At that moment Mr. Wonderful was waving and honking to us from his nice big safe-looking Saab.
“First gear!” he called back and made the wagon-ho sign. In Colorado they never let you forget the Old West.
I put the Civic into first and started across the course. I looked over at Patty Sue’s feet, which were next to the brake bar. She saw me and tapped the bar. We screeched to a stop.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Will you just please put on your seat belt and then hold still?”
“I thought you wanted me to do it,” Patty Sue said. “Anyway, my body is top long for this little seat.”
I said, “The Japanese are small people.”
The Saab chugged along in front of us, and for a moment I had the apprehensive feeling that accompanies the slow incline on a giant roller coaster. When we came up to the class, Pom jumped out. He signaled to the driving teens to repeat the course before heading over toward us. At Pom’s request, Patty Sue and I changed places.
“Okay,” he said, as he reached across Patty Sue’s lap to restart the car. “You say you’ve had some driving experience.”
“Yes,” Patty Sue said hesitantly.
I thought, If she’s lying, I’ll kill her.
“Do you remember to press in the clutch each time you need to change gears?” Pomeroy was asking. She nodded and he went on. “Then you go a little faster. Do you know how to change gears?”
She nodded again. “I’ve done it in our driveway at home. Neutral to reverse.”
Pom frowned and said, “Why don’t you move this seat back a little, Patty Sue? But watch it. When you go back, Goldy here’ll come forward. I did it that way for teenage drivers with shorter legs and adult instructors with longer ones. You all are sort of the opposite of that.”
I hated it when people referred to my being short. To make up for the coming lack of legroom I put Patty Sue’s purse in the back next to
Patty Sue grunted and brought her seat back. My face made a sudden spring toward the windshield.
“Not so much!” I howled, but Patty Sue was off.
“Let me know if I’m making you nervous!” she yelled as she gunned the accelerator while we were in first gear. We spurted forward. When I was trying to get comfortable she veered right.
“Gosh, this steers so easily,” she cried, as we tilted on two wheels and my door swung open.
“No, no!” I shouted. But she veered left and then right again. Only my seat belt kept me from falling out.
“Brake!” called Pom. “Brake!”
With another screeching turn I was back inside the car and pressing with both feet on the brake bar.
“Damn you!” I yelled at a surprised Patty Sue. “I’ve got a kid at home to take care of! And at my age I don’t care for an extended trip to the hospital and a set of dentures! Now will you calm down, for God’s sake?”
“I guess I’m not very good at this,” she said, contrite at my sudden rage.
Pom trotted up to us and leaned in on her side.
“Take it easy now, girls.”
“Oh shut up!” I said. “Why don’t you get in here with Mario Andretti in first gear? See what it’s like.”
Pom again gave Patty Sue gentle explanations about the gears, clutch, accelerator, and, most important from my point of view, brakes. Getting Patty Sue into a comfortable distance from the steering wheel had meant that my feet were only inches from the brake bar on my side. The students, still standing around in groups, giggled and pointed at us.
“Sorry,” Patty Sue said once Pom had sauntered off again. “I guess I just screw up everything.”
I felt bad in spite of myself.
“You don’t screw up everything,” I reassured her as she bumped us along, still in first, to the short middle track of the drivers’ course. When she did not answer I surveyed the cones and fences, which had looked like a miniature golf course when we first climbed over the embankment. Now they presented themselves as large and unyielding. Dairy Delight and the cars in the high school parking lot, on the other hand, looked like pieces from a Lionel train set. Laughing, blase teens zoomed by on both sides of our Honda, downshifting and upshifting and steering around the obstacles as effortlessly as toddlers on trikes.
“I do screw up everything,” she said while we were waiting our turn.
“Come on, Patty Sue,” I said with false enthusiasm. “You’re going to learn to drive, the business is going to be reopened, everything is going to be okay.”
“If I had learned to drive when I was supposed to, then we wouldn’t have to be doing this today. And if it weren’t for me, your business would be reopened.”
Now she really had my attention. We were still stopped, so I said, “What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, my talk with Laura,” she said plaintively. “If she hadn’t died, then that thing wouldn’t have happened at her house.”
It was finally our turn, so Patty Sue inched and jerked the Honda along while teens in the passing cars shouted derisively at us. She catapulted us into second and we picked up a little speed.
“Give it a little more gas,” Pomeroy called.
Patty Sue obeyed and then said, “I just think if I tell you about it, something bad will happen. Now do I go to fourth?” she asked as she swerved to avoid a cone.
I was gripping the sides of my seat.
I said, “Third. Just concentrate on your driving. We can talk about the rest later.”
But she was off and running. “I’m afraid to tell you about Laura!” she wailed. “I’m afraid of what will happen!”
Preoccupied with these thoughts, she pushed the Honda into neutral and the engine gasped. Then she put it into fourth and the car sighed until she stepped on the accelerator again.
“No!” I yelled, as we whizzed by our first set of startled teenagers.
“Downshift!” came Pomeroy’s remote voice.
“If I tell you what I told Laura,” Patty Sue shouted as her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, “you might die! That’s what happened to her!”
“Don’t worry about it now!” I shrieked over the rushing sound the wind was making in our car.
“I don’t know how to downshift,” Patty Sue called out the window.
“Look out!” I howled as a Volkswagen loomed before us.
Patty Sue swerved wildly and shattered a headlight of the VW. As she turned again my body fell forward, then back, and my feet became jammed underneath the brake bar. I looked out at the timid VW driver, who was stepping gingerly from her car.
I yelled, “My feet are stuck!”
We were speeding headlong toward the ice cream place.
“I can’t brake!” yelled Patty Sue. “I’ll crush your feet!”
“Take your foot off the accelerator!” I shouted.
She screamed, “Is the accelerator this one?” She pushed down again on the gas.
“No, no, no, no!” came voices far behind us.
Suddenly before us was Dairy Delight, where the tables and chairs were lined up like so many bowling pins. A worker came running out waving a knife. I let go of the dashboard long enough to honk. He leaped out of the way. We hit the plastic chairs and tables with a solid
“Why don’t you steer?” I cried.
“Where?” Patty Sue screamed. She wrenched the wheel to the left, then gunned the engine again.
We came up behind Dairy Delight. Two attendants were disgorging the remains of three huge ice cream barrels. Before us was a mountain of slop. On the other side of that, I knew, was the cement embankment.
The Honda hit the edge of the ice cream puddle like a water skier going full tilt; the wheels spewed a muddy wave of glop over the attendants. We skidded wildly toward the embankment.
“Oh God,” I cried, “no!”
“Help!” called Patty Sue. She began to shriek wildly, then pressed the accelerator again.
I am going to die, I thought as we hit the embankment. But we didn’t stop. The Honda climbed. We vaulted
