The Last True Love Story

by Brendan Kiely

  “Let me out,” he said. “I’ll help push.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Teddy,” he said.

  We were pushing slowly and not getting very far, and we could have used help, but what if he slipped and hit his head? What if he fell and the car rolled over him?

  Corrina yelled over the hood of the car to me.

  “Hendrix,” she said. “We need a driver. Someone has to steer.” She was right. We were pointed in a straight line toward a stand of trees. We had to get the car curving to the left to get it into the driveway. We squinted through the heavy rain and held our hands over our eyes like visors, and Corrina smiled at me. “We need a captain!” she shouted so Gpa could hear her through the window. “We need your help, man. Get behind the wheel.”

  She looked at me again. “We can do it!” I wanted to freeze time, slide across the hood, wrap her in my arms, and tell her the secret in my heart that I now knew was absolutely true, because when you see the most beautiful girl in the world with rain plastering her hair to her head, her T-shirt slick and stuck to her like a second skin, and she reads the signs and cares for your Gpa even better than you, that secret you’ve tried not to admit to yourself ignites and spreads through your body like the sun breaking through night into day.

  We got Gpa up in the driver’s seat, and with his help we got the Blue Bomber carving an arc in the mud toward the driveway. “Hell yeah!” Corrina yelled, and I yelled too, just something guttural and animal and free like I hadn’t felt before, and the car even started picking up a little speed and got easier to roll, until suddenly we realized the hill was steeper than we’d thought and the car was rolling free on its own without us pushing it and instead of pushing at the front of the open windows we switched to the back of the windows and tried to hold it back but the car was too heavy and began to accelerate down the short hill. We had to jog to keep up with it.

  “Brake!” Corrina yelled. “Brake!”

  “Brake!” I echoed.

  Gpa had two hands on the wheel and was at least keeping a straight line, but now it seemed like the Blue Bomber might go slamming into the metal door of the garage down the hill. It gained more speed and we started to run alongside it.

  “Charlie!” Corrina yelled. “Brake, goddamnit!”

  “I am,” he said. And he was. The wheels had stopped spinning. They just slid down the hill in the ruts they’d formed in the red mud. The Blue Bomber kept its course for the door, and I thought Gpa was actually going to ram it, but he turned the wheel and the tires broke through the rut, the car angled and slowed, and as we got to the bottom of the slope, onto flat ground, the car came to a stop a few feet away from the garage.

  Our hearts raced, mud caked our legs, but we were safe.

  “Roll up the windows, Charlie,” Corrina said. “We’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t go anywhere,” I added, but he frowned and shook his head at me.

  There was a glass door in the side shop next to the garage, and as Corrina and I walked to it, I could see a few people inside. We opened the door and stepped inside, and three men, each of them the size of two men, stopped what they were doing and looked at us.

  Actually, it almost seemed like there were six heads in the room, the three bald heads of the supersized men, and the skulls with fire coming out of their eyes and mouths on their T-shirts. One stood behind the makeshift counter, which looked like a section of an old fence. Another sat in a chair tilted onto the back two legs, resting his motorcycle boots on the counter. And the third sat on a stool across from him, but he stood when we entered. The skull stretched out over his chest looked bigger than my head.

  The one behind the counter was whistling, but as we came in, the man in the chair hollered. “Damnit, none of us know what song that is, but you got it stuck in my head. Just quit it already, unless you can tell me what the hell it is you think you’re whistling!”

  The man behind the counter shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  The man on the stool, the largest of the three, glared at us. “Looking for something?” he asked.

  “Gas,” Corrina said.

  “Pumps out front,” he said slowly.

  “Are empty,” Corrina finished for him.

  He looked her up and down as slowly as he spoke. They all stared at Corrina, at her T-shirt, at the band, I guess, or maybe they all were just ogling her. They didn’t seem to give a shit if they scared us. In fact, they were enjoying it.

  “Long way from home, little man,” the one behind the counter said to me.

  They all had long beards, but the beards made them look older than I thought they probably were. They could have been brothers. I thought of the girls back up by the shop. But the garage was a kind of shop too. There were a few stands of shelves with a slim selection of windshield wiper fluid, antifreeze, and oil; wiper blades, rags, and rubber mats; and yes, red plastic gallon containers of gas.

  “Where you from?” the guy standing asked Corrina.

  “LA,” she said.

  I pointed to the gas on the shelf. “How much is the gas?” I asked.

  The first man took a step closer. “LA?” he said to Corrina. “You are a long way from home.” He looked at me. “You like a little south of the border?”

  He grinned, and he was as ugly as the skull on his shirt. The guy behind the counter laughed, but the guy in the chair swung his legs down, slamming the chair legs to the ground. The pop on the floor made me jump.

  “We watched you coming down here,” he said. “Someone else with you?”

  “My grandfather,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Where you going?”

  “New York.”

  That made him laugh, and the others followed him. “Whole lot of country between LA and New York.”

  “How much for the gas?” Corrina said. She walked over to the shelf and grabbed two of the gallon containers.

  “How much they worth to you?” the guy in the chair asked Corrina. He leaned forward and put his hands between his knees.

  “How much is the gas?” I asked. I was trembling like crazy on the inside and hoped I didn’t show it on the outside. “We’re in a hurry,” I added.

  “Of course you are,” the guy in the chair said. “How much you willing to pay for it?”

  I put my hand in my pocket, about to fish out my wallet like a major frigging idiot, when the door opened behind me. The rain swept in and Gpa put his hand on my shoulder. He steered around me and walked to Corrina. “Find the gas?” he asked. I thought maybe he didn’t notice, but then, as he put his hand on her back and stared at the three beards, I realized Gpa had understood the situation as soon as he’d entered.

  “They found it,” the guy in the chair said. He looked at Gpa and saw the cap on his head. His expression changed. “You a marine?”

  “ ’Sixty-seven to ’sixty-nine. Khe Sanh. Hue,” Gpa said. “You?”

  “Fallujah.”

  Gpa nodded, walked across the room, and shook his hand. The other guys relaxed. The big one who’d been on the stool went around the counter. “Hey,” the vet said. “Ring these kids up.”

  Corrina and I brought four gallons of gas to the counter and Corrina added two bottles of dry gas, and as we paid for them and bagged them with the guys behind the counter, Gpa spoke in halting, almost coded, phrases and fragments of sentences about urban warfare, Fallujah and Baghdad, and Hue in Vietnam.

  The vet even followed us outside and helped us get the gas in the car and made sure we could start it up. Once we did, Gpa shook hands with him again and said something low in his ear. The man nodded. “Sorry for the trouble,” he said. “No disrespect. Just having a little fun.”

  Gpa nodded. “Thanks for the help.”

  Corrina stuck her head out the window and raised her gaze over the stretched skull, up to the vet’s eyes. “Ted Nugent,” she said to him.

  “What?”

  “Ted Nugent. ‘Call of the
Wild.’ 1974. He can’t whistle for shit, but that’s the song. Song sucks, too, by the way.”

  She started the engine, angled the Blue Bomber back away from the station, and left the vet standing by himself in the mud as she got us back up the hill. “Those guys were assholes,” she said as she pulled out onto the access road in front of the Feed and Mercantile. “Assholes.”

  “Look,” Gpa said. “He needed to see the situation in a different light.”

  “Bros. Brahs. Old boys’ club. Same damn shit,” Corrina continued.

  “Well, most people respect the road trip,” Gpa said. “I mean, when you get down to it, everyone respects the road trip.”

  CHAPTER 14

  GRAY HALLUCINATIONS

  Corrina got the Blue Bomber back out onto the 40 and pushed us ahead toward Flagstaff. I watched the storm attack the peak of Mount Humphreys ahead. Lightning flashed again and again, as if some horrific battle was taking place in the sky.

  One thing all three of us agreed. The assholes had made us hungry. Eventually we saw signs for Flagstaff, and as we approached the city I hoped we’d find something. First we topped up the gas tank, then we found a taco joint and sat in a booth trying not to look like outlaws on the run. Gpa was quiet, and although he’d been alert and energetic at the garage, he napped again shortly after we got back on the highway, and I worried his mind was tired. When the waiter asked him what he wanted, he paused. He took a deep breath, and I saw the confusion rising in his face.

  “Hey, Gpa,” I said. “Let’s get what we always get. You like the chicken burrito and I like the carnitas. We should just get those, right?”

  He glanced up at me and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  The restaurant had a vaulted ceiling, colorful booths raised up on a platform along one wall, tables scattered beside that, and a long bar, behind which an enormous plastic shark busted through the fake bricks. Other nautically related items hung on the walls or from the ceiling, surfboards, lobster traps, scuba diving signs indicating “wet spots” with not so subtle other undertones, foam buoys and other plastic fish. I liked the feel of the place, but the bar music was loud and echoing in the cavernous space, four large-screen TVs flashed at different points throughout the restaurant, and the din of customers and the wait staff all added up to a very non-Gpa-friendly choice.

  We got our food, and soon after, Gpa had to go to the bathroom. I led the way and waited in the restroom while he managed and cleaned up, and when we walked back into the restaurant, he held me tightly by the arm. I got him back in the booth, but he looked down at his plate as if he’d already forgotten what it was, and when he looked around, his eyes moved quickly, as if he’d just woken from a nap and he didn’t remember having fallen asleep.

  “Where the hell are we, again?” he asked.

  “Flagstaff,” Corrina said.

  He nodded, but I could tell he was struggling to place her.

  “We’re on a road trip,” I said to him. “We’re having a blast.”

  Corrina picked up on Gpa’s struggle immediately. “Everybody respects the road trip, Charlie,” she said, using his own line.

  He scowled and went back to eating. We all ate in silence for a few moments, but Corrina was looking around at the place skeptically too. In addition to the nautical theme, there were sombreros everywhere. Not hanging on the wall by themselves, but perched on the heads of sharks, or on the heads of grossly cartooned men depicted in signs and posters on the walls. I’d walked into the place and not even noticed at first: Every single person in the restaurant was white, except Corrina.

  “I picked a stupid place for lunch,” I said. “I’m noticing that now.”

  “You think?” she said, taking another forkful of her enchilada. “Food’s not bad, but give me a fucking break.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “What’s with the mouth?” Gpa said from across the table. He glared at Corrina. “If I’m taking you out to lunch, I’d like a little decorum here.”

  “Uh, okay,” Corrina said. She looked at me.

  “You too,” Gpa said to me. “You just expect me to take you out every time we see each other and you have no respect for the way I raised you.”

  He waved his fork at me as he spoke, and Corrina stared at me. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I always paid for burritos back at Holy Guacamole by the beach, or rather, I had money from Mom, and I was also paying for everything on the road.

  “I don’t have to make these trips,” Gpa went on. “I come down here to see you and this is always the case. Another lunch, another girl. We eat. We go. How about you ask how your mother is doing?”

  “Gpa?” I said.

  “Jake, you have no idea what we did so you could have the life we’ve given you. No idea! How about a little respect?”

  Anger boiled in his pinched eyes, and I wasn’t sure how to get him to calm down. Although my back was to most of the restaurant, I was sure some people could hear us. The ghost was back, sitting at lunch with us, but this time he was in me.

  “Gpa,” I whispered. “It’s me, Teddy.”

  He breathed through his nose. “What is going on here?” he said.

  “Do me a favor,” Corrina said. “Let’s sing that early Joni Mitchell song, that one you told me you and Betty loved.”

  Corrina sang a few lines and then reached for his hand, but he batted it away, knocking her hand into the wall beside her. “Cut that out,” he said. “Don’t tease me. Oh, Jake,” he said, shaking his head at me. “You and your girls. You and all your girls.” He sniffed bitterly. “Who is this, again? Who am I supposed to get to know today?”

  “Gpa, hey,” I said, louder this time, not giving a damn if others could hear us now. I put my arm around Corrina. “It’s me, Teddy. We’re just getting burritos, like we always do. This is my friend, Corrina. She’s driving us. I love you. I’m doing everything you asked. I always do. Let’s just enjoy our burritos, okay?”

  I spoke as calmly and evenly as I could, and then, without thinking, I took Corrina’s hand in mine. She let me take it, and when I squeezed, she squeezed back, and somehow I didn’t have to even look at her and I knew she wasn’t mad.

  “I don’t understand,” Gpa said.

  “Gpa,” I said. “I’d like to take you back to the car.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said again, and I watched the cloudy-eyed confusion of one of his bad days drift over him. This was worse than when he simply lost words, like refrigerator or soup; it was much scarier, as if he was living in another time, as if he was looking at the world in double exposure, a gray hallucination of the past imprinted on the one we were living in now.

  I stood and gave Corrina a wad of cash and she simply nodded, and I came around the other side of the booth and tried to help Gpa out of his seat. He struggled a little at first, but his fury had subsided, and in his confusion, he was more afraid than angry. I got him out to the car and into the backseat with Old Humper; the seat was a little wet, because we’d had to keep the windows open for Old Humper, but it had stopped raining and the air was cool and crisp and the giant cumulus clouds drifted slowly by like ships in the enormous harbor of the sky, and I looked up into it as I leaned against the Blue Bomber and read from the HFB, telling Gpa a story he’d once told me.

  THE STORY OF GPA AND GMA’S FIRST KISS

  Betty McCarthy was the absolute beauty of Ithaca. Her parents thought this beauty would be her ticket to happiness. They also thought happiness was wealth and security. Her parents were wrong.

  In 1963 there weren’t many wealthy people in Ithaca who weren’t in some way connected to Cornell or Ithaca College. But some kids who weren’t professors’ kids still looked like they had some promise. Charlie Hendrix was not one of those kids, but his friend Frank Morris was. Everybody knew Frank was going to be a doctor or a lawyer or a senator. His old man managed a garage on the edge of town. He hadn’t made it through high school, but Frank had been valedictorian, and he had p
lans of going places. Everybody knew that. Everybody expected it. And everybody in town knew Frank. Frank got free floats at Purity Ice Cream when he took a date there. The bartender at Macavoy’s always gave Frank’s date a free sherry when they arrived. Everybody knew Frank, and everybody loved Frank, especially Frank. He and Gpa worked together at Frank’s father’s garage, and this supposedly made them friends, but they didn’t hang out much.

  On the night Frank was supposed to take Betty to Macavoy’s for their first date, he’d forgotten that he’d already made plans with Kim Lynch, whom he’d been seeing in private, and with whom he’d had plans of his own.

  “Take Betty for me, will you, Charlie? Let Davy know on the sly you’re doing me a favor. He’ll set you up.”

  “It’s a date. You can’t just swap the man.”

  “Ha! No, you can’t, can you. But do a friend a favor.”

  Charlie reluctantly agreed, and when he showed up at Betty’s door, she thought it was a joke. She made him sit there, on the front steps of her porch, so they could wait for Frank and she could tell him how rude he was, and how she’d always known he’d had mean blood running through him. Charlie tried to console her, tried to tell her Frank was all right, but he wasn’t convincing because he, himself, was not at all convinced that was true, and after a while he told her the truth about Frank. Well, most of it. He didn’t say a word about Kim, because who was he to say a bad thing about her.

  “Well, that settles it,” Betty said. “I didn’t get dressed up for nothing.” She looked at Charlie’s car. “Charlie Hendrix,” she said. “You are not going to be a doctor, or a professor, and truth is you are a little shorter than any man I’d let take me on a date, but you’ve been sitting here with me on my parents’ porch for an hour and you haven’t complained once.”

  “Well, I like your company.”