So you were never pregnant? I told you, you should’ve taken that test.
Che rose from the bed, her face red, her eyes swollen. Don’t you see? she said. I know my body. I was ten weeks late. You think that’s normal? Now I’m bleeding out like my jugular’s been cut. She put her face in her hands.
Larissa patted her friend, tried to soothe her. No, it’s good. It’s so much better this way. The impossible decision was taken out of your hands. It’s the greatest day.
Almost like God intervening, said Che.
I guess, said Larissa. You were lucky. You were given a reprieve, a second chance. Now you can live your life right, learn from this, do things differently in the future. I don’t understand why you’re so upset.
What if God, like my mom, was disappointed in me? That’s what it feels like. He said, you’re not ready to be a mother. You’re not ready for this child.
That’s absolutely true.
In my free-falling blood I feel His disappointment.
That’s silly. He helped you out. Took matters into his own hands. Oh, if only every time it were so easy! How sweet life would be.
But Che was inconsolable. I did this to myself, she said. I should have had to live with the consequences.
You narrowly escaped a harrowing future. How can you be upset?
A baby is not harrowing.
At sixteen? Come on, clean yourself up. Let’s go to town, hang out. I told some people I’d meet them at Jerry’s Ices.
Larissa lay down on the twin bed, next to Che. Come on, girlfriend, she whispered, putting her arm around Che’s sobbing body. No worries now. We’re golden. Every little thing’s gonna be all right.
Larissa wrote to Che, mentioning the Jag as a postscript omitting the real reason for her agonizing.
Che wrote back.
Larissa, why so much commotion over a small matter? I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. To bring up a car in an occasional letter? It’s a car. You didn’t finish telling me why Bo doesn’t throw Jonny out or move out herself. Since when do you care so much about what you drive? Buy or not buy. I’m forty next year too, you know. You’re worried about a car, and my mother couldn’t live long enough for me to have a baby. Soon I’m not going to live long enough for me to have a baby. I’m sending you a recent picture of Lorenzo. Tell me if you think he’s worth it. Send me a recent picture of the Jag. I’ll tell you if the car is worth it.
Larissa read newspapers, magazines, to keep ahead of the times, but being versed in current events made her more anxious, not less. The only news out there was that everything was going to hell, spinning out of control.
She wrote to Che about this. There was mental illness, homelessness, robberies, random shootings, sometimes all related, Larissa wrote. Shark attacks, poison oak epidemics, rabies. Seventy-year-old women giving birth, severed heads abandoned outside newsrooms. There were bombings and threats to peace. Is peace just an illusion? she asked Che. Will the Jaguar bring me an illusion of peace?
“That’s a philosophical question, Larissa,” replied Ezra, while she was still waiting on Che’s reply. “The question is, will the Jaguar bring you something tangible? Is it a desire for something you don’t have? If so, what is it? And after you get it, will that be it, or will there be something else you want that you don’t have? Is it the quest you’re after, not the object?”
“How about,” said Jared, “the car is gorgeous—she’ll turn all heads while driving it?”
“She turns all heads anyway,” said Maggie, looking admiringly at Larissa, in jeans and a red silky top, with a bit of decolletage and red lipstick.
“Hardly,” Larissa said, embellishing her embarrassment and turning to Ezra.
“I know, Larissa, that you read Ecclesiastes only because you had to, to get a pass/fail in your philosophy course in college,” said Ezra, “which is not the same thing as understanding Ecclesiastes, but nonetheless, it will do you well right about now to remember what he said.”
Larissa stared at him vacantly.
“All is vanity,” said Ezra. “To buy, not to buy. To eat, to shop, to hire women to clean your house, to not clean it. All is vexation of spirit, except union with God. All is vanity.”
“So buy the Jag then?” said Jared.
Che wrote back.
Larissa,
Here is your real answer, the one Father Emilio gave me when I asked him. You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that ye not be troubled. For all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places.
All these are just the beginnings of sorrows. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
Lorenzo’s love is waxing cold, Larissa. And I’m still without a baby. All these years I have been living in poverty, and I don’t mean the money kind. I’m so far from what I want.
Please don’t be far from what you want.
I wish for a baby more than anything. I desperately want a little girl so I could raise her to make all the mistakes I made, only start younger.
You are a wonderful person. You don’t drive anyone crazy like Lorenzo. Get the car.
Would it be nice to have a Jag, rather than live amid unclaimed wishes yet unwished for?
But what if you knew that the car would lead you to penury and destitution, the things Che speaks of, writes about, feels, lives? What would you do then?
But you don’t know.
But what if you did?
But you don’t.
And if you did?
But…you don’t.
And…if you did?
The whole thing filled Larissa with slight shame. She even threw out the business card Kai had given her, which was the most shameful thing of all. How ridiculous that was. How ridiculous she was.
But now what?
What would she wear to a Jag dealership? She couldn’t go in sweats. But she couldn’t go too dressed up.
She couldn’t go.
The eternal moral order was the real question, the Aztec gold buried like a treasure in the hills of Mexico. Was there such a thing, and was Larissa turning her back on it?
Kai Passani. The first time she said his name out loud to herself, she turned red like she’d accidentally cursed in front of the children. Peeking into the magnifying mirror, she stared at her flushed face, her glassy eyes.
His name was Hawaiian. Kai. She looked it up. In Hawaiian, it meant the ocean. Ocean, as in bottomless?
Oh, what was wrong with her!
Passani. “From the Champagne region of France.” The urban legend goes that the monk who discovered the sparkling wine ran to his Benedictine brother with the cry, “J’ai goute des etoiles!” I’m tasting stars.
Kai Passani.
To save herself from the Jaguar, Larissa replaced all thought of it with Gucci. Gucci, Chanel, Zanotti, Dior. She bought herself a pair of reading glasses that replaced the need for reading. All she needed was the blue Swarovsky-clad Versaces; she didn’t need to read A Life by Elia Kazan. The reading glasses just had to sit on her face, like graceful jewels. Burberry, not Bronte. Gucci not Dante. Chanel not Charlotte. Prada not Pound.
To go to the library (with her kids) she put on Libretto. The mall required a different ensemble, as did the supermarket, which is why she didn’t like to combine her outings, because she was inevitably dressed wrong for all but one of them. To the mall in summer she wore Betsey Johnson dresses and Marc Jacobs sandals. In the winter, tight Marciano jeans and low-heeled boots (the lower the heel, the more expensive the boot, as in counterattack).
Kids’ winter concerts? Fur and (very) high-heeled boots. Ball games? Caps and jeans and jerseys, so affected, so designer.
Food-shopping required only mini-skirts and cowboy boots, possibly Frye.
And she blow-dried her hair. Damn that Kai. She left it long, very straight
and hippie-like, an illusion of casual chic. She haphazardly highlighted it, an illusion of being outside and sunstreaked. She wore taupe makeup, to make it seem like she wasn’t wearing any, like she had just rolled out of bed and into her car. She got dressed up for everything. Except that one day when she left the house in sweats and a cast.
The question was, and truly this was the profound question that demanded an answer: what to wear to a Jag dealership to go look at a sports car you don’t need and don’t want, just so you can be looked at by the dancing eyes of a tattered kid on a motorbike?
Ezra would say it was a false choice. It wasn’t about what to wear. “It has nothing to do with the car,” he kept repeating. “It has to do with what the car represents. The car tells you, and therefore the whole world, where you are in life. That’s what it means. It’s a long way from the fifth-floor walk-up. But a long way up or a long way down?” Ezra paused for maximum effect. “Every time you drive to the supermarket, do you want to know how far you are from Hoboken? Do you want everyone else to know too? As Walker Percy says, we live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea who he is, or where he is going. We live stifling in our souls all questions about the meaning of our own life, and life in general. So the real question is, Larissa, will this car help you discover who you are and where you’re going?”
To go or not to go.
Chapter Three
1
0-60 in 4.9 Seconds
“Mrs. Stark!” Kai was in a white shirt and tie, neat, and beaming. “How nice of you to drop by. To what do we owe this pleasure?”
Larissa had walked through the doors fifteen minutes earlier and asked the receptionist for a salesperson to help her, and the receptionist, a chirpy young thing named Crystal, tried to hook her up with a Gary, and Larissa said, actually I was looking for Kai, and Crystal said, no, no, he’s busy today. Gary is very good, and has a lot more experience, he’ll be glad to help you. Larissa frowned. Was she wearing too much or too little? Under her brown suede jacket, she wore jeans, high-heeled Fryes and a simple maroon sweater. Her makeup was light (20 minutes), her hair casual (40 minutes). “If he’s not available today, I’ll make an appointment and come back.” She said this while glancing around the spotless cream-colored dealership. It was eleven on a Monday morning, and there was no one on the floor except the salesmen, the receptionist and the business people. She was the only customer. Crystal said Monday was Kai’s day off, so he wasn’t even supposed to be in, and tomorrow he was all booked. “I don’t think he’ll have enough time to take care of you properly, Mrs….?”
“Stark. Larissa Stark. Please let him know I’m here, and if he’s too busy, he’ll direct me to someone else.”
Finally Crystal, out of excuses (WTF?) rang Kai’s extension, and in three seconds he was at the center of the showroom beaming at her.
He even shook her hand gently, Emily Post notwithstanding, because in front of other people it was easy to be polite. Hand out, her hand in. His was wiry and warm, hers fashionable and cool, the pink nails freshly buffed.
“I’m interested in finding out a little bit about your sports models,” she said, mock laid-back like her hair. “Not to purchase. Just to shop around.”
“Of course. No one comes in here ready to purchase.”
“But Crystal here,” Larissa continued calmly, “tells me today might not be a good day for you. I can always come back.”
“No, today is perfect,” said Kai, throwing the flustered Crystal a quizzical look. “I’ll stay as long as I need to take care of my customers, Crystal, you know that. Come.” He guided Larissa with his fanned-out hand on the back of her suede.
He showed her two models on the floor, a sedan and a white coupe. She didn’t like either. “Is that the price tag?” she said, astonished.
Glancing at her with a “How much did you think a Jag cost?” expression, he put on his leather jacket and out they stepped into the windy bitterness to look at the models on the lot. She found a tiny sporty thing she thought looked kinda cool, and Kai said, “Oh, sure, you would pick that one.”
“I didn’t pick it. I don’t like the color.” It was Metallic Indigo.
“We can either get you a discount on the color you don’t want or for full price any color you prefer straight from the factory.”
“Discount on something I don’t want?” Larissa smiled. “Kai, you drive a hard bargain.”
“Thanks. That’s my specialty. You can’t say no.” He grinned back. He was well groomed today, respectable with his thin black tie, his white shirt and unripped, ironed jeans. His unruly longish hair was gelled off his forehead and moussed back, neat, presentable. He looked older.
“You’re all cleaned up,” she said.
“The other me is my motorcycle-chic costume.” He laughed. “This is my take people’s money costume.”
“You’re right, the shirt should be ironed for that.”
“Even the jeans,” he said.
She wanted to ask who ironed his jeans, but of course didn’t. Larissa walked around the car, her hand on it, to feel the lines, to touch the cold glass. Too cold. She put her gloves on. “What’s so special about this one?”
“This is the XKR supercharged sports convertible. Our most expensive model.”
“Really?” She studied it with slightly more interest. “What else is great about it? Can’t be the color.”
Handing her a pair of keys, he opened the driver door. “Get in and see for yourself.”
“I’m driving?”
“Well, I could drive, but what would the point be? I’m not buying it.”
“I’m not buying it either.” She got behind the wheel. Car smelled new and leathery. “What’s the interior color? It’s a nice combo.”
“Isn’t it, though? Color of the leather is caramel. The dashboard accents are burl.”
“Burl? What the heck kind of color is burl?” She touched the smooth pebbly leopard-looking dashboard with her fingers.
“This color.”
Gingerly Larissa drove out onto Main Street. She was going twenty miles an hour. “Drives nice in traffic,” she said after a silence. “Stops at red lights. Makes lefts. Signals work. It shifts from park to drive almost as if it has an automatic transmission.”
Kai blinked at her. “You’re making fun of my sales pitch that I haven’t had a chance to make yet?”
“I’m not making fun. It actually does do all these things. I’m not being ironic.”
“Ironic, no. Mocking, yes.”
“Mocking, no. Questioning, yes. As in, what’s here that’s worth somebody’s annual salary?”
“Four hundred and twenty horsepower. Tell you what. Make a left at the college and drive till you hit the open road. Glenside Avenue runs around the Watchung Reservation on the way to Deserted Village. Let’s go see what this baby can do.”
“It brakes beautifully.”
“All righty now.”
“And the seatbelts work. No, it’s excellent. Your best, you say? Clearly a superior model.”
“Didn’t you notice how everybody on Main Street was eyeballing you?”
“What, you think it’s the car?” Larissa chuckled. “You think they were impressed with the way a Jag sat five minutes at a red light?”
“Maybe they were just admiring the driver. Make a left here and go straight for a mile.”
“Oh! It goes straight so well!” They drove in unruffled silence. She resisted the urge to glance at her eyes in the rearview mirror, to catch a glimpse of herself after he said people might be eyeballing her. Also resisted the urge to comment on how noticeably straight up he was sitting, with Buddha-like tranquility, his entire back flush and composed against the seat.
“This model has a supercharged 420 horsepower 4.2 liter engine. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“Um—no?”
“You can’t imagine power
like this. It’s like a rocket.”
“You want me to demonstrate its rocket-like qualities on Glenside?”
“It’s an empty road. And clearly, until you do, you will not cease the snarky comments.”
“Oh, no, those will continue.” Glenside, which ran in a long straight line along the edge of the protected national wildlife reservation, was deserted. No main streets ran through it, no exits to shopping areas, no gas stations, no small towns. It had the forest on the right and forest on the left. The sun was shining.
“Not too far,” Larissa said, stepping on the gas. The car soared forward.
“As far as you want.”
They were gone forty minutes. Maybe forty-five.
“So…what do you think?” He was grinning at her after she slowed down to get on the Interstate. Slowed down to get on the Interstate.
“It’s nice,” she said noncommittally.
“Don’t pretend. Car’s incredible,” Kai said. “Handles beautifully. Has great power.”
She revved up, smoking a Mercedes 550SL in the right lane. “Yes.”
“The XKR goes from 0 to 60 in 4.9 seconds.”
The snark had gone. Rockets couldn’t be as fast as this. He was right. It was unbelievable. Like nothing she’d ever driven.
“You might not need this much power,” said Kai, as Larissa gripped the leather-clad wheel with her leather-clad hands. “It’s more money than the regular XK. Which is also a very fine car at 300 horsepower, and it may be all the power you need. Did I mention it’s less money?”
“Some salesman you are.” Larissa sped to eighty. Then ninety.
“Slow down, this isn’t Glenside. You don’t want to get a ticket,” Kai said. “I know. I’ve gotten two.”
Reluctantly she slowed down. “How fast were you going?” she asked.
“Buck twenty. The cops weren’t happy. I just went to court for it. Ticket cost me a week’s pay.”
She slowed down some more. “You’re probably right. I don’t need this much power.”
“Right.” He paused. “Though it’s great for getting on the highway. You never have to worry.”
“That’s good, not having to worry,” said Larissa. “I like to not worry. But I never go on the highway. Do I really need a supercharged Jag convertible to drive to Stop&Shop?”
A Song in the Daylight (2009) Page 9