I stood up. “You think you can figure out how I work?”
The therapist gestured towards my chair. “Try me,” he said.
I laughed. “Not a chance,” I said. “You’d be frightened. You’d tell me I’m making it up—that it’s a fiction. And I don’t want to hear that from one more person.”
“This is all beginning to make sense to me,” the therapist said.
“There is nothing in the world that you can do to fix me,” I told him.
LIVE ART
The Memory of My Father mourned for my father in his way, the Two Sides of My Mother in theirs. In the days after the attack, the Two Sides locked themselves inside their home in Longmeadow, holding each other and smoking their fingers as the grass grew high around them and my father’s orphaned junk wrestled and moaned in the garage.
Down the street, meanwhile, the poor Storrs Library—where the Two Sides of My Mother had worked—grew faint with abandon. For as long as I could remember, the Two Sides had double-handedly run the Library, One Side working the desk and the Other Side repairing books in the basement. Now the books were starved and silent and the double doors stayed locked. Over a period of six weeks, all of the books crawled off the shelves and shuffled over to the windows and doors where they died in piles, their spines broken and their pages stiff.
I didn’t know this was happening, of course; I was too busy at the time trying to deal with my own results—a newborn son, a girlfriend who couldn’t bear to stay. From the very beginning I was interested in how the Volkswagen worked, which part was which, but the Lady from the Land of the Beans just wanted him healthy and running.
Even in the first few months after his birth, when she was still in Northampton and we were trying to raise him together, I could tell that she was trailing on the decisions we’d made. Without a manual to work from, she and I had to figure out the procedures ourselves. And it was difficult, because we’d open the rear lid and see something different every time—once, an old man with a hat made of newspaper pedaling his bicycle down a sidewalk that wove through the cables, past the generator and towards the clutch. Sometimes the morning cables were clear and other times they weren’t.
Eventually the Lady from the Land of the Beans became overwhelmed by all this—by the mysteries of this machine, part me and part her, that she had no idea how to fix or treat. One morning, after opening the engine compartment and discovering a thick green forest—vines wrapped around the coils, birds perched on the transmission—she stood up and ran her hands through her hair. “What is this?” she said.
I was testing a patch of moss. “What do you mean?” I said.
“What?” the VW said. “Do you see something?”
“I don’t—” She paced around the VW’s bedroom. “Do you recognize anything here?” she whispered.
“This appears to be peat,” I said.
She was quiet.
“But that, over there. That’s ‘One More Night,’ I think,” I said.
“_____,” she said. She pulled me up and we stepped back so the VW couldn’t hear us. “He’s nothing like any car I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“What are you guys doing?” the VW said.
“That’s because he’s ours,” I said warmly, and I took her hand.
She didn’t say anything, but she looked down at her hand—the one I held—as it if was something she might detach and leave if she could. I didn’t know at the time what that look meant, but soon enough I came to understand it as a promise.
A few weeks later, I took the VW out for a practice drive one afternoon and when I came home the Lady from the Land of the Beans was gone. I searched the house for her, then went outside. Our half-collapsed VeggieCar was gone, too.
I came back inside and asked the VW if he knew where she was. He shook his head and looked at his wheels, but his headlights were filled with condensation. I picked him up and looked at him eye level. “VW,” I said. “Where did your mother go?”
The VW’s eyes held actual pity for me. “She went home,” he said.
I tried to laugh. “We are home,” I said.
He shook his head. “Not for Mom.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
He looked down at the floor.
“She went back to her home? To the Land of the Beans?”
The VW didn’t say anything.
“You let her do that?” I said. “You let her go?”
“She said she had to, Dad. She couldn’t stay here anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked, my voice quivering. “What did she say?”
He didn’t say anything else.
“You tell me what she said,” I pleaded.
I maytagged at the kitchen table and the VW sat down next to me and leaned against me. I kept saying, “She loved me. She loved me.”
My son whispered, “No. No.”
It was a few days later that I went home and found the Two Sides of My Mother sitting side by side on the love seat in the living room. They were dressed in black and the room was filled with fingersmoke so thick I couldn’t see a word.
The VW, meanwhile, had gone outside to help the Memory of My Father clean up the patio. I remember watching them through the window as they loaded my father’s Invisible Pickup Truck with items to take to the town dump. My father, had he been alive, would have hated it—he saw good and promise in each item that his Memory now threw away—the two-wheeled stroller (which he would have made into a wheelbarrow), the seatless bench (which he would have fixed), the neon beer signs.
I tried to make the Two Sides of My Mother feel better by commenting that it’d be nice to have more space on the patio, that we could plan a meal or a party out there now, but they weren’t saying anything. They just stared past the patio and into my father’s garden, where my father used to spend a lot of his day and where a pack of deer were now praying—deer prayers for the dead, I assumed.
After sitting with the Two Sides for an hour or so I remembered that it was Thursday, normally a work day for them, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard about Storrs in weeks. “Hey Mom,” I said. “What’s happening with the library?”
I had to ask the question several times. They were so lost in the fog of death that I think it was hard for them to even hear my voice. But finally the Other Side of My Mother turned to me and asked, “What library, honey?”
It was less than a mile away, so the VW and I walked over. As we approached it, I could see that the old colonial building was now lying on its side and that the parking lot had now turned into a southwestern desert, complete with cacti and unbearable sun.
I unlocked the door but had to push hard to open it even a crack. As soon as I did I could smell the decomposing books inside.
I’ve always wondered: Why do so many things have to die in this book, and why is there always that smell?
The VW held his nose. “Why do so many things die in this book, and why is there always that same smell?” he said.
“Just help me push, will you?”
He did; we pressed against the door until we could open it enough to squeeze inside.
As a child, this library had been a real home for me. I remember running through the rooms as a boy with my brother and the distant Promise of the VW, getting drunk off the books as a teenager—hiding among the shelves and pressing those secret words against my eyes.
I realize now: I couldn’t agree after that. How could I, after all the mechanical work I’d done on my own mind—the carving and slicing and reshaping? I’d liquidated tissue, pulled some wires out and used them to reconnect things in new ways. I’d told no one, either; it was secret surgery.
I remember, too, all the time I spent with the Two Sides of My Mother—sitting at the desk with One Side as she checked out the books, helping the Other Side in the basement as she operated on those volumes that were sick or dying (watching her steady hands as she made tiny incisions in the books’ skin, the wordoil that sprang onto her arms).
In the midst of checking the last room for survivors, I turned around and realized that the VW was no longer behind me. I called his name, and when he didn’t respond I retraced my steps. At first I was upset—he was always wandering off, getting lost!—but that feeling disappeared when I saw where he was. I found him standing at the top of the second floor balcony, his hands wrapped around the banister, his head hung and his eyes staring down at the shelves of dead magazines on the lower level. I could tell when I saw him how overwhelmed he was—his face was an underground tunnel to free the slaves.
I stood next to him without saying anything. Then I said, “I think they’re all dead.”
“Why,” he said, without looking at me.
“I just checked all the rooms,” I said softly.
“But why did it happen?” he said. “Why did they die?”
I felt almost like a real father. “I don’t know,” I said. “I used to ask that same—”
“Everything has to die, doesn’t it,” the VW said. “You, and me too.” His eyes were dim—either on a low setting or else turned off completely.
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but then I thought of something the Other Side of My Mother used to tell me, an old twig I’d long since stepped on and snapped. “It’s only the body that dies, VW,” I said. “The soul,” I said, etcetera.
“I don’t want to die,” he whispered.
“Kiddo,” I said. I picked him up and chucked him on the chin. “These books were old. They were ready to die.”
The VW scanned the magazines, some of whom had leapt to the floor and died with their arms or legs outstretched. “They were?”
“Sure,” I lied. “Look at their faces.”
“But I’m young and new,” the VW said. His eyes brightened. “Look at my face.”
“Right—”
“And you have the tools, right? To repair me if anything goes wrong?”
“Most of them,” I said.
The VW’s face grew stern. “And you know what you’re doing?”
“Absolutely I do—I’m writing a book of power on Volkswagens,” I said.
“So why can’t you just make sure?”
“To keep writing?”
“To keep me going. To make sure I don’t break down or ever get old or die.”
“Well—I’m—I mean, that’s why I spend so much time maintaining you, buddy. To make sure you’re running right.”
“You promise?” the VW said. His face was now a holiday, a free giveaway.
“Promise what?”
“Promise that I won’t die?”
I didn’t say anything. My mind stalled. I hated the idea that the VW was worrying about this now. He was just a child, for god’s sake.
“You promise, Dad?”
The high-beams of light in those eyes—I would have said anything to keep them shining.
IV. HOW TO DRIVE A VOLKSWAGEN
TRANSMISSION
Transmission from whom, though?
From the Chest of Drawers, my friend and former professor, who taught Religious Studies at Northampton University. We used to go hiking up Summit Mountain in Hadley. And if we didn’t, I always wished that we would have—that I’d really had a friend named the Chest of Drawers, that there really was such a thing as Summit Mountain (with a museum inside which told stories of the old cable-car hotel that used to stand in its place, and a monument to a group of soldiers who’d crashed their plane into the mountains), that there was such a thing as Hadley, or America, or me.
When the VW was old enough I took him with us, but it was always problematic when I did. When he was younger the VW couldn’t keep up, and when he was older he was ill all the time, never strong enough for the hike. He would have to stop and rest, or I’d look back and find him leaning against a tree. Once, in his last year of life, I remember he stopped halfway up the trail, knelt down by a brook and vomited black, chunky oil into the running water.
But what was I supposed to do? I was a single father to a Volkswagen—I couldn’t just leave him in the parking lot by himself. So the Chest and I made do; sometimes we’d slow our pace down so that he could keep up, and othertimes I’d carry him on my shoulders.
The clearest transmission that I can remember, in fact, happened late in the summer of ’03, on one of our first hikes with the Volkswagen. I hiked the first half-mile with the car on my shoulders, but then he grew rambunctious and started asking to be put down. When I said no he started banging his heels against my chest.
I told him to stop it. “I’m only doing this because I don’t want you falling behind,” I said.
“I won’t,” he said.
“You say that now,” I said, “but I know you, kiddo. You’ll wander off.”
“_____,” said the Chest.
“He gets distracted very easily,” I told the Chest. “Maybe on the way down, VW. OK?”
“We’ll just keep an eye on him,” the Chest said.
“Yeah! You’ll keep an eye on me,” the VW said.
I slowed down and leaned in close to the Chest. “But what if we lose him and the mountain changes?” I whispered to him.
“What do you mean?” the Chest of Drawers said.
What did I mean? This was in mid-September; the leaves had suffered and were now lying dead on the trails. Even so, you had to keep watch over this mountain, like all mountains, at all times. You didn’t want to give it a chance to change its mind—to transform into a fjord or a roller rink. Such shifts made hiking (not to mention booking! How can I describe something if I don’t know what it is?) almost impossible.
The key was keeping it straight in your own mind. It was September. The leaves had suffered and were lying dead on the trails.
“We just have to keep a close eye on it,” I told the Chest.
“I will, I told you,” the Chest said.
“The key is keeping it straight in our minds,” I said.
The Chest nodded and raised his fist. “I shall pray for it, _____,” he said.
By that time we were in view of the plateau at the top of the mountain and the Summit House, a museum dedicated to height and vision. With its wide decks and clean histories, the Summit House loomed over us, its cool breath on our shoulders, western Massachusetts flapping its gaze on all sides.
I set the VW down and he ran to the stairs and started hopping up them—one at a time, then two. “Dad!” he said.
“Easy, kiddo,” I said.
“Two at a time!” the VW said.
“Yup, I see,” I said. The Chest and I walked up the steps, around the VW and onto the deck.
“I’m doing it,” he said. “Look. See?”
“I see it, buddy,” I said.
Then all three of us leaned against the deck railing and peered out at western Massachusetts—which, at that moment, looked almost real. Sure, there were wires, but most of it was grass and wood, with actual pavement along the roads and literal houses and rivers. I think back on this and wonder: Was there any hint of grey smoke in the air? Was there scenery, or anything in the margins? I can’t say. My memory keeps this scene clear, and gives it sunlight and honest-to-rivet clouds.
But I do remember the VW pointing out a virus of red and grey buildings in the distance and asking me what it was. “Is that a disease? Is the land sick?” he suggested.
“Sick?” the Chest of Drawers said. “No it’s not sick—”
“Well, that depends—” I said.
“That’s Northampton U,” said the Chest.
“That’s a school, buddy,” I said.
“I used to teach there, VW,” the Chest said. The VW nodded, then started running his ha
nd along the bars of the railing. I could tell that the Chest of Drawers would have liked to have told the VW more about his career, but the VW turned and skipped along the veranda.
I sat down on one of the benches and stared out at the expanse. “That’s about as honest a view of things as I have ever seen,” I steined.
The Chest didn’t say anything. He just sat very still on the bench, looking at the view, his eyes beginning to trade.
“Chest—what,” I said to him.
“I’m sorry?” the Chest said, as if he hadn’t heard me.
“The expression on your face is a China House,” I said.
The Chest smiled. “I’m just listening,” he said.
I looked out at the green fields, the tiny bioleggers on the road below. “To what?” I said.
“You don’t hear that?” he said.
“Hear what?”
“That sound? The pasture-chord?”
I listened. “No,” I said. “I don’t hear anything but wind.”
“It’s a song—it’s being sent from over there, I think,” the Chest said, pointing west.
“I can’t hear it.”
The Chest grimaced and shook his head. “I would share it with you if I could,” he said.
• • •
A few minutes later the three of us started our walk down the mountain. I didn’t carry the VW this time; I just tried to keep an eye on him. When he’d stop too long to smell or touch something—funky-shaped leaves, animal poop, paths that intersected ours—I’d call his name sternly and he’d come running.
As we continued, though, the Chest and I became engrossed in a conversation—we were talking about a mutual friend, Dancing Fingers, who the Chest told me had recently died. I was stunned—this woman was my age, and she lived less than a mile away from me in Northampton. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about that?” I said.
“She was sick for a while,” the Chest said.
I shook my head. “I had no idea.”
Fingers had been a peer of mine and the Lady from the Land of the Beans’s back in college, and as far as I knew the two of them continued to speak once a month or so by phone. I wondered why the Lady from the Land of the Beans hadn’t called me or told me, or told the Volkswagen to tell me.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive Page 6