To Selena, With Love

by Chris Perez

  “Go ahead,” I yelled over the engine. “Get on the highway.”

  “For real?”

  I could hear the smile in her voice. “Yeah, get on the highway and see what’s up.”

  Onto the highway we went. Selena started out at a gentle cruising speed, maybe 60 mph, but before too long she hit 65, then 70 mph.

  “That’s it! That’s fast enough!” I yelled, tapping her side. I could hear her laughing through her helmet, but she slowed down a little.

  Our ride was almost without incident. I started to relax. Selena was a good driver in a car and, despite her love of speed, she seemed fairly steady on a motorcycle.

  The one thing that hadn’t occurred to me until it was time to exit off the highway ramp was that Selena really hadn’t had enough experience on a motorcycle to know how it would react. She had never made a turn off one street and onto another.

  I was in a near panic. I lifted my visor and hurriedly started yelling things at her, telling Selena how to lean when she wanted to change lanes or turn a corner, demonstrating by pressing my body against hers.

  When it was time to actually hit the exit ramp, Selena was still going too fast. “Slow down!” I yelled.

  Thankfully, the light was green as we came off the highway. Selena made the right turn successfully, cruising right through it. Then we had to make a quick left. Unfortunately, Selena decided to lean the bike before I did, so that the bike started turning before we reached the intersection.

  I had to think fast. If I tried to fight her and the bike by leaning the other way, I risked having her straighten up, and that momentum could tip us over. If I sat up straight, she might lean even more and flip us over as well. It was going to be bad if I fought her in any way.

  Finally I decided to lean with her, just a little. We popped a curb and went right over somebody’s front yard, then came down hard off that curb and coasted onto the street. I felt Selena stiffen a little against me as she panicked. “Oh no!” she yelled.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t panic. Just keep driving,” I said, even though inside, I was yelling the same thing she was. The last thing I wanted to do was crash on our own street and have Abraham find out.

  I told Selena to stop at the corner before we were close enough for her father to see us. “Why?” she yelled.

  “What if your dad is outside for whatever reason, or he hears the motorcycle come up and decides to look out the window?” I yelled. “The last thing Abraham needs is to see you driving a motorcycle!”

  Selena stopped the bike and climbed off in a hurry. I guess the thought of Abraham was stronger than any other argument I could have given her.

  Still, Selena was stubborn enough to think that she knew all about motorcycles after that one little lesson. One night, I came home and saw that my bike was parked crooked in the garage.

  I stomped into the house. “Selena? What the hell did you do with my bike?”

  “I just took it for a ride through the neighborhood,” she said breezily. “It was cool.”

  I really got into it with her that time. “It was not cool! You don’t know what could have happened.”

  I started telling her about my father’s accident, then, and about all of my other friends and relatives who’d been left dead or crippled because of some stupid mistake they’d made on their motorcycles. I had to scare her into being sensible.

  “Anytime you’re tempted to do that again, remember that my dad got dragged for three miles with his motorcycle under a truck,” I said.

  Selena just stared at me, openmouthed. “That happened to your dad? Shoot,” she said. “Okay, I won’t take your motorcycle out by myself again.”

  I almost believed her. Still, I checked on the bike every time I came home after that. I knew how Selena rolled, taking every risk that came her way with courage and joy—in music, in love, and in life.

  Around the same time that I got my motorcycle, Selena and I owned two cars. When Selena’s charcoal gray BMW M3 was stolen, she took the insurance money and replaced it with a black Porsche 968. I had already given my own car to relatives who needed it and had been sharing the BMW. Since we were on the road so much, it wasn’t too much of a hassle to share one vehicle. One day, however, a friend of ours who owned the same dealership where Selena bought her black Porsche convinced us to come and see what he had in his car lot.

  “I want to buy something used, not new,” I told Selena on the way over to the car dealership. “I don’t see the point of buying a new car that will lose its value the minute I drive it off the lot. Let’s get something at least a couple of years old.”

  Selena agreed. No matter how much money she earned in her life, she always remembered her humble start. She still surprised me with stories about how she and her brother and sister had grown up; for instance, she told me that the family never had much money to spend on toys, so the children played mostly with household objects.

  “I especially loved playing with clean sheets,” Selena told me once. “I liked to make hammocks out of the sheets when they were hanging on the clothesline and lie in them like cocoons.”

  The minute we pulled into the parking lot of our friend’s dealership, I spotted a red Porsche. It was a Targa 911 with a whale tail, the same car that’s housed in the Selena museum today. I didn’t say anything to Selena, though, because I was wondering if a car that red and conspicuous was really my style. I was pretty sure it wasn’t.

  We looked at a few BMWs and Porsches. Finally, our friend walked us over to the red car. Right away, Selena said, “Babe, you have to get this one.”

  I pretended to be busy reading the dealer’s information sheet on the car window, despite knowing that, once again, my wife had made up her mind and it would be tough to change it. The car was a 1987 semi-convertible. That removable Targa top was the main reason I bought it—that, and the fact that I could tell right away how much Selena loved the car.

  “You know what?” I said. “Let’s go do the paperwork.”

  We bought the car on the spot and drove our two Porsches home on the highway, with her in the black one and me in the red.

  Selena frequently told me how much she loved my new car after that. “Your car looks really great,” she’d say, sounding a little wistful. “Maybe I should trade my Porsche in for a new one,” she’d add once in a while.

  “No, no, just keep that car,” I’d tell her. “It doesn’t make any sense to trade it in now. You just got it.”

  I loved the red Porsche, but of course Selena drove it now and then. I could see how well it fit her. She’d come in from driving the car around town, her hair blown every which way, and say, ‘Man, I love your car.’”

  Finally I said, “What do you love about it so much?”

  “Everything!” Selena said. “I love the way it handles, and I really like the way people look at me when I’m out there driving in that red car.”

  I laughed. The truth was, I had been thinking for a while by then about how much we needed another kind of vehicle, maybe a truck. As much as I loved Porsches, they were impractical. There was no way to fit our family of dogs in there, much less any of my guitars and speakers. It would be great to have a truck big enough that we could just toss everything into the back of it. Although we talked about it several times, we were both too busy to actually do anything about it.

  A few months went by. As always, we visited my family several times during that period. Selena used to love coming to San Antonio to visit my mom. We often took both cars for the two-hour drive, since once we got there she often went out to do errands to gather materials for her fashion projects. Once we bought the red Porsche, Selena often dared me to race her on the highway between Corpus and San Antonio, even though I always won.

  “It’s the driver, not the car,” I teased her one day as we were setting out to San Antonio. “I’m just a better race car driver than you are. Admit it.”

  “Shut up,” she said furiously. “I’m a superb driver. The re
ason you win is because you’re in a better car.”

  I knew that she was right—the red car was faster, and Selena was a great driver—but I knew it would make her happy if she got to prove me wrong.

  “Okay,” I said one day when I was in an especially generous mood. “Let’s switch cars this time. You take the red one and I’ll drive the black one. We’ll see who’s faster for real.”

  Sure enough, the red car left the black one in the dust. “See?” Selena told me, strutting up the sidewalk.

  Finally, on another visit to San Antonio, Selena and I stopped at a little mom-and-pop grocery store and gas station on the highway. We were going into the store to buy coffee when an older gentleman stopped us and pointed at the red 911.

  “That’s a great car,” he said. “What year is it?”

  I told him, and we started talking about the Porsche. I glanced over at Selena, who made a big show of rolling her eyes at me.

  Inside the store, Selena came up and slipped her arm through mine and started giving me a hard time. “You’re such a dog,” she said. “That man didn’t say anything about my car. And you know what? I don’t like my car anymore. It never gets any compliments.”

  I smiled down at her and paid for the coffee. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t think that red car is really my style, and I’ve been considering this whole truck idea. Wouldn’t it be great for us to be able to take the dogs with us sometimes? We really need a truck for that.”

  Selena bit her lip, probably to keep from seeming too eager. “Well, what about the red car?” she asked. “Are you going to trade it in for a truck?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I’m going to give it to you.”

  Selena started jumping up and down. “Are you serious, Chris?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go looking at trucks when we get back from San Antonio. I’ll give you the red car.”

  She was so excited that she nearly spilled her coffee. Once we were outside the store, she turned me toward her and grabbed my arm. “You know I love you, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So can I start driving my car right now?”

  Selena made the sad puppy dog face, the same one she always made when she wanted something from me, because she knew that I could never say no to it. So I gave her the keys and that was it. She took off in the red car, and I drove the black one back to San Antonio.

  Except that wasn’t it, exactly.

  Selena headed off in the red Porsche, and I climbed into the black car. We were going to meet up at my mom’s for dinner, but Selena planned to run some errands first and I was going to stop at one of my favorite music stores. I had driven maybe a mile when I felt the black Porsche sputtering.

  I looked at the gauge, but it said FULL, so I pressed harder on the accelerator, thinking the gauge must be stuck. On the other hand, Selena had a bad habit of running her cars on empty; in fact, I often went out and started her car for her if she had to go somewhere, and I’d check the gas and turn on the heat or air-conditioning so she’d be comfortable in the car right away. I just hadn’t thought to do that this time.

  Sure enough, I was out of gas. The engine died just as I eased over to the side of the road. I got out and pushed the car into a nearby parking lot, then fished out my cell phone.

  When Selena answered, I said, “Hey, I’m over here on the highway and your car just stalled. I could swear it’s out of gas. By any chance, do you remember the last time you put gas in your car?”

  “Uh, no,” she said.

  I sighed. “Well, never mind. Come pick me up in your new red car.”

  Selena and I did go to look at trucks when we returned to San Antonio. There was one that I especially liked, a brand-new 1993 blue Chevy Silverado. Selena loved that truck, too.

  “That’s a cool-looking truck,” she said. “That’s you all day.”

  “I don’t know if I want to buy anything new,” I said. “Let’s think about it.”

  The car salesman on that lot was an older Mexican-American who recognized Selena right away. He saw us looking over the blue truck and came over to talk about its various features. “You want to take it for a test drive, right?” he said.

  When I hesitated, Selena gave me a nudge. “Yeah, okay,” I said, and got in.

  Selena climbed into the passenger seat. She loved the middle console with the wood trim. Then the salesman leaned over me and lifted up the console, turning the front into a bench seat. Selena took off her seat belt and scooted over next to me.

  “Oh, I like this,” she said, and started pushing all of the buttons on the dash.

  “Me too,” I said, laughing. “We’ll be gone about ten minutes,” I told the salesman.

  “Take your time,” he said.

  Out on the highway, Selena continued to enthusiastically explore the truck’s various features. “You’ve got to get this truck, Chris,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I want to think about it, Selena. This is a big decision. I’m not like you, always knowing what I want right away.”

  We drove around Corpus for about half an hour, getting into one of our regular conversations about the future and what we might do if we still had this truck when our kids started arriving.

  “Remember that I want five kids,” Selena said.

  This always made me nervous. “Girl, you have one kid and then we’ll talk about it,” I joked as I always did. “Plus, if I’m driving this truck, we’ll need a minivan, too. No more Porsche for you.”

  When we returned to the dealer’s lot, the salesman came out to greet us. “How did you like it?”

  Selena said, “We loved it!”

  “It’s a cool truck,” I agreed, then gave Selena a warning look. “But I want to think about it.”

  A few days later, I still hadn’t made up my mind. We had been busy, and now it was our first wedding anniversary. Abraham and Marcella were holding a big party for us in their backyard; they had set up a tent and everything because we were expecting so many people.

  Selena was running late, as usual. She was taking forever to get dressed and do her hair and makeup. I did what I usually did while I waited for her: played my guitar in the living room, trying to work out a new song.

  There was a knock on the door, and when I went to answer it, I was surprised to see A.B. Unlike Abraham, who stopped by the house whenever the mood struck, A.B. hardly ever came over without calling. Besides, we were going to see him in just a few minutes at the party.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I said.

  “You getting ready for the party?” A.B. asked.

  “Yeah, I’m waiting for your sister as usual,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve got to run to the store. Why don’t you come with me?”

  This was weird, I thought, since A.B. had never in his life stopped by to invite me to go buy something at any store. “What do you need to get?” I asked suspiciously.

  “I need to get some gum,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug. This still seemed strange to me. On the other hand, I was getting restless waiting for Selena.

  “Selena?” I called. “I’m going with A.B. to the store. I’ll get more beer for the party while I’m at it.”

  As we took off for the store, a blue truck came around the corner. It was almost dark; I watched the truck pass us, but didn’t really get a good look at it in the dusky light.

  “I think that was like the truck I told you about, the one Selena and I were thinking about buying,” I said.

  “Yeah? I didn’t see it. Sorry,” A.B. said.

  At the store, A.B. bought his gum and I got some beer. Then we drove back to my house to pick up Selena for the party.

  The blue Silverado truck was parked in our driveway. “Happy anniversary, baby!” Selena cried.

  I was shocked almost speechless. I couldn’t believe that she had gone back to the dealer, put a down payment on the truck and done all of the paperwork herself.

  I laughed and hugged her.
“Let’s go for a ride.”

  No matter how well I thought I knew her, Selena always managed to surprise me. One day, I came home to a garage that reeked suspiciously of gasoline and some kind of small engine stink, like a lawn mower. It took me a minute to pinpoint the source: there was a go-kart in our garage.

  I went into the house and called for Selena. When she didn’t answer, I tried her cell phone. “Hey, Selena, what’s this go-kart doing in our garage?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I bought a go-kart today.”

  “You bought a go-kart? Just like that?” I wasn’t angry or anything. Just surprised, I told her.

  “Yeah,” she said again. “I always wanted a go-kart when I was a kid. Didn’t you?”

  That was one thing Selena and I definitely shared: a love of vehicles, especially the kind that could give you a thrill when you were driving them. I laughed and said, “Big toys for big people, right?”

  “Right,” she said. “I’m on my way home. I’ll tell you the rest of the story when I get there.”

  What had happened was this: Selena had been driving around Corpus in her car with our friend Nicolette, a singer who had been with Los Dinos for a little while. The two of them had driven past a dealer that sold ATVs, and there was a whole line of go-karts parked in the lot next to the road. Selena had pulled over and bought one of them then and there. The dealer had delivered the go-kart to the house on the very same day.

  Selena started laughing then, telling me in the kitchen how the neighborhood kids had seen her and Nicolette driving the go-kart over to the school in our neighborhood. Selena let the kids all have a turn driving it. “Nicolette, though, she was hogging that go-kart and trying to show off her driving,” Selena said. “She was driving really fast and doing doughnuts in the school yard and everything.”

  She really started to crack up then, laughing so hard that tears started streaming down her face. For a minute she couldn’t even speak because she was gasping for breath.

  “What?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “Nicolette comes tearing right by me, takes a turn on the grass, and falls off!” she said. “She wasn’t buckled in, so her butt slid right off the seat and she went rolling over and over!”