I Was Told It Would Get Easier(72)

Helen’s car was as much of a trip as she was. It was one of those old station wagons with the wood on it; I have no idea what they’re called.

When Helen pulled up in front of the hotel, my mother burst out laughing.

“You are kidding me. You still have Jezebel?”

Helen leaned her arm on the window and grinned. “Why would I change? She’s still running like a champ. I like cars, I take good care of her, and besides, I think my mother would be insulted if I traded in the car she gave me for something new.”

Mom laughed. “Even though she gave you Jezebel and went straight out and bought a used, pristine, silver Datsun 280ZX?”

Helen waved a hand. “She felt she’d done her time in the wagon. I was the last to go to college . . . I get it.” She jerked her head. “Are you getting in?”

I went to open the back door, but Helen stopped me. “No, I want you to ride shotgun so I can dig into the darkest recesses of your mind and see how you think.”

I looked at Mom, but she shrugged and climbed into the back seat. “Don’t try to resist, Emily, there’s no point.”

I wasn’t completely convinced this was a good idea. I mean, do these vintage cars even have airbags? Asking seemed rude, so I walked around the car and climbed in.

“Seat belt.” Helen was firm. “And then you’re in charge of the music.” She handed me a shoebox filled with those weird cassette tapes with actual physical brown whatever that is. Tape, I guess. “Play whatever you like.”

I rustled through the tapes, and eventually spotted a familiar face.

I will admit that when the opening bars of “Private Eyes” filtered through the surprisingly good sound system, and both women cheered, I felt pretty good about myself.





JESSICA


Talk about a blast from the past. Sitting in Helen’s car, listening to Hall and Oates, the breeze from the open window blowing my hair around . . . it was great. Helen and Emily were chatting away in the front, but I couldn’t hear them very well, on account of the breeze, and the murmur of their voices was soothing. I hadn’t ridden in the back of a car in so long, that feeling of being transported, both literally and figuratively. I’d spent a lot of my childhood in the back of a car much like this one, arguing with my sister over what music to play, getting overruled by my mom.

The back seat of Helen’s car was filled with books and papers and smelled like cedar. I looked for a tree-shaped air freshener but instead there was a high-tech diffuser plugged into the cigarette lighter. Do new cars even have cigarette lighters? My mom smoked like a fiend my whole childhood, and I remember her using the cigarette lighter to, you know, light cigarettes. My sister and I would watch from the back, the open windows (I’m lighting up, ladies, crack a window) blowing our hair in our faces as it is now, fascinated as Mom waited for the thunk of the lighter, the unlit cigarette pursed tightly, the exciting possibility that as she never paid attention to what she was doing (Don’t take your eyes off the road, those bastards will drive right at you), she might drop it and set us all on fire. Then she’d suck, her cigarette making the crisp sound of crinkling paper, and shake the lighter as if it were a match. Then, one eye squinting, she’d blindly put it back, occasionally melting the radio buttons instead, then snatch the cigarette from her mouth and exhale a dragon’s breath through the window at the drivers who were all getting in her way.

I’d watched my mom a lot; it was a different time, and she didn’t share herself the way I try to share myself with Emily. Not that Emily seems interested in what I’ve got to offer. My mom had lots of habits I enjoyed: a way of wiping the edge of her coffee cup with her thumb before taking every sip; the lining up of socks, top to toe, before rolling them into balls; always saying the dinner needed salt and then getting up to find the saltshaker. There’s a famous book by this social scientist called Winnicott, about “good enough” parenting, an idea I really thought I was going to apply to my own life but that I failed to do, not being able to summon the delicious combination of caring and ignoring it required. Mom paid attention to us, but no more than we needed. She fed us, but she sure as hell didn’t take dinner orders the way I do. And she’d had no more intention of spending her limited free time playing with her own kids than she would have with anyone else’s. On weekends and summers, she’d turned us out of the house in the morning and told us to come back when the streetlights came on. If the weather was bad she’d suggest the movies and maybe drop us off, but she wasn’t sitting there watching The Land Before Time, I assure you.

I would lose my mind if I caught Emily and her friends doing any of the things my sister and I got up to. Exploring abandoned buildings. Finding stashes of porn magazines and giggling over them, feeling weird but not requiring any kind of therapy over it. The one that really makes my blood run cold is the memory of putting pennies on the train tracks near our house, one summer’s favorite activity. A neighbor boy, strange and appealing in equal measure, showed us a gap in the fence and the flattened pennies that were the product of this very limited cottage industry. You could always feel the train before you saw it; a fizzing in the metal that broke into a high-pitched humming, and the train would suddenly thump into passing, close enough to whip our hair back, furiously loud, making us jump and clutch each other and scream.