How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive (6 page)

So I made an appointment and we went in. It was on a Tuesday in the spring. Emily and I were planning a trip to Ireland that summer, and I remember that she brought a book on Galway to read in the waiting room. As we waited, she put her arm over my shoulder and we flipped through the pictures: bipolar castles, soggy streets, democratic fields of green.

Then a nurse called me in. As I stood up, Emily kissed me in the ear, which she did whenever she wanted to tell me something very good or very bad. “This is
right
,” she hissed. “I’m sure of it.”

“Me too,” I said.

I followed the nurse into a large room with a metal table attached to a ten-foot-long tube-shaped machine. The nurse had me take off my clothes and lay down on the table. Two needles came in and stood over me.

“Good morning—Mr. _____?” said the needle to my right. “Ready to go?”

“Will this hurt?” I said.

The needle made a guardrail face. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression,” he said.

I didn’t have a chance to ask him what that meant. The needles strapped my wrists and ankles in place, told me to brace myself, and drove small clusters of needles into my fingernails.

My mind went white, no-word, with pain. I screamed and wept. The needle chuckled. “Oh, come on,” he said. “Is it that bad?”

The other needle drove a cluster of needles into the bottom of my testicles. My white mind shuddered and turned. I pulled against the straps. “Easy, easy,” the needle to my right said. “Just imagine how you’ll feel when this is over. Like a new man, right?”

“Right,” I gasped.

“Just two more, OK?”

I nodded. He drove a lengthy needle into one of my ears and then the other.

Then he was leaning over me. “Mr. _____?” he said.

I opened my eyes.

“This table’s going to slide forward now, into this tube,” he said, and he put his hand on the machine behind my head.

“I can’t take any more needles,” I begged.

“No more needles,” he said, smiling. “This part’s easy—it’s just like a tanning salon.”

I nodded.

“OK, here we go.” He pressed a button and the tube slid forward.

Inside the chamber, the walls lit up and I was bathed in a strange-smelling light. I could feel that light communicating in some way with the needles that the needle had driven in; I felt a uniform pressure in my legs and chest and head, and a singing in my balls, hands and brain.

My breath began to slow down, and I became numb to the pressure. At some point I drifted off. I didn’t wake up until the table slid out of the tube. I opened my eyes and the needle was standing over me.

“I fell asleep,” I said.

“That happens,” the needle said, pulling the needles out of my hands. Then he held up a thick plastic bag. It was filled with an opaque, silvery liquid. “There it is.”

“That’s the writing?”

He nodded. “You’re all set, my friend. No more writing for you,” he said.

“Not even checks?” I joked.

He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.

•  •  •

As it turns out, though, Emily wasn’t a real woman. I’d written her, compiled from women I’d seen and wished I could know, plus some that had been my friends or partners along the way. I walked out into the waiting room and there was no one there—no woman, no book on Ireland.

After a few months, though, I came to accept this. In fact, I filed it as further evidence to support the decision I’d made. I mean, I’d
created
a woman, just as I had a terrible tree and the death of a loved one.

But then, in the year that followed, my father really did die, of a second heart attack, while working on the Pachysandra Trail, and it split open
my
chest: I lost my job, stopped going outside, didn’t want contact with anyone. All I wanted to do was write, to make something, something wonderfully fake, a power made of dust and blood that I could turn on when I needed it and turn off when I’d had enough. If I could write myself away from my own life, get lost, even fucking better.

So I went back to the clinic, spoke again to the needle. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “It’s a one-way procedure—we discard the writing immediately. The state requires that we do so.”

“What about a transplant—someone else’s writing?”

He rubbed his head.

“There’s so much I haven’t done yet,” I told him. “My mother—I haven’t written about her, or any of the great friends I’ve had. I’ve loved so many people, and I want to power every one of them.

“There must be something you can do,” I said.

The needle leaned in. “There’s a very controversial nose in California who does writing transplants, but with various outcomes,” he said. “The procedure is possible in theory, but it’s pretty dangerous. Your body might reject the writing you’re given.”

“It’s worth a try,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“Not in my opinion, no. Even if your body accepts it, _____, you’ll have
someone else’s
writing in your veins. Which means that you’ll sign your name differently, that you’ll have different stylistic tendencies. And
remember how much the removal hurt? That was a bee sting compared to what they’ll do to your vessels and veins in order to inject foreign writing into your blood.”

The procedure took fifteen hours to complete, but I was unconscious for two days and heavily sedated for the following two. When I finally woke up I felt worse than ever before. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. My head felt like someone was smashing hammers against the inside of my skull.

The next day I was able to sit up, to read a little. The Memory of My Father flickered into my room in the morning, and the Two Sides of My Mother brought me jell-o and iced tea.

That afternoon, the needle came by. He sat down and smiled dryly at me. “All the diagnostics look fine so far, which is very good news. How do you feel?”

“Sad,” I told him.

That spring, Colorado stole my brother. I came home to Longmeadow (a forgotten, out-of-circulation coin), and my parents told me the news. I walked in the doorway and they were just standing there.

“Colorado wants Bryan,” the Other Side of My Mother said.

“They’re in
love
,” One Side of My Mother said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “The
state
of Colorado?”

The Memory of My Father, who was sitting by the window, nodded. Through the glass I could see a pack of deer on the lawn, whispering among themselves.
Colorado
? one deer mouthed, and another nodded.

The four of us ate pizza together, and then I drove back home through the fog, thinking about it. I was distracted by the VW, though, who was acting up and asking to go to the strip club. “I’m in the
mood
,” he whined.

“I’m in the middle of dealing with something serious right now—a very big change in my brother’s life,” I told the VW. “We’re just going to have to go another time, alright?”

The fog was something. Speeding through it was like being on the tip of a knife that was slicing through the body of a ghost.

“Please, Dad,” the VW said. “Please? Please!”

“There are other stories here about the Castaway, VW. Tonight the story is, my brother’s been stolen by Colorado,” I told him.

“Colorado? No way I’m going out there,” the VW said. “I’d get halfway, break down again, and you’d start to yell at me rabbinical.”

I tapped the dashboard. “You didn’t use that word right,” I said.

“Which word?”

“Rabbinical. It’s a religious term.”

“I’m listening, like you said to,” the VW whined.

“But the word has to come from your engineheart,” I said. “You can’t use it just because it saves minutes.”

“Will you stop picking on me?” the VW said. “You know what I meant.”

“You’re not helping things, OK?” I said.

When we got back to Northampton I was angry. I picked up the phone and called Colorado.

“What,” it said into the phone.

“I heard what you’re doing,” I said. “And I don’t like one bit of it.”

“I don’t think I give a fuck,” Colorado said.

I said, “Do you love him?”

I could hear his smile. “He’s a very nice young man.”

“Why are you doing this? Are you in cahoots?”

“Cahoots?”

“It’s a
word
, alright?”

Colorado sighed. “You’re wasting my time.”

“You touch a hair on his head,” I told him, “I’ll burn you down inch by inch.”

“It’s a big world, partner.”

“You take care of him,” I yelled into the phone. “You watch him. You make sure he sleeps well at night and stays happy at his job and is safe with the women and doesn’t get sick.”

“Are we done?” Colorado said.

I had no other threats to make. I just held the phone to my ear and listened to Colorado’s breath coming through the receiver, filled with smoke and mountains.

“Please,” I said into the phone.

The Lady from the Land of the Beans became pregnant and gave birth to
the Volkswagen as a result of a grief-stricken condom. Or, it happened because of what the Heart Attack Tree did to my father.

Or, the birth itself never happened; we discovered she was pregnant and the next day we went to have the child aborted.

We were driving to the clinic in the Volkswagen Promise, though, and the Promise broke down on us before we could get there.

The Lady from the Land of the Beans’s belly was huge—there was a car inside her, for sarah’s sake. She waited in the Promise of the Passenger Seat while I went around to the engine compartment and tried to figure out what was wrong. I opened the rear lid and saw, between mysterious cables and parts, a little scuffed-up set and two actors in velvety costumes performing before a film crew and a fleet of cameras.

When I opened the hatch the scene stopped and everyone looked up at me. One man, wearing a set of headphones, yelled “cut!” while others covered their eyes from the new light, made angry faces at me or motioned for me to lower the panel. I did; I closed the lid, spooled briskly back into the car and asked the Lady from the Land of the Beans to hand me the Promise factory manual.

“Why?” she said.

“They’re filming a movie in there,” I told her.

“They are? What kind of movie?” she asked.

“Just, give me the manual, will you?”

“I don’t think it comes with a manual,” she said.

“That can’t be right,” I said. I went around to the front and opened the hood, under which was an Olympic-sized swimming pool—the air was seeped with chlorine and I could hear the rhythmic slapping of tiny arms against the water. My glasses began to fog up. “No book in here, either,” I announced.

“_____, wait a second,” said the Lady from the Land of the Beans.

“That’s ridiculous that there’s no instruction manual,” I said. Then I had an idea—something was made. I closed the hood and got back in the car. “Oh my god,” I said. “I think I have an amazing idea—an idea for a new—”

“Wait, wait,” the Lady from the Land of the Beans said, and she
leaned in and took my hands in hers. “What’s happening here?”

“So there’s no manual, right?” I said. “So my idea is—”

“_____,” she said. Her hands were roots and wires. “You’re not listening to me.”

“You’re not listening to
me
,” I told her.

“I think this moment means something,” she said. “I think we’re supposed to have this baby.”

I was so stunned I couldn’t say anything. Then I said, “What?”

“Just, I want you to look past yourself for a moment.”

“OK,” I said.

“And think about what’s happening inside me, and also what
we’re
inside.”

“What are we inside?” I asked.

“We could have the whole world here,” she said. “A child. A whole new set of stories.”

“We talked about this, we did,” I said. “Who was the one that said we couldn’t handle this—that we’d be
horrible
parents?”

“I was,” the Lady from the Land of the Beans said.

“We’re not even
together
,” I pressed.

“I’m not saying I didn’t say that. I did—”

“You did,” I said.

“But I can’t think about the past, or what will happen next. All I can think about is what’s right for this moment. I mean, there is love here.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Isn’t there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “If there really is, then what’s the worst that could happen?”

How could I respond? My answer is several hundred pages long, and takes hours to read.

The Lady from the Land of the Beans took my face in her hands. Her eyes were department meetings. “Honey,” she said.

She’d never called me that before. “What,” I said.

“I think we should turn the car around.”

“You want to go back to Northampton?”

She nodded.

“You mean—”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “I want to go home.”

I turned around and we drove home, and two days later she gave birth to the car, right there in the Memory of the Cooley-Dickinson Hospital. The car came out full-sized, crying and blinking its eyes, and I knew right away that this was it—that this was the right story.

By then, though, things had changed
again
—we’d felt good about our decision at first, then had trouble getting along again and discussed the possibility of selling the car, and buying another VeggieCar, perhaps. But that changed for me the first time I held my son, looked at his shiny parts, felt him forming in my arms—making quick decisions about who he was going to be and what he would want.

“I’m going to be a social worker, a postal worker, a television cameraman,” the brand new 1971 Volkswagen Beetle said to me. He read my face and listened to my chest—my heart—and said, “And I won’t worry like you worry.”

“Alright,” I told him as I held him. “But you should know that I never planned it this way. Somehow my days turned soft. There is a limit to how many people you can hurt before it gets to you. And everything crosses over once you’ve been treed, and had a farm disappear on you with everything you care about inside it.”