No Right Turn (2 page)

Mom punches me in the arm pretty hard—she's got a good straight right.

In the three years since Dad died, things have just barely started to become normal … not
normal
, really. A better word would be “predictable.” And we're doing okay—I guess we're kind of getting used to our lives. I didn't think that would ever happen again.

Mom follows me through the living room and into the kitchen.

She asks, “So how was school?”

I shrug, but I catch something strange in the sound of her voice. We've gotten to know each other pretty well these past three years—after all, she's almost the only person I ever talk to—so I can tell that something is up with her. I decide to just wait her out.

It doesn't take long.

“You know Don Lugar?” she asks.

“Who?”

“Mr. Lugar, the man who bought the Andersons' house?”

Now I know. I get a weird feeling; the hair on the back of my neck stands up. “What about him?” I try not to sound as creeped out or look as uncomfortable as I really feel.

Apparently hiding my feelings works, because Mom says, “Well, he's asked me to go out to a movie this Friday.”

She waits for me to say something. I'm shocked, really, and I can't think of anything at all. I draw a total blank, so I stupidly mutter, “What movie?”

She kind of smiles and says, “We're not sure yet—we're going to discuss it.”

I think to myself,
We're
, huh? You and your new boyfriend? I also think, You couldn't keep your last husband alive. What makes you sure you'll do any better this time? Even as I think this, I know it's unfair—maybe not totally unfair, but at least pretty shitty.

Mom, not smiling now, her voice kind of soft and serious, asks, “Are you okay with that?”

“Yeah,” I lie.

Mom looks into my eyes and asks, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I say again, kind of impatiently. What's she want from me—a seal of approval?

The fact is that it wasn't Mom who was here when Dad killed himself; it wasn't Mom who had to deal with that. Nope. Dad made sure that was a special treat, just for me!

It's Friday night, and I'm trying not to stare out the front window of our house. Don Lugar was supposed to be here at six o'clock to pick Mom up, and it's already six oh three, so I'm feeling kind of good that he's late, when suddenly I see, down the street where he lives, his classic Corvette Stingray backing out of his driveway and cruising slowly up Northridge Road to our house.

I stand back a little, out of sight. Once he stops in our driveway, he climbs out of the 'Vette and walks up to our front door.

He rings the doorbell and Mom hollers down to me from her bedroom, “Jordan, will you get the door, please?”

What am I, the butler? I quietly duck down the hallway and into my room, pretending I didn't hear her.

The doorbell rings again, and I hear Mom hurry out of her room and down the hall.

She opens the door and says, “Hi.” I can actually hear the smile in her voice.

Don Lugar says, “Hi,” then, “Sorry I'm late.”

I glance at my watch. Late? It's only five minutes after six. What a dork!

They speak quietly for a moment or two, and then I hear them both laugh. From my bedroom I glance out the window at the Corvette.

“Jordan!” I hear Mom call me.

I don't answer; then I hear her walking toward me. “Jordan!” she calls again, louder.

There's no escaping. “Yeah,” I answer.

Mom says, “Come here, please.”

I walk out of my bedroom and down the hallway. It's greet-the-new-boyfriend time—great!

“Honey,” Mom says, “I'd like you to meet Don Lugar.”

He's standing there looking at me. By his expression I'm guessing that he's as uncomfortable as I am.

“Hey,” I say, offering my hand.

“Nice to meet you, Jordan,” he says, shaking my hand firmly. “Your mom's told me quite a bit about you.”

I almost burst out laughing. What could she have told him? There's absolutely nothing to tell. I'd like to blurt out an imitation of what Mom must have said: “My son is a freakin' zombie: no friends, no interests, no
life
, you're gonna love him!”

But instead I just say, “Nice to meet you, too.”

There's an awkward pause. Just to break the silence I say, “Nice 'Vette.”

Don smiles and says, “Thanks.”

Mom smiles too.

I try to smile, but it's pretty phony—this whole scene is just so weird. Don says, “Drop by sometime and I'll show you the car, take you for a ride.”

I say
to myself
, Are you trying a little too hard, mister? But I say
out loud
, “Sure, that'd be cool.”

It'll be a cold day in hell before I'd go hang out with Mom's new little pal. It may be I'm pathetic, I
am
pathetic, but I refuse to believe that I'm
that
pathetic....

We hem and haw for another few uncomfortable moments. I notice that Mom looks really nice. She's wearing a black silk blouse tucked into her tight black jeans. She has on boots with tall heels, giving her an extra couple inches. Her makeup in the light of the hallway makes her look young, and most of all, she has a perma-grin. She's really happy. I haven't seen her smile like this in a long time.

I have mixed feelings. I'm glad for her in one way—it's good to see her so excited—but it's like I don't know why she gets to go out and be happy all of a sudden. I mean, just like that, her life is back to normal? I'm being a jerk, I know, but I don't get any of this.

Finally Don says to me, “Well, we won't be late.” Like he's checking in with me for permission and like I'm the parent.

I don't know what else to say, so I speak in a deep voice. “All right, you kids have a good time now, but drive carefully.”

It's kind of a lame joke, and they both laugh way too hard.

It's a relief when they finally walk out the door. The second they're gone, I race back down the hallway to my bedroom and peek out just in time to see Don open the passenger door and Mom, kind of awkwardly, slip into the car. Then Don walks around to the driver's side and hops in too. The car's windows are tinted dark, and I can't see in very well. He fires up the engine; it has a pretty decent roar. They back out and take off.

I decide right away that he's an idiot and that I'm not going to like him. Period.

Cool car, though.

I'm walking home from school after getting off the bus. It's the following Tuesday, and I go past Don Lugar's house. In his driveway he's polishing the Stingray. I've never been a gearhead, never cared that much about cars. It's not like Mom and I have had thousands of extra bucks to burn on anything. So cars have never been that big a deal to me, and big-boy toys like Corvette Stingrays are about as realistic to me as … I don't know … as nothing, they're just something I know I'll never have.

My dad had always talked and acted like he
hated
muscle cars and cool classics—he called them “show-off cars.” Whenever we saw one on the road, he'd always say something about “what a waste of money” or he'd look at the driver, usually some middle-aged guy like himself, and mutter, “Grow up.”

But there's something about my dad that's bugged me ever since he died. On the day of Dad's funeral, afterward, everybody came back to our house to sit around and drink punch and eat cookies and try and pretend that everything was going to be okay. I couldn't stand it, so I left the living room, where a lot of people were sitting and standing around. The kitchen was just as crowded. I didn't know where to hide until I spotted the closed door to Dad's office. I didn't want to go back in there, I really didn't, but I knew that it would give me some privacy. And truthfully, something weird pounded in my head—a strange feeling of being pulled toward that closed door and then on into the room. So that's where I went.

It was already all cleaned up; some of Mom's friends from the hospital, other nurses, had taken care of it. I took a slow breath and started looking around. Pretty soon I started snooping through Dad's stuff.

Most of the things I'd seen a million times. But in the bottom drawer of his big oak desk, hidden under a pile of old bills and manila folders, and I mean really hidden, like it was a secret porno stash, I found a stack of magazines and books. I looked at the dates on them and they went back for years. There were dozens of them: hot-rod magazines, boating magazines, hang gliding, flying, and skydiving, all these magazines and books that I'd never seen before. One of the books was called
Sports Car Color History, Corvette 1968–1982
.

Why did my dad have all this crap? Why did he hide it? What good was any of this to him since he'd never skydived, hang glided, owned a boat or a hot rod? And if my dad had hated 'Vettes so much, like he always sounded when we saw one, why did he have a book about them? I glanced at the magazines and thumbed through a few of the books, but I didn't stay in there very long; the room gave me the creeps. I put everything back where I'd found it and got out.

So when Don Lugar showed up at our house driving his Corvette, I wondered what Dad would have thought about it. What would Dad have thought about a guy who actually had a
real
show-off car, hitting on Mom?

Don's taller than my dad was; he dresses just like most older guys—kind of dorky. Now he looks up and says, “Hi, Jordan, how you doin'?” like we're already old pals or something.

“Not bad.” I pause, I want to just keep walking, I want to ignore Don, but I can't stop staring at his car.

I haven't ever had a chance to really look at a Corvette up close before.

I ask, “What year?”

Don says, “It's a 1976.”

1970s Stingrays have that long, sleek Coke bottle shape—high curved fenders over the wheels, low to the ground. Don's has what looks like a custom paint job, white on top and a teal blue-green all along the lower section.

Almost against my will, I walk over to where Don wipes a soft cloth over the shiny hood. The closer I get, the prettier the car is. The white upper body is metallic, kind of cream colored with little flecks of silver in it. The windows are tinted dark, smoky gray, almost black. The tires are big, wider than the tires on normal cars, and there are bright chrome hubs.

I blurt out, “Man …” but then shut up, managing not to suck up too much.

I mean, I could care less whether Don likes me or not, in fact I hope he
doesn't
—I'm just having this weird reaction to the car.

He smiles. Don moved into our neighborhood about a year ago, bought the Andersons' house on the east side of Northridge Road—the view side. It's a large, family-type home, but he lives there alone and keeps to himself. I had spoken to Don maybe two or three minutes in the whole year he's lived three houses away from ours, right up to the day he came to pick up Mom for their date. Truthfully, I wouldn't say more than “hi” right now if it weren't for the Corvette.

But the car is
so
beautiful,
so
sleek and powerful looking that it seems to call me over to it. All those times my dad put down cool cars, I'd never thought much about it—until now. Realizing I'm being kind of rude, I hesitate before staring into the windows, which are tinted too dark for me to see inside anyway—rude or not, I can't stop myself. I've gotta see more.

Don says, “Open the door if you want to take a look.”

I don't even answer; I just swing the heavy door open. The interior is outlaw black.

“Cool,” I say softly, talking to myself.

Don laughs. “Yeah, she's my baby.”

“Is it as fast as it looks?”

Don says, “She was built back when there were more stringent emission controls, so she's no monster. But compared to everything else built in '76, she could hold her own. Plus I'm doing some tweaking here and there, juicing her up. So, yeah, she's plenty fast.”

“Yeah,” I say, not really understanding what he's talking about.

“You wanna go for a spin?” he asks.

Like I mentioned before, I've been pretty much out of it since my dad died. What's Don thinking? That he can win me over just by taking me for a ride?

I look at the car again and can't stop myself from asking, “Really?” I feel weird.

Don smiles again. “Every guy in the world who buys a 'Vette is dying to show her off.”

I ask, “Where?”

“Just a quick run up onto the prairie. I'll show you what she can do.”

My dad would have disapproved, would have warned me against taking such a chance. Dad never took a chance in his life,
ever
! Then again, what good did that do him?