Kill Switch

People can hear, Daniel. Don’t be silly. People can hear, easy. Except you, I suppose.

God. I am sorry, Da. I swear, I will never not hear you again. Never.

3

I love the prerain weather. It is my favorite weather of all. If it were just always on the verge of raining, and then never actually raining, I would be the most contented guy. The roll-in of the clouds is to me an exciting event, that small breeze, the slightly wet smell of the air. I just love it.

My father does not agree.

“Let’s just forget it,” he says, all tense as the signs start pointing that way.

We probably won’t forget it. Because we have an agenda. This summer, we all seem to have an agenda that nobody talks about. It has something to do with me leaving for college. It has unmistakably got something to do with my grandfather as well. There is a last time feeling to almost everything we do now, whether that is true or not.

So Dad has made more family outing plans this summer than all of the previous ten summers combined. Today’s big plan is to go to the antique auto rally, outdoors up at the Governor’s Mansion. The governor doesn’t live there, but one did at one time, and based on the size of the place, and the grounds and the number of classic cars that were his when he was alive, the man governed more operations than were strictly legal, in my view.

But that does not matter. What matters right now is that it looks like rain.

“Why would we want to forget it?” Mom says, standing in the living room doorway with one of the three picnic baskets she has been working on for the last forty-eight hours. She does gold-medal picnic, my mom.

Dad, on the couch, leans straight backward to look through the lacy curtains. “Because, look,” Dad says without even gesturing. He could be asking her to confirm that he has swollen glands. She knows him better.

“Come on, Scott, we are not snowmen, we won’t melt. We can survive the afternoon even if there is a little bit of rain. It’ll be a great day.”

“It won’t be a great day,” Lucy says, swishing into the room with another full basket, plunking down beside Dad, “but it will be pretty all right.”

“Sure, Dad,” I say.

Da is not down the hall yet from his marathon morning grooming, but he would more than agree. He is showering, shaving, sprucing, doing the still thickish regions of his hair up with his beloved “hair tonic,” and whistling his trademark happy tune. For whatever reason, the theme song from The Deer Hunter has always meant high spirits for him.

“Hear that?” Mom says, pointing in Da’s perfumed direction.

“I hear it,” Dad says with resignation.

Dad doesn’t love the cars thing, and to the untrained eye it is not even all that obvious that he loves his father (my guess is he does), but one thing is beyond dispute, his father loves, loves, loves the car thing.

“Tallyho,” Da says, stepping up right behind Mom, as if he has really surprised her. With his scent, he couldn’t have surprised her if we chloroformed her first, but never mind.

This does make Dad a little bit happy, because of his agenda. He badly wants to achieve something with these days, even if it can be hard to tell what.

“Reminds me of the old, old days, Pop,” my dad says to his dad.

“We never missed the classic car show at the mansion.”

“We never did,” Dad says.

“And you always argued with me when we got home, right in this room, every time, about which car was the best car in the world. Remember? Jeez. Remember?”

“If these walls could talk, huh?” I say, trying to fit in somewhere.

“Then I’d have to kill the walls,” Da says.

Things go a little quiet.

We go to the mansion.

It never gets past a little light mistiness, and really the day is almost perfect for a picnic and a stroll. A stroll across beautiful lawns, around a handsome, stately home, around a collection of the finest machines ever built, and above all, a stroll around a bit of family life and history.

“How old was I, Pop, when you first took me to this show?” Dad asks as we weave along the row of Studebakers and Pierce-Arrows parked on the great rolling lawn.

“Not too sure,” Da says, watching the cars closely, stroking his chin as if the answer is in the bodywork. “Six or eight, I suppose?”

“It was the first big thing we did together, I remember that. I sure remember that.”

Awkward. That is what I remember about these two most of all. Always awkward. I never have any trouble getting along with either of them, but boy, whenever we are all together we are one gimpy vehicle, one wheel short or one too many.

Dad is trying, though. For his own reasons, he is putting his shoulder into it this time.

Can’t really say the same for Da.

“Don’t know why everybody finds the fifty-seven Chevy so special,” Da snarls, walking straight away from his son and toward the offending car. “The fifty-five was better.”

Dad stands motionless in front of the Studebaker Lark he thought they were bonding over, and watches his old man’s back.

“He gets distracted pretty easily,” I say.

“He does,” Dad says with no emotion. We follow after Da.

“You’re right,” Dad says when we catch up. “And I remember you always said the same thing, remember, about the Thunderbird and the Corvette. Oh, the ’Vette used to drive you to distraction. Remember that, Pop?”

“Bugs!” Da says.

“What?” Dad and I both ask.

“Bugs!” Da says, and he means it. He goes stomping up the slope toward the mansion and toward the source of his irritation. “No, mere age does not a classic make. No proper car show that calls itself antique and classic has any business rolling in a bunch of these foolish little Volkswagen…”

Dad stands still again, watching his father rant his way up the hill to give one of the remaining pieces of his mind to three perfectly innocent little cars.

Dad’s face, not normally the most expressive contraption, is drained and defeated.

“You know how he is, with The Condition,” I say.

He stares some more.

“He comes and goes,” I say. “Does it with everybody.”

Dad works up a small, sharp, sad smile for me.

“Not at all, Danny. This is memory lane. The auto show with Pop was always just like this.” He pats me on the shoulder, heads in the other direction. “I’m going back with the girls. Keep an eye on him, and come on back when you get hungry.”

Just like old times.

“Come on, Dad, don’t go,” I say, though honestly I’m not all that bothered. They are a handful together, and will never get it right. But still, we should be able to manage better than this.

“I’ll see you in a bit,” Dad says, and he doesn’t sound mopey, so okay. “Go watch him before he does something antisocial.”

He means nuts. Whenever he wants to use a more accurate term for his father-mental, demented, loony tunes-he says antisocial instead. I interpret that gesture as love. I do.

“Da,” I call as I see him climb into the driver’s seat of an old sea-foam-green fat convertible. All the signs clearly state not to get into the cars. The iffy weather has made the already quiet event very sparsely populated