“If we keep it, we’ll install new weather seals, and it’ll be much quieter.”
“Why did you buy it if you’re not going to keep it?” Benjy asked.
“Because you’re going to be living at home now. For a while at least. If you don’t like it, I won’t keep it.”
He considered it for a moment. “It’s okay,” he finally said. “It’s just too loud.”
Wow, I thought, this was interesting. Once Benjy made up his mind about something, trying to get him to change was usually a waste of breath. This was very interesting.
When we did errands together, Benjy usually came with me into the stores. But this morning, on our first stop at AutoZone, he decided to wait in the Corvair. As I waddled back out with two cases of 30-weight oil to slake the Corvair’s ravenous thirst, I found him giving two country gentlemen a tour of the car. “Almost all other cars at that time had their engine and transmission in the front and their differential in the rear,” he told them. “But the Corvair had all three in the rear. That saved weight, created more interior room, boosted fuel economy, and improved handling and traction. It was cheaper to operate. My grandfather and father both like that.”
It was almost word for word the salesman’s tour I’d given him earlier.
“Your boy sure knows this car,” said the gentleman in the John Deere cap.
“Okay if we take a peek at that engine?” asked the gentleman in the CAT cap.
Happy to oblige and also to check the oil again, I raised the rear engine cover. Before I could open my mouth, Benjy resumed his lecture. “There’s no radiator,” he pointed out, repeating factoids we’d discussed on our drive here. “The engine is made out of aluminum so it doesn’t overheat.”
“And inside that big, shiny thing,” replied CAT, pointing to the stainless steel air cleaner housing atop the engine, “that’s where the four hamsters live that spin the wheel to make it go.”
“It’s a four hamster-power engine, is it?” laughed John Deere.
I grinned. Pretty funny, I thought. But Benjy didn’t laugh; he didn’t even smile. “There are no hamsters,” he said.
“It’s a joke,” I told him softly. “Engine power is measured in horsepower. So hamster-power is a joke.”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”
John Deere and CAT both eyed Benjy with a look that said “I Don’t Quite Know What’s Different About This Kid, But There is Definitely Something Different.” I’d seen it many times, and I responded as I usually did—with a wink. That usually told people all they needed to know and put them at ease.
“Wow! Super-cool car!” squealed the girl at the McDonald’s drive-thru window as she handed us Benjy’s Chicken McNuggets meal and my cup of water. Fluorescent purple, green, and red locks hung down beneath her cap.
“It’s a Corvair!” Benjy shouted across me from the passenger seat, craning his neck to see the girl—and be seen.
“Wow! Neat! What’s a Corvair?” She pushed a purple feather-wrapped hair strand back under her cap. “Benjy, is that you? You never told me you had such a cool car!”
“It’s actually my Dad’s,” Benjy said, always a stickler for accuracy. “This is a 1965 Corvair, the first year of the Late Model version, and the same year my grandfather had. Except this is a two-door with a convertible top and his was a four-door without a convertible top. My dad bought it on eBay from a man in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which is one thousand miles from here. He flew to Atlanta, Georgia, on a regional jet and then changed to another regional jet for the flight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Then he drove the car back here, a thousand miles in seventeen hours in a forty-five-year-old car! Some people think this car is defective, but it’s just different from a normal car. It’s better!”
The girl grinned and nodded on each of Benjy’s words while stealing anxious glances at the long line of cars behind us. “That’s so awesome!” she said when Benjy finally paused to take a breath. “But I can’t talk here, Benjy. I’m kinda supposed to be working.”
I put my hand on Benjy’s knee to cue him from talking more and said, “We’re holding up the line and keeping your friend from doing her job. Maybe you can tell her more at school?”
“Yes! That would be great!” the girl chirped agreeably, pushing her purple locks back under her McDonald’s cap again. “Maybe we could go for a ride sometime?”
Benjy poured cold water over that idea. “We can’t take you for a ride. There are no seat belts in the back. It’s not safe.”
“Oh, well!” the girl chirped again. She turned to see if the manager was watching, and he was. She then banged the drive-thru window shut.
“She seemed nice,” I purred as I pulled out, trolling for information. “Very friendly.”
“I guess,” he said, with a mouthful of McNugget. “She never really talked to me before.”
“Does she have a name?” I prodded.
“Lydia. We were in the school play together.” He swallowed the Mc-Nugget, then asked, “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I think we need to install seat belts in the back as soon as possible.”
“Why is that?” I played dense. “What’s the rush?”
“In case we have passengers. We can’t have passengers without seat belts in the back.”
“So you think we should keep this car?” I asked. “Because it is a really old car.”
“It’s okay,” said Benjy between bites. “It’s different. It needs seat belts in the back though.”
“All right,” I agreed. “We will put seat belts in the back as soon as possible.” If this car could keep us talking like this, I was absolutely keeping it.
CHAPTER 7
“It doesn’t look like a college the way Wheeler did,” Benjy said as we parked at the modest campus of James Monroe Community College.
“Don’t stereotype,” I told him. “It’s not old or ivy-covered, but it’s got an excellent reputation, the teachers are supposed to be terrific, it’s right down the road so you can live at home, and it’ll open the doors to a lot of new and exciting subjects you’ll love. And after a year or two here, maybe then you’ll transfer to Wheeler or some other school.”
We sat down in the Admissions Office and soon heard, “Benjamin, I am so excited to meet you and to hear that you are enrolling at James Monroe!” Full of enthusiasm, Katie Baxter, the Disability Services Coordinator, showed us into her cramped office. “You have a most impressive record, young man!” she chirped, ticking off Benjy’s high school grades and accomplishments. “You’ve already got several James Monroe credits from the dual enrollment courses you’re taking in high school and you haven’t even started here yet!”
“I wanted to go to Wheeler, but they rejected me,” Benjy grumbled. “It’s got a special program for Asperger’s students who are different, but I’m too different.”
Benjy’s blunt revelation that James Monroe was not his first choice didn’t faze Katie a bit. Her wide, blazing smile never left her, which gave me plenty of time to marvel at her spectacularly white teeth. “We have lots of students who spend a year or two here and then transfer,” she explained. “Unlike many large four-year colleges, we don’t have students teaching our courses and we don’t have hundreds of students listening to lectures in a giant auditorium. We have many excellent teachers leading small classes, which many students prefer, whether they have a disability or not, especially when the cost is a fraction of four-year schools like Wheeler.”
“He’ll like that,” said Benjy, pointing his finger at me. “He’s cheap.”
Katie roared with laughter. Looking over to me, she caught me staring at her. She slowly dropped her upper lip and eyed me with the look that Benjy usually got, the one that said “I Don’t Quite Know What’s Different, But There is Definitely Something Different About You.”
“Sorry,” I apologized, once I realized I was being inappropriate. “Your teeth are great. Really white. I guess I was staring.”
“Thank y
ou,” Katie replied, awkwardly.
“Not supposed to stare, am I?” I said to Benjy, flushing with embarrassment.
“He has Asperger’s too,” Benjy explained. “Just not as much as me.”
“I see,” said Katie, her smile returning, fortunately. In her job, she’d probably seen every behavior imaginable. Soon she was back on track, asking Benjy, “Have you formed any career goals yet?”
“I want to advocate for people who are different,” Benjy replied. “Sometimes people who are different are labeled as disabled, and stereotyped and stigmatized, and that’s not right.”
“You are certainly right about that!” Katie said eagerly. “I’m all about that! You are preaching to the choir. And we have a number of courses—communications, writing, political science, psychology—that will help you pursue that goal. Any other goals we should plan for?”
“I want to live independently,” Benjy said. “And I want to be a race car driver. Except the DMV won’t allow me to get a driver’s license. Which makes it hard for me to live independently and be a race car driver.”
After several more paragraphs on the DMV’s discrimination against him, he finally paused. “You are already an excellent and passionate advocate!” said Katie, her full smile turned back on. “As for your independent living goal, we’re not a residential college, but we do have several Life Skills courses that will certainly help. And as for driving a race car, we do have a few courses in auto repair, but none on driving instruction. You have to go to a private company for that. But has the DMV actually turned you down for a driver’s license?”
“No,” admitted Benjy. “I haven’t tried. There’s no point. I know they discriminate.”
“Well, you should try,” Katie urged. “I have several students with disabilities who have driver’s licenses.”
“There are principles at stake,” insisted Benjy. “People with differences shouldn’t have to comply with unfair rules.”
Katie nodded solemnly, then smiled at me—perhaps my inappropriateness was forgiven. She moved on to discuss the accommodations and services Benjy could receive at James Monroe. “I have several Asperger’s students here, and they do quite well,” she assured us. “But you must understand that college is different from high school. As a person with a disability—or a difference—your high school had the obligation to provide you with an appropriate education. But a college doesn’t have that same obligation. Here you will need to take the initiative to ask for help and accommodations. And when I say you, I mean you, not your father. You are the student and you are responsible for your education.”
Benjy nodded. “He doesn’t help me much anyway,” he said.
“Good!” Katie exploded, winking at me. “Taking on that responsibility will help you to live independently. You’re already making progress toward your goals!” She flipped through Benjy’s high school transcript. Then her smile dimmed. “I see that you will need to take our math assessment.”
I cringed, recalling hours upon agonizing hours of frustrating homework and baffling tests. Some people with Asperger’s or autism are whizzes at math; a few, like Kim Peek, the real-life inspiration for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the movie Rain Man, are even savants. But that was not Benjy. Math for him usually consisted of scrawling illegible numbers indecipherably up, down, and around a piece of paper, followed by erasing so furious that the paper often ripped, so that he had to start over again. “Benjy has a diagnosed learning disability in math,” I explained. “It has always been hugely challenging for him. Despite that, he worked incredibly hard and passed the state’s standardized tests in Algebra I and II. Doesn’t he get credit for that?”
Katie spoke directly to Benjy. “All students here have to pass one college-level math course to receive a diploma. That’s a requirement for students at most colleges. Including Wheeler. What you’ll take now is simply an assessment. It tells us if an incoming student is prepared for the required college-level math course or needs some remedial work first. You’ve already passed those algebra courses, so I’m sure you’ll do fine.” She smiled encouragingly.
Benjy’s chin dropped to his chest as if his neck had suddenly snapped.
After we left Katie’s office, his gloom was as deep as when he had been rejected by Wheeler. “I hate math,” he said finally, once we were safely inside the Corvair.
“It’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s just one course. I can help if you want.”
“You don’t know any math,” Benjy said. “Mom always had to help me.”
It was true. We both knew Benjy’s math disability had come straight from me.
“College is supposed to be courses I want to take. So I can do what I want to do,” he said as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“They have some required courses. It’s no big deal.” But it was a huge deal to him; he had pictured college as an invigorating journey from one mesmerizing topic to the next, each unlocking engaging new worlds to him. Instead, he faced a forced march through a subject he had barely survived in high school.
“Did you take math in college?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know any now. So what’s the point?”
“The point is I learned enough to pass the course,” I said. “So can you. And then you can forget it if you want, just like I did, because you probably won’t ever need to use it.”
“That’s not the point, Dad!”
“The point is math is required,” I said. “They want you to have a complete education—to be a well-rounded, educated young man. Really, it’s not a big deal. I know you can do it. You’ve already done it.”
“So why do I have to do it again?” he exclaimed.
“I don’t know.”
Benjy stared out the window for the rest of the ride home. As we arrived, he asked, “Can we get the seatbelts for the back now?”
“Benjy, come on,” I said as I turned off the Corvair. “So you’ll take this test and then you’ll take one math course. It’s not the end of the world, it’s the beginning. Look at the bright side. You are going to college. You’ll have fine teachers and wonderful opportunities.”
He hopped out the passenger door and stormed inside.
The next day, I nosed the Corvair carefully along a gravel road, avoiding large potholes, small sinkholes, and chickens skittering everywhere. The houses ran the gamut from single-wide to double-wide; some were level and neat while others had fallen, exhausted, off their cinder block foundations. In the front yards, goats roamed among rusted tractors and old cars. A gray hound lazing peacefully on the asphalt lifted his head, then dropped it back down as we slowly maneuvered around him; judging by the ad we were answering on Craigslist that offered to sell nearly a hundred Corvairs, either whole or in parts, this hound had probably seen so many Deathmobiles creep by over the years that ours wasn’t worth a second glance.
At the END STATE MAINTENANCE sign, the gravel gave way to a red clay path pockmarked by moon-sized craters. Scrawled in red, a sign ordered KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU! We were less than an hour from home, but it was a different world.
“You sure about these directions?” I asked. I checked my cell phone to see if I had reception in case we were lost. There was no service; we had strayed too far off the beaten path into a hardscrabble landscape that hadn’t changed in decades.
“Road becomes driveway,” Benjy read from my notes.
We ignored the warning sign and pushed deeper into the wilderness. As the path disintegrated into two barely discernible mud tracks, the Corvair’s front end spoiler bashed down again and again, even though I was barely crawling.
“You shouldn’t have been so cheap, Dad,” Benjy said. “You should’ve just bought the parts online from Clark’s Corvair Parts. They have eight buildings of Corvair parts.” He had me pegged. That’s why I was here; I thought I could score a deal. But destroying my Corvair to save a few bucks on parts for it was starting to seem like a not so great idea. As I search
ed for a place to turn around, a frame farmhouse came into view. At one time, the siding appeared to have been white, but paint had been estranged from it for decades, replaced by mildew. The square red barn was in better shape; it looked sturdy enough to remain standing for at least another week. A Corvair rested near the barn door. It had been light blue when it was built but was now a new color: rust. “That’s an Early Model Corvair,” Benjy said.
“We must be in the right place,” I said unenthusiastically, while aiming our Late Model at a dry island among the puddles where we could park. Neither of us was eager to get out. “We’ll just get the parts we need and be on our way,” I told Benjy. “You can wait in the car if you want.”
“I’m okay,” he claimed.
Out of the car, we picked our steps carefully to avoid mud that would swallow our shoes. Just then, three gray and hungry hounds exploded from the barn, barking like banshees and homing in on Benjy, poised to attack. He covered his ears, turned purple, and burst into hysterical wails. He had always been terrified by any animal that jumped or barked at him; we were one of the few families in America in which a child begged us to not get a puppy. I jumped over a puddle to get between him and kicked out to make the dogs back off; they gave ground but kept baying and baring their teeth as if we were foxes.
“GET THEM AWAY!” Benjy screamed. We both feared one wrong move would make the hounds lunge and bite.
“MANNY! Get yer sorry tail over here!” a husky voice growled from the barn doorway. As if a switch had been thrown, the lead dog stopped barking and trotted back to the voice. The other two meekly followed.
“Hell, it’s only dogs,” said the voice, now growling at us.
I saw a man in a wheelchair at the door of the barn. The dogs dropped to the ground beside him and awaited his next command.
Benjy was hyperventilating now, struggling to catch his breath and calm down. I edged him back toward our Corvair. “We’ll come back another time,” I lied to the man. I had no intention of ever coming back.
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