Companion to an Untold Story

Fast car

86 Fast car. The two necessary facts to know about Joel and automobiles are 1. He never drove a new, perfectly functioning, shockabsorbers -intact, unrusted, door-closing, fast-accelerating car. 2. He never drove a car that wasn’t subsidized or previously owned by his father. Joel was always in a state of anxiety about his car’s performance . Would it start? Would the brakes bring him to a stop on the hills of San Francisco? Was air escaping from the tires? Was the car leaking oil or overheating? Were the taillights working? Doors didn’t shut properly; broken turn signals necessitated frantic hand signals; iffy starter motors meant parking with the front end of the car aiming downhill to get a running jump. The windshield wipers smeared rain into a thick coat across the window. No heat, no defrost, no acceleration. Joel was close-mouthed about many of his problems. Instead he talked about the troubles he was experiencing with his car: 35 Letter, February 16, 1983. Skyline is a school in South San Francisco. 87 “Yesterday, my brakes were feeling a bit odd and by the time I got back from Skyline, the right front brake was smoking.”35 On one visit to San Francisco, six months pregnant, I was forced to wait on the sidewalk, then run downhill and jump into a car—when the engine caught—that jounced and bottomed out over the cable car tracks because the shocks were shot, then wait again while Joel stopped to check the air in the tires. In the backseat I was poised for disaster, wondering at the entrance to the freeway if we’d make it up the ramp, wondering whether we’d stop at the red light at the foot of the hill or sail through Fisherman’s Wharf. Indeed, the brakes were especially worrisome. Even after they were supposedly repaired, Joel wrote: “My car was released into my custody once more. Bail was $100. The mechanic said, ‘You’ll be able to drive it till it falls apart.’ Tautological, but sinister. Fact is, the brakes are really terrible now and I dread having to apply them: the car goes in all different directions.”36 He sputtered from one car to the next, taping the upholstery together, driving nowhere far for fear he wouldn’t make it back. Breakdowns, reports of the repairs needed, what he’d have to give up to finance those repairs—his letters were full of these accountings. Car woes attached to descriptions of his depression and anger: I am depressed. In addition to many of the sources of depression inherent in the state of nature—the effort of breathing, the accumulation of fatty tissue, the need to trim fingernails—are the purely artificial agencies of garage mechanics, pharmacists, and grocery clerks, all 36 Letter, February 23, 1983. 88 performing their black ministries against our happiness and well-being. It is not fun being poverty-stricken and physically unimposing in America. He didn’t make job interviews because his car broke down; he blew interviews to which he arrived late and flustered because he had stopped for repairs. One such incident took place at Vacaville High School: Because I’m not entirely stupid, it had occurred to me to rent a car for the trip, but I proved sufficiently stupid to have gone ahead and driven my vw.37 After the first 15 minutes it had become necessary forcibly to hold the car in gear—after having ground it into gear with sweat and prayers—while steering and signaling turns with the other. Slowing down meant multiple troubles: the brakes were very bad, causing the car to veer strongly to the left; downshifting was virtually impossible; and shifting back up was a great trial. My nerves were probably in a traumatized state soon after I left home. With my right arm frozen in defiance of the gear shift, my left in attendance upon the steering wheel, I was conscious of little else but the need to spot the Vacaville exit if it should ever appear, and the fact is that the highway is as good a metaphor for life as any, that there are many ways to exit, and that this was no time to develop a predilection for any particular one of them. . . . Somehow I made it to Vacaville. The car sounded like a rattling pail of nuts and bolts...