“If these walls could talk, huh?” I say, trying to fit in somewhere.
“Then I’d have to kill the walls,” Da says.
Things go a little quiet.
We go to the mansion.
It never gets past a little light mistiness, and really the day is almost perfect for a picnic and a stroll. A stroll across beautiful lawns, around a handsome, stately home, around a collection of the finest machines ever built, and above all, a stroll around a bit of family life and history.
“How old was I, Pop, when you first took me to this show?” Dad asks as we weave along the row of Studebakers and Pierce-Arrows parked on the great rolling lawn.
“Not too sure,” Da says, watching the cars closely, stroking his chin as if the answer is in the bodywork. “Six or eight, I suppose?”
“It was the first big thing we did together, I remember that. I sure remember that.”
Awkward. That is what I remember about these two most of all. Always awkward. I never have any trouble getting along with either of them, but boy, whenever we are all together we are one gimpy vehicle, one wheel short or one too many.
Dad is trying, though. For his own reasons, he is putting his shoulder into it this time.
Can’t really say the same for Da.
“Don’t know why everybody finds the fifty-seven Chevy so special,” Da snarls, walking straight away from his son and toward the offending car. “The fifty-five was better.”
Dad stands motionless in front of the Studebaker Lark he thought they were bonding over, and watches his old man’s back.
“He gets distracted pretty easily,” I say.
“He does,” Dad says with no emotion. We follow after Da.
“You’re right,” Dad says when we catch up. “And I remember you always said the same thing, remember, about the Thunderbird and the Corvette. Oh, the ’Vette used to drive you to distraction. Remember that, Pop?”
“Bugs!” Da says.
“What?” Dad and I both ask.
“Bugs!” Da says, and he means it. He goes stomping up the slope toward the mansion and toward the source of his irritation. “No, mere age does not a classic make. No proper car show that calls itself antique and classic has any business rolling in a bunch of these foolish little Volkswagen…”
Dad stands still again, watching his father rant his way up the hill to give one of the remaining pieces of his mind to three perfectly innocent little cars.
Dad’s face, not normally the most expressive contraption, is drained and defeated.
“You know how he is, with The Condition,” I say.
He stares some more.
“He comes and goes,” I say. “Does it with everybody.”
Dad works up a small, sharp, sad smile for me.
“Not at all, Danny. This is memory lane. The auto show with Pop was always just like this.” He pats me on the shoulder, heads in the other direction. “I’m going back with the girls. Keep an eye on him, and come on back when you get hungry.”
Just like old times.
“Come on, Dad, don’t go,” I say, though honestly I’m not all that bothered. They are a handful together, and will never get it right. But still, we should be able to manage better than this.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” Dad says, and he doesn’t sound mopey, so okay. “Go watch him before he does something antisocial.”
He means nuts. Whenever he wants to use a more accurate term for his father-mental, demented, loony tunes-he says antisocial instead. I interpret that gesture as love. I do.
“Da,” I call as I see him climb into the driver’s seat of an old sea-foam-green fat convertible. All the signs clearly state not to get into the cars. The iffy weather has made the already quiet event very sparsely populated today. It’s here for three days, and most people are holding out for tomorrow’s promised sunshine. So there is no uproar when Da bends the rules, and the nearest plaid-jacketed old guard is probably off having his cucumber-sandwich break. They lean a bit heavily on the honor system here at the mansion.
“Da, you cannot do this,” I say, standing at the driver’s door like I am a carhop from the days when this car was new, waiting to take his order. He feels it as well.
“Give me a double cheeseburger and a root beer float, sweetheart. And get your skates on.”
“Da, come on, they will make us leave if you don’t get out of there.”
“No, they won’t.”
He is pulling the very big, green steering wheel this way and that, bouncing in the seat like a little kid. It is a lovable old thing, this car. It’s either led a sadly boring life or has been adoringly restored, because it is immaculate. The leatherette upholstery is almost the exact color of the glistening paint job. Big white sidewall tires and lashings of chrome. The white canvas electric top has been retracted to taunt the rain. The two doors are fat. The car is adorably fat.
“‘Rambler American,’” I say, reading the raised silvery lettering as I walk around the back.
“Nineteen sixty-two,” he says.
“Very good,” I say. “You do know your cars. Now come on out, huh?” I am leaning over the passenger door now.
He laughs, stares straight ahead, still juking the wheel as if he’s going somewhere. “I do know my cars. And I won’t be getting out. Because this is my car.”
Uh-oh.
“Please, Da. I mean, you know it isn’t your car. What would your car be doing in this show? How could that be?”
“Because they took it off me.”
These are the moments when I too want to use those words I should not use. But he is being totally nuts, textbook nuts.
“Who, Da? Who took it off you?”
“They did. And they shouldn’t have. Said the car was too distinctive. ‘If you’re not a shadow, you’re a bull’s-eye’ was the saying then. They had no right. That was too far. That is when it becomes taking the man away from the man, just for the job.”
He is trying my patience, and I have got a lot of it. I am sorely tempted, but jeez, he is being certifiably antisocial now.
I have to get tough. As tough as I can be with the Old Boy, anyway.
“Old Boy,” I say crisply. He looks at me and I tap my wrist, like when you want someone to notice the passage of the time. But I want him to notice something else.
He looks down, and sees his copper MEMORY LOSS bracelet.
He looks back up at me, where I am stupidly making the gesture.
He makes a gesture of his own, at me, also with just one finger.
“Da!” I splutter, and we neither can help laughing.
“Hey!” comes the shout as the dignified old security dude comes ambling up the hill toward us. It has started sprinkling and he most likely was coming up to put the top up, rather than rumbling us. “Get out of there, you.”
Da gets tired rather easily these days, so he’s always using little energy-conserving tricks. Therefore his finger is still in the air when he gets yelled at by the security guard in the plaid jacket.
Da hates being yelled at, more than anybody else on earth. And he’s not too crazy about plaid, either. He aims the finger.
“Right!” the security guard yells, from about twenty yards away. “You two are in serious-”
“Come on,” Da says to me brusquely.
“Come on, what?” I say.
The engine starts up, a simple, muffled brummm.
“Jeez-,” I say, and jump right over the door into the passenger seat as the Old Boy takes off down the lawn, slaloming between T-Birds and Model Ts and JFK Continentals with the suicide doors.
“Da?” I call, just a bit nervously. “Da, how did you start this thing?”
“I told you, Young Man, it is my car. Two wires, two fingers, and varoom. Couldn’t be worrying about keys all the time in those days. I had places to go.”
“Holy-,” I shout as more mad plaids start appearing and it becomes as much an exercise in not killing people as it is a joy ride.