There’s the divorce, the Chevroelt, the new girlfriend,
and McDonald’s. I’m never certain about the exact order in which
they arrive. But Mom gets the Volkswagen (and the butcher block, and the kids),
and Dad buys a used four-door sedan, the color of a much washed but never eradicated
coffee-stain.
Even at age seven I know it isn’t a cool car. My father, however, tends
to present his foibles as funny stories, so I laugh even though I’m more
than a little afraid the car will explode. Mom flares her nostrils whenever
it rumbles and sputters up the driveway to collect my sister and me for the
weekend visit. But Dad says adventures are important and that whiners will not
be tolerated, so I hold my breath and tell my little sister to get in the back
seat. Knowing my mother is watching from the front porch as the car pulls away,
I try to look neither miserable nor excited.
Dad contends the car was born
a runt, scarred before it ever left the factory by the dyslexic misspelling
on the left side of the trunk. “CHEVROELT” the rusting chrome caps
announce. My father alleges this is akin to those rare postage stamps mistakenly
printed with upside-down biplanes. “One in a million,” he says.
The vehicle has a habit of releasing the hood while in motion, forcing Dad to
drive with his head hanging out the window until he can pull over. An eruption
of blue smoke marks each stoplight’s switch to green, enveloping the cars
behind in an impenetrable, squid-ink fog, which Dad says makes it a great getaway
car. He always makes clear that nothing can erase the Chevroelt’s special
stigmata of uniqueness. In addition, it’s fodder for his stories, which
he tells loudly at faculty parties, gesturing with a clinky glass of bourbon
in one hand and a look of amused bewilderment on his face.
My sister and I are often dragged along to these events, where grown-ups balancing
plates and wine glasses surround my dad, waiting for the next punchline. (Some
time later, one of his favorite stories will be about the countless, sleep-defying
calls he received after advertising the Chevroelt for sale in the local paper:
“Not pretty, but runs--$45.00.”) Many of his stories are like this.
He may appear a little foolish (“I could’ve gotten 500 bucks for
the damn thing!”), but everyone listening is completely charmed. The new
girlfriend stands by smiling and nodding, and rolling her eyes at the right
moments. I watch from a distance in my scratchy good clothes, while my sister
plays Sorry with the other bored kids in the next room. I can’t remember
my mother ever looking at Dad the way the new girlfriend does--like he’s
a present she never expected to receive.
At some point during each weekend
visit Dad pulls the Chevroelt into McDonald’s. Every time, it seems like
a miracle to be eating inside this red and yellow wonderland. I am afraid of
what my granola-baking and co-op-shopping mom would say if she knew, but I have
also developed a mean appetite for the cheeseburgers. No lumps, no surprise
vegetables tossed in “for vitamins,” just perfectly smooth, brown
discs. The trade-off for this illicit pleasure is that every meal my sister
and my father enact the same pointless argument.
“I can’t believe I have a daughter who eats ketchup,” Dad
says. “Jesus H. Christ.” She is four. “Don’t you get
it?” he persists, “Ketchup is the lowest class of condiment--in
fact, it isn’t even a real condiment. The purpose of a condiment is to
enhance flavor. Ketchup utterly obliterates flavor.” My sister squirts
more ketchup on her fries, the corners of her mouth already flecked with red
paste. I want to pinch her but she’s across the table. I do not eat ketchup,
in fact it turns out I never will. But Dad won’t drop it and she won’t
stop putting the wet, scarlet fries in her mouth, silently, stickily. Finally
the new girlfriend says softly, “Hon’,” and he quiets down
with a grunt and a shake of his head. Though I’d never tell my mom, I
think the new girlfriend is nice.
Eventually, my father the film professor
becomes so enamored with the Chevroelt he decides to make a short film, called
“Used Car.” Super-8 projects like these are the only kind of home
movies we have, and while my sister and I may occasionally star, Dad always
directs. He already has footage of the cloud of blue smoke, but a key scene
will feature the odometer turning over 200,000 miles. He has been talking it
up several weekend visits in a row (“Get ready, girls, this is gonna be
great!”), and finally the moment has arrived. We will celebrate at McDonald’s
right afterward, and that night he and the new girlfriend are throwing a faculty
party.
Piling into the car, I get the front seat. My sister is in the back with Dad
and his super-8 camera. It’s comical to see my father in the backseat--it
seems like the last place you’d find him. The new girlfriend is driving
so Dad can film over her shoulder. For some reason I feel especially grown-up.
In the Volkswagen I’m used to getting the front seat, since I’m
the oldest. But it seems different with the new girlfriend sitting next to me
here, as if we’re just friends, out for a drive. It’s summer, and
the windows are rolled down, or maybe they’re just stuck open, and her
blond hair keeps flying into the picture. “God dammit. Keep your hair
out of the fucking frame,” Dad says, in the voice where you can’t
tell if he’s genuinely angry or jokingly irritated.
It feels scary and wild, filming while driving down the highway. There is
significant swerving. Horns blare from other cars as they try to steer clear
of us. It’s unclear to me why we have to be going so fast but I am not
a whiner. I try to help by reaching up to hold the new girlfriend’s long
hair away from the lens. I grasp at the silky strands. Her hair is like Barbie’s,
a doll my mom says I can’t have because of sexism. Nothing is really working
out the way Dad said it would with the filming, but that’s okay because
now he’s laughing, saying, “Holy Christ,” in a way that’s
not mad, just surprised. He starts listing out loud everything that’s
gone wrong so far, setting it up like he will when he tells the story at the
faculty party: the finicky camera, the untamed hair, the cars honking, the swerving.
In the retelling he’ll have to include all of us, packed in the Chevroelt
together. This is my dad’s new life, and at least for right now, I am
in it.
Brangien Davis is the editor of Swivel:
The Nexus of Women & Wit, a literary magazine created by fastening
together thin sheets of some sort of tree product and putting patterns of pigment
or dye on them. Takes all kinds, I guess. This is her second story for Lime
Tea.
