Okay, I lied

I decided to post the triptych in its component parts because it's pretty long. Here's the first one. Hopefully the other two will be finished tonight.

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You're All Right

I was 15 when I last saw my grandfather. I had had my learner’s permit for about three months and done a rather limited amount of driving, even though the small plastic card had burned a hole in my back pocket all the way from Wayne to Pendleton. My parents let me drive a single two-hour stretch, less than one-twelfth of the actual time it takes to travel between the two cities. Demands for more time went unheeded, and I felt cruelly persecuted. My parents were clearly trying to prevent me from ever becoming a driver or a grown-up at all! My brother, who was over eighteen months younger than I, had spent more time behind the wheel of a car by the age of six, due in large part to my grandfather and father, who let him drive their pick-ups short distances when they were out doing man things presumably unsuitable for girl children. Life was cruel.

As long as I could remember, Grandpa had had two pickups, the gold one and the blue one, and it was in these that my brother learned to drive. I presume each had specific uses, but I was completely unable to distinguish a pattern in which one they would choose to take on any given outing. I preferred the gold pickup, not for a good reason, but simply because it seemed shinier. In fact, I had once tried to improve on its shininess by teaming up with my cousin Kristy and washing it one afternoon. The scrub brushes made a delicious swishing noise as we pushed the brush down hard, then ran the length of the truck side, leaving a trail of soapy water from bumper to bumper. Grandpa’s reaction upon hearing of this free service was less than enthusiastic, worse even than the time we’d deliberately flooded the garage. “Ma truck! What have ya done to ma paint job! Go see if your grandmother has something for you to do, ya good-for-nothin’ kids, and don’t touch my truck ever again.” He wasn’t really angry—we were hand-fed M&Ms from the garage candy dish later that afternoon—and I don’t think we scraped off too much paint, but all access to water was strictly controlled after that summer.

* * *
We took the gold pickup when we went out. Somehow, I think Grandpa saw the rectangle scorched in my back pocket where I carried the learner’s permit, and one rainy afternoon about a week into our stay, he loaded up me and my and we headed out for a driving lesson.

I don’t remember my dignity being offended at the idea of getting a lesson after I had already taken—and passed with an A—driver’s education the summer before. Grandpa, oddly sensitive to the teenage ego, must have phrased it more carefully, something like, “Well, let’s go see if you can drive better than your mother says.” I’m almost sure that was how it went. Like most adolescents, I was eager to prove my parents wrong about anything, and my lack of driving skill was a particular sore point. And time spent with my grandfather was rare enough that I was willing to tolerate my know-it-all brother tagging along.

We drove out into the hills surrounding Pendleton. It was winter, and snow lay dirty in the ditches and cupped the bottom of fence posts, but for the most part the ground was bare, dampened to a dull brown with the dreary, persistent mist that would have been snow if the mercury had ridden just a few degrees lower in the thermometer. The roads weren’t slick, although they were wet, and when we drove off of the paved roads onto gravel ones, the ground was still firm. Grandpa pointed out a deer and a few pheasants, although I was forbidden to look; I tended to turn the wheel when I turned my head. The houses were somewhat far apart and the roads narrow, although we weren’t far outside of the city limits. Another pickup passed us from the other direction; I nervously pulled a little too far over on the shoulder. “Get back on the road!” Ethan yelled.

“Shush,” my grandfather replied. “She’s fine.” And to me, “You’re fine, just wanted to check out that tree. You’ve seen it, now get on back over.” He was always calm, faintly amused. It was a refreshing change from my father, who when stressed tended to raise his voice as he repeated himself: “Fifteen miles an hour around the corner, fifteen miles an hour around the corner, FIFTEEN MILES AN HOUR AROUND THE CORNER, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!” I suspect he probably wanted to swear and would have if it had been my brother instead of me at the wheel. My eyes still fly to the speedometer when I make a 90-degree turn, checking to see that the needle is indeed hovering somewhere around 15 mph.

My mother was no better, gripping the dashboard and flexing her brake foot convulsively while failing to produce complete sentences. “ERIN! There’s—! Watch tha—!” When confronted, Mom theorized that Grandpa’s calm came from the fact that I was not his child and that made the experience amusing rather than terrifying. This made no sense to me; it was still his car and his life on the line when I was behind the wheel. I just figured he was more laid back and less into picking on me. I liked driving with him. Even when I accidentally pressed the gas instead of the brake, coming within inches of the car in front of us, obediently stopped at the red light and having no pedal confusion, Grandpa just laughed like someone had told him a good joke. My heart was threatening to break ribs with its furious pounding and my fingers refused to release the steering wheel, but he seemed unaffected. His belly shook a little and all the wrinkles on his face folded up neatly as he chuckled at me. “You’re all right. Brake on the left, ya good-for-nothin’ kid,” he laughed. The light turned green. “Head up the hill; we’re goin’ to Bi-Mart.”

* * *

Last summer, six years after my grandfather taught me to drive with patience, I found myself in the passenger seat, trying to teach a friend to drive my Tracker, which is shinier to me than even the gold pickup. I don’t let many people drive it, and certainly not six-year-old boys or teenagers in the first flush of driving lust, so I was expecting to be as nervous, flexing my foot and yelling, “Slower on the turns! Brake! NO! Clutch, then brake!” But I didn’t channel my parents. Instead, I heard my grandfather’s easy laughter bubble out of my mouth as Nolan lurched around a parking lot and came to a screeching stop, the engine dying with a groan. “Clutch on the left, ya good-for-nothin’ punk. Clutch on the left. You’re all right.”