“Not in my opinion, no. Even if your body accepts it, _____, you’ll have someone else’s writing in your veins. Which means that you’ll sign your name differently, that you’ll have different stylistic tendencies. And remember how much the removal hurt? That was a bee sting compared to what they’ll do to your vessels and veins in order to inject foreign writing into your blood.”
The procedure took fifteen hours to complete, but I was unconscious for two days and heavily sedated for the following two. When I finally woke up I felt worse than ever before. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. My head felt like someone was smashing hammers against the inside of my skull.
The next day I was able to sit up, to read a little. The Memory of My Father flickered into my room in the morning, and the Two Sides of My Mother brought me jell-o and iced tea.
That afternoon, the needle came by. He sat down and smiled dryly at me. “All the diagnostics look fine so far, which is very good news. How do you feel?”
“Sad,” I told him.
III. TOOLS AND SPARE PARTS
BENEATH THE UNDERDOG
That spring, Colorado stole my brother. I came home to Longmeadow (a forgotten, out-of-circulation coin), and my parents told me the news. I walked in the doorway and they were just standing there.
“Colorado wants Bryan,” the Other Side of My Mother said.
“They’re in love,” One Side of My Mother said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The state of Colorado?”
The Memory of My Father, who was sitting by the window, nodded. Through the glass I could see a pack of deer on the lawn, whispering among themselves. Colorado? one deer mouthed, and another nodded.
The four of us ate pizza together, and then I drove back home through the fog, thinking about it. I was distracted by the VW, though, who was acting up and asking to go to the strip club. “I’m in the mood,” he whined.
“I’m in the middle of dealing with something serious right now—a very big change in my brother’s life,” I told the VW. “We’re just going to have to go another time, alright?”
The fog was something. Speeding through it was like being on the tip of a knife that was slicing through the body of a ghost.
“Please, Dad,” the VW said. “Please? Please!”
“There are other stories here about the Castaway, VW. Tonight the story is, my brother’s been stolen by Colorado,” I told him.
“Colorado? No way I’m going out there,” the VW said. “I’d get halfway, break down again, and you’d start to yell at me rabbinical.”
I tapped the dashboard. “You didn’t use that word right,” I said.
“Which word?”
“Rabbinical. It’s a religious term.”
“I’m listening, like you said to,” the VW whined.
“But the word has to come from your engineheart,” I said. “You can’t use it just because it saves minutes.”
“Will you stop picking on me?” the VW said. “You know what I meant.”
“You’re not helping things, OK?” I said.
When we got back to Northampton I was angry. I picked up the phone and called Colorado.
“What,” it said into the phone.
“I heard what you’re doing,” I said. “And I don’t like one bit of it.”
“I don’t think I give a fuck,” Colorado said.
I said, “Do you love him?”
I could hear his smile. “He’s a very nice young man.”
“Why are you doing this? Are you in cahoots?”
“Cahoots?”
“It’s a word, alright?”
Colorado sighed. “You’re wasting my time.”
“You touch a hair on his head,” I told him, “I’ll burn you down inch by inch.”
“It’s a big world, partner.”
“You take care of him,” I yelled into the phone. “You watch him. You make sure he sleeps well at night and stays happy at his job and is safe with the women and doesn’t get sick.”
“Are we done?” Colorado said.
I had no other threats to make. I just held the phone to my ear and listened to Colorado’s breath coming through the receiver, filled with smoke and mountains.
“Please,” I said into the phone.
BAYWATCH
The Lady from the Land of the Beans became pregnant and gave birth to the Volkswagen as a result of a grief-stricken condom. Or, it happened because of what the Heart Attack Tree did to my father.
Or, the birth itself never happened; we discovered she was pregnant and the next day we went to have the child aborted.
We were driving to the clinic in the Volkswagen Promise, though, and the Promise broke down on us before we could get there.
The Lady from the Land of the Beans’s belly was huge—there was a car inside her, for sarah’s sake. She waited in the Promise of the Passenger Seat while I went around to the engine compartment and tried to figure out what was wrong. I opened the rear lid and saw, between mysterious cables and parts, a little scuffed-up set and two actors in velvety costumes performing before a film crew and a fleet of cameras.
When I opened the hatch the scene stopped and everyone looked up at me. One man, wearing a set of headphones, yelled “cut!” while others covered their eyes from the new light, made angry faces at me or motioned for me to lower the panel. I did; I closed the lid, spooled briskly back into the car and asked the Lady from the Land of the Beans to hand me the Promise factory manual.
“Why?” she said.
“They’re filming a movie in there,” I told her.
“They are? What kind of movie?” she asked.
“Just, give me the manual, will you?”
“I don’t think it comes with a manual,” she said.
“That can’t be right,” I said. I went around to the front and opened the hood, under which was an Olympic-sized swimming pool—the air was seeped with chlorine and I could hear the rhythmic slapping of tiny arms against the water. My glasses began to fog up. “No book in here, either,” I announced.
“_____, wait a second,” said the Lady from the Land of the Beans.
“That’s ridiculous that there’s no instruction manual,” I said. Then I had an idea—something was made. I closed the hood and got back in the car. “Oh my god,” I said. “I think I have an amazing idea—an idea for a new—”
“Wait, wait,” the Lady from the Land of the Beans said, and she leaned in and took my hands in hers. “What’s happening here?”
“So there’s no manual, right?” I said. “So my idea is—”
“_____,” she said. Her hands were roots and wires. “You’re not listening to me.”
“You’re not listening to me,” I told her.
“I think this moment means something,” she said. “I think we’re supposed to have this baby.”
I was so stunned I couldn’t say anything. Then I said, “What?”
“Just, I want you to look past yourself for a moment.”
“OK,” I said.
“And think about what’s happening inside me, and also what we’re inside.”
“What are we inside?” I asked.
“We could have the whole world here,” she said. “A child. A whole new set of stories.”
“We talked about this, we did,” I said. “Who was the one that said we couldn’t handle this—that we’d be horrible parents?”
“I was,” the Lady from the Land of the Beans said.
“We’re not even together,” I pressed.
“I’m not saying I didn’t say that. I did—”
“You did,” I said.
“But I can’t think about the past, or what will happen next. All I can think about is what’s right for this moment. I mean, there is love here.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Isn’t there?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “If there really is, then what’s the worst that could happen?”
How
could I respond? My answer is several hundred pages long, and takes hours to read.
The Lady from the Land of the Beans took my face in her hands. Her eyes were department meetings. “Honey,” she said.
She’d never called me that before. “What,” I said.
“I think we should turn the car around.”
“You want to go back to Northampton?”
She nodded.
“You mean—”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “I want to go home.”
I turned around and we drove home, and two days later she gave birth to the car, right there in the Memory of the Cooley-Dickinson Hospital. The car came out full-sized, crying and blinking its eyes, and I knew right away that this was it—that this was the right story.
By then, though, things had changed again—we’d felt good about our decision at first, then had trouble getting along again and discussed the possibility of selling the car, and buying another VeggieCar, perhaps. But that changed for me the first time I held my son, looked at his shiny parts, felt him forming in my arms—making quick decisions about who he was going to be and what he would want.
“I’m going to be a social worker, a postal worker, a television cameraman,” the brand new 1971 Volkswagen Beetle said to me. He read my face and listened to my chest—my heart—and said, “And I won’t worry like you worry.”
“Alright,” I told him as I held him. “But you should know that I never planned it this way. Somehow my days turned soft. There is a limit to how many people you can hurt before it gets to you. And everything crosses over once you’ve been treed, and had a farm disappear on you with everything you care about inside it.”
“Not for me,” said the baby VW. “It is simple and beautiful.”
“You could get sick and die,” I said. “Cancer. Leukemia. A brain aneurysm. Sudden Volkswagen Death Syndrome.”
“Not every idea is for sharing,” he told me. “Just hold me and enjoy the marakesh that I am fresh and new, and I don’t have a dent on me yet.”
He was right. For once, I shut my mouth and my mind and focused on the new and untold story in my arms, such a gift!, and when my new baby Volkswagen shivered I held him and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
TOOLS AND SPARE PARTS
If you want to keep your Volkswagen mandarin you’ll need a few tools. I’d recommend starting with the list below.
BioLegs, one pair (for those times when the VW is being repaired, is at school or is out with friends)
One Headless Syracuse, inner or placed
At least two spare memory coils
History-resistant wrenches (This is a must!)
Spare morning cables (various lengths)
Time (And not just any time—time you’re able to spend. How much depends on the car and the task, but you won’t get anywhere without at least a few years handy.)
Your Volkswagen will need constant repair. As confident and charged as my son was, for example, he always needed something. He was born with a cough and a limp and lesions on his skin, and he became exhausted easily, even at two or three years old. I learned early on that repairing him was not an occasion, but part of what it meant to parent this particular car. I don’t even want to think about the hours this took—between the finicky cylinders, a recurring coil problem and regularly-scheduled maintenance, at least a few mornings a week. And I remember spending a full day reading a complicated pedal chart just to change one cranky sustain.
You’ll make the coding that much more difficult for yourself, too, if you don’t have a quality set of tools. My melody on tools is that it’s absolutely worth going the extra hours for the good ones. You’ll see cheaper coats in the stores that speak the same language, but those few extra hours will get you a better attitude or emotional state. The cheaper tools are less optimistic, they don’t pray, they eat with their mouths open. Will they believe in the 1971 Volkswagen Beetle, the CityDogs, a story called Faces? I can’t guarantee it (Though it depends, in part, on how your believer’s set up.). I’ve had real corners with cheap tools, usually because they’re so fragile. Remember, you’re not just buying metal or mesh here—you’re accepting a history, a group of stories that will become part of everything they touch: you, your Volkswagen, your home (via the floor of the VW’s garage/room!).
I remember once, I was changing the tuning valve and harmony gauge on my Beetle—this was several months after the Lady from the Land of the Beans left, and by this point I was overwhelmed by the amount of work the VW required—with a ratchet that I’d bought at the flee bee in Hadley a few weeks earlier. As it turned out, the tool was very unstable. It had been overly chatty all afternoon—telling me about its wife, its kids, a few scrapes with the law—but late in the day it became scared. We were struggling with two stubborn bolts when I heard the ratchet start to weep uncontrollably—I could hear him sealing and I could feel the tears on my hand. I tried to ignore it and keep working, but when he continued to cry I pulled him out from underneath the car and asked him what was happening.
“I can’t—I can’t do this,” he confessed.
“Course you can,” I told him. “We’ll get it, buddy.”
“No, no,” the ratchet said. “This won’t work.”
“What won’t work?”
“This project. These bolts are thirty years old. Have you looked underneath the car? It’s old and rus—”
“This car is a newborn,” I assured him.
“What?” he said. His eyes blinked furiously. “How can that be?”
“Listen,” I said. “Just calm down and focus. I’ll worry about the car’s well-being—you just concentrate on the job at hand.”
The wrench shook his head. “Maybe I’m sick,” he said, and he took off his glasses and rubbed his cast-iron eyes. “I might have a virus. Do I look sick? Do I feel cold to you?”
“You’re fine,” I said.
The wrench closed his eyes and shook his head.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s get back to work, alright?”
“I can’t.” He curled up in my hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. I tried to uncurl him. “Hey—hey, come on. Come on—there’s work to do!” I tried to pry him open but he hugged his knees to his chest.
No way was I losing a ratchet that I’d spent good minutes on to depression, so the next day I took him in to a therapist that the Lady from the Land of the Beans had been seeing before she left Northampton. I was sitting in the waiting room and booking with the VW (who’d stayed home from school that day, claiming he was ill) while the ratchet spoke to the therapist. But then the receptionist asked me to step into the therapist’s office. I left the VW in the waiting room chair. “Stay right here, alright?” I told him.
The VW, who was reading, nodded.
I scanned the room and noticed three jackals sitting across from the VW. They were whispering and laughing.
I leaned in and whispered to my son. “Hey,” I said.
“What,” he said, without looking up.
“What’s the rule about trusting strangers?” I said.
“I won’t go anywhere, OK?” the VW said at full volume. “God!”
I pinched his arm. “What did I say about that expression?”
“Alright,” the VW said.
“What did I say?”
“Alright, I’m sorry,” the VW said, and he pulled his arm away.
I went into the office and there was the therapist, wearing a therapy machine on his face. Across from him sat the ratchet, sniffling and teary-eyed in his chair.
“I’m going to need to ask you some questions if it’s alright,” said the therapist. The therapy machine made his voice sound like a library.
“Sure,” I said. I sat down.
“Harold tells me that he’s been working with you to repair your son—”
“A seventy-one Beetle,” I said.
“Right,” said the therapist, and I could hear his machine storing my answer. “And the
Beetle is … how old?”
“Still an infant—only a few months,” I said.
“The nineteen seventy-one car is your son, and he’s only a few months old?”
“Right,” I said.
The therapist nodded, and then he reached up and pressed a key on the machine on his face. Then he said, “And I understand you’ve also lost your father recently?”
I leaned forward. “Do we have to discuss that?”
“See?” the ratchet said.
“Well wait a moment,” the therapist said. “Mr. _____—I don’t want to pry. I understand that you’re in mourning. I’m just wondering if there’s a connection between what happened—”
“I just said, I don’t want to talk about my father,” I said.
The therapist held up his hand and nodded slowly. “OK. Yes, I understand,” he said.
Then the ratchet began to sniffle and a tear ran down his cheek. The therapist turned to him. “Harold?” he said.
“Ask him about his project—about his son,” said the ratchet. “Ask him how he runs and where it goes—”
“Listen,” I said. “None of this is very complicated.”
“Not complicated!” the ratchet said.
“I’m a single parent trying to raise my son—that’s all.”
“A car that runs on stories!” shouted the ratchet.
“Harold, let’s relax—take a breath. OK?” the therapist said to him. The ratchet leaned back and closed his eyes and the therapist turned to me. “Mr._____,” he said. “I’d like you to tell me, if you could, about your Memories of the One Side of Your Mother.”
Soon I understood what was happening. This, again, again, was about me—about my favorite teams, my defensive plays. “Look,” I said. I pointed to the ratchet. “His condition—”
“Interesting word,” the therapist said.
“Yes, condition,” I said. “His condition has nothing to do with me.”
The therapist reached his hand out towards me. “I don’t know that I’m thinking so much about Harold at the moment as I am you.”
“I’m not the one in need of help.”
“I don’t know that I agree with that, either,” the therapist said.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive Page 5