, the wipers gliding across the windshield, put the car into neutral, got out, and pushed it back. I repeated these maneuvers again and again until I finally freed the car.
As I headed to school, I reminded myself of just how lucky I was to have a father who liked to rescue people, the trait most likely having something to do with him being a lifeguard in his youth. He was a staunch Democrat, a union member, who worked his entire life as a signalman for the Transit Authority. When I was around, he’d rarely open his mouth, except to talk about Mom. “There’s no happiness in running away, Bobby. She thinks she’s got a better life now. Well, she’s in for a rude awakening. He’ll show her the door and, when he does, she’ll be knocking on ours, but I won’t let her in. No siree.” But when he drank, mostly Jameson neat, he’d sit in his rosewood armchair, cross his short, swollen legs, hold up his glass like a chalice, and during commercial breaks boast about knowing “how the world works.” At one time, he’d chauffeured our congressman around our district in the Impala. Back then it was brand new, all power, all the rave, a befitting ride for an esteemed public servant.
Last year, hating that I was at a community college (he’d much higher expectations for his only child though he’d little money to realize them), he called in a favor. Our congressman had an in with another congressman whose wealthy family had for generations funded a significant portion of my university’s endowment. So, despite my mediocre community college average, my psychedelic-plagued SAT score, and the unfortunate typo the congressman’s secretary made when she typed my name on the letter of recommendation, I’m “Robert Kelly” not “Robert Jelly,” I got in.
And as I was thinking all this, my car suddenly started making noises, strange squeaking sounds, like I’d just run over the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz or something. And if that wasn’t bad enough, when I turned onto Tremont, the frame started shaking. By the time, I got to Comm. Ave., it felt like the entire transmission might break from the chassis.
But I made it.
After my test—I’d done okay, though I’d screwed up calculating the variance on one of the bonus questions—I pulled into the Texaco, the signal bell going off. Monica approached, twisting a greasy rag, her jumpsuit unzipped to her waist, underneath another tight tube top, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. “What’s it gonna be, hon?” I could tell she thought I was there for the transmission.
“No. Just fill it up, please. Regular.”
She went to grab the pump and her eyes fell on the inspection sticker. “It expires in three weeks.” I looked at it; she was right. “No way, it’s gonna pass.”
There was an abandoned strip mall near my house so, after gassing up, I parked in there. I only had two more tests, Macroeconomics and Italian. I figured that, after those, I could drive to a junkyard and maybe get a few bucks for the car. As I got out, the strong-armed smell of gasoline hit me. What was it? I looked around. Maybe I’d walked through a spill. I checked my hi-tops. They were dry.
On my way home, my thoughts circled back to Dad, betrayed and lonely, sitting in his dark, lamp-lit bedroom, cleaning the ghastly stomach incision with that tattered green cloth of his. In the mornings, he’d turn on the dusty CD player and listen to Van Cliburn play Chopin and make tea and oatmeal and later get into his plush Mercury Cougar and drive to church. And I wished for a moment that I was with him. If he found the energy, he’d vacuum the rugs later. Do some laundry. He’d read every word of the newspaper. Sit on the back porch, his shirt buttoned to his throat, and count the cardinals and blue jays. One, two, three, four, five.
* * *
That night, I got a call from him. “How you making out?” he asked, his voice sounding strong and upbeat. It didn’t seem possible he could be dead in six months.
“Good,” I replied, my eyes falling on the water stains on the walls. Like a ring around a bathtub, I thought.
“How’s the car?”
“Fine.”
“I’m glad I was able to give you that.”
He always did what he could.
“How you feeling?”
“A lot like what’s in this colostomy bag. I’ll probably need to change it soon. When you get home, will you shave my head?” What? What was he talking about? “The chemo.”
“Oh,” and I started walking in circles; the floor, warped from the flood, started creaking and I remembered how the veterinarian had entertained Mom with weird facts: a giraffe cleans its ears with its tongue; if you keep a goldfish in the dark it will turn white, it takes two hours to boil an ostrich egg, hippopotamus milk is pink.
“Don’t worry, Bobby, Doctor Nelson’s going to come through for us. How’s school?”
“Hard. Can’t wait ‘til it’s over, Pop.”
“You’ll do fine,” and I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, but I had done that once, many years before and he hadn’t said anything back. It was the morning we were at the tree farm, just the two of us. I must have been about seven or eight. Mom, still persevering in her role as good wife and mother, was in town shopping for stocking stuffers. With searching eyes and in a haze of snow flurries, we moved joyously between the endless rows of evergreens, from a crackling car speaker, Elvis’s “Blue Christmas,” ringing in the smoky air. I pointed to the one I wanted, a beautifully tapered, majestic, six-foot blue spruce with needles sharp enough to stitch a seam. “I hope your mother likes it.” He had his handsaw and with some effort—he was about thirty pounds overweight—he got down on his hands and knees and began cutting the thick trunk but the blade was dull and he was having trouble and, as he struggled, flush-cheeked and squinty-eyed, I swear I could see every pore in his face.
* * *
The next day, while walking to the lot, it started raining. My car, of course, was where I’d left it, by the graffiti-marked wall, a few crushed beer cans by the bald tires, but nothing boxing it in and, as I got closer, I began identifying with it. I wasn’t the BMW that had just rolled by with the hot blond in it, or the Mercedes at the traffic light with the happy kids in the backseat or even the Chrysler LeBaron parked across the street by the parking meter. I was this. And this was me. And it sucked.
It was raining hard now and I jumped in and again the smell of gasoline.
On Beacon Street, I started cruising just above the 30 mile per hour speed limit, splashing through puddles and my wipers were on and in rapid-fire motion batting away drops and for a moment, brief but glorious, it was as if everything were working perfectly.
But the next morning while driving to school for my final final, my thoughts on summer: Dad’s chemo and the gofer position that I’d lined up at the wine importer, the fuel gauge caught my attention; it was near empty. How can that be? I pulled into the Texaco.
“I’ll get it back to you in few days,” Monica said, chewing a wad of bubblegum.
“No, no. I’m here for gas.”
She looked confused and her nostrils flared and, sniffing, she cast her eyes downward. “Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“Look.” There was a puddle underneath the car. She crouched and dipped her finger in it. “Oh pissa! It’s gas.”
She put it up on the rack and, a short while later, she pushed it out the garage, the signal bell going off. “You have a hole in your tank, hon.” She got out and slammed the door. “Rust. Probably started as a pinhole. Now it’s the size of sink hole.”
“How much we talking?”
“Ahhhh! It’s wicked corroded.” She waved me off. “And not with your other problems.”
“But I need it. Today!”
“Well, let’s see, she’s getting about four hundred feet to the gallon so to get you to where you’re going . . .” She scratched her head. “I’d say about six hundred dollars in gas.” She really thought that was funny.
I checked my watch. I’d have to call Professor Bianchi. Mi dispiace, il professore. Maybe he’d let me take the exam the following week. But I didn’t have his number handy. Anyway, I wanted to hop a train home for the summer. I wanted to see Dad. But, if I did that, I’d get an incomplete and be thrown out of school and, in my mind, I could see the disappointment in his eyes, the way it had persisted, honestly and fiercely, during the time I was enrolled at the community college. I felt sick. Almost dizzy.
Pondering my predicament, Monica put her finger over her glossed lips. “Hold on,” and she headed for the garage.
In no time, she appeared behind the wheel of a giant pickup, an unlit cigarette between her lips. “Get in.” There were a bunch of Hagstrom maps on the passenger seat and she pushed them to the floor. “I was going to go this afternoon,” she said, smacking down the visor. “But Vinny says it’s okay. There’s a Mobil in Brookline. They’re holding an axle for a ’73 Mustang for us.”
The interior smelled like the blue spruce needles from that tree farm, the scent from a Chippendale’s air freshener. She handed me a business card: Nelson’s Scrap Metal, Inc. “They’ll come and tow it for you. You’ll have to pay fifty bucks though.” She fiddled with the radio until she found something she liked, Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” She turned up the volume. “Don’t wait too long, hon!” she yelled. “Vinny won’t want your car sitting around!”
She turned into the roadway and sped past the amber traffic light.
I love you, Dad, I thought, as I stuffed the card in my pocket and I remembered holding out my arms as far as I could. This much.
And the car lighter popped and she pulled it from the socket. The glowing, orange coil singeing her cigarette. With smoke filling the cab, she offered me the lighter, her green eyes smiling at the van ahead. I took it and pulled out a cigarette, trying to remember the last time I felt so grateful.
THE END
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P. J. Gannon is a writer in New York City. His work has appeared in The Alembic, Slow Trains, Amarillo Bay Literary Magazine and other literary journals. John Cheever, T. C. Boyle, and Ha Jin are among his favorite writers.
