The Last Cadillac

by Nancy Nau Sullivan

  8

  HEAVY LITTLE KEYS

  I sorted Dad’s clothes. I packed boxes to ship later. I threw out fifteen garbage bags full of stuff that my parents had moved into the condo that I was not going to move again—except to the curb. The furniture had been appraised, and with Dad giving us the go ahead, we decided to divide it up among us. Fortunately, that was something we could all agree on.

  In the blur of activity, however, I forgot about the Cadillac. But Dad didn’t.

  “The Cadillac,” he said abruptly. “We need the car down there.” He was sitting at the breakfast table, halfway into his favorite sandwich, a grilled peanut butter and ham sandwich—the treat he and Mom had shared during their college years at Purdue a lifetime ago.

  I looked up from packing the soup tureen and bowls and linen placemats, and other stuff no one needed.

  “OK,” I said, layering a box of knives on top of a boom box and a carton of light bulbs.

  Focus.

  I hadn’t thought about the Cadillac. But I took out the to-do list that propelled me through the remaining weeks in the North, and in that moment, the Cadillac went right to the top. Of course, we were going to take the Cadillac.

  How are we going to do that?

  His last Cadillac sat in the driveway of the condo. He couldn’t drive it anymore. Age had left him too slow and uncoordinated to drive, although it hadn’t done much to dim his sense of humor and love of a good story, especially the one about the black Cadillac convertible he owned in the ’80s—a doozey—with white leather interior and wire wheels. A thief stole the fancy wheels off the car, and later, he tried to sell them back to Dad, as they sat side by side, in their respective cars, during a one-minute stop at a red light. No deal. Dad got a kick out of that one. He found the value of a good laugh more important than owning anything fancy. After that, he kept his wheels plain and simple.

  Dad’s Cadillacs rolled along in the stories: of trips and football games, of dinners, and christenings, and weddings—even parades through town—of all the places those cars took my parents after Dad’s business picked up and he could afford to buy his first Cadillac in the early ’60s. Now, this one, the last of Dad’s Cadillacs would have a story all its own.

  Dad got up from the table and hobbled over to his walker. “Come with me,” he said.

  I closed the flap on the cardboard box I’d just filled and followed him. “What are you doing? Do you want some help?”

  “I’ll say.”

  He headed to the front door, and I was right behind him. “Dad, where are you going?” But he didn’t stop.

  We reached the door and I opened it, hoping he didn’t trip on the raised threshold.

  “We don’t have time to go anywhere today, Dad.” Impatience intruded, but I scurried along behind him.

  He stepped down onto the front walk and pointed at the Cadillac. As he fumbled in the pocket of his khaki jacket, I had the urge to tell him to stand up straight. Here I was, in the middle of another role reversal, and another childhood memory hounded me: Stand up straight. Don’t fidget. Eat your carrots.

  Then, to my surprise, he pulled out a set of keys.

  I thought I knew everything about Dad. His favorite sandwich. His regularly scheduled television programs. Every tie and sock and pair of pants I’d washed and packed. But, seeing him produce those keys, I was reminded—again—that I would never know everything about anybody. I hadn’t even known my husband. And now, for the life of me, I didn’t know how my father had come up with those keys. Unmistakably, they were to a car. Dad’s Cadillac.

  He handed them to me.

  “Here. I want you to have these,” he said, extending the keys in a curled palm. His nails were getting long again. He needed a haircut, too. As usual, I was easily distracted.

  “What’s this?” I’d driven his car every now and again, to the doctor’s or grocery store. But we really hadn’t cruised around town in the Caddy. There’d been no time.

  “The keys to the Cadillac,” he said. “My last Cadillac.” His shoulders hunched up and down, and then he stifled the weeping, looking at me with teary, smiling eyes.

  “Dad, you old sweetheart.” I hugged him awkwardly as he leaned on his walker, and I stood in my bare feet, in my bathrobe, in the driveway, in the heat. “Thanks, Dad.”

  I turned the keys in my hand. He was proud of that special set of keys hanging on a ring with the familiar Naval crest. Holding them, bouncing them in my open palm, I felt the weight of them. The responsibility. The heavy responsibility.

  “You don’t get it,” he said.

  “Yes, I get it.”

  “Take the keys; take the Cadillac. I want you to drive now. You’re in charge.” He straightened up, his eyes clear and blue.

  “Thanks, Dad. I’ll try.”

  “Don’t take any guff.” Then he turned to go back inside.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just keep your eye on the ball. You’ll be fine.”

  I dropped the keys into my pocket. Such a small thing, and so heavy. I patted them, then looped my arm through Dad’s. “I hope I know what I’m doing, what we’re doing,” I mumbled, as I steered him back into the house.

  “Well, damn it, I hope so, too,” he said, shaking his head. He put his weight on my arm. “You can handle it. I know you will.”

  His walker rattled back to the table, and he sat down again with his sandwich. He took a large bite. Then he smiled up at me. “When do we blow this pop stand?”

  Later that afternoon, when Dad was napping, I went out to the driveway of the dollhouse and looked at the 1994 Mocha Deville. I didn’t get the “Mocha” part, because the car was definitely a mix of silver and purple and hadn’t a thing to do with any shade of coffee brown. The leather interior matched the exterior, and the whole job looked like a large, shiny boat.

  I climbed in, scorching the back of my legs on the wide seat. Since I hadn’t driven it much, it would take some getting used to. I adjusted the seat forward and back, floating smoothly with each automatic surge. This would certainly be better than driving my seven-year-old Taurus—“The Shark,” the kids’ nickname for it—which was on its second transmission, thanks to my brainy idea to use it to pull a U-Haul full of our belongings. The car had certainly lived up to its name for its ability to eat every last dollar in my checking account. I loved The Shark (eventually my godson Peter ended up with it), but I much preferred Dad’s last Cadillac.

  I slid out of the car and shut the door crisply.

  “Well, dearie,” I said to the Caddy, “we’re going to Florida. I don’t know how, but we’re going.”

  “We be stylin’,” Tick said. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

  I turned around, grinned at him. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  Suddenly, I remembered Lucy and me, and all the times in high school—and even before high school—when we took turns sneaking out with the family car. One Saturday afternoon when our parents were away, I talked Lucy into going for a drive in our enormous, grey Ford station wagon. I was just shy of a bold thirteenth year. We ended up crashing into a gas pump in downtown Lansing, and somehow, miraculously, the impact didn’t do any damage (and, thankfully, police were not involved). That was a time they knew how to build cars—childproof cars with steel parts, not plastic. Lucy wouldn’t go out with me after that, but the trip had been worth it. The thrill of driving that car, the thought of getting caught, knowing I had crashed it, and the fear of that excursion ending my secret rides were truly among my fondest, crazed, childhood memories. Didn’t Dad know that we knew about the extra set of keys in the pitcher on his nightstand? If he did, he never let on. We finally told him years later what we did, and he even chuckled. I guess with relief that we hadn’t killed ourselves or someone else.

  Tick and I stood in the driveway, musing at the Cadillac, each for different reasons. He put his arm around my shoulder, and I reached for his strong hand. I stole a look at him, tanned and sm
iling. He was such an easy-going kid, almost a teen, and growing fast, with none of that impossible, withdrawn, sullen angst teens are so famous for. I couldn’t figure out where he got his quality—to rise above it—except for, maybe, a gene from his beloved deceased grandmother. His irreverent teasing, however, was another thing.

  “Nice, Mom,” he said. “Are you going to let me pimp the Caddy?”

  I poked him in the armpit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if I hear you use that kind of language again, I’ll give you a good one. And don’t even think about taking the car out.”

  “Oooooooooo.”

  “Don’t be smart.”

  “OK, sorry, Mom. I’ll be dumb.”

  “You’re being smart.”

  Tick was a long way from a driver’s license, but he was dreaming of the day. I saw it in his eyes—I could see me in his eyes.

  “Someday you’ll drive it,” I said, reluctantly. Time flew very fast, and, in a blink, he, too, would be driving his first Cadillac. When he ran for president of the United States.

  Next on my to-do list was to find a way to get the Cadillac to Florida. Our realtor recommended Mr. Karr of Karr City, who transported her car to Florida every winter. “Sure,” he said, “no problem. I’ll get it down there in fine shape for $550.”

  The day finally came when I drove the Cadillac to K-Mart and met Mr. Karr in the parking lot. I handed him the keys and watched as he pulled the Cadillac up into a berth on the car-hauling trailer for the trip south. A silver-purple ship ready for launch.

  “It’ll be all right there?” I said.

  “Haven’t lost one yet,” he said.

  Let this not be your first, I thought, watching Dad’s last Cadillac bounce one more time, and then settle down for the trip.

  “Meet you safe and sound in Florida,” he said.

  9

  WONDERFULAND

  The first time I left for Florida was on a January morning in 1952 when I was six years old. My grandparents invited me to drive south with them in their new hunter green Cadillac, the early ’50s bulbous version with pokey little fins. They spent half the year up North, next door to us on Bernice Road in Lansing, and the other half down in Bradenton near Anna Maria Island. Out of the dozen or so grandchildren, it was my turn that year to go with them to Florida.

  That morning, dressed up in a new, maroon coat with a fur collar, direct from Little Bramson’s in Chicago, I walked over to my grandparents’ house with Dad, our feet crunching on the frozen grass and cracking the thin ice in the dip between our houses. The sun was just reaching over the trees, shining on the leafless, ice-covered poplars and housetops. It was a wonderland. A frosty, candy-coated morning. And I was on my way to Florida.

  I was glad to be leaving home. Mom was expecting another baby, and that was a lot of babies in less than six years. It was chaotic and messy. Every morning, a baby was standing in the crib crying and wet with a runny nose. I already knew how to change a diaper and give the baby a bottle. At first, it was thrilling, but the thrill wore off—fast.

  Even though I was glad to be going, I didn’t want to leave my dad. He sang Irish songs and tickled us. He stood on his head, and we raced around to pick up the coins that fell out of his pockets. I loved that he had wavy black hair and was tall and handsome, with the distinction that he had a nose all over his face because he’d been a Golden Gloves boxing champ.

  He picked me up and hugged me, then looked me in the eye. “I know you’ll be a fine girl.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Who’s the strongest man in the world?”

  “You are. My dad is.”

  The seats in my grandfather’s new Cadillac were plush, grey-striped, and scratchy. And the back seat where I spent four days was big as a couch. By the time we arrived in Florida, I’d thrown up many times on that seat, but my grandparents didn’t say a word about the mess.

  Grandma only said, “Poor sweetie, are you better now?” And my grandpa said, “Give her some of that magnesia.” That night, my grandmother chased me around the motel room with a nasty, chalky liquid in a blue bottle.

  I stayed with my grandparents for three months in Florida. That is when Grandma found the cottage. My grandfather, of course, went along with her wishes to buy it. They both had a nose for real estate of all sorts.

  One afternoon on the porch, my grandmother was reading The Bradenton Herald, crinkling up the want ads, while my grandfather watched The Secret Storm, his cigar smoke mixing with the scent of gardenias that wafted through the screened door. He growled at me for racing back and forth off of the porch and into the yard among the orange and grapefruit trees. I flew across the spongy Zoysia grass, bouncing along with Punky, the cocker spaniel, his blond ears flopping, like we were running across a wide, green bed.

  Later, I sat sweating on the porch, drinking a Seven-Up. My grandmother tapped the crumpled pages of the newspaper with a pencil and smiled at me. “Ha! Let’s go out there and have a look.” I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I was excited, and, in my six-year-old brain, I knew this had to be something special. “Out there” meant the beach.

  We drove just a few miles west to Anna Maria Island. My bathing suit was wadded up under the front seat, just in case. Off we went. My grandfather with the cigar in his mouth, and my grandmother with a frill of white hair blowing in the humidity. We clacked over the wooden drawbridge, past the tall, spindly palms and the mangroves, the Brazilian berries and the Australian pines, out to the white beach and turquoise water. Small, stucco, ranch houses were popping up, but in those days, the narrow, seven-mile-long island was still a tropical paradise of overgrown sables and palmetto.

  The cottage stood on stilts, slightly crooked on the white sand, at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. It was built of enormous cypress logs that were interspersed with wide swaths of stucco; it was a striped house, the black logs alternating with the white stucco. A rusty-red shingled roof topped it off, and the white-framed windows on either side of the faded green door were like two great eyes that peered right into my happy soul.

  My grandfather was laughing when we pulled up to it. “Liz, the Gulf is almost at the door!” But that didn’t seem to bother her. She was falling in love, and I was, too, the two of us standing next to one another looking out at the water, my hand holding her silky fingers. I squinted up at the sun. There, all around, yellow, soft, golden sun. The Gulf sparkled with diamonds of sunshine, and from that minute on, the turquoise water dazzled me.

  My grandfather came around right then and there, chomping the cigar and looking up into the palms that lined the short street of crushed shell to Gulf Drive. Grinning, he nodded at my grandmother. She raised the edge of her floral housedress and waded into the foamy surf. (She went to her grave saying the salt water was good for her bunions.) I immediately flopped into the waves beside her, bathing suit forgotten.

  My grandmother had saved for just this place. She kept “egg money” tucked in her rubber stocking, and it was from those savings she was able to make a down payment on the cottage. She was always frugal, washing and saving tin foil, making gooseberry and grape preserves from the arbor—she watched me pour the hot wax over the jelly to seal the jars. She was the first person I ever knew to clip coupons. As reluctant as she was to spend money, my aunts made a point of dragging her to Goldblatt’s in downtown Hammond for a new outfit at least once a year. Sometimes I went along, and even then, we had to go directly to the bargain basement.

  My grandmother bought the cottage and the surrounding lots—most all of it under water—for approximately $7,000. The seller was glad to get rid of it.

  Over the years, when we were growing up, we left freezing Northwest Indiana and drove down to the cottage. The trip usually started on cold, dark winter mornings when my Dad woke us up, but I was always dressed under the covers, ready to go, a book and a bag of penny candy under my pillow. In the early days,
we piled into the maroon Chevy station wagon with wood on the sides, someone always throwing up in the backseat, one lucky one standing up in the front seat between Dad and Mom. One time we flew down, the propellers of the airplane making me deaf for days afterward, which only added to the totally mind-altering experience.

  The beach changed, receding and advancing, until finally we ended up with a football-size playground of sand like white sugar. We hid in the sea oats and then ran out in shrieks of laughter; we buried each other up to our necks, dug for coquinas, and made horrible soup with the tiny shellfish (with a recipe from an Old Cortez fisherman). We scoured the beach for sand dollars, periwinkles, and olive shells. We watched for dolphins, and fed lettuce to the manatees, and stale cereal to the seagulls.

  To me, the cottage was paradise. We brought our school-books every winter and never opened them. All day we were on the beach, and at night, I watched the white edge of the Gulf in the darkness from my window when Lucy and I settled down in our small bedroom. The wind creaked and sang through the cracks between the logs. I went to sleep soundly, listening to the waves that rolled in beyond our window. Some nights, the Gulf rose up and the waves lapped against the cottage. Lucy was terrified, but a splash thrilled me. My grandfather told me the pilings under the cottage went seventeen feet into the sand. We were safe in the best place on earth.

  One year, though, we couldn’t go to the cottage, the year I was nine. My parents talked all the time about austerity and recession, words that I didn’t understand, but my mother and father were obsessed with the financial situation. They whispered about it to each other. They never talked to us about finances, except in nebulous terms. The “situation” went right into that category of other unmentionable topics, which included certain illnesses. Finally, Dad announced that we couldn’t go to the cottage because of the “situation with the business.” What damn business, I wanted to know—repeating damn, damn, damn over and over again to myself in my bedroom, after slamming the door and locking it. It didn’t make any sense.