Devil in the Details (25 page)

So that was out, too. Thus it was decided that I would learn to
drive on the family sedan, a Datsun Maxima that was annoying for a
host of reasons. It was a talking car, which had seemed very novel
when we first got it. If you did anything wrong – left a door ajar,
forgot to turn off the lights, neglected to put on your seat belt –
you were subjected to admonitions by the crisply reproachful voice
system. Now, four years later, the novelty had worn off. “I took
enough lip today,” my mother barked when the electronic voice
reminded her to release the hand brake, “and I’m not taking any
more from you.”

It was indeed a frustrating machine, a small car that seemed to
have been designed for freakishly tall people. At five feet even, I
was just too little for it. The seat belt that should have crossed
my chest crossed my throat instead, pressing uncomfortably on my
windpipe. I couldn’t see where the car began and ended. My parents
bought me a booster, and I moved the seat as far up as it would go,
but I still felt like a munchkin in a tank.

Was it just me? I had a friend who was a full foot shorter than
I, only four feet tall, and she managed to get around just fine.
There were people missing limbs and other crucial faculties, people
who had to steer with their toes or teeth, all of whom could
operate a car no sweat. At fifteen my sister could drive with just
a knee, leaving her hands free to unwrap burritos and flip off
tail-gaters. But I
struggled
.

The problem, of course, was not in my body but in my brain. OCD
is based upon an irrational belief that if you don’t do something
perfectly – wash your hands, pat the end table, plug in the
coffeemaker the exact right way – someone will get hurt. But with
driving, that’s a distinct possibility. You’re sitting in several
thousand pounds of metal packing several gallons of flammable
material. If you don’t do something perfectly, someone really
might
get hurt.

Especially if I was at the wheel. Oh, I tried. My father and I
dutifully set out for my driving lesson every Sunday. He felt it
was important for me to master shifting gears before I was set
loose in traffic, so our lessons took place in a deserted trucking
company parking lot on the outskirts of town. I would drive around
and around the lot for hours, shifting from first to second to
third. This went on for months. My driving skills did not improve.
My command of passive-aggression advanced considerably, however, as
I shot my father hostile looks and made terse loaded comments. “You
know, this would be
easier
for me if you weren’t
scrutinizing
me so closely.
I
think I’m doing
fine
. I’m really not sure what you
expect
.”

My permit expired. My sixteenth birthday came and went. Instead
of a car, I got a sewing machine. That was just as well. My
anorexia was blazing again, and I was far too busy doing leg lifts
to bother with the DMV. And since none of my clothes fit anymore,
it was nice that I could take them in.

What did I need a license for, anyway? I didn’t have anywhere to
go. Of course, my classmates didn’t either, and that didn’t stop
them. That was sort of the point, the aimless driving. They
cruised. Cruising up and down the town’s Main Street was such a
popular activity the city council had tried to ban it, making it
illegal to drive down the same street more than three times in an
hour. But this only added to the appeal. Now you weren’t just
driving aimlessly; you were
breakin’ the law
. The only time
it was officially permitted was on Cruise Night, a summer festival
featuring tricked-out funny cars, cover bands, and corn dogs. To
commemorate the occasion, you could buy a T-shirt featuring a cat
wearing sunglasses riding in a convertible.

I found the whole thing unspeakably tacky. Stupid cruising.
Stupid cars. Stupid driver training. I was so turned off by the
whole industry that I briefly considered using my post as president
of Students Against Drunk Driving to undertake a new campaign, with
a simpler, better acronym: Students Against Driving. Drink all you
want, we would say, but lose the wheels. Sidecars, yes; cars,
no.

I continued happily license-free for another year. Then we got
back from Europe and my parents started badgering me again. Next
summer I would turn eighteen, and they had less than a year of
control over me left. If they didn’t force me to get my license now
they’d be stuck hauling me around forever.

In short order my mother made me renew my permit and announced
that she would teach me to drive herself. This time there would be
no laps around the parking lot. She put me right into traffic.
“Sink or swim,” she said, putting on her sunglasses and reclining
the passenger seat.

Our first time out I plunged us into a ditch. Sink.

Next Sunday we tried again. This time, I cut off two cars and a
tractor, but I managed to stay on the road. The following Sunday
there was a near sideswiping, but that was all. I was gradually
getting the hang of it.

A few months later I was competent enough to think about taking
my driving test. But first I would have to pass driver training.
Fortunately the instructor, who was also my Honors Chemistry
instructor and the only teacher who knew my biweekly ‘dermatology’
appointments were with a therapist, took pity on me and scheduled
some sessions just for me, on his own time. Maybe it was just
because he was so nice, or maybe he was afraid of pushing the
dermatology patient too far when she had volatile Honors Chem
supplies at her disposal. Whatever. I passed.

After all this trouble my actual DMV driving test was pretty
uneventful. I got a 71, one point above failing, a D-minus. It was
a fair grade. I was a D-minus driver. I got into an accident the
very next day. It was so embarrassing. I had plenty of classmates
who’d done that very thing, but they’d done it in the course of
something wild and exciting, drag racing or stealing joyrides. I’d
done it while taking two ten-year-olds to a matinee of
An
American Tail
. It was a really stupid accident, too, plowing
into a parked car while doing a three-point turn. This would not
have been so stupid if I hadn’t been in a cul-de-sac at the time.
Why a three-point turn? It was a
cul de sac!
Even the
ten-year-olds couldn’t help but laugh at me, and along with the
singsongy complaints of the talking car itself, they formed a
humiliating chorus.

Our Datsun was fine, but the Opel I’d smashed into now had a
large canyon in the driver-side door. This was not a dent. You
could bathe a toddler in this concavity. I carefully printed my
name and phone number on a sheet of binder paper and left it under
the windshield wiper. Then I drove to my father’s office, handed
his receptionist my license, went straight home, and obsessively
cleaned the house until my parents arrived.

It was something, watching them try to convey the message that
they were very, very angry with me, that I must never do this
again, but that I shouldn’t feel too discouraged to get right back
behind the wheel tomorrow. As much as I wanted them to, they would
not take away my driving privileges. Perhaps they should have. I
promptly had two more accidents, neither one involving a moving
car.

I’m not sure why I had so much trouble with stationary things,
parked cars and traffic islands, curbs and poles. They were always
jumping out at me, especially when I tried to park. In lots I would
park away from all the other cars, in a remote corner where no one
would ever think of parking next to me. A couple times, however,
someone did, pulling in just as I was locking the car. “I think you
should probably move your car, sir,” I always told them. “I have no
idea what I’m doing and I can pretty much guarantee I’ll take out
your rearview mirror.”

Driving was hard, but parking was worse. I was lucky that we
lived in a town with plenty of lots; I never had to parallel park,
and fifteen years later, I still haven’t, not once ever. But still,
I struggled. The most difficult parking in town was in our own
garage. It was small and narrow, and the driveway was angled,
forcing you to come in from the side and then sharply maneuver
straight, all the while being careful not to ding my father’s
sports car on the right or the side of the house on the left. There
was no room for error, and my sister and I knocked mirrors off
several times. Once my sister even knocked off a door. This turned
out to be a blessing, however, because when we went to get that
fixed, the mechanic noticed that the alignment was dangerously out
of whack from my run-in with a curb several weeks earlier. I
believe the phrase he used was
death trap
. We’d all been
driving the car with no idea. “That could have killed any one of
us,” my mother said through gritted teeth, in the
you-did-a-bad-thing-but-that’s-
okay
tone that she was
becoming expert at.

The thing was, I wasn’t so bad if someone else was in the car.
It was when I was alone, when there were no witnesses to verify
that the curb had attacked
me
, that I got in trouble. When
there was no one to distract me, my compulsions had full reign.
Obsessive-compulsives vary in their habits, some of us praying and
others pulling hair, but we all do the exact same thing when we get
in a car: we circle endlessly, convinced that we ran someone over
without noticing and then heading back to check. A normal person
would know for sure if they’d committed a hit-and-run, but not me.
“I don’t remember goring that little girl at the stoplight, but I
don’t know, I can be forgetful that way,” I would think. “Better go
back and make sure.” So I would circle back, and this time there
would be an old man there, and half a block later I’d get to
wondering if I’d hit him, and round and round we’d go. I could
circle the block forever, in circuits that both mimicked and
reinforced my neural loops. I was literally driving myself crazy. I
was also in danger of being arrested for violating the
anti-cruising ordinance.

Driving overwhelmed me. There were too many things competing for
my attention. Besides fending off ruminations and looking for the
bodies I couldn’t remember hitting, there were a million other
little things. I couldn’t filter out the unimportant data. The song
on the radio, the texture of the upholstery, the temperature inside
the car, the state of my hair – all of these things were making
equal demands on my attention. To have to deal with stop signs and
other cars on top of everything else, and a clutch and a gearshift
on top of
that
, was just too much.

The anorexia and scrupulosity allowed me at least the illusion
of control, but in the car I had none. I’d felt that way before.
Many years earlier we’d gone out for a Sunday morning drive in our
egg-colored Corolla. A drunk plowed into us, scrambling it.
Miraculously we were all fine, but the car was totaled. “Who the
hell is drunk by eight a.m. on a Sunday morning?” my father wanted
to know. No one in our family, certainly. The Jews didn’t know how
to party and the Catholics had the decency to wait until after
mass.

I’d hated that feeling, of spinning helplessly in a vehicle I
couldn’t control. I felt that way every time I got behind the wheel
now, spinning and spinning, my brain churning, the car circling the
block yet one more time. I hated every errand I had to run, every
trip to the post office or the library, and was amazed every time I
arrived home intact. I never felt comfortable, and when I went off
to college I was relieved that my parents gave me a computer
instead of a convertible.

Over the next few years, I got better. The OCD subsided and I
found I didn’t mind driving as much. It helped that by then the
family car was an automatic. My driving became automatic as well,
and I was finally able to do everything I was supposed to without
thinking too hard about it.

I don’t drive very often now, but when I do, I do it fine. Over
the years I have become perfectly competent, the only person I know
with a spotless record. I’ve never gotten a ticket, not even for
parking, though this may have something to do with the fact that I
rarely drive and never park on the street.

When I did lose my license it was for fainting. I was on public
transportation at the time, and woke up to find that the bus had
stopped for a medical emergency. “Great,” I said to the friend who
was with me. “Now I’m going to be late for work.”

“
Really
late,” my friend answered, pointing out that the
emergency was me. This explained why I was lying on the floor.
Apparently I’d passed out. It was a simple orthostatic faint; Yom
Kippur had been the day before and I hadn’t gotten fully rehydrated
yet. But I went to the doctor just to make sure nothing was wrong.
She informed me that by law she had to report my episode to the DMV
and that I wouldn’t be driving for a good long while.

I rarely drove, but this galled me. Losing my license for
passing out? I had friends who’d kept their licenses after
committing far worse infractions. It didn’t seem fair. I knew
someone who’d been apprehended driving drunk with a trunk full of
stolen merchandise and gotten off with a warning. But I forget to
drink enough water
one time
and I can’t drive for a year?
You couldn’t lose your license for drinking, it seemed, but not
drinking was another story.

In the end it worked out just fine. A year later I petitioned to
have my license reinstated and got it back without too much
trouble. I got a new picture, too, and it’s the best picture I’ve
ever taken. You should see it. I look like a model.

Now I’m legally clear to drive whenever I like. For the most
part, however, I continue to live car-free, relying on public
transportation and a network of indulgent driving friends. The
qualities that made me a bad driver make me an excellent passenger,
and I never have to look too far for a ride. I take care of all the
details: picking a good radio station, modulating the heater or air
conditioner, offering snacks and interesting banter. “Is everyone
comfortable?” I ask. “Is everyone happy?” Then I angle back the
seat, roll up the windows, and bask in the knowledge that this is
one thing I’m
really
good at.