The Red Car (7 page)

“This is a lovely spot,” I said.

The barn looked like something Judy would want to paint. It was right on the water.

“She left instructions,” Diego said. “For the funeral. She set aside money for it. She had been painting here for years. Beverly did everything.”

“I thought they had a falling-out,” I whispered. I did not know why I was whispering. I tried to remember the last funeral I went to. It had been for Hans's ninety-year-old grandmother in Austria. She had been a schoolteacher in a one room school during the war. Before her death, the family had grown exasperated with her. She had become notorious for repeating the same stories about the war, telling them over and over, as if always for the first time. I wished that I could have listened to these stories but she only spoke German. The service had been in German.

“On again, off again,” Diego said. “These older single ladies. They are like cats. They were friends when she died.”

I felt slightly offended by this comment but I didn't respond. There were three rows of benches, filled with people I both knew and did not know. Judy's paintings hung in the barn. She painted flowers and cats. Which is not to minimize the quality of her work. I loved flowers and cats and her work was actually quite good. Beverly had said she had left me a painting and I wondered which one it would be.

Beverly was already there, wearing a flowered dress and Mary Janes. She came over to me and gave me a warm hug. I had literally not given her a single thought over the years and there she was.

“So sad” is what she said and I nodded my head in agreement.

I said hello to other people from the office; two building managers, men in suits whose names I could not remember, the Englishwoman who took the calls at the customer service
desk, her name was Hailey, and Ruby, the receptionist at the front desk who had never liked me. There was a cluster of older women who I guessed were from Judy's painting class. There was a guy in his fifties wearing a leather jacket and wire-rimmed glasses. He had a goatee. Maybe a boyfriend. Occasionally Judy had them. He also could have been another painter.

I felt like I did not belong there.

I wobbled in my shoes.

“How does this work?” I whispered to Diego, who, for reasons I did not understand but was grateful for, stayed close to me.

“I hate funerals,” he said.

I nodded, because this made sense to me. I had only been to two. There had been Hans's grandmother, an affair that had been completely without meaning. Afterward we had gone to a traditional restaurant where I ate spaetzle and drank too much beer. I also had an aunt who died of leukemia when I was thirteen, and that funeral was completely surreal. Her boyfriend at the time was an epileptic alcoholic from Copenhagen and at one point during the reception, he went off to throw up in the bushes. I could not bear to look at my cousins, because it seemed too awful, losing their mother, and I had never gotten along with them. They had grown up in the country and did not do well in school.

It occurred to me again that I had so little experience with death. Thinking that was a horrible thought, a little bit like Jinx, because now that I had thought it, perhaps I had willed someone I knew to die. My mother, my father. Diego. I took Diego's hand. I wondered if we would have sex.

“You might,” I heard Judy say, but Judy was dead.

It was weird how she had started talking to me. Unnerving. Where had she been, all these years? Why had she allowed me to drift away? We were at her funeral and I was married and Diego did not want to have sex with me. He had made that clear a long time ago. I was not allowed to have thoughts about having sex with Diego. I was married. I had been choked by my husband. Did that change the rules? I wondered what Judy thought about that. Nothing. She thought nothing about that. But I was at her funeral and perhaps I was not supposed to be thinking critical thoughts.

Beverly stood up at the front of the barn and the room quieted. “We are here to say good-bye to our dear friend Judy,” she began.

I was crying. It was ridiculous. It was embarrassing. I hoped that Judy would not be mad at me.

I
FOUND MYSELF THINKING ABOUT DOLPHINS
during the service. How beautiful they were. Sometimes, on the weekends when I was in graduate school in Louisiana, I would drive my car to Biloxi, Mississippi, where I would take a boat to Ship Island. It was a short ferry ride, which I loved. You almost always saw dolphins in the water, swimming alongside the ship. There were dolphins in the water in the Gulf of Mexico. I had not known that before I went to school there.

I would go to Ship Island by myself and I would swim. Even from the beach, you could see dolphins, leaping from the water and their gentle return back into the sea. It was a magical place.

I remembered writing Judy an email about Ship Island, about going there by myself, the sun on my face, the dolphins. How I loved it there.

The crazy thing about Ship Island was that it no longer existed, not the way that I remembered it. There were a series of hurricanes and, at least for a short period of time, the island had been swallowed up by the sea. I read that repairs had been made, the visitors facility rebuilt. It was a place where I had been happy, but I would never go back again. That part of my life was over.

A
FTER THE FUNERAL, JUDY'S ECLECTIC
group of friends and co-workers went to a nearby Mexican restaurant for lunch. Diego ordered a pitcher of margaritas. I licked the salt on the edge of my glass. I drank my drink too quickly. I liked the salt. I felt sad about the dolphins. Melancholy. I felt floating unexplainable melancholy. Loss.

Beverly took my hand.

“After lunch,” she said. “We'll go see the car.”

I had forgotten already. Judy had left me her car in the will. I hadn't driven in years, not since moving to New York. Really, the only time I had ever driven was when I was in graduate school when the supermarket was three miles away and the mall was four, and driving was absolutely essential.

“I don't want the car,” I said. “Judy died in it.”

Diego poured me another margarita.

The man with the leather jacket and the wire-rim glasses came up to me and shook my hand. “She told me all about you,” he said.

“Who?” I said.

Okay, I was drunk already. There had been actual lunch at the restaurant, tacos and guacamole, and somehow all I had been able to do was drink. I picked up a chip and I dipped it in the guacamole and I ate it. It was good, so good. I didn't know who this man was but somehow, he knew who I was.

“I haven't seen her in years,” I said.

He shrugged. “That doesn't change a thing,” he said. “Love is what it is and she loved you.” I wanted to ask him who he was, but he said that he had to leave.

“Guy is an asshole,” Beverly whispered to me. “He totally played with Judy's heart.”

“He spent her money, too,” Diego added.

“A boyfriend,” I said.

“I wouldn't call him that,” Beverly said.

But it was something. If not love, maybe sex. Someone. At least Judy had gotten laid. I didn't like the idea of Judy dying alone.

“But I did die alone,” Judy said, matter-of-fact. “I was alone in my car. Though I guess you could also say that I was with my car. I loved my car.”

But then, I wanted to argue with Judy, everyone dies alone. You can't die with another person, or even if you do, like in an earthquake or a car accident or a fire, or in a hospital bed with a lover holding your hand, your actual death is still a solitary thing. Why did I want to pick a fight about this in the first place, when I wanted to believe that Judy hadn't been alone? Of course she was. It occurred to me that I did not know a thing, which made me wonder why I thought I could be a writer. It was time to leave the restaurant. I ate some more guacamole.

Beverly told me that lunch was over. The funeral was over. The busboy began to clear the table. Diego was holding my hand. “Thank you,” I said.

I had two more weeks in San Francisco.

We drove back into San Francisco to see the car. Diego dropped me off at the garage. Beverly had forgotten her promise to take me.

“Aren't you coming in with me?”

“I have work to do, sweetheart,” he said. “It's a workday.”

I don't know what I had thought. That he would take care of me, not leave my side. I did not even know where I was sleeping that night. I did not like how he called me “sweetheart.” I felt dismissed by the word.

“Drive back to the office when you are done here and meet me,” he said. Which was a little bit better. But somehow not actually better.

“Won't the car be undrivable?”

“Then take a taxi.”

“I could take the bus.”

“Don't take the bus,” Diego said. “You're overdressed.”

I nodded, unsure. Maybe Diego had fulfilled his obligation to me. Or to Judy. I was married. I was not supposed to allow my feelings to be so easily hurt.

“Can't you stay?” I asked him.

Diego shook his head ruefully. “Judy died the week quarterly reports are due. I have to put in a budget. I might have to work late tonight. I don't know yet.”

My carry-on bag was still in the trunk of his car. I decided not to say anything. Even if Diego and I hadn't talked about it, I would sleep at his apartment tonight. Where else would I go? It was what I wanted to do.

I could almost see Judy nodding. Oh, how I missed her. Now. Now, I missed her. Now.

“That is the whole point,” she said. “About being on this earth. Doing what you want to do. That is what I did. Also, you are right. You can be an idiot. I forgive you.”

I
T TURNED OUT WHAT JUDY
had wanted to do was die. She had left a letter for me to find in her car.

T
HE MECHANIC SEEMED PLEASED TO
see me. I did not have to introduce myself.

“You the owner of the red car?”

I nodded and followed him from the office to the back of the garage.

“How did you know?”

“They told me you were coming today.”

That, then, was not much of a mystery.

I blinked when I saw Judy's car. I felt the margaritas turn in my stomach and I wondered if I would throw up. I could taste the bile in the back of my throat, as if I had caught the vomit and pushed it back down. There I was, face-to-face with Judy's red car. The entire left side was smashed in, the face of the car that had killed her imprinted in the metal.

Oh, how I knew that smashed-in car. We had driven over the hills of San Francisco. This car had taken me to so many lunches, dropped me off on the rare days that I had worked late. Taken me to Marin and Sonoma, and once, a weekend in Mendocino. I had never liked this car. As a passenger, I had always felt much too low to the ground. Unsafe. Jostled. Bumped over every bump. I had never gotten past the new car smell. But I had never told Judy this, because she loved her car.

“You can't fix it, can you?” I asked the mechanic. I wanted the answer to be no.

“Sure, I could,” the mechanic said. “It's just bodywork. A lot of bodywork.”

The mechanic had a long beard; he wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt. This reminded me of my husband, who had a short beard and owned a handful of Grateful Dead T-shirts. I averted my eyes from the skeleton on the mechanic's T-shirt.

“Won't it cost a lot?”

“Insurance is going to cover it.”

“Won't it cost as much as the car is worth?” I asked.

“Just about,” the mechanic said. “But like this, sweetheart, the car is worth nothing. I fix it, you have a red car and I get a lot of money.”

“Okay,” I said. I did not know why everyone was calling me sweetheart.

“Okay?”

“Okay, fix it, I guess,” I said.

I had learned lessons about the value of money from my father. When I was still a child, he had explained to me over Chinese food that all wars were fought over money. I had argued passionately about the Civil War, about the emancipation of the slaves, and he had told me that slaves were worth good money, like an expensive horse or an automobile, and that the war was all about money. Nothing else. I remember the disappointment I felt. It was a lesson I did not want to learn. But, now, in the auto body shop, I was not going to throw away good money. I was not in any kind of position to do that. I would have the car repaired. I would sell it. Hans was writing a novel, too. We had to pay rent. I looked at the car. Judy's car.

“Can I sit in it?” I asked. “Just for a second?”

He nodded. I took a seat in the passenger side, my seat. I buckled my seat belt. I remembered the last place Judy and I had gone to lunch before I left for graduate school, a touristy restaurant right on the ocean, the Cliff House, because I told Judy I had never gone there.

“That is ridiculous,” she said. “They have terrific French onion soup.”

We took a three-hour lunch that day. We had French onion soup and gin and tonics, took a walk along the beach. I rolled up my pants and put my feet in the water. Judy said it was too cold. She shook her head fondly at me.

“I will miss you,” I said.

But I hadn't.

Or I did, but only for a short while. It wasn't as if she was my mother. Or a friend my own age. She was my boss, she had been my boss, and so it did not make sense to stay in touch. Not when what she had to say no longer pleased me. I had fit her neatly into a category that did not quite apply. Who else did I go for walks with along the beach, get along with like that? There was no one. There was no one else.

“I am sorry,” I told Judy now, sitting in her car.

She didn't answer.

I would have liked if she had answered.

I put my hand under the seat, I don't know why, and I found an old journal of mine. It was a Japanese notebook with a navy blue cover, skinny lines, filled until the second-to-last page with my illegible scrawl. I remembered how bereft I had felt when I lost that particular journal. I had looked everywhere for that book, torn up my apartment, gone into every café and bar I
frequented and asked if I had left it there. Now, I held it to my chest. Had it sat under the seat for years and years? Did Judy know that it was there? This had been the book I had written in, questioning my feelings for Daniel. My guilt about Alice, wasting away in front of me. Where I wondered, do I go to graduate school? Do I rent an apartment and live like a grown-up? What do I eat for breakfast? I opened it to a random page and closed it.