Notes From the Backseat

by Jody Gehrman

  When we finally crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, the sun was sagging toward the water, soaking the ocean and the cars and even our skin in tangerine light. Coop and Dannika looked like movie stars with their sunglasses on and the red, curving lines of the bridge swooping past them. The left-out feeling that had haunted me most of the day started to creep back in. They just looked so perfect together up there—so natural and salty and wild. It was hard not to imagine how photogenic their little surfer children would be. Everyone driving past us must have wondered what I was doing in that picture. They probably assumed I was the wacky cousin visiting from some obscure Eastern European country that hadn’t yet discovered denim or Lycra.

  When we got across the bridge and were getting closer to the turnoff for Highway 1, I was astounded when Dannika said, “Let’s take the coast again.” I mean, God, the sun was halfway down and we still had a couple hundred miles to go. Even if we took 101 and headed northwest at Cloverdale, we were still looking at four, maybe five more hours in the car, depending on traffic. Taking the coast would mean five or six, at least, most of it in the dark on hellish-curvy roads.

  I couldn’t help it; I leaned forward and said, “Why don’t we just take 101?”

  She looked at me with disdain. “I don’t believe in freeways.”

  “You live in San Diego and you don’t believe in freeways?” I punctuated the remark with one raised eyebrow. There were things she could learn from me.

  “I don’t,” she said. “They’re evil. Coop, don’t you think we should take the coast?”

  We both looked at him.

  “If it were up to me, I’d go for 101. It’s twice as fast.” He shot Dannika his don’t-be-mad-I’m-only-being-honest look.

  She shook her head and laughed. “You’re just siding with her.”

  “It’s only logical,” I said. “Why take the scenic route in the dark?”

  “Well, sorry, folks, but it’s my car and my car doesn’t take freeways. End of story. Here’s the turnoff.” Her tone was brusque, but underneath it you could hear the warning: my way or the highway—which in this case turned out to be the same thing.

  When Coop turned off obediently I wasn’t surprised. I mean yeah, it was a little wimpy, but we all knew if he didn’t we’d have a major tantrum on our hands and I don’t think any of us were up for it.

  Of course, the gods of Highway 1 had a few surprises in store for us, so if we were looking to get off easy, we could forget it.

  We were just passing Point Reyes Station, getting close to Tomales Bay. The sun was long gone but there was still a fiery pink clinging to the underside of a few smudgy clouds—the leftovers of a messy sunset. The air was turning a harsh, coastal-cold against our faces. I’d been debating for the past twenty minutes about asking if we could put the top up, but I hated to be the hothouse flower amongst tough native shrubs. The irony here was that I was the native. I’m the one who comes from apple country; Coop’s from Philadelphia and Dannika spent most her life in Ventura—what do they know about the strange, hostile territories north of the Golden Gate Bridge?

  As I sat there freezing my ass off in my wool chemise suit and my yummy little leopard-print car coat, I kept dreaming about the full-length mink I’d almost run back to grab this morning. If I had that, I could bury my face in its silky depths until the numbness in my nose and ears went away. Again, it was Dannika who had kept me from following my instincts. All day we’d been bending to her will—why? Because she had a perfect, perky little nose, gleaming blond hair, a supple, pinup girl body? And what part of all that wasn’t store bought? Even if it wasn’t—even if she was as all-natural as that gag-inducing juice I’d choked down earlier—what right did that give her to call every shot?

  Suddenly, I didn’t care if it was her car or if they thought I was a total city girl. I was going to ask them to put the damn top up. What was this, some kind of naturalists’ boot camp?

  I was just leaning forward to make my request when two things happened at once. Coop turned his head slightly and said, “You cold, kitten?” The words weren’t even out of his mouth when the engine coughed a few times, sputtered briefly and died.

  Coop guided it onto the crumbling, almost nonexistent shoulder and stared at the dash. “That’s weird,” he said. “Sounded like we ran out of gas, but the gauge says we’re still half full.”

  There was a pause.

  Dannika broke the silence. “Actually, the gauge is sort of…broken.”

  I leaned back and sighed.

  Coop just looked at her. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s busted. It hasn’t worked for months.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you mention this before we got all the way out here?”

  “I thought you knew!”

  His voice turned incredulous. “How would I know this, Danni?” I didn’t like the nickname, but I relished the tone of their conversation. They were bickering and if they kept it up the exchange would escalate into a proper fight. Usually I hate violence, but in this case, I thought I could make an exception.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry, okay?” Her voice didn’t sound very apologetic. “I forgot you haven’t driven my car in a while.” The subtext was complicated but clear: I forgot you’ve been so wrapped up with the little bitch in the backseat that you’ve neglected me and my precious car for months.

  Coop backed off. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Who’s got a cell phone?” We all looked at each other blankly. “Dammit,” he said, slapping the steering wheel, but he was laughing a little now. “A couple of technophobes and a retro purist. Why couldn’t we have one normal, mainstream American on board?”

  It was kind of funny. I laughed with him.

  Dannika didn’t even crack a smile. “Great. So what now?”

  “You have a map?” he asked.

  She shook her head, no.

  “Shit.” Coop wasn’t laughing this time.

  “It’s a straight shot up the coast,” she told him. “Why would I need a map?” She was whining now, and I thought, careful, girl, your Donna Horney’s showing.

  We all looked around at the sloping hills turning rapidly darker. There were a few stars out, now. The stretch of highway disappeared around curves both ahead and behind. There were scraggly coastal trees, bent over like old people from all those years of wind. We were truly out in the sticks. The air smelled of cypress and salt—clean and cold. In the distance, I could hear seals barking.

  I closed my eyes and visualized where we were on a map. Remember how you used to call me Navigation Girl? You always said it was my superpower. This time it was easy, since you and I used to drive this stretch a lot in high school, although usually we’d head south at Point Reyes Station so we could sit on the beach in Bolinas and watch the hippies surf, scanning the waters for sharks. We were maybe four miles north of Point Reyes Station now; the stretch ahead was pretty desolate.

  “Our best bet is to backtrack to the last town we passed,” I said.

  They both looked at me in surprise, as if they’d forgotten I was back there.

  “We haven’t passed anything for miles,” Dannika snapped.

  “Yeah, we did,” I said. “Point Reyes Station. It’s easy to miss, but I’m pretty sure they have a gas station.”

  “I would have noticed,” she said.

  Coop smiled at me in the lengthening shadows. “That’s right. You grew up around here, didn’t you?”

  I nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.”

  I know you’re proud of being a Sonoma County girl, but for me it’s a lot more complicated. I never talk about the past with Coop if I can avoid it. I know it’s beautiful up here, rustic and quaint and all that shit, but in my mind it’s a big tangle of memories and misguided impulses, most of which I’d rather just put behind me. You were the best thing Sebastopol ever gave me and I got to take you with me when I left. Everything else I’d just as soon never talk about again. I guess that’s why Coop
had half forgotten—didn’t even really know—that we were only about fifteen miles from the town where I was born and raised.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Dannika was the princess waiting for her incompetent advisors to suggest a solution. I suppose it didn’t occur to her that our current situation was entirely her fault.

  “How far back is Point Reyes Station?” Coop asked me.

  Before I could answer, Dannika barked, “There wasn’t any town.”

  I forced myself to stay calm. She was really starting to get on my nerves. To Coop I said, “Maybe four miles back.”

  “I swear to God there was nothing back there.” She sounded close to a meltdown. “The last town I saw was Stinson Beach, and that’s not far from San Francisco.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s back there. Trust me.”

  “Right.” Coop got out of the car. “I guess I’ll try to hitch a ride and get us some gas. If worse comes to worst, I can probably walk there and get a ride back.” He leaned against the driver’s side and looked at the surfboards. “If we all go, our gear might get stolen. Then again, I hate to leave you two here…”

  “Yeah, but think about it,” Dannika said. “We can’t all three hitch a ride—it’s easier if you just go. Besides, is Gwen going to walk four miles in those shoes?” She shot a bitchy look over her shoulder at my kitten heels. I wanted to tell her if she didn’t stop whining I’d happily plunge one of these sharp little heels deep into her heart (provided I could get past the silicone) but I bit my tongue. In some ways, I liked it better when Dannika was a pouty little wench. It made her even easier to hate.

  “Kitten?” Coop put his hand on my head. His warm fingers made me want to curl up in his arms—more than that—I would have curled up inside his lungs right then, if it were possible. “What do you want to do?”

  As much as I hated the thought of spending the next hour or three stranded on the side of the road with the satanic blonde, I couldn’t come up with a better solution. “I guess Dannika’s right,” I said. “We’ll just stay with the stuff. But be careful about who you get a ride with. There are some freaky people out here.”

  “Can’t be worse than L.A., right?” He grinned.

  “You’d be surprised,” I said.

  One of the reasons I never go back to Sonoma County with you is because the land itself is polluted by my childhood. When I drive through Sebastopol, it’s like navigating a minefield. The deli on the corner reminds me of the time my dad and I went in there for Junior Mints and he left with the salami slicer’s phone number. I can’t drive past the old ballet studio on Valentine Avenue without thinking of my mother acting rude and tight-lipped with Miss Yee, my favorite teacher there; later, in the car, she blurted out that Daddy was sleeping with “that Chinese slut in the legwarmers.”

  I never took lessons there again. How could I concentrate on my pliés, when images of my father doing vague, obscene things under the covers to Miss Yee were burned into the eight-year-old folds of my brain?

  Sebastopol is riddled with these traps. Every store and restaurant, every open field and parking lot, every strip mall and house can be traced through an intricate mesh of connections back to some messed-up snapshot from my childhood. I can see the whole town in my mind; it’s a vast, convoluted topographical map. Remember Mr. Colwell telling us about the experiment with spiders on acid—how their webs were all wonky and haphazard? The lines of my map are like that—way too complicated and crazy to follow.

  It’s sad, really, because I know that good things happened here, too. I mean sure, most of the kids at school thought I was a certifiable nutter, which made at least eighty percent of my adolescence excruciating and torturous, but after I met you, everything changed. I was still considered a freak, but when you signed on as my friend I could feel the rest of my life opening up and beckoning me forward. You were an ambassador to the future sent to remind me that there was so much beyond that myopic, claustrophobic little high school. Remember that night when we snuck out and drove your mom’s car to Salmon Creek? We stood in the dunes, staring out at the water. The moon was so bright that our shadows were etched into the sand. You sang that Cat Stevens song “Moonshadow,” and I called you a hippie and then we ran down to the crashing waves and closed our eyes and let the mist pour over our faces in the dark while the cold foam licked at our bare toes.

  You see what I mean? Get me within county lines and I become a font of nostalgia. Actually, that’s not accurate. I become more like AM radio; every once in a while there’s a good song that comes soaring out of the static, but mostly it’s just a bunch of lame, reactionary crap.

  Enough careening down memory lane. Suffice it to say, I’m not happy that this dog-hair infested couch I happen to be writing you from is the epicenter of all those bad memories.

  So there I was, trapped in the ’57 Mercury with my gorgeous nemesis. As I snuck glances at her profile, I couldn’t help thinking about the bags of silicone inside her boobs. Do they still use silicone—isn’t it like saltwater now? If she had it done eight years ago, what did they use back then? I was overcome with an irrational impulse to ask her about the surgery. What did it feel like, rising from the operating table like a sexed up Frankenstein? Did it take her long to adjust to her new proportions—did she run into things for a few days? What did people say when they first saw her? Were they too polite to comment on her new cleavage or was it so in-your-face they couldn’t help but blurt out something inappropriate?

  “Sure is dark.” Dannika’s voice in the front seat was surprisingly squeaky. “You want to sit up here?”

  Was the queen actually inviting me out of the servant’s quarters? “I’m okay,” I said.

  She turned around to face me. “You’re not cramped back there?”

  Gee, I’ve only been wedged between two surfboards and a steamer trunk for eleven hours, now—how kind of you to notice. “It’s not too bad.”

  An awkward silence ensued. The barking seals started up again, so far away you could barely hear them. It comforted me, knowing we were close to the water, even though we couldn’t see it from here.

  “It’s getting kind of cold,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  An owl let out a high-pitched, lonely hoot. Dannika shivered and pulled her sweatshirt together at the throat. “Why don’t you come up here?” she said. “That way I don’t have to turn around when I talk to you.”

  It’s all about you, isn’t it? I thought, but I went ahead and climbed over the seat into the front. She was sitting dead center and I climbed into the passenger side so she had to scoot over behind the wheel. I couldn’t see any reason why I should contend with the steering wheel—not when her surfboard had been dripping cold, waxy blobs on my beautiful car coat for the past two hundred and fifty miles.

  Freed now from my confining second-class accommodations, I realized that the car was so immense it was like a mobile couch. All three of us could have ridden in the front, easily. She leaned against the driver’s side door and stretched her legs out on the seat. I let my head fall back and looked up at the growing assembly of stars.

  You’re totally going to force-feed me Zoloft when I tell you this, but for one dizzying second there, I considered what it would be like to kill someone—namely, the leggy bombshell beside me. I mean it’s not like I thought it was a good idea. I knew it was sick. But a truck barreled past us just then, a huge logger with a mammoth pile of lumber, and I just thought, we’re alone; I could lure her into the road somehow and act all horrified when she’s flattened.

  Do you think I should seek professional help?

  I was slightly aghast, but at the same time it made me realize something: I really, really want Coop in a way I’ve never wanted anyone in my life and whoever gets between us better watch herself.

  It was chilling, but also weirdly uplifting. In other words, I knew I was in love.

  “You always this quiet?” Dannika asked.

  “No.” I started wrack
ing my brain for something else to say, but it was a total blank. Actually, it wasn’t blank so much as clouded with an impenetrable fog of resentment. I’d been right there, barely two feet from her, all day. Had she shown any interest in making conversation before now? I wasn’t going to be her backup entertainment, called onto the stage because her star had gone to get gas.

  “So, how did you meet Coop?”

  “At the Laundromat,” I said. “Stars Wash-n-Dry. Everything in L.A. is about stars—especially places where no celebrity would be caught dead.”

  When I didn’t offer anything else, she asked, “What was his pick-up line?”

  I chuckled. “It was really crowded and I was waiting for his washer. He left a pair of his boxers in there, so I went over and returned them. I guess I was blushing—he said I was turning pink and could he buy me a beer for my trouble.” I paused.

  She must have sensed my hesitation, because she said, “And…?”

  I shrugged. “That’s it.”

  There was no way I was going to tell her the rest—about the delicious, giddy beer buzz we nursed, even though it was only eleven in the morning on a Sunday. How we dropped his laundry off first, then mine, then ate at this random hole-in-the-wall Korean barbecue place we found in Venice. We tried going back there a few weeks ago, but we couldn’t even find it. It was like we slipped down an elusive rabbit hole that day, into a land of fleshy noodles, sweet, tender pork, duck that dissolved on the tongue. I was drunk on the afternoon, on his dimples and his cheekbones and the penetrating warmth of his muddy hazel eyes. If she thought I was going to tell her all that, she was crazy.