God and poker saved your father\u2019s life. You\u2019ve heard variations of this your whole childhood: at produce stands, department stores, the diner where you eat supper every Tuesday night. You\u2019ve heard it at his auto shop a million times. He tells customers in the lobby, out in the lot. He\u2019ll thump his cane against their tires and say, \u201cGod and poker saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pieces and parts of his stories are always in motion, always changing. Sometimes he won the cigarette case off a soldier with a straight flush, other times eights and queens. Sometimes it was an officer, other times a kid fresh out of Camp McCoy. Sometimes they were at the Battle of Bloody Ridge, other times the Punchbowl. Sometimes the air tasted like honey, sometimes it was too hot to breathe, and sometimes it was so cold they had to sleep four men to a foxhole. Sometimes he could hear the enemy fire approaching as he laid demolition wire, other times it was an ambush\u2014no warning.<\/p>\n
The only part that never changes is how the cigarette case stopped a bullet meant for his heart, but not the one that severed his tibial nerve. He always rattles his cane and jokes, \u201cGod\u2019s gotta keep you humble.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all his storytelling, if he ever mentions your mother it\u2019s only to say he met her on a bus to Atlantic City after the war. Another lucky day. But when people ask about her\u2014because they always want to know where she is now\u2014he says, \u201cI\u2019m afraid she\u2019s gone.\u201d He likes to make it sound as if she\u2019s dead, not off living another life. This is easier. It\u2019s like God and poker. People want stories that make sense, that don\u2019t leak.<\/p>\n
And, of course, when you follow him around with his tools, they always ask about you.<\/p>\n
\u201cA girl mechanic?\u201d they say.<\/p>\n
Your dad always corrects them. \u201cThe Junior Mechanic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re not at school, you spend every moment with your dad. In the afternoons, you walk to his auto shop on Madison. You do homework in a room that smells like rust after a rain. When the other mechanics call in sick, your dad hollers at you to drop the books and get in the garage.<\/p>\n
He leans against open hoods while you hold his cane. It\u2019s still warm from his touch, heavy in your hands. He teaches you to use wrenches, to wheel yourself under engines, to report what you see. When his leg is acting up, he talks you through repairs. Tells you which bolts to loosen, which wires to disconnect, which parts of the engine you should never, ever touch without his supervision.<\/p>\n
At school, other girls scrunch their noses when you enter the classroom. The boys don\u2019t look at you at all. Your teacher hands you yellow slips of paper and tells you to report to the principal\u2019s office. You sit on plastic chairs in the hallway, unable to return to class until you\u2019re following the dress code. It\u2019s always Aunt Mary-Claire who arrives to recuse you, and she always walks with a cigarette in one hand and a tartan dress in the other. Hunter green, scarlet red, bumblebee yellow.<\/p>\n
She leads you to the bathroom. You change inside the stall. She flicks ashes in the sink. \u201cYour dad,\u201d she says. \u201cI swear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once dressed, you hand her your old clothes. She untangles the knots in your hair. Licks her thumb to scrub stains from your neck. The bathroom smells like the garage. Rust and rain. Her combs hurt your scalp. When you cry for her to stop, she yanks harder.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should have been a boy,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019d be easier for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
You watch yourself transform in the water-spotted mirror. The pain does not make you beautiful, just cleaner. Sometimes there\u2019s a knock at the door and then a teacher bops her head inside and says, \u201cYou can\u2019t smoke here, ma\u2019am!\u201d<\/p>\n
Aunt Mary-Claire sucks her cigarette and says, \u201cThis place.\u201d<\/p>\n
You still go to work after school. Your hair smoothed, your cheeks pinched, your shoulders tight inside the tartan dresses.<\/p>\n
Your dad leans at the register, flipping through books on probability. \u201cGot a full garage, Junior.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m all dressed up,\u201d you say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen change,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When your dad is out of town, you spend long weekends at Aunt Mary-Claire\u2019s. You sleep on the living room couch. All night, orange light buzzes through the curtains. In the daytime, you find places to hide. All your cousins will eat is boxed mac and cheese. Aunt Mary-Claire always puts a squirt of mustard in with the milk. When Uncle Fred is home, everyone stays out of his way. Whenever the phone rings, Aunt Mary-Claire grabs her soft pack of Camels. If it\u2019s your dad, you can tell how well he did at the casino by how many cigarettes she lights. One means he\u2019s coming home with money. Two or three means he\u2019s telling stories: a pickpocket swiped his wallet at the airport; a loopy hotel clerk double charged him for the room; he got a flat tire driving back from Atlantic City and\u2014can you believe it?\u2014he, of all people, forgot to pack a spare.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You never become what anyone would call a good student, but you\u2019re not a bad one either. You breeze through math and English, but get marks taken off for handwriting. You swap sugar for salt in Home-EC, destroying cheesecakes. Every time you try to enroll in shop class, the guidance counselor says it\u2019s not safe for girls. Sometimes you feel like you exist in a bubble and while you can see out of it, no one else can see in. At lunch, you float through the cafeteria with bags of apples and ham sandwiches. Being invisible kills you, but it also feels like the thing that saves you. Boys never bother you. Girls don\u2019t tease you. Teachers forget your name. In class, they call you Katie or Laura or Becca and you don\u2019t correct them.<\/p>\n
Every day after school, you go to work. In tenth grade, you inherit an old set of coveralls a mechanic left behind when he got called up for Vietnam. He was small for a guy and your dad said, \u201cIt\u2019ll fit you perfect.\u201d Sometimes, as you button it, you picture the mechanic in dusty barracks, sweat-soaked, playing cards, telling stories about the blowhard he used to work for back in Cleveland, Ohio who claimed cigarette cases could stop enemy fire. Sometimes when you\u2019re wearing it, customers joke and call you \u201cFreddie,\u201d and you don\u2019t correct them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One day when you\u2019re stocking brake pads, a boy from high school stands at the counter. He\u2019s tall, dark-haired, and dressed in cross-country shorts. He doesn\u2019t notice you but his father, who\u2019s an older, balder version of him, glares at you from across the garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, Hank,\u201d he says, \u201cyou got any real mechanics working here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, Dan,\u201d Dad says, \u201cI\u2019m afraid Nixon sent \u2018em all to Saigon.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, you\u2019ve gone hippie now?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat can I do for you, Dan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my kid\u2019s first car. I want to make sure it\u2019s up to snuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAlright,\u201d Dad says, taking the keys. \u201cWe\u2019ll take her for a spin, let you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
You follow him to the parking lot, leaving your classmate and his father inside the shop. It\u2019s a nice car, a 1961 red Rambler convertible with white accents. Minimal dents and scratches. You sit in the passenger seat. Your dad tosses his cane in the back and takes the wheel. Warm wind hits your face, smelling of late summer and exhaust fumes. But the engine sounds like it\u2019s got a sack of quarters caught inside. Coins shaking in a cup.<\/p>\n
You find a paperback in the glove box: La Peste by Albert Camus. You flip pages, wondering if your classmate actually understands French or if he only pretends to. When you return to the shop, you slip the paperback inside your coveralls. You reach into the backseat and grab your dad\u2019s cane as he delivers the news.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe may be a looker,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019m afraid she\u2019s a clunker.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Later you sit in bed reading through the margins of La Peste, wondering if it\u2019s something your classmate needs for school. Are you the reason he\u2019ll have to tell his teacher he couldn\u2019t read the assigned chapters? In the margins, the notes are written in English. Sometimes in blue ink, sometimes pencil. The cursive is loopy and feminine. Neat. Precise. For some reason, this thrills you, imagining he writes like a girl.<\/p>\n
You trace your fingers over a handwritten note at the top of one of the pages:<\/p>\n
Can one be a saint if God does not exist?<\/p>\n
You fall asleep, wondering.<\/p>\n
In the morning, you still wonder. You fill the percolator with coffee and water and wonder why your dad, who never goes to church, would think God once helped him cheat at cards just so he could win a cigarette case to place in his pocket for when he got shot in the chest on the battlefield of a war with no clear-cut victory. Over breakfast, you ask if he really, truly, thinks God exists.<\/p>\n
He sips coffee and flips through the paper, pen in hand. The sports section, always sports. \u201cWell,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s more probable that He does than He doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what do you believe?\u201d<\/p>\n
He circles baseball scores. \u201cI believe in probability.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After school, you head to the library. It smells like hot leather and newsprint. You scour the fiction shelves, searching for Camus. You find an English copy of The Plague and sit down in a sunny window. You read with the French copy at hand, checking between the text and your classmate\u2019s handwritten notes. You scribble your favorite lines in a separate notebook, in a messy language only you can read.<\/p>\n
The town itself, let us admit, is ugly.<\/p>\n
A few days later, you find the red Rambler in the high school parking lot with the folding top down. You write a note in French, cobbled together from dictionary definitions and workbook examples:<\/p>\n
J\u2019aime un garcon qui lit Camus, mais il ne sait pas que j\u2019existe.<\/p>\n
You drop the paperback behind the passenger seat. You run away, feeling sick. It\u2019s a relief, the next day, when he walks past you in the hall. Never looking back.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You work the counter when your dad is out of town. Sometimes he calls and asks you to take money from the safe to a Western Union. But you\u2019ve seen the letters from the bank. You know the war is not the reason he can\u2019t keep a staff. Each time you try to talk to him about it, he says, \u201cIt\u2019s my money, Junior.\u201d<\/p>\n
You tell Aunt Mary-Claire in confidence. She of all people will understand.<\/p>\n
But she waves an unlit cigarette in her face\u2014the one she sucks on all day to help her quit smoking\u2014and all she says is, \u201cYour dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One summer day, you drive to Western Union in bubbling heat. The air is soupy, reeking of chlorine. You pass other auto shops. Lots filled with cars. Hoods popped. At stoplights, you notice wildflowers sprouting from cracks in the curb. Beauty in ugly places. It makes you think of La Peste, and how winter was the only pleasant time of year in Oran.<\/p>\n
You wire the money to your dad, trying not to imagine all the other things he ought to spend it on: new tools, the leaky roof, repaying the bank. He only believes in probability when the odds don\u2019t apply to him. You start to wonder if there\u2019s a difference between doing the right thing and doing what\u2019s expected. This is your dad\u2019s money, yes, but you already know that one day he\u2019ll call and there won\u2019t be anything left to send. What would Camus say?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The next time your dad calls from Atlantic City, you do as you\u2019re told. You open the safe, pack the cash, and head to Western Union. They don\u2019t open for another hour. Next door, you eat a plate of runny eggs and grab the newspaper the last customer left behind. You fill out the crossword puzzle, skim obituaries, read the classifieds. A 1961 red Rambler convertible is for sale down the street and you wonder if it\u2019s his.<\/p>\n
By the time you leave, the Western Union has opened but you keep walking, feeling the cash inside your front pocket. You head to the address listed in the classifieds. It\u2019s not a big house, not what you expected. One story, brick exterior, a bushy dogwood covering the front windows. The red Rambler sits in the driveway, facing the street, a sign in the windshield asking for six-hundred dollars. You know that\u2019s more than it\u2019s worth. You know what\u2019s inside.<\/p>\n
You walk up to the door and knock. Part of you hopes the boy who reads Camus will answer, but it\u2019s his father. Arms crossed, gazing down at you the same way he did at the shop\u2014like he\u2019s trying to figure out a math problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re Hank\u2019s girl,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll give you four hundred bucks for the Rambler,\u201d you say.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s six, sweetheart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know it\u2019s a clunker. My dad said so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what do you want it for then?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll give you four hundred,\u201d you say, holding the envelope. \u201cCash.\u201d<\/p>\n
This goes back and forth for a while, until, finally, he says, \u201cFine, you want it so bad, you can have it.\u201d He walks inside and returns with the keys and pink slip.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I give you some advice?\u201d he says. It doesn\u2019t sound like a question and he doesn\u2019t wait for your response. \u201cYou,\u201d he says, \u201ccould be a pretty girl. But you sure don\u2019t let anybody see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sack of quarters shakes inside your stomach. The way he gazes at you feels as if he\u2019s trying to both unpeel your skin and stitch it back together for you. Behind him, the house is dark and smells of lemon cleanser. Artificial and antiseptic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, thanks,\u201d you say, taking the keys.<\/p>\n
He lingers on the porch, watching as you head to the Rambler. The first thing you search for is the book, hoping\u2014for some reason\u2014it\u2019s still there. But the car is clean, the upholstery reeking of lemon cleanser. On the drive, the engine sputters. Smoke rises from the hood at traffic lights. Still, you take the scenic route home, along the lake. Charred oil and citrus in the wind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After you buy the Rambler, your dad\u2019s so mad he kicks you out of the house. He says not to come back to the shop either. He\u2019s done with you.<\/p>\n
You say he\u2019s got a gambling problem, and this was your way of trying to show him. \u201cYou\u2019d have just lost it,\u201d you say. \u201cLike you always do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is theft,\u201d he says, \u201cyou stole from me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not good at gambling. God, Dad, why can\u2019t you accept that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI take care of you. I provide for you. And this is how you repay me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen was the last time you picked up a wrench?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re just as stupid and selfish as your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
This hurts in an unexpected way. Not because you\u2019re scared of being like a woman you\u2019ve never known. It\u2019s because his intention is to hurt you. And, until then, you never thought any of the harm he caused you was on purpose.<\/p>\n
It takes everything to swallow your tears, to stop the quarters rattling in your gut.<\/p>\n
You race to Aunt Mary-Claire\u2019s. When you tell her what happened, you expect she\u2019ll offer you shelter, take your side. She\u2019s been through it with him too.<\/p>\n
Instead, she raises her soggy cigarette and shakes her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou two,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A week later, he calms down. He asks you to come home, come back to work. He never says he\u2019s sorry. Neither do you. This is just how it will be from now on: both of you knowing exactly who the other is. You need each other too much to compromise beyond that.<\/p>\n
He lets you keep the Rambler as long as you promise to fix it up and sell it for a profit. You work on it late at night, before school in the mornings. You take Polaroids and hang them around town. You decide to embrace it for what it is. She used to be a clunker and now she\u2019s looking for a second chance.<\/p>\n
You get six-fifty for her.<\/p>\n
But you tell your dad you only got five.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Years later, after the bank finally takes the shop, your dad goes on disability and moves in with Aunt Mary-Claire. The kids are out of the house and Uncle Fred\u2019s been gone for years. She doesn\u2019t seem to mind having her younger brother around. It\u2019s not a bad roll of dice for either of them.<\/p>\n
Whenever you\u2019re in town, you swing by their place. Your dad\u2019s almost always waiting for you in the driveway, ready to thump his cane against the tires of your new clunker, inspect the engine, fiddle with the controls.<\/p>\n
You always climb into the passenger seat and toss him the keys.<\/p>\n
On your drives, he tells stories. Coming from anyone else, these would be mundane accounts: trips to the grocery store, afternoons at the track, prescriptions for new glasses, how Aunt Mary-Claire cheats at Jeopardy!. But his stories are tales of suspense, the details sharp and polished. His pauses expertly planned around cliffhangers. Over the years, the more you hear him tell the same tales, the more you realize he\u2019s always tinkering with them. Always patching weak spots, tightening fuel lines, replacing loose bolts. He\u2019s untruthful, yes, but it\u2019s only because he knows you\u2019ll listen longer.<\/p>\n
When you stop for lunch, he knows everyone at the diner by name. The customers, the servers, the line cooks who lean out of ticket windows and say, \u201cHey, Hank, what\u2019s good?\u201d Your dad introduces you as the \u201cJunior Mechanic.\u201d Everyone already seems to know who you are, but he explains that you\u2019re his daughter who travels the world restoring old cars. He tells them how you scour junk yards for hidden beauties, how you rescue rusted-out classics from forgotten lots, how you document it all for glossy magazines. Your clients are millionaires, billionaires, big celebrities who collect antique convertibles. They fly you all over the world on their private planes. You once rescued a waterlogged 1964 Jaguar E-Type for an English duchess after she went on a bender and crashed it in a marsh. You spent a summer in Italy working on race cars. You ate octopus with Mario Andretti. You worked on movie sets in Hollywood for half a decade. You showed Michelle Pfeiffer how to drive stick shift. You know all the tricks behind the scenes\u2014what\u2019s real, what\u2019s not, who\u2019s phony. When he really starts exaggerating, you don\u2019t stop to correct him. You let him go on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The next time your dad calls from Atlantic City, you do as you\u2019re told. You open the safe, pack the cash, and head to Western Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","writer-meghan-louise-wagner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21167,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20691\/revisions\/21167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}