The Elm Street Ladies Tea and Wine Society

by Sandie Nygaard

  "Do you remember driver's ed?"

  Jean laughed and looked across the table at Ellie. How could she possibly forget? "No mailbox was safe when you drove," she told Ellie.

  "I was pretty bad, wasn't I?" Ellie took a sip of her coffee.

  "I was pretty bad, too, but in a different way," Jean replied. She glanced out the window of the café, watching shoppers rush past. "It was the end of our friendship, and really, it was all my fault."

  "But we're friends again now, so it all worked out."

  Jean smiled. That was typical of Ellie. Always steady, always seeing the best in people.

  Twenty years ago, they were in high school together, and they thought they'd be best friends forever. When they were assigned to the same driver’s ed car it had seemed like a fabulous stroke of luck. It was 1970, both lived on small farms, and very soon, when they got their driver’s licenses, they were going to be the two coolest kids at Cedarville High. they knew this because they had been practicing. On Friday evenings, they sneaked into Ellie’s barn, and practiced smoking cigarettes, climbing into the cab of the flatbed truck with their smokes, hanging their elbows out the open windows, and there in the dark, tried out swear words pretending that they were cruising through town. And some nights, when Ellie’s parents were out, they opened the liquor cabinet and made some of the drinks in her dad’s bartender’s guide. Jean tried making a Manhattan first, because it sounded so sophisticated. They practiced holding their glasses and cigarettes in one hand as they choked down the fiery liquid.

  “Oh, um, shit,” Ellie said, coughing. “Are you sure you made this right? It tastes terrible." Ellie still stumbled over swear words.

  “Ellie, cuss with conviction,” Jean said. “I followed the recipe. We just have to get used to it.” Jean poured her some more. "Bottoms up."

  Ellie made a face and took another sip. When they finished, they replaced the lost liquor with water so her parents wouldn’t notice that anything was missing.

  Jean believed that once they had their driver's licenses, she and Ellie could drive into Seattle and have all sorts of exciting adventures. And the only obstacle between them and their licenses was Mr. Dewey's driver’s ed class.

  When it came time to drive, Jean and Ellie were dismayed to find that Chris was the third student in their car. He wore oversized glasses and had a smug sanctimonious air that made Jean avoid him whenever she could.

  "Not even a hundred driver's licenses would make him into someone cool," she told Ellie.

  The first day of driving, Mr. Dewey had them practice starting, stopping, and backing up in the school parking lot. Big deal. Jean and Ellie had been doing that with farm equipment since they were tall enough to reach the pedals. The second session wasn't much better, because all they did was parallel park. Chris and Jean had a hard time getting the hang of it, but Ellie could parallel park as if she was born to do it.

  On the third lesson, they got to drive, but Ellie had a little accident, and scraped a mailbox standing along the road.

  Later she confided to Jean, "It scares me to see cars coming toward me.”

  "You just need more practice," Jean said

  The next week Mr. Dewey took them out of town on some of the flat two-lane roads that wound around the farms. It was Ellie’s turn to drive first, so she took the wheel and headed down the road. As they neared the first corner, Jean looked out over the field and saw a car heading for the same corner going in the opposite direction. She gauged the other car’s speed, and realized that they would meet at the corner. She remembered Ellie's words about being afraid, and suddenly had a very bad feeling.

  “Oh shit,” she whispered with conviction.

  Chris glared at her. “Can’t you put a lid on it?” he said oblivious to what was about to happen.

  Mr. Dewey saw the approaching car. “Ellie,” he said, “I want you to slow down for this corner.”

  Ellie didn’t slow. She had seen the car coming toward her and had panicked, her foot frozen on the accelerator, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. The other car turned the corner, and the road turned the corner, but Ellie went straight; over the gravel shoulder, and through a fence. As the fence splintered around them, Jean screamed a really sincere profanity, Chris bent over into the crash position like they tell you to do in an airplane, and Mr. Dewey braced himself against the dash. They went through a cow pasture until Ellie unfroze and put on the brake. Once stopped, Jean and Chris tumbled out of the car as if they thought it was going to catch fire.

  Mr. Dewey exited calmly, and investigated the front fender, frowning and pursing his lips. "Now a fence to pay for," he muttered.

  Chris was pale, and clearly upset. He began shouting in Jean's face as if this were her fault. “I thought I was going to die,” he yelled, “and the last thing I was going to hear on the face of this earth was your cuss word. Can’t you think of something else to say?” He gave her a push on her shoulder. Her knees were shaking so badly that he nearly pushed her over.

  “Like what?” Jean asked trying to summon up some strength, and giving him a weak push back.

  “I dunno. Boogers or something.” He pushed her again.

  “Boogers? That’s the last word you want to hear on the face of this earth?” she said. Chris balled up his fist, and Jean thought he might hit her, but Mr. Dewey stepped in.

  “Cut it out you guys. Get in the car. Now!” he barked. He opened the driver's door and got in. Chris climbed into the front seat next to Mr. Dewey and Jean and Ellie got in the back

  “I don’t like her swearing,” Chirs said to Mr. Dewey.

  Mr. Dewey put the car into reverse and as he turned to look out the back window, his eyes met Jean's, and she could see that he was at the end of his patience.

  “I don’t care for it much either. From now on it’s nothing more offensive than boogers, or I’m going to kick you out of this car,” he said.

  Jean slumped into the seat. Humph. She looked at Ellie for support and saw that Ellie was shaking with silent sobs. Jean crossed her arms and let Ellie cry. It was Ellie's fault that everyone was mad at her anyway.

  By the last week of driver's ed, Ellie's driving hadn't improved. She had a worrisome tendency to veer to the side of the road when faced with an oncoming car and an alarming habit of sudden and inexplicable braking. Her incompetence felt like a betrayal to Jean. She knew Ellie wasn't doing it on purpose, but how was it possible that her best friend couldn't learn to drive?

  Traditionally, the last day of driver’s ed was a trip over the pass, about fifty miles away. Jean dreaded it. A mountain pass didn’t seem like a safe place to be in a car with Ellie driving, but Jean soon realized that Mr. Dewey had it figured out. When they were almost through the mountains, he told Chris, who was driving, to take the next exit, and then to pull over and let Ellie drive. The next exit was a two lane road that soon turned into one of the logging roads that twined through the mountains. You could drive around up there for days and not see a soul. So they bounced over ruts and endured teeth rattling-washboard for a while with Ellie driving until Mr. Dewey decided they'd better get back. He had Jean take over when they found a place to turn around.

  Jean hadn’t been driving long, when she started up a steep slope, and saw a pick-up towing a camp trailer barreling down toward her. The road was larger than one lane, but it wasn’t quite two either, and there were trees on both sides. Jean cranked the wheel to the right as far as she could, and heard the mirror snap off as she scraped up against a tree. She hit another tree with the corner of her right fender, and stopped, stuck in place. The pick-up driver hit the brakes too hard, and started to jackknife, the trailer skidding sideways in the road. He got it partly straightened out again, but he had so much downhill momentum, that it was obvious that he couldn’t stop.

  Ellie screamed in the back seat, Chris was silent, and Mr. Dewey finally got rattled. He covered his face with his hands. “Oh boogers,” he said.

  Jean simply froze in hor
ror.

  Chris later said that what happened next was a miracle and for once, Jean had to agree with him. The miracle wasn’t that the pickup stopped in time, the miracle was that it fit in beside them. Sort of. When Jean opened her eyes, she found she was wedged in. Large tree, large white camp trailer, small battered driver’s ed car (now with two broken off mirrors), large tree. Just like that. To make things worse, the pickup hadn’t completely pulled out of the jackknife, so it and the trailer were slightly curved around the car. Mr. Dewey and Jean had to crawl to the back seat of the car to get out.

  He and the pick-up driver stood in the road trying to figure out what to do next.“That was a close one,” the driver said. “I never expected to see anyone up here. You must be as lost as I am.”

  Mr. Dewey scratched his head. “Naw, we’re not lost, we were just practicing on some different roads. It’s kind of a long story.”

  “Ya think we can get that car outta there?” the driver asked.

  “It might be better if you could unhitch the trailer,” said Mr. Dewey.

  “Slope’s too steep. I’m afraid the trailer would take off down the hill if we unhitched 'er,” the driver replied.

  “Then let’s see if we can get the car out,” said Mr. Dewey. He climbed back into the car, and with the pickup driver shouting directions, he began trying to jockey the car out. After about fifteen minutes of this, if anything the car was wedged in tighter.

  “We need someone to watch the front and someone in the back,” the driver said. “How 'bout if one of your students takes the wheel?”

  It was Ellie that saved the day. Watching, Jean realized that for Ellie, it was nothing but a difficult parallel parking problem. She wasn’t even following the shouted directions. She just finessed the car out following her own instincts. A few inches forward, a few inches back. Ten minutes later, and the car was out.

  Despite her heroic parking feat, Ellie still flunked driver’s ed and nothing Jean could say would convince her to sign up again. They weren't going to be cool together. Then Ellie's father noticed that his bourbon didn’t look right, and when he tasted it, realized that it was mostly water. He grounded Ellie for three months. The first day that Jean drove through town with her elbow out the window, and a cigarette in her hand, a neighbor saw her, and her parents confiscated her driver’s license for a month. And they adamantly refused to let her drive to Seattle by herself - ever. Despite all these setbacks, Jean was still determined to pursue her vision of cool. Ellie gave it up. She just wasn’t cool, especially with no driver’s license. Jean soon drifted off and found other friends.

  Now, years later, sitting with Ellie in a coffee shop in downtown Seattle, Jean knows that, despite her early efforts, she is definitely not cool. Her kids tell her so all the time. She never developed a taste for Manhattans, but did for cigarettes. She quit, but when she's home alone and the house is quiet, she still yearns to smoke. She is a working, middle-class mom, living in suburbia. So is Ellie. They live about twenty miles apart, and they've become friends again. She is Jean's parallel parking friend. Ellie went through her high school and college years the way she parked. A little bit forward, a little bit back, a little patience and eventually she got to where she was going. Jean sped hell-bent down the highway, not realizing that eventually, she would have to slow down and find a place to park. When she did, Ellie was there waiting for her. Jean can’t say whose approach to life was the best; everyone has to live their own lives. Ellie stayed truer to herself, while Jean pursued a vision of who she wanted to be. They both ended up in about the same place, except that Ellie doesn’t have nicotine cravings in the middle of the night.

  "Hey, I need to run by the grocery store. Want to come with me?"

  "Yeah, I need a few things, too"

  They left the coffee shop, and as Ellie pulled into traffic, the car in front of her stopped suddenly. Ellie slammed on the brakes, but couldn't stop in time, bumping the car in front of her.

  Ellie looked at Jean and laughed. “Oh boogers,” she said.

  * * * *

  Also by Sandie Nygaard

  How to Catch a Man

  A romantic comedy of love, life, and the pursit of man.

  Available in e-book format at all major retailers and at