I’ve always imagined that one day I’d be a writer. Not a person who writes employee biographies and bulleted bits of information in a PowerPoint presentation during the day and the occasional blog post at night, but a real writer. A writer by profession. I always imagined that this transformation would take place the day I found myself living deep in the hills where, during the winter, from a distance, someone driving on the nearest paved road from my cabin would see a plume of smoke chugging from a stone chimney, the only sign of a human nestled in the thick of trees. I’d be inside, stooped over a black Underwood typewriter, sipping black coffee, a fire crackling, tapping my bare feet against the bowing planks of a hundred-year-old hardwood floor. At last, with some quiet and solitude, I’d whittle away at those blunt thoughts about love and sadness as the human condition, carving and chipping until incongruous and meandering ideas finally fit together, revealing a striking and as yet unrevealed perspective on who we are, what we mean, why we persevere.
I think I’m in North Carolina in this scene, though, to my knowledge, I’ve never actually been to North Carolina. And so far, I’ve never stayed in a cabin with hundred-year-old hardwood floors, I own a silver Dell laptop – not a weighty, black Underwood – I still like my coffee with milk and, though my last apartment did have a fireplace, the only flame that ever flickered from its mouth was that of a cluster of pillar candles my roommate arranged in the hearth after showing me a picture of the idea in that month’s issue of Real Simple. I live in a city of three million people at the intersection of two of the thousands of paved roads that make up a sprawling city grid. My nearest neighbor sleeps nine feet above me and listens to talk radio in the bathroom on weekday mornings. There is sometimes solitude, but there is never quiet. I am still not a writer.
I loaned my car to my sister the night before last; hers was in the shop until maybe Friday, the mechanic had said. In gratitude, she offered to pick me up in the morning, latte in hand, and deposit me at the train stop, since it was forecasted to be the coldest day of the winter so far.
The next morning, I get a call at 7am:
JEN: Your car’s not starting.
ME: Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you - you have to give it gas.
JEN: While I turn the key?
ME: Yeah, turn the key and give it gas.
JEN: It’s not starting.
ME: Are you giving it gas?
JEN: YES.
ME: I mean you have to really PUMP it! Give it gas!
JEN: I AM! I know what ‘give it gas’ means. It’s making a weird clicking sound.
ME: Is it revving a little too? Like a little muted roar under the hood?
JEN: No. Just the clicking.
ME: [exaggerated sigh] Well, I don’t know what to tell you other than give it gas! I have to get ready for work.
7:10am:
JEN: I can’t come get you. Your car’s not starting.
ME: Did you give it gas?
JEN: YES! Jesus!
ME: Well, did you flood the engine or something?
JEN: Are you serious? It’s not starting. I can’t come get you.
ME: Fuck! FUCK! How are you getting to work?
JEN: I’m not going. I can’t go. I can’t get there.
ME: Well, I have to go then. I have to put on three more layers of clothes and walk to fucking train. I’m coming over there to see if I need to have it towed or whatever. FUCK. I have to go.
I leave my apartment ten minutes later – a pair of tights under my pants, a jacket zipped over my wool sweater, two pair of socks, feet stuffed in UGG boots, heavy coat stretched over my torso, its buttons straining around the bulk, scarf coiled to my ears, wool cap and gloves – walk the six blocks to the train, get off two stops later and walk the four blocks to Jen’s apartment, where my car is parked. (People, ten blocks is a mile. People, it was three degrees yesterday morning.)
“Okay, baby. Mama’s here.” I coo, approaching the car. “I know it’s cold, honey, but let’s just get you started so you don’t have to be towed, okay? Okay?” There is a warm latte in the cup holder. “Alright, baby, let’s go. I know it’s cold. I’d really appreciate it, okay?”
Pump. Click Click Click. Pump Pump. Click Click Click.
“Come on, honey.” Pump Pump. Click Click Click.
“Okay! Okay, but just know that I AM NOT happy about this. I am NOT happy.”
I call Jen.
ME: Hey. It’s totally dead.
JEN: I know that.
ME: Are you at home?
JEN: No, I borrowed Denise’s car. I’m on my way to work. I cannot believe this fucking morning.
ME: Seriously. I’m getting a cab to work. I can’t walk to the train again. Thanks for the coffee. Sorry I yelled at you.
JEN: It’s okay. It’s chaos this morning.
ME: Later.
A cab pulls over as I snap the phone shut and, as I step toward it, gripping the door handle, it peels away, missing my toes by four inches.
“Jesus! What the fuck was that?” I shout into the frigid air and a man in the crosswalk laughs and shrugs.
“I cannot handle this fucking morning!” I say to no one in particular. I watch for a cab for a few more minutes. No cab comes.
On the train to downtown, I rub my hands rapidly over the tops of my tingling legs. The guy I went out with Saturday night had a car with seat warmers. I’ve never dated a man with a car with seat warmers. I think of J and wonder if he is riding his bike in this cold. I hope he has taken the bus, though he hates taking the bus.
The guy with the car with seat warmers told me he’d built a new deck off his condo over the summer. Tore down the old, rotting one and put a new one in himself. He was thinking of building a wall in his bedroom because it is oddly shaped – long, with a closet at each end.
“I can’t picture it,” I said.
“I’d have to draw it for you,” he said.
He builds bridges for a living. I bet he could replace the battery in my car. He offered to give me a ride to the airport to pick up my friend who’s visiting this weekend.
“Is that too forward after one date?” he asked, “Maybe you don’t want to introduce me to your friend?”
Yes, it is, I thought, and no, I don’t. “I’ll have my car back from my sister by then, but that’s really nice of you.”
I bet he would replace the battery in my car. Could J replace a car battery? I don’t know. I assume he couldn’t and recall a frequent argument, “Why are you constantly underestimating me?” I want to call my father and have him fix the car while I’m at work. My father lives 600 miles away.
I am 45 minutes late to work and my boss asks if I have triple A. I imagine Jen and me running jumper cables from Denise’s car to mine in the dark. My legs are still tingling. I call triple A and am talked into the Gold Membership.
My mom calls in the afternoon. “Well, I’m driving your father’s truck today because my car’s broken down.”
“So is mine and so is Jen’s.”
“I know! I talked to Jen this morning.”
“I walked a mile and a half to get to work today and its three degrees. My legs just stopped tingling. I thought I’d done permanent damage. A cab driver almost ran over my toes.”
“What a jerk. Why?”
“I have no idea.”
“Your father went to talk to the Toyota dealer here to see if they have any deals going. Your sister’s car blew a gasket. She’s gonna have to get a new one.”
“It blew a gasket?”
“Mm. Hm.”
“I guess that’s where that saying came from.”
“What?”
“Blew a gasket. I guess cars have gaskets.”
“Mm. Hm.”
“I joined triple A.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Mom, I think I have to marry someone handy. Someone who can fix cars in the cold.”
“You should. That’s a good idea. Your father is not handy.”
“But he could put a new battery in my car if he were here.”
“Are you kidding? He could just cuss at it a lot.”
“Oh, that’s how I handled the situation.”
“Yeah, you got that from your father.”
I go to Jen’s apartment after work to wait for the triple A guy. She has come back from the convenience store with three bottles of wine. “C’s coming over. She’s bringing the baby,” she says.
We drink wine and dance with the baby and then my aunt calls from Kansas to see what scent of candles Jen and I would like her to send us. She’s started making candles in her basement. Stirring and pouring the wax is cathartic, she says. I request lavender and citrus and then have to hang up because the triple A truck is outside.
The car starts on the fifth try, but the man says there is zero chance it will start in the morning.
“What are the chances this will start in the morning?” I asked him.
“Zero.”
I call Jen and tell her that I have to take my car to the mechanic, but the tow truck guy said they can replace the battery tonight.
“Are you coming back over?” she asks, “We’re ordering food.”
“Probably not. Who knows how long this’ll take.”
I follow the tow truck to a mechanic on Belmont and a man named Martin, who has a pale area on his upper lip, like he got a tan and then shaved his mustache, shows me that the battery is dead because the alternator is bad. He shows me the reading on some kind of gauge and then shows me what a good reading should look like by hooking the gauge to a different car.
“We can fix the alternator tonight,” Martin tells me.
“I’ll have to leave it here?”
“Yeah. You want a loaner for the night?”
“A loaner?”
“Yeah, I’ll give you a car. You bring it back tomorrow and get your car. It’ll be ready.”
I write down my name and phone number and Martin shows me out the back door where a light blue Honda is running with the lights on. Twenty minutes have passed since I left Jen’s apartment.
I call Jen from the car.
“I left my car at a place called Martin’s Auto and Martin gave me a car that’s nicer than my real one, so I’m coming back over.”
“We ordered pizza. There’ll be enough.”
We eat pizza and drink wine and dance with the baby and C says, “Some days I have to get her out of the house to remember that she’s fun. She did not sleep last night. Today’s kind of been kicking my ass.”
“Today’s been kickin ass and takin names all day,” Jen says.
C and the baby leave and Jen and I sit at opposite ends of the couch and finish the wine and she listens to me talk again about how I want to be a writer, but I’m still not one and I’m bored with talking about it and bored with wondering when and how I ever will be.
Jen teaches social skills to teenaged boys with autism. She’s been pushed and spit on and yelled at and once chased a six-foot-tall boy five blocks after he escaped from the school during a fire drill and wanted to jog the streets throwing a rock into each of the nearby sewage grates. She knows what makes each of the boys uncomfortable, what will make them frustrated and what will make them laugh. A good day is when, despite the chaos, she feels that she connected with one boy, taught one boy something meaningful. While I talk and Jen listens I think, Jen is not waiting for a secluded cabin in a thick of trees to become what she wants to become.
It gets late and I drive the loaner home. I pull my boots off at the door and my socks come off inside them. My bare feet tap across the hardwood floor and a thought floats around: This is life and this will have to do. I’ll write about this. The noise and the incongruence and the meanderings. Here. And this will do.
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