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 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 antisocial now.
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 brummm.
“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 my car. Two wires, two fingers, and varoom. Couldn’t be worrying about keys all the time in those days. I had places to go.”
“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. Never give up. Understand?”
“I understand, okay? Now, just… give up.”
Thwack.
“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 slow car!”
“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.
“I owed you this, son. I’ve owed you this ride for a long time.”
He doesn’t drive much these days, so under the best of circumstances he’d be a little rusty. Under the circumstances we have, it’s pretty hairy stuff. He seems to be fighting the wheel as much as steering it. It’s a big thing, like a bicycle wheel, and appears to take a large turn in order to make a small one. So he’s all over the wheel, and the car is all over the road.
“Pop,” Dad says, “are you sure about this? I mean, I am glad you think you owed me a ride in a nice vintage car and all but-”
Another mood shift. A soft anger comes over Da. “This car,” he snaps. “This car. My car. I owed you a ride in this.”
“How is this your car?”
The radio comes on, out of nowhere. It took its sweet time, and it’s as if it had this song stuck in its throat since the sixties. Frank Sinatra sings at us that “it was a very good year,” and Da’s beaming mad, happy expression hints that he agrees.
“How did it do that?” I ask.
“Because it’s got tubes in it,” Da says, “like an old television set. Takes time for the tubes to heat up.” He strokes the dashboard like it’s a good, loyal old dog. “You just take all the time in the world, pal,” he says.
His foot is all the way to the floor, and old pal is quite obviously going to take its time.
“Pop,” Dad says, “how is this your car? That’s kind of wild talk.”
“Because it is mine. Because I bought it and took care of it and loved it. Until they took it away from me.”
“Who-?”
Da takes a sharpish turn, and we all slide sideways with the Rambler’s squishy suspension.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Da answers, sort of.
“Oh, jeez, Pop. Really?”
I look ahead just in time to see the handsome stone-and-steel archway of the cemetery pass overhead.
“We need to make a quick visit,” Da says. “She needs to see us men all together, on a day out together. And she needs to see the car. She loved this car and will be very pleased we took it back.”
That “we took it” thing has me suddenly getting visions of jail. I look back to Dad, who has sat way back in his seat now and looks a bit shrunken.
I guess we’re going visiting. And, from the sound of the sirens, I think we’ll be a large visiting party. Hope you are ready for company, Gram.
She looks ready. We drive the car so far up the winding roads of the place, I am sure we are on hallowed, unallowed ground. We pile out of the car and walk over the twenty yards to the grave, silent as monks, solemn as altar boys.
It is the simplest of simple stones. White granite. Dates of birth and death. And
ELLA CAMERON
BELOVED
She was a simple woman in her tastes.
We all stand around her, staring for a minute or so, before Da steps aside like a game show host with a big cheesy smile and a sweeping arm gesture, introducing the car.
“I got it back, Beloved. How’s that? How’s that?”
“Um,” Dad says softly, “the girls, they’ll probably be mad with worry about us…”
The cops have entered the gates, cut the sirens, and slowly cruise their way up toward us.
“Pop?” Dad asks. “Pop? Are you aware…?”
“Of course I’m aware,” Da says. He’s still talking to Ella, though. “I am aware, and I am sorry. I said I would get it back, when the time came. I only wish you could have waited. If only you could have waited.” He turns to us. “She was a very impatient woman. She was a very feisty, impatient woman.”
The cops are standing about eight feet off now, patient and polite, like they are officiating at a funeral rather than hauling in a team of car thieves.
Then, before we even have a chance to say anything, another car pulls up, and it’s Zeke.
He steps out of his car and walks right up to Da.
“No finer woman,” Zeke says, arm around my grandfather’s shoulders.
“None finer,” Da says, Dad says.
“No finer man,” Zeke says, squeezing him harder so that Da’s shoulders compress into a small-man frame.
“I’m sorry,” Da says again. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Pop?” Dad asks. “It was just a little confusion, that’s all. Nobody’s going to-”
“Sorry for… everything. Nothing. Never mind. Nothing, sorry for nothing.”
It is all coming on fast now, and the confusion is alarmingly visible on my grandfather’s face. I step up, like he is mine, like he belongs to me, because these days he does. “Come on, Da,” I say, putting an arm around his shoulders and helping him back to…
Some stranger’s lovely little stolen classic.
I realize what I am doing, and turn to see the two cops, and Dad, and Zeke, but mostly the two cops.
“You don’t really have to…,” I begin. “You can see what we have here, right? Is it really necessary, since he didn’t even realize the car didn’t belong to him?”
Dad tries to help. “We got in the car with him to try and talk him down. To see that he didn’t maim anybody, but the purpose was to get the car back to the owners just as soon as we could.”
“I am the owner,” Da says, low and serious as he and I move toward the car again. We stop at the driver’s door. “If you want to arrest the car thief, arrest whoever stole it from me.” He turns again. “Arrest him,” he says, pointing to his old colleague and friend Zeke. “He’s one of them. He’s one of them, took my car away from me. This was only just right. Just getting back what was mine.”
This is a very uncomfortable place right now, and a very uncomfortable group. Zeke leans up and whispers a few words in the lead cop’s ear. The cops both nod, very understandingly, but what could they possibly understand? I have been right here all along, and I don’t understand. Da is living through it, and he doesn’t understand. I guess the police simply understand that the old man doesn’t understand, and that’s why they can be so understanding.
“We are going to have to go back to the mansion,” says the lead cop, “and see what Mr. Rose wants to do about this. If he wants to press charges, certainly he would be within his rights to do so.”
“Rights?” Da spits. “It’s my car, not Rose’s.”
Zeke comes walking toward us, and Da bristles.
“Why are you even here?” Da asks.
“Because I am your friend,” Zeke says.
“How did you know we were here?” I ask him. Da is getting so red and puffed in the face, I fear he’s going to blow like a bloody tick all over Zeke.
“I was at the auto show when I saw the show was becoming my old pal here.”
Zeke unwisely does a little chuck move at Da’s shoulder. Da slaps the hand away.
“You seem to be lots of places we are,” I say.
I see a slash, brief, of tension cross his eyes. “We came to this show together practically every year. We love it. We have always had a lot in common, your granddad and I. Peas in a pod, weren’t we, Darius?”
Suddenly, Darius demures.
“Why don’t we all go back to the mansion,” says the second cop, a larger, younger, more sneery-looking law enforcer. “Something will work out, I’m sure. Why don’t you let me have the keys, sir.”
“Keys? Junior, I lost the keys sometime around 1967.”
Junior smirks, walks over, and leans into the front seat. He looks around the steering column. He pops up, shrugs toward the other officer. “Don’t appear to be any keys,” he says.
Da walks over, pushes the big cop in a way I never would dare to, and leans in. He runs his hand around a bit under the wheel, wiggles his fingers.
Bruummm.
Da beams. “Just have to be nice to her.”
“We are going to all have to go back to the mansion,” says the boss cop.
“Right,” says the burly one. “I’ll drive this.”
He tries to sit in the Rambler, and Da gives him a two-forearm blast; if he had a hockey stick he’d be in the penalty box. The cop laughs at him in a way that’s both unamused and seriously unamusing.
“Listen,” Zeke says, warmly and all too helpfully, “come ride with me, Darius. It’ll be like old times.”
“No,” Da snaps.
“That or the squad car,” the big cop says with satisfaction.
“No,” Da insists, sure for all the world that he’s got choices here.
“Come on, Pop,” Dad says, defeat already in his voice. “You don’t want to be stuck in a police car. How embarrassing would that be? This will all be sorted out soon if you just-”
“No,” Da says.
“What will the girls say?” Dad says, getting visibly distressed over the thought.
“Come on.” Zeke shows impatience.
“I’m going in my car,” Da insists.
I look at my father, the man here who I am thinking should be taking charge, taking care, of the old man, of the situation, of me and everything.
And I am thinking, how did he ever get so weak? I am sorry for thinking it, and I love the man, I do. But how did the man who had Da for a father become this man?
“Officer,” I say, stepping right up to the boss man. “Listen, let us take the car back. Please? You see, right? You see what he’s dealing with, his condition. We’ll follow you, or you can follow us… He’s a good man. He’s on the wrong side of the slope now, but he shouldn’t have to have it any worse. Please? My Dad will drive the car. Please?”
He stares at me. He hears a lot of stories, of course, a lot of them crap, of course, so this look would be the law-enforcement, I-am-processing look.
Then I do something I would not expect me ever to do. I reach out and squeeze his forearm. With two hands, like I am kneading bread dough. I am a little stunned with what I am doing and a little disgusted too. “He was my granddad,” I say.
Cop looks away, looks at Da, looks straight up in the air. “Aw, cripes,” he says. Then he pokes me right in the stomach with his finger. “If you guys don’t drive straight and very carefully right back to the mansion, I will throw the old guy in jail and pistol-whip his grandson.”
That worked out better than I expected.
The big cop passes my way as the other one walks away. I think he’s going to just slip by but I feel my biceps squeezed like I am getting my blood pressure taken by a boa constrictor.
“My mother has dementia,” he says, close, understanding, quietly furious.
I do not know what to say. I do not know what he wants to convey to me or squeeze out of me. I do not get the sense that he quite knows either. But if he does not let go in the next few seconds, I am going to lose this arm.
“I understand,” I say, as close to understanding as I can come.
He lets go, just before I produce tears.
The two policemen climb back into the cruiser, and I tell Dad the deal.
“I’m driving this?” Dad says.
“Like hell you are,” his dad says.
“Dammit, Darius,” Zeke says, “just come with me.”
“Listen, Da,” I say, “there is no way they are going to let you drive, certainly not before we have sorted the whole thing out back at the mansion. So your choices are: cop cruiser or Zeke or ride in the old-”
“My old…”
“Your old Rambler. As a passenger.”
Zeke lets out a small, almost screechy growl down low in his throat, like an animal in a trap. “Darius,” he says, and it’s pure menace. He gives me a chill.
“This is a family trip, sorry,” I say to Zeke as Dad and I link arms with Da. You cannot force my grandfather into anything. But I think we just about managed to charm him.
We climb in and set off, a ways behind the cops, a short distance ahead of Zeke. Dad is driving, and smiling broadly as he comes to grips with the old car.
“I feel like… a kid, I guess,” Dad says. “Like I am back driving my first car.”
“You never drove this machine, fool.”
It is a strange combination of stiff and bouncy, but the car has a cool of its own. A frumpy cool, unlike what a convertible usually shows you.
“Neither did you, old-timer,” Dad says, actually playing with his father. Strange, stranger, strangest, what is happening here, but bone me if I am going to get anywhere near stopping it. They have had a hard time, these two, for as long as I can remember, and certainly since before that. They both love me, and it shows. They both love each other, and it, dammit, never ever does.
But now.
“I drove it for ages,” Da squawks.
“If by ages you mean the time between when you committed grand theft auto and the time the police caught you, then yes, you drove it for ages.”
We are just about to exit the cemetery, and Da does what would have been unthinkable before everything became thinkable. He goes for the wheel.
“Pop!” my father screams, and tries to outmuscle the still wiry Da.
“Da!” I shout, trying to get out of my seat belt but not quick enough.
We swerve hard left, over the oldest part of the cemetery, the place with all the famous pre-Civil War graves and even pre-Revolution ones, where all the stones are famously soapstone and ring-fenced and do-not-touch.
Before Dad gets us to a stop, we have touched-up quite a few of them, as well as laying smushed-up waste to their protective fences. I jump out and run to the front to see what the damage is, but the rugged, heavy old frame of the Rambler has done most of the damage, while the dead soldiers are just as dead as before, only now unidentified.
“Pop!” my dad says again, pushing his father away from him and holding him firmly by the arms. The way he would sometimes do to me when he was furious and I needed a shake as well as a talking-to.
No longer full of fight, Da just says, sadly, “My car.”
Zeke is now standing lordly over the mess of us. “Cripes,” he says. “This just got a whole lot more expensive, didn’t it?”
We all slump in embarrassed silence.
He’s an embarrassment. My mighty, almighty Da has become an embarrassment.
“This was when an automobile dealer treated a man correctly,” Da says in the passenger seat, stroking the green, leatherish dashboard. “They had respect. There was respect all over the damn place, and nobody ever talked about it. Not like today. Not like today. The word is everywhere, but that’s it. Just the word, “respect” with a whole lot of nothing behind it.”
“Okay, no more screwing around,” Zeke says, opening the door and helping Da out. The old man puts up no fight. “Gentlemen, it is a good thing this man here is so loved by so many people in so many places. We will sort this out, don’t you worry. But I’m going to take Darius to the station myself. Follow right behind, carefully, before we call any more attention to all the havoc.”
“Thank you, Zeke, thank you so much. Sure. We will,” Dad says, a little weaselly. “Right behind you.”
“They would do anything for you,” Da says, leaning back over the side of the car, rubbing his hand down the back of the chair, along the top of the half-down passenger window. The window even has its own chrome strip across the top. “They would make buying a new car almost as much fun as driving it,” he says, and suddenly snaps the latch on the glove compartment, giggling like a toddler making mischief, before Zeke impatiently tugs him over to his own big, expensive, charmless, boring machine.
I take my seat riding shotgun.
“Dad,” I say as he starts weaving around the rubble.
“What, son, I am trying to-”
“Look,” I say, gesturing at the open metal flap of the glove compartment.
The compartment door serves as an ancient cup holder, two circles stamped deeply into the metal. Must have passed for fancy a world and a half ago. In between the cups, written in a stylish script, are raised, silver-plated initials: D.C.
“So what?” Dad says. “Daniel, we have to get-”
“Those are Da’s initials. Dad? Those are Da’s initials. This was Da’s car after all.”
He growls his low and small growl of concentration, fear, anxiety as he concentrates on maneuvering a car that is no sports car, trying pathetically to hang with a car that is a whatever-it-wants-to-be car.
“Don’t be so dumb and adventurous, Daniel. It doesn’t mean anything. Those are your initials, too, and I don’t think this is your car. Is it?”
I look at the side of his face. He has his father’s profile, and almost nothing else at all. There is a weird, almost completely new expression there that I am trying to read, can almost read, cannot read.
“It was his car, Dad.”
“No it wasn’t, Daniel.”
Now I can read the expression. It is willful, fearful denial, and I realize I have seen it before.
Hundreds of times.
I shut up.