How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive (15 page)

I knew immediately that it was a mistake. Shortly after the transaction, the VW asked me what time “chow” would be served. Later that night, he asked me about getting a tattoo.

For two days, the VW believed he was a prison. Every other word was caged—he spoke about solitary confinements and inmate rehabilitation. One night at dinner the following week, I asked him what his plans were for the evening and he mentioned his hopes to review proposals for new community outreach programs.

That was it—I’d heard enough. I threw down my fork and knife. “In the morning I’m taking you back to Jaws,” I said, “and we’re going to get you a new believer.”

“If we can put these inmates to work, Dad—”

“Enough,” I said.

“—we can help them
and
help the community.”

I went back to Jaws the next day and spoke to the same balloon. “It doesn’t fit,” I said. “The kid believes that he’s a state prison.” I handed him the old, rotten believer. “See how this one has five points? The one you gave me has four.”

I could hear the balloon’s stories churning as he studied the part. “Remind me where this goes on your car,” he said.

“It connects one of the transmissions to the storypump,” I said.

The balloon looked up at me and his face turned a corner. “The transmission—to the what?” he said.

Breakdown.

• One young, faulty 1971 Volkswagen Beetle
  
• A good-to-go gertrude
  
• Questionboats, at least two or three
  
• One poor booker
  

• On the way to school
  
• By Cooper’s Corner in Florence Center
  
• On South Street, by the Northampton-Easthampton Q
  
• En route to a Sunderlandian
  
• On Market Street, outside Joe’s
  
• Outside the Pleasant Street Theater
  
• Voking up Gothic
  
• Driving past the Northampton Airport
  
• Prasking towards a story in Leverett
  
• On the Northampton-Amherst Rail Trail
  
• Everywhere! After only a few months on the road, the kid was breaking down everywhere.
  

We were driving down 63 in Leverett when the VW slowed to a stop and
I got out. “What’s the story?” I said.

“You tell me,” said the VW, coughing and shaking his head. “A
syllabus
?”

In those days my writing was dischordant, every note flat. I said, “So what?”

“A syllabus is
not
a story.”

“Well, it’s all I can come up with right now,” I said.

“But I can’t run on it.”

“You can if you scan it right,” I said.

“It’s just a list, Dad—there’s no Procedure, even! It’s just a bunch of cheap words—”

“These words work fine.”

“Not for me they don’t,” said the VW.

I threw my hands. “What do you want me to do?”

“Write!”

“Right here?” I said. “On the side of the road?”

The VW blinked.

“It’ll take
hours
,” I said.

“I don’t care how long it takes,” the VW said.

I custom-swore, grabbed my power from the front seat and sat down on the curb. “You like to make my life difficult, don’t you?”

“How hard is it to write fuel?” the VW said. “All I need is a freaking A-to-B. A character, something!”

I tried. I put my hands on the keys. After a minute or so I said, “I can’t think of anything!”

“Start with a conflict, how about,” the VW said.

“Like what?”

“A problem—any problem.”

“Here’s a problem—I want to go home, but my son won’t move.”

“Fine—start there, then!” the VW said.

Then there was the time we were daytripping towards the Quabbin and
the VW started complaining about being tired. “Can we stop and rest for a second?” he asked.

“We’re almost there—let’s stop when we get there, OK?”

“How about a quick nap?”

“We’re like five miles away!”

A mile or two later, though, the VW stalled. “What’s happening, kiddo?” I said.

The VW didn’t answer me.

“Hey!” I said. I hit the breaks, steered us into the breakdown lane and got out of the car.

The kid was fast asleep.

Just a few miles past the Café Evolution, veeping onto Elm, the VW shouted a custom-made and coasted to a stop. I said, “Ey—what’s happening?”

He mumbled an answer.

“What?” I said.

He was speaking too quietly for me to hear him—all I heard was “wrong road.”

I got out of the car and went around to the front. The VW was studying the pavement. “What’s the problem?” I said.

“This is the wrong version,” he said. “There’s a history here.”

“A what?”

“Listen.” The VW put his ear to the asphalt. “There was a stadium right here—a huge baseball field with rows of seats. This is where Northampton’s team, the Words and Pictures, used to play.”

“It was?” I said.

“Right here! I was the shortstop.”

I put my hands on my hips, suddenly realizing what was happening. “VW—”

“We were the best team in western Massachusetts. I remember ol’ Glue Stevenson, who played third—”

“There wasn’t ever a stadium here, kiddo,” I said. “You’re having problems with your memory coil is all.”

“—was at the plate this one night, against a mean, cantered industrial grill—”

“This is all just a bad coil-wrap.”

“And that grill had the best continue-pitch in the league.”

“OK. You can tell me this story at home, alright?”

“You mean keep going? No way,” said the VW.

“What? Why not?”

“Dad, this spot is
historical
for me. How can you expect me to just drive over the field’s Memory as if it wasn’t ever here?”

“Because it wasn’t,” I said.

“It was—you just don’t remember it,” the VW said.

“Can we please go home now?”

The VW shook his head. “I’m staying right here.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“I’m not kidding at all,” the VW said.

And he wasn’t. I pleaded with the VW to let the “memory” go, but he wouldn’t move. I had to call a tow truck to get us both home.

The VW would start to lurch and sputter, and then he’d stop running altogether. I’d get out of the car and open the engine compartment. When I did I’d find:

• A landfill
  
• A candy store
  
• A factory of some sort
  
• I don’t know, but something took my picture
  
• An old woman, pointing her finger at me and shaking her head
  

“What do you see?” the VW’d say.

I’d tell him.

“Can you fix it?” he’d ask.

Hardly ever!

“Of course I can,” I’d say.

There was the half-faced woman and the Scientist, and then there was the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass, who lived and worked at the Don Muller Gallery in Northampton. I really came close to loving this woman; she was bright and creative, an artist, and I could spend a good deal of money with her without feeling the draw of the power. She was also the one who told me about the village of Shelburne Falls, incidentally, because she was born there—forged by a mother (raw sand) and a father (a glass-blowing factory film) out on the scene of the body of glacier-pockmarked stone called the Potholes.

I met the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass at the Paradise City Arts Festival, where she was selling handmade moods. Each one was completely unique, and it came with its own case and certificate of authenticity. I was supposed to be there to write a story for the
Wheel
, but as we were browsing the tables the VW became fascinated by one of these moods—a new sort of skepticism—and he wouldn’t put it down.

“How did you get the happiness in there?” the VW asked the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass, who stood behind her table in a simple black dress.

“I work with a microscope,” she explained. “I fused the happiness with a steady disbelief.”

“Jeez. It must have taken so much
money
,” the VW said.

“It did—”

“It’s
beautiful
,” the VW said. “It’s a beautiful mood.”

“Thanks, man,” she said. “It’s cool that you like it so much.”

I didn’t say anything. To be honest, I was intimidated by her
beauty—by the way the light attached itself to her, passed through her multi-hued cheeks and neck and hair and sprang from it as if somehow stronger.

After a few minutes I told the VW to put the mood down. He begged me to buy it, but I said no. It wasn’t even an option for me—I just didn’t have the time with me.

“You know what?” the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass said. “This one’s on the house. Take it.”

The VW’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

“No,” I said to him. Then I turned to her. “That’s very kind. But I can’t let you—”

“I’m not giving it to you,” she said to me. “I’m giving it to
him.
”

“Yeah,” the VW said. He put the mood on and his face became very suspicious.

“Take that off,” I said to him. Then I turned back to her. “Really—”

“Too late—done deal,” she said. “He digs it too much for him not to have it.”

“Please,” I said. “That’s just too much. Can I at least give you something for it?” She continued to refuse, but as she did so I saw a very tiny wisp of interest in the glass housing behind her eyebrows. I had to stare at it for a few moments before I was even sure it was interest. But it was.

So I asked her if I could take her to dinner.

She held the question in her mind for a moment, and then looked into her hands. “You don’t need to do that—it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Even so,” I said. “Dinner.”

“No,” she said, clouding.

“I’ll go too,” the VW said.

She stared at me.

“Dinner,” I said again.

The Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass and I went on a few dates—to dinner, to a play that the VW had worked on as an understudy—and then things grew folk; she started spending nights at my place, or I went to hers. I met her mother-of-sand; she came with me when I met the Two Sides of My Mother for breakfast one morning.

We had a lot of faith in each other, and sometimes when we did there was enough light—from the candles, from the moon—for the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass’s body to catch it, and then I could see myself inside her, see every aspect of that process, the soft and mysterious machine of her body as it moved against mine. It felt like a real relationship; the VW and I stopped going to the Castaway, even!

But these kind of stories—love stories, stories with faith—are apparently not the kind that I was built to book, either that or I haven’t yet learned
how
to book them. As it turned out, the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass was too fragile for me; every time we argued or our discussion warmed, her body grew cold and brittle. If she wasn’t careful, she told me, it could crack.

One night we had a very heated argument—she wanted me to move in with her, and I was reluctant to do so because I had to run the Crescent Street apartments—and we couldn’t resolve it. We went to bed angry—she on her side of the bed, me on mine.

That night I dreamt I had all the time in Northampton.

I woke up next to a pile of broken stained glass, and my legs were all cut and pleading. I did all the screaming—the pile of glass was completely silent.

Had
I
done that? Had I destroyed the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass, because her glass was fragile and I rolled over in my sleep? Or had she been so cold that she shattered?

You see what I mean: The story fails, it has a heart attack, it needs something I can’t give it.

I never did get rid of that stained glass, though. A year later, when the VW was really ill, one of his eyes shattered and I used some of the stained glass to repair it. Every time I drove at night from that point on, colors from the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass’s skin—pinks, blues, greens—were broadcast onto the roads of Northampton.

Years and years later, though, after I’d left it all behind and moved away, I saw a woman who looked exactly like the Lady Made Entirely of Stained Glass. She was dressed in a blue uniform with an orange vest, standing in one of those wooden boxed platforms in the middle of a busy
intersection, directing traffic outside a fair. I was so stunned when I saw her that I stepped out into the middle of the traffic and approached her.

She saw me and pointed. “Step back to the curb!” she yelled.

The cars coming towards me slowed down. I held up my hand. “It’s me,” I said.

She put her hands on her glass hips. “Sir, step back to the curb!” she said again.

I kept walking forward.

“Sir!” she bolted.

I smiled as I looked up at her. “I don’t know if I did something wrong that night, or if I just wasn’t able to tell the story right, or what,” I said.

Now we stood in the center of the road and the traffic moved around us. Her look was a fist. “You have me confused with someone else, sir,” she said. “Now, please—go back to the sidewalk.”

“The Volkswagen?” I said. “Northampton, Massachusetts? Remember?”

Her glass hair shone from beneath her blue hat. “Sir, I’m trying to do my job—”

“It
is
you,” I said.

Her arms were waving madly at the traffic. “I’m not the person you’re looking for,” she said.

But she was. I saw the Memory in her mind: my own image, the pink cloud of fear attached to it.