The Red Car Read online

  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.”

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

  THE 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.

  I was not sure, actually, that I wanted to read these pages. I wrote journal pages just to write them, never to revisit. Taped to the back cover was a sealed envelope, my name written on it with a black calligraphy pen. I recognized Judy’s handwriting.

  Judy had written me a letter.

  She had written me a letter.

  I could suddenly feel it, like a wave. Judy had died in this car. What was I doing, breathing that air? I struggled with the door handle, unable to get out quickly enough.

  “Don’t fix the car,” I told the mechanic.

  The mechanic looked at me.

  “What about the money?”

  I blinked. I did not understand the question.

  “I will fix the car and then I’ll sell it for you,” he said. “And I will give you the cash. We can work out the details. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, changing my mind again, quick as that. I did not feel any less panicked, but that did not matter. My father would be pleased with me. But I would not get back into Judy’s car. I was glad that was settled.

  The mechanic took my hand and led me back to his office. I sat down on the plastic chair across from his desk and was not surprised when he brought me a glass of water. It was easy to make fun of the hippies, but often they were kind. I knew, for instance, that when he sold the car, he wo
uld give me the money.

  “He might not,” Judy said. “I wouldn’t trust him.”

  Judy had a less favorable opinion of hippies.

  “Judy, my friend, she died in that car,” I told him, both hands on my water glass, afraid that I might drop it. “I don’t think anyone should drive it.”

  “You are probably right,” he said. “How about I sell it to a creep?”

  This made me smile.

  “She wrote me a letter,” I said.

  I showed him the envelope.

  “Your dead friend,” he said, gently. “You gonna read it?”

  “Not here,” I said.

  “Are you going to give me your phone number?”

  I looked at him.

  “So I can call you after I fix the car.”

  I nodded, dumbly. I wished that I had a cell phone. I gave him my home number, the one I shared with Hans. And then I wrote down my email.

  “It would be better if you emailed me. I share that number with my husband. Back in New York.”

  “You don’t wear a wedding ring.”

  I shrugged. I wondered if the mechanic was going to ask me on a date. There was nothing that I would like less. “It was uncomfortable,” I said. “When I did yoga.”

  This was true, though it had been a long time since I had taken a yoga class. I found it difficult to relax during a yoga class. My mind raced during the slow parts, I could not begin to do a headstand and I was always watching women more beautiful than I was, stretching more deeply than me. And while I had these inappropriate competitive thoughts during a nonjudgmental yoga class, I judged myself for my thoughts. Of course, I stopped going. I had also never liked wearing my wedding ring. We had bought matching gold bands at a discount jewelry store on Route 17 the day of the wedding. It was uncomfortable during yoga, uncomfortable when I slept. I worried about losing it when I swam in the ocean.

  “You wanna get high?” the mechanic asked.

  I tilted my head to the side.

  “You look.” The mechanic paused, as if searching for words. “You look as if you need something.”

  “No,” I said. “Not really.”

  The mechanic seemed to be waiting for something more.

  “I don’t want to get high,” I said.

  THE LETTER FROM JUDY

  Leah,

  If you are reading this letter, it means that I am most likely dead and you have found your journal under the seat of my car. I have held on to your journal for all these years, sometimes rereading it. It was difficult for me to read, you should know. Your handwriting is such a fucking mess, but I suspect that is on purpose. You are hiding from yourself as much as you are hiding from everyone else. Wearing clothing several sizes too large. Dating men who are not worthy of you. Men who are either indifferent to you or smother you with their love.

  I have never met a person so in need while also so unaware of how needy she is. I think that is why I hired you. And smart. Also, I liked you right away.

  It broke my heart when you left to go to graduate school, even though I was glad to see you go. I helped push you out the door, didn’t I? I knew it would be good for you.

  I know you will be a great writer. I know things, you don’t always believe me, but there are some things I know. You think leaving was all your idea, but I had threatened to fire you, hadn’t I? You never worked very hard, and after you left, my new assistant did a much better job. I never took her to lunch. We were not friends. I had learned my lesson.

  I loved you, Leah, though I don’t think you appreciated me. Because I was your boss and not your mother. Because you did not respect me for having an office job. You had this idea that your life would be so much more than mine. You never liked my red car. I am not stupid. I don’t think you thought that I was stupid. I don’t think you valued me enough.

  Here I am, writing you a letter to read when I am dead, believing that my words will mean something to you. It seems odd to me, choosing you, when I don’t believe you valued me enough. Shouldn’t there be someone else? Well, let me tell you: it is hard to find true love. Or just love. To love and be loved back. Also, you were young, you did not know better. You are still young. I have been lonely. I made peace with my loneliness long ago. It is hard to be five foot one and wear thick glasses and meet a man worthy of my wit and intelligence. All my life, I have been underestimated because of my height.

  My first husband was a drunk. He threw me down a flight of stairs and he said it was an accident and maybe it was an accident, but I still broke my arm.

  To tell you the truth, Leah, I also thought that my life would be so much more. I am not that old, only fifty-three, and I have enough money in the bank that there is no reason for me to kill myself now when I can buy a plane ticket instead and go to Hawaii. I know that if I were in the Pacific Ocean, swimming with sea turtles, something you wrote to me about once in an email, my outlook about life might be very different. I might not want to die. I could go to Italy and drink red wine and eat pasta and not give a damn about the calories. I might still want to die, but at least I would have had a good time before I go.

  I can’t explain it. Why I won’t go on a last vacation. I don’t think my life would turn into a Diane Lane movie. I don’t want to waste the time.

  I have taken to driving recklessly, closing my eyes while driving on a highway—just for a second at a time. Speeding through yellow lights.

  I am leaving you my car, which I think you also underestimated, and also some money. I am also hoping that you will figure out, now that I am dead, that you actually did love me. Though we haven’t emailed in a while, too long, I know you need money. Because you chose to be an artist. Because you married someone you probably shouldn’t have.

  If I leave Leah money, I think to myself, she can leave her husband. Presumptuous, right? I know my advice to you was one of the reasons why you stopped talking to me—and I have always regretted that. Because I miss you. But it was also impossible for me to not tell you how I feel. I am sorry I read your journal. Or maybe, Leah, you left it in my car for me to read it.

  Do what you want, Leah. It might seem hard to believe me, seeing that I am dead, but I have lived the way I wanted to. I would even say that I was happy.

  One more thing. One last thing. I recently received an invitation to my niece’s bat mitzvah. My sister and I have not spoken in a long time. Perhaps I will be able to go. I bought a plane ticket and reserved a hotel room. Not Hawaii, not Tuscany, but Pennsylvania. I don’t believe I will be here, on this earth, on the day of the event, and therefore will be unable to attend. I would appreciate, if that is the case, if you would go in my stead. I have not seen my niece in many years. I dislike my sister, we haven’t gotten along, not since we were kids, but it occurs to me that most likely my niece is a perfectly wonderful girl. Perhaps she needed a hip older aunt like me to save her. I suppose that is my one regret. Go tell her that. Would you do that for me?

  I knew when I bought that car that I might die in it. I have really never loved anything as much as that red car.

  xox,

  Judy

  THE AUTO BODY SHOP WAS located in an industrial district. There was not a taxi to be caught. I did not have a cell phone to call Diego. I did not want to ask the mechanic for any more help, because I knew how that would go. He would be kind to me, let me use the telephone, and I would somehow feel like I owed him. I would go out to dinner with him, or coffee, or out to hear a band, and then have to tell him no, again, and sometimes, if I didn’t feel like saying no, I wouldn’t. Which was almost never a good idea: the random one-night stands in my life. Not that I would ever have sex with the mechanic. I just did not want to ask him to use the telephone.

  Though it occurred to me now that men had stopped hitting on me, as if I had become invisible once I got married. Until I bought this black dress.

  “No,” Judy said. “It’s the vibe you have been giving off.”

  “The vibe?” I asked. “What vibe?�
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  “It’s not good. Almost toxic. Your body language says stay away.”

  I changed my mind. I did not like having Judy’s voice in my head. She was dead. It was my choice to allow her to haunt me. Was it my choice? I could not predict what she would say. When she would say it. Nothing she said was comforting or easy.

  And there was another voice in my head, also nagging me, that I wasn’t listening to at all, Hans, who I knew was getting progressively angrier at me for not calling. Even though I had already called once. That morning. I had hung up on him. Shit. He would want to hear from me again. I had not had a chance to call. I could have asked the mechanic to use his phone, but that occurred to me only now, as I walked aimlessly in what I was pretty sure was the right direction toward I did not know what. I couldn’t even get myself to ask the mechanic to call me a taxi, let alone make a personal call. I walked past a bus stop just as a bus pulled to a stop, and so I got on it, not entirely sure which direction it was going.

  “The Castro,” the driver said.

  I didn’t have a bus card.

  “You can’t buy them on the bus,” the driver said.

  I blinked.

  “I just came from a funeral,” I said.

  I realized that might not have made any sense, given the neighborhood I was in, but I was wearing a black dress.

  “Just have a seat,” the driver said.

  I moved back quickly, so as not to attract any attention, taking a seat in the back row. Muni. I was remembering how it worked: my Fast Pass, a monthly bus card instead of a MetroCard. I used to buy mine at the small market across the street. What else? What else had I forgotten about living in San Francisco? The views, always sneaking up on me, the bookstores, Golden Gate Park, the sea lions at Pier 39. The ocean. The burritos. Italian food in North Beach.

  But I had left. I had left because I was stuck. I had left because after two years of working for Judy, I was afraid I was too comfortable at my job and would never go anywhere, do anything. I left because I had this boyfriend who never seemed to care when I broke up with him, but was always happy when I came back. I left to get away from all of those things. I left to be a writer. I left to get a graduate degree.