what was somehow worse, it was always “her” and “she” instead of “it”.
I didn’t like it, and I didn’t know why.
And even my own father had spoken of it as if, instead of buying an old junker, Arnie had gotten married. But it wasn’t like that. Not at all. Was it?
Stop the car, Dennis. Go back… I want to look at her again.
Simple as that.
No consideration at all, and that wasn’t like Arnie, who usually thought things out so carefully—his life had made him all too painfully aware of what happened to guys like him when they went off half-cocked and did something (gasp!) on impulse. But this time he had been like a man who meets a showgirl, indulges in a whirlwind courtship, and ends up with a hangover and a new wife on Monday morning.
It had been… well… like love at first sight.
Never mind, I thought. We’ll start over again. Tomorrow we’ll start over. We’ll get some perspective on this.
And so finally I went to sleep. And dreamed.
The whining spin of a starter in darkness.
Silence.
The starter, whining again.
The engineered, missed, then caught.
An engine running in darkness.
Then headlights came on, high beams, old-fashioned twin beams, spearing me like a bug on glass.
I was standing in the open doorway of Roland D. LeBay’s garage, and Christine sat inside—a new Christine with not a dent or a speck of rust on her. The clean, unblemished windscreen darkened to a polarized blue strip at the top. From the radio came the hard rhythmic sounds of Dale Hawkins doing “Susie-Q'—a voice from a dead age, full of a somehow frightening vitality.
The motor muttering words of power through dual glasspack silencers. And somehow I knew there was a Hurst gearbox inside, and Feully headers; the Quaker State oil had just been changed—it was a clean amber colour, automotive lifeblood.
The wipers suddenly start up, and that’s strange because there’s no one behind the wheel, the car is empty.
Come on, big guy. Let’s go for a ride. Let’s cruise.
I shake my head. I don’t want to get in there. I’m scared to get in there. I don’t want to cruise. And suddenly the engine begins to rev and fall off, rev and fall off; it’s a hungry sound, frightening, and each time the engine revs Christine seems to lunge forward a bit, like a mean dog on a weak leash… and I want to move… but my feet seem nailed to the cracked pavement of the driveway.
— Last chance, big guy.
And before I can answer—or even think of an answer—there is the terrible scream of rubber kissing off concrete and Christine lunges out at me, her grille snarling like an open mouth full of chrome teeth, her headlights glaring -
I screamed myself awake in the dead darkness of two in the morning, the sound of my own voice scaring me, the hurried, running thud of bare feet coming down the hall scaring me even worse. I had double handfuls of sheet in both hands. I’d pulled the sheet right out; it was all wadded up in the middle of the bed. My body was sweat-slippery.
Down the hall, Ellie cried out “What was that?” in her own terror.
My light flooded on and there was my mom in a shorty nightgown that showed more than she would have allowed except in the direst of emergencies, and right behind her, my dad, belting his bathrobe closed over nothing at all.
“Honey, what is it?” my mom asked me. Her eyes were wide and scared. I couldn’t remember the last time she had called me “honey” like that—when I was fourteen? twelve? ten, maybe? I don’t know.
“Dennis?” Dad asked.
Then Elaine was standing behind and between them, shivering.
“Go back to bed,” I said. “It was a dream, that’s all. Nothing.”
“Wow,” Elaine said, shocked into respect by the hour and the occasion. “Must have been a real horror- movie. What was it, Dennis?”
“I dreamed that you married Milton Dodd and then came to live with me,” I said.
“Don’t tease your sister,” Mom said. “What was it, Dennis?”
“I don’t remember, I said.
I was suddenly aware that the sheet was a mess, and there was a dark tuft of pubic hair poking out. I rearranged things in a hurry, with guilty thoughts of masturbation, wet dreams, God knows what else shooting through my head. Total dislocation. For that first spinning moment or two, I hadn’t even been sure if I was big or little—there was only that dark, terrifying, and overmastering image of the car lunging forward a little each time the engine revved, dropping back, lunging forward again, the hood vibrating over the engine-bucket, the grille like steel teeth—
Last chance, big guy.
Then my mother’s hand, cool and dry, was on my forehead, hunting fever.
“It’s all right, Mom,” I said. “It was nothing. Just a nightmare.”
“But you don’t remember—”
“No. It’s gone now.”
“I was scared,” she said, and then uttered a shaky little laugh. “I guess you don’t know what scared is until one of your kids screams in the dark.”
“Ugh, gross, don’t talk about it,” Elaine said.
“Go back to bed, little one,” Dad said, and gave her butt a light swat.
She went, not looking totally happy about it. Maybe once she was over her own initial fright, she was hoping I’d break down and have hysterics. That would have given her a real scoop with the training bra set down at the rec programme in the morning.
“You really okay?” my mother asked. “Dennis? Hon?” That word again, bringing back memories of knees scraped failing out of my red wagon; her face, lingering over my bed as it had while I lay in the feverish throes of all those childhood illnesses—mumps, measles, a bout of scarlet fever. Making me feel absurdly like crying. I had nine inches and seventy pounds on her.
“Sure,” I said.
“All right,” she said. “Leave the light on. Sometimes it helps.”
And with a final doubtful look at my dad, she went out. I had something to be bemused about—the idea that my mother had ever had a nightmare. One of those things that never occur to you, I guess. Whatever her nightmares were, none of them had ever found their way into Sketches of Love and Beauty.
My dad sat down on the bed. “You really don’t remember what it was about?”
I shook my head.
“Must have been bad, to make you yell like that Dennis.” His eyes were on mine, gravely asking if there was something he should know.
I almost told him—the car it was Amie’s goddam” car, Christine the Rust Queen, twenty years old, ugly fucking thing. I almost told him. But then somehow it choked in my throat, almost as if to speak would have been to betray my friend. Good old Arnie, whom a fun-loving God had decided to swat with the ugly-stick.
“All right,” he said, and kissed my cheek. I could feel his beard, those stiff little bristles that only come out at night, I could smell his sweat and feel his love. I hugged him hard, and he hugged me back.
Then they were all gone, and I lay there with the bedtable lamp burning, afraid to go back to sleep. I got a book and lay back down, knowing that my folks were lying awake downstairs in their room, wondering if I was in some kind of a mess, or if I had gotten someone else—the cheerleader with the fantastic body, maybe—in some kind of a mess.
I decided sleep was an impossibility. I would read until, daylight and catch a nap tomorrow afternoon, maybe, during the dull part of the ballgame. And thinking that, I fell asleep and woke up in the morning with the book lying unopened on the floor beside the bed.
