But he surprises me this morning. “Just once around the block.”
I grin and run upstairs to get my shoes—the sneakers my dad insists I wear when driving, for safety.
In thirty seconds, we’re out the door, and I’m eyeing the sleek silver two-door 3 Series convertible and running my hand appreciatively along the driver’s side door. “Thank you,” I gush again. And I picture this scene in my head: a father and daughter, a new convertible just in time for her sixteenth summer. But there’s a reason my father spoils me, and it’s not because he’s superwealthy or because I’m an entitled snob. It’s because my mother’s dead.
We cruise slowly around our sleepy neighborhood, and I revel in the fact that Dad is going to be late for work this morning—for me. We don’t talk; we don’t turn on the radio. Even though it’s already nearly eighty degrees outside, I open my window to feel the air, and my father does the same. I watch his face relax as we listen to the bird tweets and hissing sprinklers and lawn mower engines over the BMW’s soft purr. I’ve gotten good at seeing my father out of the corner of my eye, and I take advantage of any opportunity to do it, because when he thinks I’m not watching, he’s more himself, more like the Dad I remember from before. It’s like he believes that showing any emotion around me will make me sad. But I see him now, letting the warm air hit his face and ruffle through his military buzz cut, and I can sense a softening in him.
We pass Carson’s bungalow-style house and her mother’s prize roses, then the Sullivans’ place with their carefully staked tomato plants. With my father in the car, I won’t travel over twenty-five miles per hour. I watch the speedometer needle carefully, knowing that he’s aware of it, too, and we’re going so slowly that I have time to glance around for once. It’s almost like we’re walking.
Even though everyone has heard of Charleston, South Carolina, it still feels like a small town to me. I can’t go anywhere without running into people who’ve known me since I was crawling, which means that a ten-minute errand can take up to an hour, depending on who I run into. Sometimes I resent the intrusions that delay my progress to the next adventure, but when I look around the neighborhood where I’ve lived my entire life, where Mama lived, I can’t imagine leaving.
As we drive under the shadows of Spanish moss, along the slow bend of the Ashley River, I get used to the clutch. It’s heavy, and it catches late, but after a couple of false starts I have the hang of it, and it’s smooth as silk. Dad gives me a proud smile as I ease the car up the steepest hill in our neighborhood with a quick downshift—he loves that I drive stick—and I flash him a grin.
When we pull back into our driveway, I peer at the clock on the dash—8:17 a.m.
“What was it your mother used to say?” Dad asks me. And I’m surprised for a moment that he brought her up. He rarely does, even though I know we’re both always thinking of her.
“You only live . . . once,” he and I say together.
I shake my head as he gets out of the BMW. He’s using Mom’s motto to justify being half an hour late for work. That’s not exactly the kind of “living” that thrills me.
My father gets into his car as I walk back toward the house, and when he pulls out of the driveway, I watch his Mercedes coupe turn around the bend before I race upstairs to change my shoes—it’s way too hot for this closed-toe nonsense.
I just tooled around my neighborhood at twenty-five miles per hour, but my foot was itching the whole time. I climb back inside the BMW and smile at the speedometer, wondering how fast my new gift can go from zero to sixty.
The area where I live is a typical, well-kept development with cozy culs-de-sac and two-story houses built in the 1970s, but the heart of Charleston has a history that reaches back for hundreds of years. I pass the old mansions along South Battery and give a nod to the row of oak trees that makes people shiver even in this ninety-five-degree heat. Carson always holds her breath when she goes by the oaks—“So I don’t breathe in their bad luck,” she’s told me—but I have no time for useless rituals. The story goes that back in 1718, twenty-nine pirates from Stede Bonnet’s notorious crew were hanged from those giant oaks, and their eyes stared coldly as their bodies swung, rotting slowly in the hot Charleston wind. I know this tale by heart—everyone in town does. Hanging them right along the water was supposed to scare other pirates who thought about approaching our fair city, but I think it just worked to frighten the people in the mansions, which has always made me smile a little.
Superstitious types like Carson might be afraid to tempt fate in this spot where the horrific hanging happened—everyone says this part of town is haunted. But I don’t believe in spooky stories. If there were such a thing as a spirit world, I think I’d be aware of it. The only ghosts I know are the ones that haunt the corners of my dad’s mind. The ones that keep him quiet, unable to give me a real hug—instead of just a shoulder pat—on my birthday.
Not that I’m bitter. Dad has his own way of relating to things since Mama died.
I was six when it happened, and I remember little glimpses of her. The honeysuckle smell of her soft blond hair. A favorite blue cotton dress with tiny white flowers on it. Her fingernails—always cut short and painted a pearlescent pink.
I also remember glimpses of him. How he’d tuck me in at night—all the way up to my chin—to make me feel safe and warm. A laugh that rang out like a big brass bell. Arms that would scoop me up onto his shoulders to see what things look like “from the catbird seat.”
“I want my little girl to live life at the top,” he would say.
I guess this BMW is proof that he still wants that for me. But Dad hasn’t tucked me in for years, his laugh—on the rare occasions when it rings out at all—is hollow, and he never swoops me into his arms anymore. He’s still strong and larger than life; I’ve never seen him cry. In fact, I haven’t seen much emotion at all since Mama got sick, except in moments when he thinks I’m not looking, like this morning when we rolled the windows down and he let the warm wind on his face soften his steely facade. I know he loves me, I know he’s there for me, but I wish he’d show it more—it’s like he’s determined to convince me that he’s a rock. Like he’s forgotten how to feel anything.
I haven’t. I know exactly how to get a rush.
The dock on the north side of Battery Park is long and narrow, but it widens at the far end as it juts out over the water. I start at the beginning of the pier, and though I’ll want to steer around three storage structures built on the north side, I have at least three hundred feet to the other end, plenty of time to get up to sixty and then spin to a stop—I’m guessing I’ll need about a hundred feet to brake. I half wish I’d called Carson and asked her to bring her camera for this one—she’s always up for a thrill. But I want to break in the BMW on my own.
I glance in the rearview mirror as I remove the clip holding my waves back in a ponytail. A mess of dark blond hair falls over my forehead, frizzy from the humidity of Charleston in June. Stealing a glance in the rearview mirror, I see that my face is flushed with excitement, blue eyes shining with anticipation at what I’m about to do. “You only live once,” I say to myself just before I rocket off the clutch and push the gas pedal to the floor with my bright yellow Havaianas. Dad hates it when I drive in flip-flops.
The car takes off with effortless determination, like it knows what I’m doing, like it’s been waiting for me to let it run. I get closer and closer to the edge, and I see the point where I need to turn the wheel, ease off the gas, and start to brake so that I don’t plunge into the Atlantic.
I let my foot linger for a split second longer than I should. As I release the accelerator, I jerk the wheel to the right, and the car responds immediately. I spin around the wide end of the dock, blue sky flashing abstractly in front of me. I wonder what it would feel like to hit the water in a violent splash.