Vision Quest

by Terry Davis

  I saw the commotion from way down the street. Five or six people were gathered on the sidewalk, looking through the cars toward the back of the lot. I walked the Honda through them, then rolled down the driveway and pulled up next to Ray Lucas. He was leaning against the trunk of a ’71 Buick, looking down at the bloody dentures in his hand and spots of blood that ran down his white shirt and burgundy pants and onto his white shoes. Dad was talking to a girl about my age who instantly reminded me of a Raggedy Ann doll. In one hand she clutched a bouquet of paper money, and from her shoulder hung a cheap packsack out of which poked a beat-up cardboard sign that said WEST. The old Ford coupe hung from the company wrecker in the alley. The girl stuffed the bills in her packsack, then tore off her shirt and wrapped Dad’s bleeding hand in it. She wore a man’s white cotton tank top undershirt, through which her beautiful round breasts were visible to the crowd of us. Dad tried to take off his suit coat to put around her, but he couldn’t get his sleeve past the wad of flannel.

  “Your fucking father cracked up,” Lucas gummed.

  Two bike cops pulled in, flanking me, followed by an ambulance. They leaped off their bikes and grabbed my arms. “Dad!” I yelled. He turned and ran toward us, waving his bloody flannel mitt.

  “It’s not the kid!” yelled Lucas. “That’s the one!” He pointed at Dad. “The guy’s gone crazy.”

  The cop let me go and raised his hand in front of his chest to show Dad to keep his distance. Dad slowed down and walked the rest of the way to where I sat on the bike. “It’s all right,” he said to the cop. “It’s all over.” He rested his elbows on my headlight and sighed.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t mind a man making money,” Dad said. “But I don’t like him stealing it.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Your fucking father flipped out is what happened,” Lucas said. He shook his bloody dentures in Dad’s face. “This crazy bastard broke my teeth!” he yelled at the cops.

  The ambulance attendant made Lucas lie down on a stretcher. “For Chrissake,” said Lucas. “I’m all right.”

  “We got a call somebody was hurt,” the guy said.

  “Well, it ain’t me,” Lucas replied.

  One of the cops took Lucas’s statement and the other took Dad’s. All of us, except Dad, leered at the girl. “Fuck you guys!” she screeched, giving us the finger. She turned and fingered the mechanics who stood looking at us from the shop door. She fingered the salesmen looking at us from behind the showroom window.

  The ambulance attendant taped Dad’s hand and the girl grabbed her shirt from my handlebars.

  “Pull that Ford in, park the wrecker, and go down to The Shack and wait for me,” Dad said, flipping me the wrecker keys. “Buy her a sandwich,” he said, pointing to Carla.

  Carla and I walked the six blocks to The Shack. I’d have taken her on the bike if I’d had an extra helmet. But I didn’t, so I had to push it along the curb. First a guy in a Dodge van stopped to give me and the bike a lift; then a guy in a Toyota pickup stopped. By the time I told them I was just walking with a friend who didn’t have a helmet and thanked them for the offer, Carla was two blocks down the street. I pushed the bike at a dead run to catch her.

  “I’m Louden Swain,” I puffed. “That guy back at the car lot was my dad.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. God, she was beautiful. She had curly red hair that blew a little in the breeze. Her nose was small and her face was lightly freckled. Her breasts swayed slightly at the speed she walked.

  “Carla,” she replied.

  “What happened back there?” I asked.

  “According to your dad, that guy he punched sold me the car for too much money.”

  “How much did you pay?”

  “A hundred and forty dollars.”

  I could have bought that old Ford for fifty bucks. Lucas sold it to Carla for $140. Dad and I could have dropped another engine in it for that kind of money. She thought she was getting a deal because Lucas filled it with gas. Someone had primered it without sanding, so from a distance the finish looked fuzzy. Carla got off on the idea of a fuzzy car. She also liked all the space created by its lack of a backseat. “Lots of animals could have ridden there,” she said. She made it as far as the freeway ramp.

  We got to The Shack and Carla went in without waiting for me. I hustled the bike around to the parking lot and was sprinting back to the door when Dad pulled in. I walked over to his car. “That was fast,” I said.

  “Doesn’t take long to lose your job,” he replied.

  I didn’t press for details.

  We spotted Carla in a booth at the very back. Dad said hello to all the waitresses and to six or eight guys in coats and ties seated at the counter and in the booths. They acted a little funny, so I figured maybe they’d already heard what had happened. The Shack’s right on what they call “auto row,” so a lot of car-business guys eat there. I’d been meeting Dad for lunch or dinner at The Shack for as long as I could remember. When I was real young Mom would dress me in little suits with hats and short pants and take me down to show me off. Then when I got older I’d take the bus by myself.

  “Sorry about putting you through all that,” Dad said to Carla.

  “I’m sorry about the trouble I’ve caused you,” she replied. “And thanks very much for getting my money back.”

  “That’s all right,” Dad said. “That’s all right.”

  Dad ordered breakfast, which he eats any time of the day or night, and Carla ordered a burger. I drank water and sucked the ice. It was only a couple weeks before this that I’d decided to drop to 147 for my last high school wrestling season. Normally I wouldn’t have begun dieting until September to reach my usual 154, but I was trying to be as slow and gentle with my body as I could so that in December, when the time came to coax out those seven extra pounds, I’d have its loyalty. I weighed 176 then.

  “You can stay with us if you want,” Dad said.

  “Sure,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of room.”

  “We’ll find you a decent car,” Dad said.

  “Sure,” I said. “For a hundred and forty bucks we can find you a car that’ll get you anywhere you want to go.”

  “That’s very, very kind of you,” replied Carla.

  Mom told Dad Carla was dirty. Carla’s jeans were a little mungy, but she was clean. She washed her panties in the sink in the basement bathroom and hung them from the shower-curtain rod. A little spot of blood shown faintly. I figured she was having her period. She rinsed the sink after she brushed her teeth.

  Dad gave Carla my bedroom. I could have slept on the davenport in our other basement room, but Mom wanted me to sleep upstairs. Since she and Dad slept in the two upstairs bedrooms, I would have had to sleep on the davenport in the living room. I didn’t feel like doing that, so I moved out to the backyard. I slept in the carport when it rained.

  I was working mostly nights, so Mom and Dad and I didn’t see each other very often for the rest of the summer. They were usually asleep when I got home and looked in their rooms to tell them good night and turn off their TVs. And I was usually asleep when they came to tell me good-bye on their way to work in the morning. Dad would come about seven thirty. His footsteps were louder across the cement and he never came all the way to my cot. Sometimes his footsteps would wake me and sometimes it would be his voice from the corner of the garage saying, “So long, Son. Be careful on that goddamn motorcycle.” An hour later I’d wake to the tap of Mom’s high heels or to her hand messing with my hair and her voice saying, “Bye, sweetie. Hope you make lots of tips tonight.” I regret not seeing Mom more often then, because she left us for a china-and-glassware man at the end of the summer, and I’m afraid it was the last chance I’ll have in my life to live with her. I don’t think she left because of Dad’s losing his job and selling the cabin and getting sued and stuff. After Mom started to get well she really got into her jo
b selling china and glassware at the Bon Marché. There may be such a thing as a china-and-glassware syndrome. She had already begun to fall away from Dad before Carla and the lawsuit.

  Even in the best of health Mom is built like a falling leaf. But even when she was the sickest her body couldn’t keep her spirit down all the time. She always wanted to know what was going on at school and how many cars Dad sold. She was into painting by numbers and making ceramic ashtrays and mosaics—stuff she could do lying down. And when she felt good enough to get around she cleaned the house and washed clothes and baked stuff and even trimmed the grass. We lived in a time of strange eclipse then—all darkness and quiet for part of the month, then blasts of steady light and activity. I know I’m still shaped by those times, but I don’t know quite how.

  I guess Mom had a terrible time giving birth to me. I heard she almost died. I know something happened to screw up her menstrual cycle and cause her really unnatural pain and heavy bleeding about ten days each month. I have no idea what this problem could have been. I’ve never come across symptoms like those in my reading. I’d like to ask a doctor.

  Anyway, Mom was sick like that for fifteen fucking years. She didn’t have a hysterectomy because her doctor, a naturopath, told her she wouldn’t be a woman anymore if she did. He also told her that God was the greatest healer.

  He treated her with vibrating machines, hot and cold towels, and a lot of capsulated herbs named just with letters of the alphabet. I don’t know what God treated her with.

  After school I’d take a bus to the clinic to see her. She’d be strapped in this thing that looked like a chastity belt. It was hooked up to an electronic device that resembled an automatic washer on wheels. Violet tendrils of light popped and danced in the little round window. Mom would spend some time hooked up to that machine, then she’d get a series of hot and cold towels, then she’d swallow two Cs and an A and a B, and I’d push her out in her wheelchair. She hurt so bad she couldn’t even stand up. We’d take a cab home.

  Mom was a country girl and had gone to that guy all her life. She wasn’t and isn’t terribly religious, so more than that it was probably habit and faith in an old acquaintance that kept her with him. It just happened that after she married Dad and moved to Spokane this doctor decided to open a big clinic here.

  Finally, when I was fifteen, the naturopath died. Mom didn’t know any other doctors, so she went to Dad’s. Although he never bought the line himself, Dad kept quiet about Mom’s naturopathy for all those years. He just paid the bills.

  Dad’s doctor referred Mom to a gynecologist, who told her she was crazy for not getting a hysterectomy fourteen years before. So she got one. And after she rested awhile she felt great. I don’t know if she felt less a woman.

  I remember one thing from the days of her sickness—I’ll never forget it. I was playing Pop Warner football then. I was in the seventh or eighth grade. Our season was over and I got voted most valuable player. I was a really big bastard for a seventh or eighth grader, so it wasn’t surprising. But it was still a pretty big deal for me. I ran home about a thousand miles an hour to tell Mom and show her my trophy. I blasted in the door and saw all the lights were off. I figured she might be sleeping, so I walked quietly into her bedroom. Outside it was a beautiful fall afternoon, and inside there was my mother with her curtains all drawn up tight, curled up like a little animal in her bed, holding her pelvis and crying.

  I burst into tears. I must have scared her. I ran up and jumped on her bed and probably half crushed her. I just hugged her and cried like a little kid. All I said was, “I’m sorry you don’t feel good, Mom.” I just kept saying that. She probably couldn’t hear me anyway through all my blubbering.

  After a while I showed her my trophy. Mom said she was feeling better and that she thought the trophy was great. Then I went downstairs and cried by the furnace, where Dad used to beat on me when I was little. I fell on the floor like I was having a fit. I remember the concrete was cold at first but got really warm. If that doctor were alive today I’d kill the cocksucker with my bare hands.

  After Mom got feeling good she took a job in the china and glassware department of the Bon Marché. In about six months she became a buyer.

  I think maybe what happened is that she had been sick for such a long time that finally feeling good was like becoming a new person. She started making friends at work and really got into her job. That’s when she started falling away from us.

  None of us was home much. Dad worked a fourteen-hour day, I was either in school or working out or running room service at the hotel, and Mom was traveling a lot. When we were all home at the same time, Mom was busy with her catalogs. The talking she did do was more to Poodle than to Dad or me. But when I’d stop to see her at the Bon, she’d be blustering around in full bloom, gabbing with the salespeople and the customers.

  She went for a ride on my motorcycle once. It was dusk. I took her up to Manito Park to see the rose garden. She really enjoyed it. But then I took High Drive home and scared the hell out of her. That was a bad move, because she wouldn’t go again. I think she got a kick out of riding slow. She wore this long wild scarf thing from Italy. It flapped about three feet behind us. Mom looked pretty racy. From a distance she probably looked like my little sister.

  I think more than anything else it was the change in their lifestyles that broke Mom and Dad up. Before last spring Dad was into one thing only—selling lots of cars and making heavy bread. He went at it like a war. Each car sold was an enemy casualty. If he made his bonus each month it was a battle won. He was the general and the salesmen were his troops. He took care of them like a father, selling cars himself and crediting the deals to the lowest men on the board. He wore his uniform proudly—double-knit sport coat, cranberry slacks, white belt, white shoes.

  Mom liked driving her Buick convertible and buying different-colored carpet for each room in both the house and the cabin and buying new credenzas for all her dishes and going out to dinner a lot. The thing about Mom is that she got real pleasure out of this sort of shit. I saw it in her face when she dusted the furniture or when she set the table for company. That’s why I don’t think I can ever stay pissed off about it for long. Her family was poor. I guess she learned to need stuff like that by not having it, the same way rich people learn to need it by having it. I don’t really understand about learned behavior patterns yet. We’re well enough off. At least we were. I couldn’t care less about a bunch of fucking cups and saucers or a whole store full of big-assed cars.

  Anyway, it happened that Mom’s new lifestyle and Dad’s old lifestyle coincided, or at least didn’t conflict.

  But about last spring Dad began to change. He began to tell me how shitty the new cars were, about how there were so many piddly little things always going wrong with them, and about how they would come from the factory with the armrests half off and the plastic “wood” on the dash coming unglued. He complained to the factory representative that nothing manual could be ordered anymore—no standard transmissions, brakes, or steering, not even a station wagon back window that could be rolled by hand. The factory man, this young college-educated guy of whom Dad had been in awe, told Dad that people didn’t want to do things by hand anymore. Dad, who was getting less and less awed all the time, said, “In a pig’s ass they don’t!”

  Then I began seeing books on the nightstand with Dad’s Time: Future Shock, The Assassin Automobile, The Human Use of Human Beings, Power and Innocence. He began to wear his older, plainer clothes. He’s got two closets full of clothes. He must have a hundred shoes. He quit smoking, and to fight his nervousness he built a working model of the Wankel engine. He tried to talk Mom into quitting smoking. He tried to talk her into selling the Buick and buying a little Honda car. He wanted to try walking to work a couple days a week. Mom was having none of it.

  One evening after I got home from working overtime I heard Mom and Dad talking. Dad was nearly pleading with her to stop smoking. She smokes about three pac
ks a day. I was surprised at Dad’s tone. I’d have to call it “tender.” I wouldn’t call him mean, but I don’t usually call him tender, either. It made me happy in a sad way. Not that it turned out well. Mom said she loved smoking and could never quit. The tone in which she said it made me feel strange and good. I would have to call it tender, too. She also said it would break her heart to sell the convertible. She said she’d never drive “one of those little toilet bowls.”

  Dad hasn’t smoked a cigarette since. But he did return to cigars, of which he smokes probably fifteen a day.

  Either Mom and Dad ended their twenty-year marriage quietly or they did all their yelling when I wasn’t around. The first I knew about it was one day in the middle of August when Mom asked me to meet her for lunch. We sat in a booth in the Bon Marché cafeteria and Mom told me she was moving to Seattle.

  I focused on the way she held her cigarette. So casual—elbow out, wrist cocked, a little kiss of lipstick on the filter. I thought back to the picture I’d seen of Mom in her teens, when her hair was long in what they called a “page boy.” And in my mind I could see her practice holding her cigarette. Stuff like that was important then. I loved my Mom that day as much as I ever did or probably ever will. I think I loved her because she suffered so long and still came out of it with a good heart. Maybe I feel guilty for being part of the cause of her suffering and love her to make up for it. Whyever I love her, I don’t think it’s just because she’s my mother.

  “Punkin,” Mom said. “I want you to know they broke the mold when they made your father.”

  So Mom lives in Seattle with her new husband now. She transferred to the Seattle Bon Marché. We talk more now, even though it’s only over the phone. I’ll spend a week with her after the season’s over. The University of Washington invited me to visit their campus, so I’ll do that then, too. Carla doesn’t think she’ll go along.