Car Trouble

by Robert Rorke

  I tried the best I could to clean the sides of the car, with one foot in the garden while bending to wash the chrome strips, well nicked with raisin-sized spots of rust. Over my shoulder, I saw the new marigolds and gladioli getting ready to bloom, green heads turning orange, yellow, and peach. There were some dead leaves around the rosebushes, some dead cane on the bushes themselves—but they would have to wait for another day.

  “Well, hey there.”

  I turned around and saw Mrs. Garrett standing in the alley. She had just come from church—Southern Baptist, on Lenox Road—and wore a blue suit with white buttons and a demure white hat pinned to her straight gray hair.

  The suds dripped off the fender onto my sneakers. I wondered if she was going to complain about the car being in the driveway. I would park it on the street when we got back from the beach. “Hi. Doing a little spring cleaning. I’m going to start with my father’s car.”

  She wore silver-frame eyeglasses that reflected my unshaven face. “What happened to your lip?”

  The swelling was down but still noticeable. I looked at her. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Your daddy did that, didn’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “I heard him, you know. Last night. Giving somebody the business.” She paused. “He’s gone now, isn’t he?”

  I flushed. The bucket handle felt clammy in my right hand. I nodded, but I felt foolish somehow.

  She now reached out and touched my hand. Her skin was dry as paper. “You’re going to be all right. I can tell.”

  * * *

  I eased the Ford, still wet, out of the driveway, parking in front of the house, and went up the front stoop, stepping over the suds in the gutter, and shouted through the window screen, “Ladies, your beach transport has arrived. All aboard.”

  The stoop was a mess. I didn’t know how to fix it, but Uncle Tim had to know someone who could teach me. And I’d paint the front door too. I’d do all the things around the house Himself forgot to do. The summer was mine and I had the energy and focus to make it different.

  I adjusted the rearview mirror while everyone got themselves situated and made room for Queenie on their laps. For once, Mom did not sit in the back, and the girls spread out, with their wicker beach bags next to them, on the backseat. Mom was nervous because I didn’t have my license yet, but I promised her I wouldn’t go over 40 miles per hour and I wouldn’t take any main streets until we reached the Flatbush Avenue extension. I knew all the back roads.

  “You’re going to have to buy an air freshener or something,” Mom said, rolling the window down as I pulled out. She was smoking a cigarette.

  “The sea air will fumigate the car for us, hopefully,” I said.

  She laughed. “Oh, sure. Did you put the hose away?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Just remember, I’m not looking to spend the whole day out there.”

  Really? I had my bathing suit on under my jeans.

  “I need a break from your father’s family for a while.”

  “I know, but I don’t think we can honk the horn, get Maureen, and go.”

  Why was she in such a huff? Exhaustion, probably. I never did ask what time the Florida expedition finally got on the road. I drove around the corner and took a left on Brooklyn Avenue and another on Cortelyou Road, riding along the back end of Holy Cross. There were seldom any cars on this stretch because the road was so old and narrow.

  “We’re getting her out of there at the right time,” said Patty, sitting behind Mom. “Maureen told me she’s had it up to here with Aunt Julie’s bratty kids.”

  “Come on, they can’t be that bad,” I said. “They were nice at Christmas.”

  “Everyone’s nice at Christmas. They’re getting presents,” Patty said.

  It was already heating up and I was hoping the cooler beach air would change Mom’s mind about spending the day in Belle Harbor. The needle on the gas gauge was poised just above the middle. Was that enough to get us there and back? I hoped so. I was driving on Clarendon Road, passing Utica Avenue and looking for East Fifty-Third Street, a wide residential street in a quiet neighborhood I could take almost all the way. There’d be a lot of cars on Avenue U when we got to Kings Plaza, but I wasn’t going to attract that much attention, even with a pink car. After all, I was tall enough to pass for an adult now. I just had to shield my face with a baseball cap.

  “Maureen thinks Rockaway is boring,” Patty said. “I think she misses the action on Church Avenue.”

  “Who would miss Church Avenue?” Mom said, flicking an ash out the window. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  I thought of Maureen riding in Boppo’s Buick to see me at Baskin-Robbins. Trouble would always find her, whether Himself was in the house or not.

  Mom asked me about the play. I told her it was great but telling her about the plot could not describe it. After all, no one in my house needed to see a play about a man who made Himself look like an amateur at life’s cocktail party. So I told them about the scene I’d never forget, when Josie cradled Jamie Tyrone on the edge of the stage, bestowing a forgiveness upon him he’d never give himself after he went with a prostitute following his mother’s death. I could barely breathe. I knew then that the stage would be my destiny. To command an audience like that, why would you want to do anything else? I just had to figure out how to do it.

  “Did your teacher say anything about your lip?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” I sat in the backseat of Brian’s car with the washcloth and melting ice cubes pressed against my lips, but didn’t want to get into it when he asked me what was going on because we weren’t alone. His friend Kevin was in the front seat. He had his new legs. All I said was “I’ll tell you later,” but then I never did. I was too caught up in watching the play. My mouth may have been numb, but the rest of me was on fire.

  The blocks clicked past like flash cards. Glenwood Road, Avenue H, Avenue J. The alphabet of my childhood. I swung over on Avenue M to East Fifty-Sixth Street, by Mary Queen of Heaven. I wondered if the portable record player was working. At the next red light, I looked for the switch under the dashboard and flipped it on. A record with a purple label dropped onto the turntable. Gordy Records. The needle hit the worn grooves of the 45 and soon the mellow harmonies of the Temptations floated on the summer air. They were singing “The Way You Do the Things You Do,” and my sisters, surprisingly, knew most of the words. Without Himself at the wheel, I could blast it.

  “Your father called—collect—while you were at church. He’s left Virginia with your grandfather and your uncle’s on his way home,” Mom said.

  “Glad I’m not sitting in the backseat of that car.”

  We hit a line of cars at Avenue U and just sat there. The song finished and I felt around inside the record player for another single to play. I pulled out singles by Martha and the Vandellas, the Four Seasons, and the Supremes. As I removed the last record, my fingers touched something else. I pulled it out. It was one of the bullets from the .357 Magnum. I placed it on the dashboard. Then I popped the Supremes on the record player. “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.”

  “What’s that?” Mom said, nodding at the lone bullet.

  “Something Dad left behind,” I said.

  Diana Ross and her backup singers were all fired up, tearing through the song with brassy gusto. Get out, get out of my life and let me sleep at night. . . . I made the wide left turn onto the Flatbush extension. I pressed a button below the dashboard and the hood lifted, retracted, and folded back, letting summer warm our necks.

  “Ladies, we are living the convertible lifestyle,” I said.

  The towers of the Marine Park Bridge came into view, blue-gray in the full sun. I had come down this road several times in the last year and each trip had the whiff of danger about it. One left a trail of tears. Today felt different. I tossed fifty cents into the basket at the tollbooth and drove up onto the noisy bridge, the streets of Brooklyn behind me and the Atlantic, wide and blue,
up ahead.

  Epilogue

  I had to wait until I made it to Broadway for Himself to see me on stage—and even then he had an ulterior motive. I was playing Edmund Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night at the Booth Theatre and George C. Scott was playing my father. The show was going well, with the critics saying Julie Harris was a shoo-in for the Tony as Mary Tyrone. But the critics I most cared about were sitting in row G. It was weird doing my monologues knowing they were out there.

  After the curtain calls, I waited backstage for my family and they were moved yet humbled, as if I was finally doing the real thing after one TV lawyer show in LA. Mary Ellen gave me a bouquet of tulips from our garden. Himself shook my hand. He had a handlebar moustache now that gave Yosemite Sam a run for his money. “You held your own up there with General Patton,” he said, just a little too loud. “Very impressive.”

  He had a moderate buzz. I assumed he’d had some other refreshments before they left the house.

  “Let’s go to my dressing room. We can sit down,” I offered.

  Dad leaned over and said, chuckling, “Is General Patton reviewing the troops, or is he closeted in his quarters?”

  Mom made eyes at me over his shoulder. “Do you think it would be too much trouble for your father to meet George C. Scott?”

  “Nah. We can meet him or anybody else you want to. I’ll go knock on his door.”

  I led the troupe down the corridor and up two flights of stairs, through peeling hallways and industrial gray carpeting, to the dressing rooms. My door was open.

  “Gee, it’s not very fancy back here,” Mom said. “I thought you were all big stars.”

  “Welcome to Broadway,” I said. “We won’t be long. Anybody else for George C. Scott?”

  Patty and Dee Dee shook their heads, and Dad and I went back down the hall.

  I knocked on the door. “George, do you have a minute? I have someone who wants to meet you.”

  I heard some rustling inside and then the great man opened the door, his brows raised with the kind of curiosity that made people pull themselves up short when they met him. He wore a terry-cloth robe over his undershirt and black nylon socks on his feet. I glanced at a glass of scotch on the table inside.

  “Meet my father, Patrick Flynn.”

  Himself seemed so awed that I knew he wouldn’t dare call him General.

  “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Flynn,” Scott said in warm appreciation. “Your son here’s one of the finest young actors I’ve worked with.” Gilding the lily, but who was I to argue?

  “So I see,” Dad said, chuckling nervously. I realized he didn’t know how to talk to him. “Yeah, he’s done all right for himself.”

  Scott pointed to the liquor glass on the table. “I was just having a postperformance drink. Would you gentlemen care to join me?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Dad said, taste buds break-dancing. He stepped forward into Scott’s dressing room. I followed. He watched Scott pour the Johnnie Walker into a tumbler like a priest pouring Communion wine into a chalice.

  Scott raised his glass and I thought Himself was going to salute. “Nick?”

  “I should get back to my mother and sisters. They’re waiting in my dressing room.” I whispered to Scott, “One drink.”

  Himself was shooing me out the door. “Tell your mother I’ll meet her out front in ten minutes.”

  I cleaned up, changed into fancier pants than the jeans I usually wore to work because I knew we were going out somewhere, and met everyone outside the theater.

  Pointing up at the marquee, Mom said, “Everybody get together for a picture.” We gathered for a minute and grinned while Mom snapped one with her Instamatic.

  Suddenly Dad pulled up in his cab. The only car he drove these days was a yellow taxi. The Florida thing didn’t exactly work out. He was gone about a year and a half, working for various trucking companies, driving the eighteen-wheelers, but then something went wrong and he came back, just in time for my graduation from St. Mike’s. I had my license, my diploma, and a scholarship to Carnegie-Mellon. Maureen was the next to go—off to Maine, then Colorado. By the time I moved back to New York, there were three sisters left. And Queenie. And my mother. She never left him.

  He got out and ushered the girls into the backseat. “Door-to-door service,” he said with his bartender’s smile. “It’ll be a little cozy up front.”

  “So?” Mom said, smiling. “How was the general?”

  “Very impressive. I wanted to salute him, but I couldn’t find the right moment.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Patty. Much of the crowd had dispersed into town cars and taxis and now only the sketchy characters of Times Square remained. “Do you think we could get out of here before these bums start hitting us up for money?”

  “Oh, by the by, wherever you want to go, it’s on me,” Dad said.

  I shook my head. “Dad, don’t be ridiculous.” I knew he had given up a night of work to get the cab. I had an idea. “Hey, why don’t you let me drive?”

  Dad looked at me, surprised. “That would be against the law, I’m afraid,” he said with solemnity. “You see, it’s my face on the hack license.”

  “I know, but it’s my big night, so I want you to let me drive. I’ve never driven—”

  He glowered at me. “Are you trying to insult me?”

  This flare-up was all too familiar. But I was a grown-up now; I could humor him. “I’ll just drive downtown.”

  Mom leaned over in the front seat, calling out the window. “Let’s go, you two.”

  He was giving me the hairy eyeball, and I gave it back. “I am not trying to insult you. I just thought I’d do it for the hell of it.”

  He threw me the keys, and they landed on the sidewalk. I scooped them up, smiling. The old man surrenders in battle. I slid in behind the wheel and looked back at my sisters. It wasn’t one of those taxis with a divider between the front and backseat.

  “And where would you lovely ladies like to go this evening?”

  “Oh, let’s go someplace fancy,” Mary Ellen said.

  “Yeah, let’s be elegant,” said Dee Dee.

  I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You’re the one who said ‘Yo, Nicky’ at the curtain call, right?”

  Dee Dee blushed. “Yep, I confess.”

  I adjusted the rearview mirror and pulled out. Himself sat in the passenger seat; Mom was in between us. “If you take a left at the corner and go down to Ninth Avenue, you can make all the lights,” Dad said.

  “I’d rather take Broadway. It’s much prettier.”

  “You’ll get stuck in traffic.” A singsong warning.

  I followed his instructions, driving to Ninth Avenue and making a left. A sea of cars. “Get into the passing lane, lose this dame from Jersey,” Dad said. “Come on, Maryann,” he said to the woman driving in front of us.

  I was sweating, getting just a little nervous having Himself play backseat driver. I made every effort to look serene. Once we passed Thirty-Fourth Street, I took the first left and made my way to Broadway. The Flatiron Building came into view near Twenty-Third Street.

  “If you put your foot on the accelerator, you can make this light,” Dad said.

  “That’s okay. Is anybody here in a hurry?”

  No one said a word.

  “Well, if you’re gonna drive a goddamn cab, drive it.”

  I swallowed. Would-be passengers stuck their arms out on lower Broadway, looking for a ride. They lowered their arms in disappointment and stepped back toward the sidewalk when they saw my cab was full. Yes, Himself was being a pain in the ass, but I still thought this was pretty cool, until we came to the intersection of Broadway and Houston, and we were set upon by a plague of zombies wearing baseball caps and dirty T-shirts. They were coming up to the car and pawing the windshield as if they wanted to reach through and grab our throats. Then they squirted the glass with sudsy Windex bottles.

  “What is going on here?”

  “Put on the w
ipers,” Dad commanded. “Don’t let these varmints touch my cab.”

  “Where are the wipers?” I panicked, seeing one guy with a bumpy, dark face and a rag tied around his head approaching with a blue sponge.

  Dad reached across Mom’s lap and flipped the wipers on. At the intersection, the light turned red. The wipers swished back and forth while the guy made a wiping motion of his own with a rag. I shook my head, waved him away, and the guy gave me the finger.

  “Ooh, he’s so rude,” Mom said.

  I burst out laughing. “Who are these guys?”

  “They call them the squeegee men. They’re from the men’s shelter,” Patty said in the backseat.

  You’d never see anything like that in LA. I really was back home. Dad muttered something under his breath and opened his door. “Daddy, don’t get involved,” Patty said. “The light’s about to change.”

  It was already too late. In two strides, he was standing in front of the cab, yelling at the squeegee guy. The guy was yelling back, with wild gestures. Dad stepped back, as if the guy had grazed him.

  I could make a living in the theater, but he was the real actor in the family. Never needed a script to put on a show.

  “Nicky, go get your father,” Mom said.

  I shook my head. He was on his own. “I’m not getting out of this car.” I honked the horn to get Himself’s attention. A cacophony of horns honked behind me, and another taxi pulled ahead of us. The light had turned green. I stuck my head out the window. “Come on. You’re holding everyone up.”

  He ignored me so I drove across the intersection, pulling over next to a car near the corner of Houston Street. In the rearview mirror, I watched Himself walking toward me.

  He opened the door on the driver’s side. “Slide over,” he said, winded.

  It was his cab and I did as I was told.

  * * *

  We ended up back at the house. It was the shank of the evening, but after a three-hour play, Mom was beat, and I said we would go out another night, when I didn’t have a show. My family was the only white family still living on Medallion Street, and Himself was the only Flynn left in New York. Even Uncle Tim had taken off, packing up his brood for a fancy job in the Midwest. Uncle George had moved back from Germany but didn’t return here. I wondered what size bomb I would have to light under Himself to get him to put the house up for sale.