Drive (2 page)

Don't run, Jens, I told myself. Don't blow it.

Halfway across the lot my heart was still thumping but I was walking casually, breathing easy.

The prospect was in his thirties, with closecropped curly hair already starting to gray and a tan he couldn't have gotten in this part of the
country, miracle spring or not. His suit had a faint expensive sheen like the ones Jack Lahanni wore. He was looking at what I called the power cars.

“Hi, how are you today?”

“Pretty good. The weather's beautiful.”

I gestured at the shiny new cars. “And just look at the scenery.”

He laughed. It was starting to feel like a great day, too.

I made it work this time — the card, the handshake, and all the right questions. His name was Richard and he'd just been promoted. I felt that light again, inside.

“What does your boss drive?” I asked.

He looked surprised at the question, but he told me. We had one on the lot. When I suggested he take it for a test-drive, he laughed in disbelief.

“Might as well get the practice,” I said.

It got him behind the wheel. When he sat down in the deep leather seat, he looked at me and grinned. He wanted to be the man who drove this car. My heart was running. I tried not to talk too much, but it was hard. I needed this.

All through the drive, even while I recited every feature I could remember from the brochure, I was rehearsing the question in my mind. It was the big one, the tough one – eight
little words that always made my mouth go dry.
Would you like to write up an offer
?

But I never had to ask.

As soon as we pulled onto the lot again, Richard got out of the car. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the business card I'd just given him.

“Listen, I'm in a hurry today. But why don't you take this into your sales manager and see what he says.” He wrote a figure on the back of the card, and a phone number. “This is my cell. You can reach me any time.”

I took back my card. In a glance I knew that the offer was low — really low. But it was a start. We'd negotiate up. I had a live one.

“You'll hear from me this afternoon, Richard,” I said, pumping his hand. As he walked off the lot I wondered where he'd parked and what he was driving now — we hadn't talked trade-in. But it didn't matter. I could have done cartwheels back to the showroom.

“Sy wants you,” Judi said as I came in.

I was still rushing, still high. I leaned my peasant's body against her work station. “Of course he does. Everybody does. You want me, don't you, Judi?” I teased.

Behind me, Dave snickered.

Judi looked at me for a second. “Try cold
water for that stain, Jens, if it's mustard.”

Dave was still laughing as I walked into Sy's office, my face burning.

Sy was on the phone. He motioned at me to shut the door, which I did. But I was too excited to sit down. I paced the back of the office, reading the sales board, fingering the card with Richard's offer. I was looking at everyone's numbers but mostly Paul's. He was the one to beat, to be Sales Leader of the Month. I realized the cut-off was ten days away, the same date as my nineteenth birthday.

Behind me, Sy hung up the phone. In two strides I was at his desk, and I dropped the card on it. This close I could smell his lunch. Three shots of Glenkinchie Scotch, from Taps Bar and Grill.

“I need us to counter right away,” I said. “I have to call him back.”

“What the hell is this?”

I blurted out my Richard story, struggling to stay cool. But my prospect was looking at the top of our line.

“Now, I know it's low, but it's a start…”

“No, it's not, Jens. It's bullshit.”

I straightened. Sy grabbed a form off his desk and thrust it at me. It was filled out, in triplicate. One of Paul's.

“This is an offer, this is real.” Sy tapped my
card. “You don't even know his last name. How can I take it seriously? For all you know, this guy works for a dealer, too. He's fishing. He's trying to find out how low we'll go.”

I felt struck. No wonder Richard hadn't parked where I could see, or given me one of his own business cards. But I couldn't let go.

“I'll…call him. He can come back, or I'll go to his office —”

“Jens,” Sy said, getting up. “Why don't you have a chair?”

I sat down. Sy came out from behind his desk and leaned against it.

“I like you, Jens. I really do. You've got the talent and you try so hard…” He went on that this wasn't personal, it was about numbers. Who tied up a desk, how many base salaries had to be paid out. Who the producers were.

I felt waves of hot and cold breaking over me.

“I can get this guy, Sy! I think he's real. I'll get him now and write up the offer —”

I tried to stand but his hand was on my shoulder.

“One offer isn't going to solve this,” Sy said gently. “Jens, I want you to take some time. Go home and relax and give yourself time to get over this.”

I was really being fired. It felt like a boot in my guts.

“I can't go home,” I blurted.

“Why not?”

He thought I meant to my apartment. I was talking about Ile-des-Sapins, where my family was, where my life used to be. Only one person knew what I had given up to come to Five Star Ford.

I got to my feet. “I want to talk to Mr. Lahanni.”

“Jack's on holiday. And…he knows about this.” A look of pain seemed to cross Sy's face. “We're all under a lot of pressure.”

My head was spinning. There was nobody who could help me. I put my hand on the doorknob.

“I won't tell anybody yet,” Sy said quickly. “Keep your truck for the weekend. You can bring it back Monday, when you clean out your desk.”

He started over, but a look from me stopped him cold. Sy lifted his hands helplessly.

“I'm so sorry, Jens. Give yourself some time.”

I nodded numbly and pushed out. That was the one thing I really didn't have.

I loved my truck, the demonstrator Jack Lahanni had arranged for me when I started. It was a white F-150XL, with a custom box that someone had ordered and never taken delivery on. When I'd gone home at Christmas, I parked in front of the house, behind Dad's glass truck, so no one in Ile-des-Sapins would miss it.

Driving back to my apartment that Friday, I parked on the street, not in my stall. I didn't want my landlord, Mr. Delbeggio, to know I was home. I owed him for half of February and all of March.

I sat down in the chair that faced the balcony, still in my suit. Late in the afternoon the sky clouded over and it began to rain. One of my windows was open, curtains flapping, water
pooling on the floor, but I couldn't make myself get up to close it.

I was sure my father had never been fired. I knew he'd left school at seventeen, to help his family when his dad died. He'd had other jobs but all my life he'd been the window man. As a kid, I'd thought that was the best job you could have - fixing things that were broken, replacing old with new.

Dad worked twelve and fourteen hours a day in the summer but even when I was little, I'd wait up for him. I'd sit at the table while he ate his late dinner, happy just to look at him, big shoulders in coveralls. He'd grin across at me as if we shared a secret, and actually we did. He loved Mom but he hated parsnips, and I was the only one who saw him scrape them into the garbage.

I didn't know how to go home a failure.

A sudden banging on the door made me jump. Oh, God. Delbeggio had seen my truck. What was I going to tell him this time?

It was my brother, Daniel, dripping in the hallway. He was wearing his performance hat, an Australian cowboy hat that looked like an old-time leather fedora.

“Jens,” Daniel said, “I'm in trouble, real shit this time. You've got to help me.” He hesitated. “And I need twenty bucks for the cab. He's holding my guitar.”

I shut the door in his face.

“Jens!” He hammered with the side of his fist, almost frantic now. “I'm not kidding. It's Mogen Kruse. He says I owe him the money – all of it! - I swear to God.”

“How much is ‘all of it'?” I said through the door.

When he finally spoke, I could barely hear him. “Almost five thousand dollars.”

I sagged, clinging to the doorknob. I'd seen this coming, warned them about it at Christmas, but it didn't stop the blow. Five thousand dollars was a lot for any family. For ours it was a fortune.

I opened the door. “Shit for brains! Are you trying to kill Dad? Do you want him to have another heart attack?”

But I had enough money for the cab, and I gave it to him.

•

I was the first one who believed my brother wasn't deaf. I don't remember him as a baby but I know he had a lot of ear and throat infections, that he was always on antibiotics. As a toddler he played by himself a lot. And he didn't talk. He didn't even try.

But there was something about him, a bright glimmer in his eyes as he watched me, that made me sure he was listening. At three they
took him to Winnipeg for testing and got the confirmation - his hearing was fine. But still Daniel didn't talk. The adults in Ile-des-Sapins started using the word autistic, which actually sounded kind of neat because I didn't know what it meant.

The kids weren't using neat words. One afternoon a bunch of us were playing in Shane Lasko's yard and he said Daniel was a retard.

Something broke inside me. I threw myself at him, arms swinging wildly. It was my first fight and Shane was bigger than me, but I'd caught him by surprise. Once I had him down I had to keep thumping him — I was afraid he'd kill me if he got up. Mrs. Lasko dragged me off. She made my mother come and get me.

I knew what I'd done was wrong but I felt better for having answered him. You didn't say things about my family. I thought maybe someone would be proud, but my mother was just upset. She sent me to my room. When my father came home, I listened with my ear against the bedroom door. I heard the tears in my mother's voice. “I've always worried…that it might be in his blood. It's got to stop now, Karl…”

I didn't understand. Neither Shane nor I had been bleeding.

My father came in to talk to me. It was dusk and the light slanting into my room was thick
gold. It lit up the dust on his work clothes. He looked tired.

“Jens,” he said, “you don't hit people.”

I blurted out what Shane Lasko had said and he didn't flinch. Maybe he'd already heard it.

“Daniel's not hurt,” he said. “He doesn't care.”

“I care,” I said fiercely. “I thought we were supposed to stick up for our family.”

“We are. Your family is the most important thing.” He leaned close, and I could smell the gravel roads he'd been on. “But a strong person has self-control. You don't hit people, Jens.” Dad lowered his voice. “Unless somebody hits you first.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze and I understood. This was men stuff.

We walked out to the kitchen for supper. Daniel was sitting on the floor in the living room with his Fisher-Price record player. He had a record on and he was turning it under the needle with his hand, listening to the same stretch of sound, forward, then backward, then forward again. He might have been there for hours.

“I got in trouble for you today,” I whispered proudly to the back of his head. Daniel kept turning the record.

A few months later, the rumor reached our house that Mrs. Melnick wouldn't let Daniel
start school if he wasn't talking. It launched something in my mom that I'd never seen, something powerful. Before she'd tended to keep Daniel at home but now she took him everywhere, tugged him along on every errand, hers and mine.

“Take your brother with you!” she'd call as I went out the door. Some days it bothered me. Who wanted a four-year-old along when you played with your friends? But secretly I was glad. I wanted him to be normal, too.

Daniel really wasn't much trouble. He was so disinterested in everyone else. He'd sit or play by himself at the edge of our game. I just had to watch that he didn't wander away.

“Keep him close,” my mother warned. “I want him to hear you, listen to you, all the time.”

It wasn't enough, though. At home she began to talk to him constantly, sing to him, involve him in every conversation, usually in French. I hated it. She'd never taught French to me. But it was her first language and in her panic she thought it might be his, too.

It bothered my father, who didn't speak French, either. “Jeez, Mariette, you're just going to confuse him.”

My mother isn't a big woman but I saw her draw herself up in the kitchen that day. For an
instant she looked larger than my dad, larger than all of us. “We don't know what he's learning right now. It can't hurt, Karl,” she said quietly.

But it did hurt. It hurt me. I hated the sound of it, this language running over my head like water, too fast, too different for me to understand. It didn't matter that Daniel didn't respond. I felt utterly excluded.

“I could teach you, too, Jens,” my mother said, but I didn't
want
to learn. I could talk just fine.

I decided I was going to solve this myself. I closed Daniel in our room with me.

“This is Spiderman,” I said, holding up the red-and-blue toy figure for him to see. “He's got a comic, too. He's way better than Superman or Cyclops. He's the best guy. Say it. Say 'best guy.'”

Daniel looked bored. I was determined. I went through the room, my toys, which he already knew but mostly ignored.

“This is a book, Daniel. We read books.
I
can read,” I said proudly, and rattled off the title. “Say 'book.'”

Nothing. He usually liked being with me but he seemed ready to leave. I dug through the closet and found something at the bottom.