Life Among the Savages (11 page)

“
We
'll get them,” she said enigmatically, “they can't get far without stealing a car.”

A week later I was invited to the local jail to see Hope, who gave me back my overshoes with an apology for having kept them so long, asked kindly after the children, the cats, and the dog, remarked parenthetically that she had never really gotten to know my husband, and asked me to go five thousand dollars bail for her.

I told her civilly enough that these constant ads in the paper made such a drain on my pocketbook that I had really nothing left for more than household expenses, and asked nicely what she was in for. It turned out to be grand larceny; my overshoes, she said, she had never regarded as anything but a loan; it was a difficulty with a former employer's fur coat which worried her now. I shook hands cordially with the jailer's wife, declined a piece of fresh-made sponge cake, and departed. I sent a carton of cigarettes and some magazines to the jail for Hope about a month later, and got back an earnest letter saying she would be sure to come back to work for us when she got out, and could we wait three years?

Between the time I last saw Hope and the time I got her letter, Amelia had come and. gone. Amelia had been recommended to me by a neighbor, with the specific statement that Amelia was not an intelligent girl, but she was able, my neighbor was confident, to do simple household tasks. Amelia washed dishes, but not very clean. She arrived every morning on foot, by a process which required that she inquire at every house in the neighborhood each day before she found ours. She never tried to borrow my overshoes, which I was keeping anyway in the only closet in the house which locked, and I sincerely believe that after working for us for two days she was still unable to find her way from the kitchen to the front door without falling over the furniture.

Like Hope, Amelia had but one major failing. The second day she was with us—which turned out, coincidentally, to be the last—she made cookies, spending all one joyous afternoon in the kitchen, droning happily to herself, fidgeting, cluttering, measuring.

At dinner, dessert arrived with Amelia's giggle and a flourish. She set the plate of cookies down in front of my husband, and my husband, who is a nervous man, glanced down at them and dropped his coffee cup. “Sinner,” the cookies announced in bold pink icing, “Sinner, repent.”

Phoebe did not stay with us much longer than Amelia had. She was accustomed to arriving mornings on a motorcycle, but after two weeks her mother called one morning to say that there had been an American Legion convention in a nearby city and that Phoebe was now in Kansas City. It was terribly hot all that summer, and I kept thinking about poor old Phoebe in Kansas City on her motorcycle. Perhaps I privately envied the motorcycle, it being a species of abandoned travel with which I am respectably unfamiliar; perhaps the notion of wild noisy motion appealed to Laurie. He asked me one morning later that summer, “Why don't we have a car?” I was stirring chocolate pudding—a talent of the late Phoebe's—at the stove, and he was painting at the kitchen table. Jannie was laboriously dressing her doll on the floor, singing quietly to herself while she stuffed the doll's arms brutally into one of the baby's nightgowns.

“Why don't we have a car?” I repeated absently. “I suppose because no one around here can drive.”

“If we had a car,” Laurie said, in the tone which I was beginning to recognize as one all seven-year-old boys use to their mothers, as of one explaining a relatively uncomplicated situation to a sort of foolish creature, apt to become sentimental and impertinent unless firmly held in check, “if we had a car, we could ride around.”

“But no one around here can drive,” I said.

“And we could go anywhere we wanted,” Laurie said. “And we wouldn't have to walk, or drive with other people, or take taxis.”

“Who would drive us?”

“I could sit in the front seat,” Laurie said, “and Jannie and Sally could sit in the back seat.” He thought. “And Daddy could ride on the running board.”

“What would I be doing?” I asked. “Driving?”

“I want to ride in the front,” Jannie said, lifting her head to scowl at her brother. “I want to ride in the front and Laurie in back with Baby.”

“I'm going to ride in the front,” Laurie said. “I'm older.”

“But I'm a girl,” Jannie said, undeniably.

“But who would
drive?”
I said.

“Listen,” Laurie said to me, a thin edge of contempt in his voice, “can't you drive a
car?”

“No, I can not.”

“Can Daddy?”

“No.”

“Can't
either
of you drive?”

“No.”

Laurie put his paint brush down and looked at me for a long minute. “Then what can you do?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “I can make chocolate pudding, and I can wash dishes, and I can . . .”

“Anybody can do that,” Laurie said. “What
I
mean is, can't you drive a car?”

“No,” I said sharply, “I can not drive a car. And I do not, furthermore, intend to learn. And I also do not want to hear one more—”

“If we had a car,” Jannie said, “I could ride in the front and Laurie could ride in the back with Baby.”

“I'm older,” Laurie said mechanically.
“You
ride in back.”

“I'm a girl,” Jannie said.

“Why not let Baby ride in front?” I asked in spite of myself. “She's younger. And she's a girl.”

“But if Laurie and I rode in back we would fight,” Jannie said.

“That's true,” I said. ‘“So why not—” but the chocolate pudding thickened and I had to stop talking.

Jannie began to sing one of her morning songs. “On earth, what are you doing,” she sang softly, “on earth, what are you doing? I am going splickety-splot. On earth, what are you doing, on earth, what are you doing? I am going thumpety-thump. We do dig and it does rain.” While she sang she rocked her doll, Laurie painted amiably, and I hummed to myself while I poured the pudding into dishes and wondered whether I could get away with chicken soup again for lunch today.

Jannie began her song for the third time, and Laurie set his page aside and asked absently, “Why did you say we don't have a car?”

“We don't have a car,” I said wearily, “because both Daddy and I would rather roller-skate.”

“Can Daddy drive?” Jannie asked. “Daddy can do anything, can't he?”

I hesitated, not at the moment able to find an answer, and Laurie said, “If we had a car you could take us for rides.”

“Now listen to me, both of you,” I began with great firmness, but at that moment the baby woke up and as I started upstairs I heard Laurie asking dreamily, “Jannie, what would you do if a snake came and ate you?”

In our family a conversation such as this one about the car does not end, ever. At dinner that night Laurie remarked to his father, “Mommy is going to get a car and drive it around.”

“And I'm going to ride in front,” Jannie said.

“
I
'm going to ride in front,” Laurie said. “I'm—”

“I'm a girl,” Jannie said.

My husband regarded me with mild surprise. “A car?” he said, perplexed. “You mean, drive me if I wanted to go for a haircut? And I wouldn't have to—”

“Wait,” I said, “wait, wait.”

“I'm going to ride in
front,
” Laurie said.

“I'm a—”

“
I
am going to ride in front,” my husband said flatly.

 

 

 

THE MAN FROM the driving school was named Eric, and he was about eighteen years old and undisguisedly amused at meeting anyone who could not drive a car. When I told him sharply that in his business he must meet quite a few people who could not drive a car he laughed and said that usually people my age did not try to learn new tricks. I eyed the dual-control car he had parked in our driveway and said falsely that I might surprise him by learning faster than he expected. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “That's my girl.”

Laurie and Jannie and my husband holding the baby stood on the front porch cheering and waving as I rode off with Eric, crushed into a corner of the seat to avoid touching any of the dual controls, and desperately afraid that if I did the car would go out of control and rocket madly off the road, no doubt killing other innocent people and very probably ending my driving lessons. Laurie and Jannie and my husband holding the baby were again on the front porch cheering, two hours later, when I came back with Eric, dismayed and bewildered and not prepared to take levelly any childish prattle about how we would drive around when we had a car.

I took ten lessons from Eric, including lessons in stopping and starting, making a U turn—that was how I got the dent in the back of the car, but Eric said they were insured against that kind of thing—making right turns and left turns, shifting gears, backing and filling, allemande left, and reeling and writhing and fainting in coils. He neglected to teach me how to turn on the lights and what to do when a funny little noise started somewhere inside. Every time I got out of his car in front of my own house, weak-kneed and with my hands stiffened into a permanent grasp on a steering wheel, I was greeted with cheers and friendly criticism by my faithful family. I completely captivated one of Laurie's friends—a young gentleman from Cub Scouts whose mother and father both know how to drive, and have for years—by running smack into the stone wall at the foot of our garden, something no one else has so far been able to do, since the wall is set approximately seven feet from the driveway and is clearly visible. Evenings, I studied a little book Eric had sold me, which told in graphic detail what to do in case the car skidded out of control, what to do in case the steering wheel came off in my hands (from this I got the vivid impression of running the car like a bobsled, and steering by leaning from side to side), and how to bandage a compound fracture.

My test, which I shall always believe was supposed to be a test of whether or not I could drive a car, I passed seemingly without effort, and with only one bad moment when, told to stop completely halfway up a hill which may well have been Mount Everest, I realized that the head inquisitor assumed with infinite amusement that I would be able to start again. He was a very patient man, and waited for several minutes, tapping his fingers gently against the window while I scoured my mind for Eric's directions on starting a car on a hill. (“Swing your wheel sharp? Turn down your lights? Keep one foot on the clutch and one foot on the brake and one foot on the starter ... ?”) “Well?” said the inquisitor, looking at me evilly.

I gestured competently with one hand, keeping the other one locked to the wheel in some obscure belief that only my grip on the wheel kept the car from rolling back down the hill. “State law,” I said carelessly. “Child coming, can't start.”

He glanced at me briefly and then craned his neck out of the window to see where a boy about twenty was sauntering down the sidewalk. I had hoped to distract his attention, and did, but I then discovered that it is not possible to be surreptitious about starting a stalled car on a hill. I firmly believe that the inquisitor gave me a license only because he was sure I could never start a car and so could never become a substantial menace on the highways.

Meanwhile, it had been decided who was to ride in front (Baby), I had learned to drive, the lessons had been paid for, and I had a little piece of official paper saying that I knew how to drive. We lacked only a car. This was adjusted by a gentleman who, saying he acted only from pure friendship, sold us one of
his
cars. He said he was very reluctant to part with it, particularly at that price, he said it was a better car than any of the new ones on the market, he praised its spark plugs and its birdlike appetite for oil.

“The cigarette lighter doesn't work,” I pointed out in a spirit of pure critical inquiry.

“Neither does the clock,” said my husband.

“And the fender is sort of caved in,” I added.

“Tell you what I'll do,” the man said. “I'll pay for the license plates.”

“Better get that cigarette lighter fixed right away,” my husband told me, as we surveyed our new car. “And the clock. Best to be on the safe side.”

“I'll have to find a place to get them fixed,” I said.

“Can't be too careful,” my husband said.

I got into the car and reasoned out how to start it and drove with great caution, in the middle of the road, to a garage that could be reached without a left turn, and there I talked for quite a while with a young man covered with grease and oil who had “Tony” written across the front of him in big red letters. “Got a nice car there,” he said, after I had told him we had just bought it, and what we paid for it, and had added trustingly that I had just learned to drive and had never before owned a car and knew nothing about cars or motors or, as a matter of fact, driving. “You're even going to have to tell me what gas to use,” I added laughingly.

Tony nodded soberly. “But you got a real nice car there,” he insisted, “for the price you paid, you couldn't get a better one. Needs a little attention, of course.” He laughed. “Wouldn't be a car if it didn't,” he told me.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “The cigarette lighter—”

“You take that clutch, for instance,” Tony said. He opened the door and pushed the pedal up and down reflectively. “Now I guess you don't know anything about the clutch, do you?” he asked. I shook my head, and he went on, “Well, it's a funny thing about the clutch. You go along for maybe one, two thousand miles and then all of a sudden . . .” He shrugged expressively. “You got a repair job costs you maybe two, three hundred dollars. Always better to get the clutch fixed in time, saves you money, expense, wear and tear.”