Allegiance and Betrayal: Stories

My ’49 Ford

1 My ’49 Ford Though my mother kept telling me I was lucky, that these years would be the best of my life, I didn’t feel lucky at all, only glad to be driving. After three hours on the road, rain had sheeted down and left the pavement silver and black. Beads of water stood up nicely on new wax of the louvered hood, but my rocker panels and flared fender skirts would be filthy by the time we arrived. My father, clean-shaven, in a white shirt and tie, nodded sleepily in the backseat . My mother sat in front. She was crocheting as we sped past a wall of spruce on both sides of the road. Her long fingers and crooking wrists used a single strand of black yarn to enlarge a pattern that rested in her lap. Suddenly she let out a bark of a laugh that tapered to a soft chuckle. I knew why: the restaurant where we just had lunch. “Now don’t look at me that way,” she said. “You’ll have an accident . I can’t help it if I get a kick out of people.” She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and laughed again, the last part slurping like water down a drain. My expression must have made her laugh again. “Oh, you’re just a sourpuss like your father.” “Ma, I didn’t say nothin’.” “You didn’t say anything. You’re not with that stupid Road Devil gang of yours.” “Come on, Ma.” “You didn’t say anything.” “Fine.” I took a deep breath. “I didn’t say anything.” 2 | Allegiance and Betrayal “Very good! Speech describes the mind. Keep talking like that, and they’ll think you’re a nitwit before you even sit in a class!” She was in a good mood. I wasn’t. I was nervous about the general and immediate future. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her lean forward for her purse and begin to search it. “Ma?” “What?” “Don’t take it wrong, but—” “Enough preface.” “I’d appreciate it, Ma, if you didn’t smoke.” Her eyes got black as hornets; the mouth became a straight seam. “Ma, everybody knows what those things do. Look at Uncle—” “You look! You say you worry about my health—” “I do.” “And I don’t seem to listen, do I?” “No, you don’t.” “Now, do you ever listen to me? Do what I want you to do?” “Ma . . . you always pull this.” “Answer me.” “I try.” She laughed in contempt, the laugh becoming a long string of phlegmy coughs. “See, see,” I said. “We both know what causes that cough.” “Oh, do we?” In the backseat, my father cleared his throat, a signal that we were getting on his nerves. God, why had I started this? But I hated smoke; I always had.At home, to some extent, I could at least escape by going into another room, yet even there the stink always found me. “Oh, you’re an expert on causes. What caused those ten stitches in your head last Christmas? What caused the cops to bring you home at four o’clock in the morning that night last summer?” “Ma, that’s a smoke screen.” “Ha! I’ve raised a punster.” “Ma, we’re not talking about the same thing, and you know it.” My ’49 Ford | 3 “Hey, knock it off,” my father said. “All you two ever do is go around in circles. Lay off!” His voice was loud. She glowered, turned, and shot a black look at my father, but nothing more was said. We rode in silence. She lit up—she had to now. I knew that. And I knew the little perfumed pine tree dangling under the dash was no match for the volume of smoke she would produce. I cracked the vent window. Smoke—it infuriated me. Once, I had made Peggy walk home from our parking place by the ocean because she thought she had me under her thumb and lit up when I told her not to, at least not in the car. What she was giving me wasn’t worth the eye-burning smoke, and the lousy taste when we made out. And to top it off, she put her feet up on the dash, on the twenty coats of lacquer and custom pin-striping...