The New Yorker Stories

In response, Jim looked down and began to hit keys. It increased his school-boyish quality: he bit his bottom lip, concentrating. The printer began to print out.

“I used to get in trouble for being impulsive,” he said. “Then I got diagnosed with ADD. My grandmother said, ‘See, I told you he couldn’t help it.’ That was what she kept saying to my mom: ‘Couldn’t help it.’ ” He nodded vigorously. His bangs flopped on his forehead. Outside, they would have stuck to his skin, but inside it was air- conditioned.

His mentioning ADD reminded me of the ALS patient—the man I’d never met. I had a clearer image of a big- footed, bulbous-nosed clown. If I breathed deeply, I could still detect the taste of cinnamon in my throat. I declined every option of coverage, initialing beside every X. He looked at my scribbled initials. “What kind of writing?” he said. “Mysteries?”

“No. Stuff that really happens.”

“Don’t people get mad?” he said.

The older man was looming over the woman at the far end of the counter. They were trying not to be too obvious about watching us. Their heads were close together as they whispered.

“People don’t recognize themselves. And, in case they might, you just program the computer to replace one name with another. So, in the final version, every time the word Mom comes up it’s replaced with Aunt Begonia or something.”

He creased the papers, putting them in a folder. “A-eight,” he said. “Out the door, right, all the way down against the fence.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for the good suggestion.”

“No problem,” he said. He seemed to be waiting for something. At the exit, I looked over my shoulder; sure enough, he was looking at me. So was the older man, and so was the woman he’d been talking to. I ignored them. “You wouldn’t program your computer to replace Mustang convertible with one of those creepy Geo Metros, would you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said, smiling. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“Easy to learn,” I said. I gave him my best smile and walked out to the parking lot, where the heat rising from the asphalt made me feel like my feet were sliding over a well-oiled griddle. The key was in the car. It didn’t look like the old Mustang at all. The red was very bright and a little unpleasant, at least on such a hot day. The top was already down. I turned the key and saw that the car had less than five hundred miles on it. The seat was comfortable enough. I adjusted the mirror, pulled on my seat belt, and drove to the exit, with no desire to turn on the radio. “That’s a beauty,” the man in the kiosk said, inspecting the folder and handing it back.

“Just got it on impulse,” I said.

“That’s the best way,” he said. He gave a half salute as I drove off.

And then it hit me: the grim reality that I had to talk sense to her, I had to do whatever it took, including insulting her great good friend Drake, so he wouldn’t clean her out financially, devastate her emotionally, take advantage, dominate her—who knew what he had in mind? He’d avoided me on purpose—he didn’t want to hear what I’d say. What did he think? That her busy daughter would conveniently disappear on schedule, or that she might be such a liberal that their plans sounded intriguing? Or maybe he thought she was a pushover, like her mother. Who knew what men like that thought.

The cop who pulled me over for speeding turned on the siren when I didn’t come screeching to a halt. He was frowning deeply, I saw in the rearview mirror, as he approached the car.

“My mother’s dying,” I said.

“License and registration,” he said, looking at me with those reflective sunglasses cops love so much. I could see a little tiny me, like a smudge on the lens. I had been speeding, overcome with worry. After all, it was a terrible situation. The easiest way to express it had been to say that my mother was dying. Replace lost her mind with dying.

“Mustang convertible,” the cop said. “Funny car to rent if your mother’s dying.”

“I used to have a Mustang,” I said, choking back tears. I was telling the truth, too. When I moved from Vermont, I’d left it behind in a friend’s barn, and over the winter the roof had fallen in. There was extensive damage, though the frame had rusted out anyway. “My father bought it for me in 1968, as a bribe to stay in college.”

The cop worked his lips until he came up with an entirely different expression. I saw myself reflected, wavering slightly. The cop touched his sunglasses. He snorted. “Okay,” he said, stepping back. “I’m going to give you a warning and let you go, urging you to respect your life and the life of others by driving at the posted speed.”

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

He touched the sunglasses again. Handed me the warning. How lucky I was. How very, very lucky.

It was not until he returned to his car and sped away that I looked at the piece of paper. He had not checked any of the boxes. Instead, he had written his phone number. Well, I thought, if I kill Drake, the number might come in handy.

I also played a little game of my own: replace Richard Klingham with Jim Brown.

He was probably twenty-five, maybe thirty years younger than me. Which would be as reprehensible, almost, as Richard’s picking up the teenager.

Back over the bridge, taking the first Venice exit, driving past the always closed House of Orchids, dismayed at the ever-lengthening strip mall.

My mother, again in the lawn chair, reading the newspaper, but now not bothering to look up as cars passed. I could remember her face vividly from years before, when my father and I had turned in to our driveway in Washington in an aqua Mustang convertible. She had been so shocked. Just shocked. She must have been thinking of the expense. Maybe also of the danger.