Dad picks me up from LAX in a blood-red Ferrari. There’s hardly any trunk and it takes a long time to get my shit in the car. Everyone’s looking at us; Dad’s wearing gold-rimmed Louis Vuitton sunglasses.
On the highway, Dad dribbles fingers on the steering wheel, goes, “Pretty rad, huh?”
“It’s cool,” I say. Dad’s always driven—and I never really thought about this—a station wagon because he’s got one kid with his old girlfriend and one with his new girlfriend. I’ve always shared rooms with my “brothers” while staying here summers. His old apartment sucked, but his new girlfriend has a house, at least.
“What’s Mike driving now?” Dad says. Mike’s my stepdad.
“A Maserati,” I say. I almost lie and say a Hyundai, which is my mom’s car.
Dad’s grin twitches, but he nods. “Cool, cool. So,” and he lowers his sunglasses, “you want to drive this son-bitch?”
“I don’t have a license.”
Dad jerks the car over, cutting off a truck, which lays on its horn, and he says, “She hasn’t taken you yet?” meaning my mom.
I shake my head.
“That figures,” he says. “I know a place.”
He drives to this empty parking lot. “Have you driven a stick?”
I shake my head. I have. With Mike.
“So Mike hasn’t taught you?” he says, grinning.
I shake my head. Mike’s been teaching me for months.
“Word. I’ll show you.”
Dad’s a personal trainer, a big guy, so it takes him a minute to crawl out of the driver’s seat. “Low to the ground, though,” he mutters.
I want to ask him how much the car costs, if it’s his new girlfriend’s—she’s some kind of business lawyer—but of course I don’t.
Well, maybe she bought it for him. My mom’s been cutting back my allowance. She says it’s time I get a job. But if I do and it hurts my grades, she’ll sell my car and I can ride the school bus.
When I roll in to drive, he Bluetooth’s AC/DC or Metallica—some 90s stuff—on the soundsystem, crazy loud. We have to shout over it while he tells me how to switch gears; I pretend like I don’t know how while he pretends not to notice me pretending.
“This baby has twice the horsepower of a Maserati—what kind of Maserati is it?” Dad screams over the ear-splitting metal. “Mike has?”
“I’m not sure,” I lie. It’s a GranTurismo, way more comfortable than this Ferrari, which is killing my ass.
Last month, on the way back from the drive-in movie, I accidentally called Mike “Dad.” When we got home, my mom gave me this big, sloppy hug. Now Mike keeps asking me to throw baseballs, keeps buying me equipment I already have, taking me out for ice cream.
I mean, he’s a nice guy.
“You’re doing awesome,” Dad says as I circle the parking lot. He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder, then leans back and grins, folds his hands behind his head, which inflates his biceps. “Hell yeah, bro. We’re doin’ awesome.”
Halfway through my stays in California, my mom always calls, and during these calls, Dad paces outside in the hallway, too big and bulky to be sneaky about snooping. My mom puts Mike on the phone to check in, which is unprecedented. There’s lots of “uh huh-ing” and “So—what’s up?” and silences. I keep expecting him to ask me who my favorite superhero is, his go to until around the time I started driving. Finally, I tell him about Dad’s Ferrari. After a pause, I hear Mike typing. He begins robotically listing Ferrari facts—like historical ones. Finally, I guess he’s exhausted the Ferrari Wikipedia page and he says, “Well, alright—miss you, dude!” and I say, “Miss you, too,” hang up, and feel guilty for some reason. I discover Dad looking caught out and nervous in the hall. He tells me that they’ve recalled new GranTurismos for faulty airbags.
The day before I’m supposed to fly home, Mike and my mom pull up in Dad’s driveway.
According to my mom, my parents despise each other. Dad rarely mentions her. They divorced when I was little and never talk on the phone, only communicate via long, angry text messages.
I’ve seen them; they go on for pages.
On rare occasions Dad and Mike are in the same room or parking lot or whatever they’ll exchange like, maybe, five words.
Mike leaps out of his Maserati and walks a theatrical circle around the Ferrari, fingers hooked in belt loops, whistling appreciatively and stuff. Dad and I have come out on the porch.
“We thought we’d check out Disneyland!” my mom says, but she’s got this numb, lost look.
Dad charges down onto the lawn. “What the hell, Kate? He’s mine another day. You didn’t even call.”
Mike, who’s not a small guy, just skinny and older—a middle school chemistry teacher who looks like a middle school chemistry teacher and was my middle school chemistry teacher—flinches back, then says, “So, this is the famous car! I bet she flies!”
Dad glides past my mom and Mike and stands admiring the Maserati. “That’s a GranTurismo, huh? What year?”
At the end of the drag strip, I stand watching Dad and Mike climb into their respective sports cars.
“Love you, son,” Dad says and shoots me a wink.
“Ah… love ya, dude,” says Mike. He gives me a thumbs up. “Wish me luck.”
“Love you guys,” I say, and watch them roar off.
