today. It’s here for three days, and most people are holding out for tomorrow’s promised sunshine. So there is no uproar when Da bends the rules, and the nearest plaid-jacketed old guard is probably off having his cucumber- sandwich break. They lean a bit heavily on the honor system here at the mansion.
“Da, you cannot do this,” I say, standing at the driver’s door like I am a carhop from the days when this car was new, waiting to take his order. He feels it as well.
“Give me a double cheeseburger and a root beer float, sweetheart. And get your skates on.”
“Da, come on, they will make us leave if you don’t get out of there.”
“No, they won’t.”
He is pulling the very big, green steering wheel this way and that, bouncing in the seat like a little kid. It is a lovable old thing, this car. It’s either led a sadly boring life or has been adoringly restored, because it is immaculate. The leatherette upholstery is almost the exact color of the glistening paint job. Big white sidewall tires and lashings of chrome. The white canvas electric top has been retracted to taunt the rain. The two doors are fat. The car is adorably fat.
“‘Rambler American,’” I say, reading the raised silvery lettering as I walk around the back.
“Nineteen sixty-two,” he says.
“Very good,” I say. “You do know your cars. Now come on out, huh?” I am leaning over the passenger door now.
He laughs, stares straight ahead, still juking the wheel as if he’s going somewhere. “I do know my cars. And I won’t be getting out. Because this is my car.”
Uh-oh.
“Please, Da. I mean, you know it isn’t your car. What would your car be doing in this show? How could that be?”
“Because they took it off me.”
These are the moments when I too want to use those words I should not use. But he is being totally nuts, textbook nuts.
“Who, Da? Who took it off you?”
“They did. And they shouldn’t have. Said the car was too distinctive. ‘If you’re not a shadow, you’re a bull’s-eye’ was the saying then. They had no right. That was too far. That is when it becomes taking the man away from the man, just for the job.”
He is trying my patience, and I have got a lot of it. I am sorely tempted, but jeez, he is being certifiably
I have to get tough. As tough as I can be with the Old Boy, anyway.
“Old Boy,” I say crisply. He looks at me and I tap my wrist, like when you want someone to notice the passage of the time. But I want him to notice something else.
He looks down, and sees his copper MEMORY LOSS bracelet.
He looks back up at me, where I am stupidly making the gesture.
He makes a gesture of his own, at me, also with just one finger.
“Da!” I splutter, and we neither can help laughing.
“Hey!” comes the shout as the dignified old security dude comes ambling up the hill toward us. It has started sprinkling and he most likely was coming up to put the top up, rather than rumbling us. “Get out of there, you.”
Da gets tired rather easily these days, so he’s always using little energy-conserving tricks. Therefore his finger is still in the air when he gets yelled at by the security guard in the plaid jacket.
Da hates being yelled at, more than anybody else on earth. And he’s not too crazy about plaid, either. He aims the finger.
“Right!” the security guard yells, from about twenty yards away. “You two are in serious-”
“Come on,” Da says to me brusquely.
“Come on, what?” I say.
The engine starts up, a simple, muffled
“Jeez-,” I say, and jump right over the door into the passenger seat as the Old Boy takes off down the lawn, slaloming between T-Birds and Model Ts and JFK Continentals with the suicide doors.
“Da?” I call, just a bit nervously. “Da, how did you start this thing?”
“I told you, Young Man, it is
“Holy-,” I shout as more mad plaids start appearing and it becomes as much an exercise in not killing people as it is a joy ride.
“Okay, I believe you. Can we stop now? You did your thing, now they will probably be okay if you just give up.”
The surprisingly solid old man thwacks me in the chest with his free fist. “That is a reminder, Daniel.
“I understand, okay? Now, just… give up.”
“Okay, okay.”
The plaid brigade have now given up. The dozen or so car buffs milling about seem not to have caught on yet that Da is not an official part of the show. He is pretty classic, after all. He beeps the horn, which is a semicircular chrome bar in the middle of the wheel. Without exception, every customer waves when he does it. He waves back, the straight-up-in-the-air wave that is a must in a convertible. I start doing it too. Feels great.
There are sirens out there somewhere.
“Da?” I ask, and figure that is question enough.
He does not answer, but steers the car toward the innocent picnicking family ahead. They all jump to their feet, stand there staring as we approach.
Da jams on the breaks and manages a sloppy fishtail skid, ruining some nice lawn.
“Coming for the ride?” Da says, like an utterly antisocial, old James Bond.
Lucy comes running.
Da puts out his hand like a stop sign. “Sorry, sweetie,” he says. “This is no place for the ladies right now.”
The car is a time machine, after all. It’s set us back several decades already.
Dad is standing there with his mouth hanging wide-open. A cherry tomato rolls out.
“Coming, boy?” Da asks.
My dad, a boy? Well, I suppose. I suppose. He had to be somebody’s boy, at least once-upon-a. But boyish, I can’t see. And adventure, I can’t see-
He drops his sandwich, runs flat-out in his black picnic shoes, and dives like a stuntman into the backseat.
Da is laughing… yes, here I think “like a madman” is entirely appropriate. His son, my father, is floundering around the backseat, his lower half still outside the car because, really, he didn’t achieve much speed or airtime in his brave dash. I laugh too, as I turn to see Dad pop up when we officially leave the grounds of the mansion. His hair is blowing forward with the swirling wind, and he looks wildly into my laughter.
“He is stealing a car!” Dad says, making me laugh harder with the sound of it.
“I know,” I say.
The sirens appear to be getting louder. Dad looks back over his shoulder at the sound, then at me again. “He’s stealing a really
“I am not stealing anything,” Da says, coolly reaching forward and clicking on the radio. Nothing happens.
“It doesn’t work,” I say. “Too bad, it probably plays all old songs and commercials and nuclear bomb warnings and stuff.”
Da just grins wisely. The rain has stopped again.
“What do you mean, you are not stealing? About twenty people just watched you stealing. I am watching you stealing. Why am I even here? I must be… antisocial or something.”
“Nuts, boy,” Da says. “Say it.”
“Nuts. Totally, insanely nuts.”
“Not at all. You’re a good boy and I am glad you came.”
Then, like a sudden downpour, Da’s mood changes, he stops being silly, starts being… something else.
