Car Trouble
Page 34
Mom immediately got out of her dress-up clothes and into her nightgown when we arrived home. Dad opened up a Bud and tilted back in his recliner. Queenie, thirteen years old now and slowing down, the gray hairs fully grown in around her muzzle, lay at his feet.
“So what would you say the play is about?”
When I was on the TV show, sometimes he would call me to talk about the latest episode, slightly in his cups, late at night, working up the courage. He talked to me about my scenes, the other actors I was working with, whether there was enough dramatic punch. It was his way of telling me he wanted to stay in touch, despite everything, and I had to give in. He was proud of me, I knew. And now that I was making money, well, that was all this cabdriver from Brooklyn needed to know.
I sat on the couch, looking at him. “Oh, a lot of things—regret, hatred, love, whether people can still love each other after all the crap they put each other through, something like that. I don’t know.”
Now wasn’t that articulate? I thought. Only people in Eugene O’Neill’s plays discussed these things at one in the morning.
He gave me a serious look. “No, I mean it. In your estimation, what do you think this play is about, what makes these characters tick?”
Mom wouldn’t have asked me a question like that. Sometimes he really surprised me. While I thought of an answer, I watched Himself drift off. Mom came into the living room with a cup of tea, the tag on the Lipton’s tea bag hanging outside.
“Out already?” she said, glancing at him. “That was fast. He had a long day, though, worked a double shift last night. Thank God I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but I do,” I said, rising to use the phone to call a car service.
“Wake him up. He’ll take you home.”
“But he’s fast asleep. Besides, he’s had too much to drink.”
“I’m telling you, he’ll be offended.”
Dad grumbled in the chair, but it was a false alarm. The snoring immediately began, the deep, satisfied rumble of a middle-aged man. He was under. I knew it. I called Arecibo car service. The driver was there in five minutes. I ran upstairs and said good night to my sisters and kissed my mother good night at the door.
She stood in the vestibule as I went down the stoop, the way she had the night we junked the Blue Max, cigarette in one hand, the dog at her side. I looked into the garden. The roses were in full bloom and there were new clusters of marigolds and salvia. “Hey, what about these weeds?”
“I know. I’ll get to them.”
The driver was waiting.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “It really meant a lot to me.”
“We had a great time. We’re very proud of you. But do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Next time, do you think you could do a comedy?”
The streetlamps cast their fuzzy glow on Dad’s cab, parked in the driveway. The driver from Arecibo was pulled up alongside it. I got into the backseat and looked out at the house. It looked good, even tasteful with the Wedgwood blue aluminum siding. Everything looked a whole lot better than it used to.
“Where to?” asked the driver, a man about Himself’s age with dark hair combed in a swirl over the center of his forehead.
“Remsen Street.”
“Mind if I take the Prospect? I don’t like driving in this neighborhood.”
“Who asked you?” With that snotty comeback, I felt like a New Yorker again and settled in the backseat. “Go whatever way you want to.”
We made a left at the corner of Church Avenue and rode out in the star-blind darkness past Cliff’s Pink Pussycat. It was the neighborhood’s newest bar, on the corner of Brooklyn Avenue. Cliff had a clientele who rolled up every Friday night to the shocking pink aluminum siding façade in a parade of pastel Bonnevilles and Coupe de Villes, according to my mother.
It was funny how Himself had never gotten around to owning a Cadillac. Me, I drove back to New York in a Thunderbird. I didn’t get it at a police department auction either. I made a commercial for acne medication, even after I was pimple free, when I was in college and saved the residuals for a car. It was a 1966 model, with a retractable hood and Cruise-o-Matic automatic transmission. The taillights were hidden behind a wide band of red plastic and the car’s symbol, an art deco bird with a thin, wide wingspan that formed a V on its breast, was planted on the egg-crate grille. Best of all were the colors: diamond blue with a Wimbledon white hardtop.
I knew Himself would approve. He hasn’t seen the car yet, but when he is feeling all right, I might let him take it out for a spin. We’ll see.
Acknowledgments
My editor Sara Nelson and my agent Liza Fleissig made everything come together quickly and seamlessly. I would like to thank these teachers for their guidance and encouragement: David Haynes, Dominic Smith, Victor La Valle, Ron Carlson, and Shelby Hearon. Thanks also to the staunch friends who read portions of this story: Lee Prusik, Rebecca Foust, Liz Gray, Bethanne Patrick, Anita Gates, Rolf Yngve, and Reine Arcache Melvin. Thanks to James Iacobelli at HarperCollins for the extremely cool license-plate font on the cover, Trent Duffy, Mary Gaule, Bryan R. Monte of the Amsterdam Review, Lindsay Ahl, John Timpane, and my family.
About the Author
ROBERT RORKE was born and raised and lives in Brooklyn. He is a TV columnist at the New York Post who has also previously written for Publishers Weekly, TV Guide, Los Angeles Times, and Seventeen. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College and his MA in English from Stanford University.
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Copyright
car trouble. Copyright © 2018 by Robert Rorke. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Permission to quote “Honestly Sincere” and “A Lot of Livin’ to Do” has been granted by Lee Adams, lyricist of Bye Bye Birdie © 1960 by Lee Adams and duly renewed.
first edition
Cover design by James Iacobelli
Cover photograph © Dinanda H. Nooney, courtesy of New York Public Library Digital Collections
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978–0–06284850–5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-284849-9 (pbk.)
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