The Language of Men (23 page)

The kick of the ignition—an eruption—cued the engine's beautiful rumble. Great gray puffs of smoke rose above the trunk. I checked my mirrors. Adjusted my seat. Buckled my belt. This was not Mom's Taurus. No air bags here, no padded steering wheel. No cruise control. No shoulder straps. No power brakes. I backed the Dodge into the street and followed my father to the Expressway.

At some point on the drive home, I passed him. I looked over and nodded at him sternly, as if I were a big-rig truck driver. He grinned, chewing a little piece of gum slowly. The rumble of the engine eased into a steady vibration. The wheel seemed to turn on its own, anticipating the curves in the road. I watched the slide show of sky and pine trees on the hood. The road signs I knew so well, the town names and exit numbers I'd watched from the backseat for years were different now, smaller, as if the windshield were a backward telescope. I saw my father in the rearview, his bald head above the wheel of his Chevy. I kept looking at him, glad he was there but at the same time wishing I was alone, completely alone on the highway, driving in total silence in the car I bought with my own money, more money than I'd ever held, let alone spent. A wave of adrenaline surged through me. The asphalt world stretched out before me, and as I accelerated, the dotted lines blurred into a single white strip.

And then I broke down.

The throttle linkage had busted loose in the middle of the highway. I was giving it gas and going nowhere. I pulled over and my father quickly repaired it with some wire he had in his glove box. When we got home, he tinkered with it for the rest of the afternoon.

"No big deal," he said. "Easy fix."

We began the year-long restoration process. My father continued to shave a few hundred bucks off his paycheck. We didn't tell my mother. I started painting houses for my cousin to pay for the Dodge. I liked being outside, doing manual labor, working with tools. I liked the routine of coffee and bagels in the morning, big deli sandwiches for lunch, blasting music all day. This felt right. This was what I expected work to be: rise early, work hard, sleep well.

My father showed me how to use Bondo to fill in the rust holes. Scoop out the red goop with a putty knife and spread it evenly over the chewed metal. Sand it smooth with a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a wooden block to avoid leaving fingerprints. He repeated several tips almost every time we were in the driveway: Always check your fluids. Keep at least a quarter tank of gas. Pump your brakes.

When the car was finally ready for paint, we took off the emblems, the mirrors, the bumpers, the grille and put them on the lawn. I stopped for a second. The Dodge looked like an old man getting ready for bed, his dentures beside him on the nightstand.

"Man, wait'll she comes back," my father said. "You won't even recognize her. Remember when the Chevy was painted?"

I remembered. My father took a picture of me sitting on the step-side of the Chevy, my knees almost to my chest, the fresh red paint blazing around me like fire. My father hung the picture in the garage next to the picture of me sitting on the stepside of the truck when it was gray, my feet dangling above the driveway. Beside an old shot of my father's Triumph motorcycle—Grim Reaper airbrushed on the gas tank—there were two dim photographs of my brother's cars, the Volare and the Buick. There were no pictures of the restoration process, no images of the Volare or the Buick patched with Bondo. No shots of my father bending beside the fender, Don leaning over his shoulder, listening to my father's instructions on how to repair rusted metal. No pictures of my father and Don holding golden trophies beside their gleaming cars, validating their work. These pictures did not exist. There were only the two dim shots of Don's cars, later used to prove their original conditions to the insurance company.

"Yeah, boy," my father said in the driveway. "When she's done, she's gonna look mint."

I couldn't wait to see Billy with the '72 Olds look up from his sausage sandwich and see me rolling in behind my father. Greg with the '66 GTO would be right behind him, standing up on his toes to get a look at the Dodge. I'd tell
The Automotologist
he'd better print a sign up for me. It felt a little weird not driving to the show with my father. I saw him in the rearview, chewing gum, his wrist resting on top of the wheel. Sometimes it felt like he was close enough to see my eyes move and that he knew when I was looking back. Other times he seemed too far away.

We registered and rolled through the rows of cars and trucks. I saw Billy with the '72 Olds and a few other guys check us out. My father and I parked next to each other in the shade.

"I thought Billy was gonna shit when he saw you roll in."

The Dodge did look good. We picked an aggressive red, somewhere between fire and blood. It complemented the black interior, made the new bumpers and mirrors pop. I borrowed some of my father's spray-on wax to clean the dirt and pollen off the hood. He did the same, then took out the chairs. I unloaded the cooler from my trunk.

"Let's do it," I said. We headed over to the swap meet.

Around four, they started announcing the winners. Even though my father took first once, he'd be the first to tell you it was only because the competition was light that day. The guys who took first were rich and retired. Their cars were full restorations, right down to the last washer. We did what we could.

My father took second. He stood with his arms crossed, waiting for the judge to announce my class. The judge called out a two-way tie for third—a ratty orange El Camino and an ugly silver Mustang. I knew I had them beat. My father looked over and nodded.

"Okay. In second place," he shuffled through some papers; the microphone squealed, "we got Anthony's '66 Do-"

"Yeah, boy!" My father yelled out and squeezed my neck. I started laughing, and walked up to get my trophy. When I turned around, my father was waiting for me, halfway between the crowd and the trophy table. Billy's Olds took first. My father and I heard them announce it as we compared trophies at the back of the crowd.

We hung around for a while, listening to the engines start up and then fade away. The sausage guy climbed down from his truck and dumped out a stainless steel bin full of grease. He got back in and drove out through the front gates.

My father had been talking about taking pictures of my car and his truck, parked next to each other, on the opposite side of the fairgrounds. The grass was fuller on that side, and the pine trees formed a natural wall, blocking out the highway. We hopped in and drove over.

My father made a wide turn, pulling in at an angle. I did the same on the opposite side, angling the front end of the Dodge toward the truck. We got out and my father snapped a few pictures.

"That looks good, right?" He snapped a few more.

"Yeah, it looks awesome."

We wanted to take one with both of us standing in front, but everyone else had already left. We'd stayed so long we'd lost track of time.

On the way home, thick clouds of steam billowed from the front of the Dodge. It smelled horrible, like there was a bonfire of plastic trapped under the hood. My face flushed. I lifted my foot off the gas but didn't brake. I just coasted, letting the road pull a little, slowing me down. My father blew the Chevy's air horn, and I saw him stabbing his finger toward the shoulder. I pulled over.

"You fuck. You motherfucker." My father stuck a rag in the radiator to stop the antifreeze from gushing out.

"What happened?" I stood behind him, rubbing my palm with my thumb.

"The fuckin' radiator cap blew."

The inside of the hood was dripping with antifreeze. It left ugly green streaks on the valve covers and boiled in little puddles on each manifold bolt. The distributor cap was pock marked, the battery cables soaked.

"Get another rag, huh?"

I ran to the trunk and grabbed all the rags.

He wiped down all the cables and bolts. He let some rags sit and soak up the puddles.

I stood next to him for a while, watching him clean off the engine and then I walked back to his Chevy and climbed in. When the tow truck came, my father flicked his Winston and lit another. He watched the driver place the long steel supports behind the tires. When the driver was ready to go, my father slowly walked back to the truck. It took about a half hour to get home and we spent it in silence, the Dodge dragging in front of us.

After my father paid the tow truck driver, he pulled the Dodge into the driveway. He got out and popped the hood. With his white handkerchief, he polished the valve covers, the carburetor, each manifold bolt. I stood behind him, watching him work. When he was finished, he closed the hood and went inside. I stood in the driveway and stared at the Dodge. The exhaust pipes ticked, a faint puff of steam seeping out from beneath the hood like breath.

I barely drove the Dodge in the winter. My father said the snow and salt would ruin the paint. It sat in the driveway, underneath a dark blue cover, and the snow piled up in three thick squares—one on the hood, one on the roof, and one on the trunk. After a storm, I'd go out and clean off the snow.

On bright, dry winter days, I drove the Dodge and listened to the engine. When I accelerated, I heard a noise like a bomb ticking. Once, I tried to yield to a tractor-trailer on the Expressway and the brake pedal dropped to the floor. I swerved onto the shoulder, coasting over the rumble strip, until the dirt and gravel slowed me down enough to shift into park with a loud bang. I popped the hood. The brake lines were bone dry.

I didn't tell my father. I kept the Dodge's flaws to myself, unless they were impossible to hide. If I could top off the fluids or fix a flat without him knowing, I would. I wanted all the internal parts to seem as perfect as the external—the bright chrome, the blood-red paint as bold and powerful as each piston pumping inside the engine. To take the whole car apart, to bring each piece into daylight, would be like staring at the anti-smoking poster hanging in health class, the one where a woman's face is covered in black, sticky tar. The caption asked us if we'd still smoke if what happened on the inside, happened on the outside. Full car restoration starts inside and moves outward, but my father and I didn't have the money. Instead, we patched the body and gave the surface a glossy coat.

MIA MOVED AWAY to school. For the first couple of months, she tried to convince me to come visit. I did a few times, but eventually, we stopped returning each other's calls. It was harder than I thought. I remember sitting in the kitchen, crying to my mother about not being able to see Mia. Perhaps I still missed my old friends, or perhaps my crying was a desperate attempt to get out of my busboy job that night, or maybe I really did miss Mia. Wherever my tears came from, they were uncontrollable. As my mother tried to comfort me, my father walked into the kitchen.

"What's the scoop?"

"Nothing," my mother said. "I think he misses his girlfriend." I looked up at my father. He was confused. Another round of tears poured out of me.

"God damn, boy. You gotta toughen up."

"Donny," my mother said, but my father shook his head. He refilled his bowl of peanuts and walked back into the living room. I told my mother to get away—that I was fine. She backed off. I grabbed my coat and went to work.

Most of my new friends moved away that year, too. Marlon went to art school in Baltimore, just like he said he would, and he'd call me every now and then and tell me details about dorm rooms and beer pong and late-night pizza binges. I could tell by the way he was breathing that he was smoking weed or a cigarette or a mix of both. He seemed to linger in each exhale, as if giving me time to wrap my head around how different his life was from mine.

"Nobody knows me here, dude. You can be whoever you want."

I took the bus to visit him because I wasn't sure the Dodge would make it. My father preferred that I drive the Dodge only short distances.

Most days, I took my mother's Taurus to class and left the Dodge in the driveway beneath its blue cover. I didn't mind that much. It was better on gas, and I didn't have to worry about getting it dirty. I held the wheel with one hand, ate gooey egg sandwiches from the other. I wiped my hands on my jeans and tossed the wrappers in the back. I didn't have to check the weather or think about where to park. I could just go.

I sat in the parking lot before class, watching my English professor shuffle through the dead leaves on his way to the low brick buildings. Except for a single row of dorms painted hospital green, it was a commuter college. No one I talked to was entirely sure why they were there, as if they got into their cars wearing their high school graduation gowns and coasted into the parking lot. Stepping out, they scratched their heads, bought their books and went to class.

The few times I drove the Dodge to school, I parked at the back of the lot, far away from the other cars. On my lunch break, I sat in my car, the smell of greasy hamburgers and French fries overpowering the naked lady air freshener that dangled from my emergency brake pedal. I wiped my hands on my pants and watched the granules of salt tumble between the seats.

When I finished eating, I rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. There were a few other students who drove classic cars and parked as far away as I did, but we also parked far away from each other. We pretended we didn't see the other pull up or eat his lunch or light his cigarette. Our exhales rose like smoke signals, vanishing in the air.

I began spending my afternoons at my cousin Shannon's house. She was an English teacher, and she helped me prepare my applications. I wanted to transfer, to leave community college and go to Boston. I focused on that word: transfer. Transference. I saw my life as a decal, a sticker peeled off one bumper and placed onto another. Would it be possible to take all of me with me, to scrape off every piece of glue that once held me and transfer it to another place?

I thought about that as I drove my car around potholes or walked to its distant spot in the parking lot. One rainy day, the Dodge sat in the driveway beneath its blue cover. My brother asked me for a ride to the train station.