Cars

1-

The other day on the way home from my nannying job my car got stuck in the snow on a two-lane road. I rev the engine, the tires spun uselessly, my hazard lights blink red against the slush and snow on the road, cars swerve around me. I get vulgar quickly, heart beating quick, swearing in the dark of my car.

It’s not really my car, it’s my dad’s truck. I don’t even know why we have a truck; we don’t do manual labor, so it seems useless and gigantic for no reason. The car doesn’t even have four-wheel drive, which is a persistent problem this winter as I keep getting stuck in random places. It’s almost humiliating to be in such a big, unmovable truck. People act shocked when I tell them there’s no four-wheel drive, “What? That big car you’re in doesn’t have four-wheel drive?” and then they insist to climb into the driver’s seat and double check. I am, after all, not knowledgeable about cars.

I reverse the truck when I see no cars behind me, try again to propel myself forward, but find the truck stuck. It’s six p.m. and I am beating my fists on the steering wheel, agitated, listening to the radio, trying to figure a way out of this mound of snow without having to call for help. I concede and call my dad, who picks up right away.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi.” I know he is sitting in the left corner of the couch in the living room. I know the lamp on the end table beside him is lit and orange. He is wearing reading glasses and sketching on his iPad, sandwiching his phone between his ear and shoulder. I know him very well, which cup he likes to use best for tea (the clear, handled glass with a widening top), his least favorite texture (the skin of peaches), his coffee order at every café (cappuccino with two sugars at Starbucks, double-double at Tim Hortons, caramello at Espresso Elevado, crème caramel latte at Sweetwater).

“I’m stuck in the snow,” I say.

“On the road?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

I tell him where I am, 30-minutes away from home.

“Okay,” he says, “I’m coming.”

“I’m scared,” I say, though I don’t really feel scared, more annoyed than anything.

“It’s fine. Don’t be scared,” he says. He’s pulling his coat on and calling for my mother upstairs when he hangs up.

I am, again, in the car alone. I decide to call Eric, who cannot possibly help me in this situation as he is two hours away. I hang up as the phone is ringing, realizing we never call each other out of the blue unless somebody has died. I text him, asking if I can call. He says yes and then calls me. I pick up promptly.

“Hewwo-whoa-whoa,” he says (our special greeting). Then, “What’s going on?”

“I’m stuck,” I whine, “I’m stuck in the snow and all the cars are going around me.” He is very sympathetic and offers to stay on the phone with me until help comes. I agree and then disagree because I have a feeling in my stomach that help will not be coming soon (I was correct in this feeling), and I am becoming more dejected by the minute. Hearing his voice is calming, it always is.

We hang up and I continue reversing in the snow and trying to shoot the car forward. A few cars around me get stuck and then get unstuck quick and drive off. I feel a flash of anxiety when a car drives up behind me and flicks their hazard lights on. I do not want a stranger to knock on my window and try to help me. I do not trust strangers and am afraid of being murdered in my truck.

Something about the truck I like— people will see a truck and not think that a tiny, brown person is driving it. There is a sense of anonymity about this where, to everyone behind me, I could be a large bearded white man in the driver’s seat, and nobody murders large bearded white men. So, I feel fairly safe, stuck in the road, reassured that I will probably not die tonight, though I briefly entertain the idea that another car will rear-end me (which will not cause my death and will probably hurt their car more than my car).

Eventually, a police car arrives at the intersection behind me and parks his car perpendicular to the road, blocking it off. We are the only two people on this road as far as I can see, which is not far at all; I’m near the crest of a gravelly hill. My mom calls me and instructs me to call roadside assistance. I hang up and call roadside assistance. Roadside assistance is entirely useless and says they will be here in an hour and a half. I busy the time waiting by flicking the heat on and off, getting sweaty, getting cold, messing with the thermostat, turning it on and off and on and off.

2-

I don’t like giving presentations. Today I gave a presentation about The Best Way to Predict Aggression After Middle Childhood to my assessment class. I did not enjoy speaking. Fumbling my words, pausing between every few words to think harder and organize. I always practice giving presentations a few times before I have to stand up and speak. Practicing becomes very smooth and easy. Giving the presentation is a lot different and my words become muddy and untranslatable from my mind to my mouth.

One positive of doing a master’s program online is I don’t have to stand in front of a classroom to speak. My knees wiggle dramatically, my heart flutters, my hands get sweaty, I speak quickly and smile a lot, trying to be charismatic and intelligent but coming across like I’m in a state of mania.

As I’m giving my presentation in class today, I realize that I don’t like the way my voice sounds. I try to change the sound during the presentation and my voice sounds drier and lower, stumbling down a few octaves. I decide I like that better, but it sounds crunchy in my ears, and I have to restrain myself at the end of the presentation for apologizing about my voice. Who apologizes about the sound of their voice anyway? I happen to think my voice is very annoying, rattling around in my ears.

Usually when I drive, I play music in the car and sing along but think about how bad my singing is and stop. I sing again, trying to focus more on the sensation of making noise rather than the sound of my own voice. Sounding good is not the objective, I remind myself, singing is something human beings do. I feel like an alien studying human behavior: humans sing and dance and make art, not to be good at it, but it’s because something human beings do. I am doing, I am a human being.

3-

Here I am, back in the truck, stuck in the snow. I pull a bag of goldfish crackers out of the center console and eat them quickly. I’ve started keeping large quantities of goldfish packages there since I’ve started nannying. There are lone goldfish everywhere. Once I opened a bag of goldfish too aggressively and they shot in every direction, goldfish on the dashboard, the cupholders, crumbs in my hair. I turned to look at the child in the backseat, hoping she’d laugh (she did not).

I eat a bag of goldfish crackers and then wipe the powder on my jeans. I drink a little water and then wonder if I’ll be here so long that I’ll have to pee. I start to get so frustrated sitting here that I start to cry and then I can’t stop crying and I don’t stop for twenty minutes and then thirty minutes and then forty minutes. I sit there sobbing, angry and sad and running through all my life’s greatest tragedies, taking inventory of them, roll-calling them, as I stare at the snow falling in clumps in front of my hazard lights.

I say, dejectedly, “I’m going to die here,” though I don’t believe that at all. I know I won’t die here, but the melodrama is somewhat comforting. I hit the steering wheel with my fists some more and then calm down a bit, sniffling.

There is a flashlight bobbing toward me from the police car. I roll my window down and the cold air takes my breath away. The white light is blinding in my eyes. I squint, still sniffling and frowning.

“Hello,” the officer says. He moves the light away from my eyes. He’s wearing glasses and is completely bald. He seems nice.

“Hi,” I say.

“I’ve blocked off the roads. Are you injured?”

“No,” I say, “Just stuck.”

“Okay. Whose car is this?”

“My dad’s.”

“Does it have four-wheel drive?” He says.

“No,” I say and then I add, more agreeably, “I don’t think it does.”

“This big truck? Here let me check.” I unlock the door and climb out, slowly, as unstartling-ly as possible. “Climb into the passenger side,” he says. I walk around the back of the truck and climb in. My shoes do a terrible job of keeping my feet dry, and my toes are freezing as I walk through the slush.

“Nope. No four-wheel drive,” he says. He climbs out, and I climb back in. “Did you call your dad?”

“Yes,” I say, “He said he’s coming to help.”

“Okay,” he says, “If you need anything, I’m right over there,” he aims his flashlight behind us at the police car. He hands me his card. “You’re not injured, you’re going to be okay. I’ll call a tow truck,” he says, “Stay in your car. Stay warm.”

I offer him a bag of goldfish, he declines, and walks back to his car.

4-

I haven’t seen Eric in person since January 23 when he drove back here in his beat-up Pontiac to attend our friend’s wedding. The wedding was in a log cabin banquet room, and everything felt very homely. Eric and I both cried at different points during the wedding, we held hands the whole time and then I drove him home in the dark; the truck zipping through the empty streets, slicing the night in half. We cried in the car again because we knew we wouldn’t see each other for a long while after.

Eric stopped by the next day to drink coffee at my kitchen table and say good-bye. We felt a lot better. I squeezed him very tightly, hoping our cells would break down, and my body would fade into his parasitically. I want there to be such a blurred line between us that we can’t tell where one of us ends and the other begins. I want to be engulfed in his warmth. He sighed, his chin could rest on my head if he leaned down a bit.

I feel sad when we’re at the door. I watch him fold into his car, and it sputters to life, bobbing down the snowy street.

5-

My mom calls me and says that she and my dad are just over the crest of the hill. Right in front of me, I can’t see them over the hill, but they are there. I think about leaving my truck and walking up to meet them, but I don’t. My mom says a police officer checked their car for four-wheel drive and was shocked they didn’t have it. She explains they are coming from the other direction now because the police are closing off the other intersection of the road, the one over the impossible hill.

I wait in the truck, vacillating between weeping and sitting eerily still, staring at the snow still falling hard in front of me. There’s a house across the street. Their plastic mailbox sitting on the end of the driveway. A man is plowing the snow with a machine that shoots it up and forward. I imagine standing in the spray of the snow. I think I would have liked to do that as a child. I liked to sit in front of the window air conditioner in my grandparent’s shabby apartment. I’d struggle to breathe in because of how freezing the air was. I’d gasp and gasp.

In my rearview I see my parents pull up, and I feel glad for the shred of familiarity in the mirror. The police officer talks to them and then they turn and drive off. I feel sad watching them go. I flick the heat off again.

6-

In the end a tow truck never comes. Two police officers instruct me on turning, pressing, the gas, braking. One of them asks me if I think I can brake fast enough before hitting the mailbox across the road. I nod along, doing what I’m told. The truck is unstuck, we’ve unstuck it. I am very grateful and want to offer them goldfish crackers, but don’t because I want to go home more than I want to be kind.

I drive off slowly and find my parents car waiting for me at the edge of a neighborhood, turning onto the street. I park in the middle of the road, nobody is here. Without speaking, we all switch seats; I go into the passenger side, my dad slips into the driver’s seat, my mom drives the other car home. I see her get out of the car, she’s wearing a winter coat and tall boots over her night gown. I feel a rush of love for her, knowing she immediately hopped into the car with my dad without bothering to get dressed. She hates driving in the snow; it’s her least favorite thing about living in a northern state.

On the drive home, my dad and I are mostly quiet. I change the music to late 70s pop hits, Three Times a Lady, Mama Mia, Rasputin, on and on, driving slowly, fishtailing home.