by Chris Lynch
“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.
4
Tests, they said. Observation, they said.
Why? I said. We already know. We know who he is and what he is and why.
Like hell you do, Da said. He laughed.
Pop, will you please shut up, Dad said.
Don’t ever talk to him like that, I said. That was violent. For us. Then. That was violence then.
Understand, son, the man said.
I do not, and I am not, I said. He has been all through this before. You have no test he has not taken.
And failed, Da said. And laughed.
He needs a period of observation, clearly.
He is in the middle of one. Clearly. I observe him. Every day.
It is for the best.
It is for him.
It is for everyone.
It is for the best.
Why are you being so contrary, Daniel?
Contrary Mary, Da said. He laughed.
Why are you being so obstructive, Daniel?
Your acquiescence is not required anyway, son. This is a courtesy.
I am not your son.
No, that is right. You are mine. And I say—
And you’re his son, Dad. So why let him go through more unnecessary and unexplained testing when we already know where it all ends up?
Where does it all end up? Da asked. He laughed.
Simple equation, fellas. A brief period of observation on the one hand, a buttload of fines and damages and charges on the other.
Zeke owns the mansion, Da said.
I am a friend of the owner, nothing more.
Observation, Dad said.
Acquiescence, I said. Observation, acquiescence, observation. Acquiescence.
Do not look at me like that, my father said.
That was violence. That was it right there.
Acquiescence, I said.
Observation, said Da. So long, said Da.
5
“Wake up.”
“What? No. And tell those birds to shut the hell up too.”
“Time for our walk, Da.”
He r
olls over, just his head, toward his digital alarm clock. He does this amazingly, in my opinion, like his head is a separate entity entirely, or like an owl or a beacon on a lighthouse. Always did that, turning his head that way. He looks at the clock, squints even though the numbers are about seven inches high. Then he shields his eyes with his hands as if he is being blinded by the sun at the same time.
“What time is it, Da?” I ask, standing over him. It is good to keep asking them questions, keeping them as sharp with the basics as possible for as long as possible.
He turns away from the clock, gives me the squinty quizzical look now.
“The numbers are seven inches high for goodness’ sake. Are you blind already, Young Man?”
I am never Daniel or Dan or Danny or D.C. or Danny Boy or even District of Columbia, which I loved, not first thing in the morning. That would be too much to ask, and so I don’t ask for it. Young Man suits me just fine, as does the attitude. Feisty. We’ll actually be needing some feisty.
“What time is it, Old Boy?”
“XL,” he says, curling back under the covers like a high school sophomore. At some point, and for no discernible reason, XL became his abbreviation for extremely early. He’s rewriting the language by bits now.
“It’s time for our walk, Da? Remember, Doc said you were supposed to keep up with it, religious-like. The walking.”
He sighs, growls, sits up.
“Doc also says I am supposed to report for observation this morning. Quack-ass doctor schmuck.”
I splut a laugh out loud at the spit-perfect bratty-boy way he says the word “observation.” This is the Da I want.
“Well, walking comes first. Remember he said that? Remember, Da? Remember he said to remember, that every day the walking comes first? Remember?”
These days Da remembers lots of things that never happened, as far as I know. He unremembers lots of stuff that did. Then there is lots more middle ground that who knows whether it did or not, but anyway, I am hoping I can slip some things past him just now.
He grins at me, closes one eye like a pirate, and says, “What are you playing at, boy?”
I make the exact same face. “Not playing at anything. Just carrying out my duties of care and love for my beloved grandfather. That so bad?”