Truck (30 page)

“'Fifty-one,” I say.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “my old man had one like that, but I think it was a 'forty-eight.”

We pull back onto the short stretch of four lane that runs between Cameron and Rice Lake and Mark works up through the gears until the old six-cylinder is roaring and the cab is thrumming with the vibration of the road. The rubber tires are out of round from sitting so long, and the
whump-whump-whump
feeds up through the suspension. At the first stoplight in town, Mark looks over at me and says, “This is so
cool
.”

“Yeah,” I say, “and it would be even cooler if we weren't grinning like dorks fresh off the farm.”

We pull into Farm & Fleet and park in the middle of the lot. We walk off toward the store but keep stopping to turn back and admire the truck. It's a wonder we don't clothesline ourselves on the cart corral. The yellow parking-lot stripes draw out the green paint beautifully. Parked on the level over the clean asphalt plane, the truck looks trim and lively. All that old steel, looking almost coltish. Cutting back the fenders and pulling the running boards was the right move.

We pick up some odds and ends in Farm & Fleet—including one last bag of wintergreen lozenges—and then it's my turn to drive. It's like easing back into an old familiar chair. It's thrilling the way the muscle memory takes over, how the hand-eye-foot coordination maps are still in the brain, waiting to be accessed like a digital file. My arm weaves the out-of-gear-into-gear movement of the shift lever in between the double-pump motion of my clutch leg. In between gears, I find myself resting my right palm atop the shift knob just the way I used to. Mark and I just keep grinning. It really is getting silly. We take the cure at Twenty-third Avenue, where I have to hang a left across the median and two lanes of oncoming traffic, at which point an air bubble in the brake fluid works itself out of the line and when I push the pedal it slaps straight to the floor like stomping a puffball and we remain
at speed. “Hang on!” I tell Mark, as I pogo my foot up and down on the brake pedal, trying to drum up the least bit of resistance to our momentum. “
Pres-stop four-wheel hydraulic brakes…”
it says in the brochure back there on the bench in the shop, “
…safe, easy stops with less pressure required of the driver!
” I am already partially into the turn and there are cars coming in the opposite lanes, but I figure I can either beat them or put my faith in our four-point racing harnesses and jump a small embankment into the grassy ditch of the median. In the end I calculate our vector on the fly and figure we can thread the needle. I flatten the accelerator and we careen through the median at a severe tilt, shooting across both lanes and, seeing no reason to slow, I keep my foot in it as we straighten and head up the road to home and at some point I notice the wheels have rounded out and are rolling smoothly.

We ease up to the shop and head straight for the old truck manual, opening it at the tab that says
Brake System,
then turn to section A, page 3, “Bleeding the Lines.” Gonna, as Mark says, wanna get right on that.

 

Anneliese and I are attending an abbreviated version of premarital counseling. Frankly, this was not my idea. When Anneliese first broached the subject, I got quease-inducing images of us sitting criss-cross applesauce and peering at each other's retinas whilst playing patty-cake across a tub of potpourri. Meanwhile, off in the corner, you'd have some gauzy guru whacking your chakra. The whole concept clashed with my staunch sense of by-gum do-it-yerselfness, never mind that after two decades of captaining my own love boat I was batting a thousand on shipwrecks. When I heard that Anneliese's mother was behind the counseling idea, I got the message.

Our adviser is the Reverend Virginia Johnson of the Unitarian Universalist Church. We are not members of the church, but we have attended a few services, during which Reverend Virginia preached charity and reason, themes I welcome regardless of denomination. Anneliese and I desire a thoughtful third party with no partiality for either of us, so Reverend Virginia seemed a good choice. During our first session, she
had us share the story of how we met. Any happy couple welcomes this opportunity, and I assume a perceptive observer can glean much from how the story is told, from who dominates the narration to who jumps in to correct whom, how often, and with what level of politesse. Meanwhile, the nonverbal reactions accrue.

After a review of our respective family histories we were left alone to complete the Premarital Personal And Relationship Evaluation (a clunky name designed to serve the cutesy acronym PREPARE; the eradication of such forced alphabetical mash-ups is a dream of mine). Because Amy is in the picture, we were assigned the Marriage with Children version. There were 165 multiple-choice questions, each answer represented by a small circle. I selected my circles carefully, scribbling them in thoroughly with a No. 2 pencil, as if my college admission depended on it.

You could tell the interrogation was written up by professionals. Every domestic eventuality was checked off—from kids to dishes, from sex to checkbook. But more to the point, the same question was often posed three or four ways, a sly little trick designed to forestall fudging. Reverend Virginia had told us we were not to speak or consult, and we kept our word, but every now and then one of us would read a question and snort or chuckle, usually because the question covered something we had already hashed out. When the last dot was darkened, we handed in our papers and scooted off to the car and began comparing answers. I suspect the most valuable element of the test may be the conversation that takes place during the ride home.

For our concluding session, we meet Reverend Virginia at a sidewalk café. Over a mocha she reports that our relationship scored as Very Dynamic—which for some inane reason makes me think of the relationship between self-improvement evangelist Tony Robbins and his Super Large Teeth. Reverend Virginia says for all but two categories our scores were synchronous across the board. She gives us the favor of a smile when we correctly predict the two divergent categories: spirituality and—shorthand version here—a couple of loose ends in the family planning department. Biggies. But Reverend Virginia digs to the root of each, pressing us as necessary. In the end she
gives us her blessing, comfortable that each understands where the other stands, and that we have established a mutual middle ground. I went into this process suspicious that clinical examination of the fundamentals might take some of the shine off. Instead, I depart feeling more than ever that Anneliese and I are walking shoulder to shoulder. No guarantees, no end in sight, but four good tires and a clear windshield.

I attribute the sweet gravity of the experience to Reverend Virginia's steady hand. We are being advised here not by some cloistral naïf armed with platitudes and well-intended dogma, but rather someone who speaks from a breadth of experience regarding the complications and joy of sworn commitment. For thirty years she and her partner have tended heart and hearth. In sickness and in health, the whole works. They have raised two children, who in turn have given Virginia grandchildren. Virginia has said nothing to us, but I know the rest of her story, which is that this partner of hers is a woman whose health insurance she may not share. This places our coffee klatch in a frame of tin-plated irony indeed.

 

In the essay “Bewildered Snowflakes, We All Are,” Annie Dillard writes,
Even lovers, even twins, are strangers who will love and die alone
. I believe this. There is the banal but relevant question of the woman who loves and outlives two husbands. In the beginning, I used Dillard's line against the idea of marriage. Perhaps love is everlasting, but the paperwork expires when you do. Meaning it all comes back to love, and show me the sanction that improves upon the real deal. I remain convinced on this point, but a hundred other little moments—seeing Mark put down his wrenches and go in the house to watch his son, seeing Anneliese and her mother together tearful in that chair—have accumulated and the message seems to be pretty evenly split between
to overthink is not necessarily to be thoughtful
and
for the 365th time this year, son, it ain't always about
you. When I looked at Anneliese on the airplane that day, it began to filter through to me that while busily assembling my crotchety thesis, I have lost sight of the idea that giving your hand to someone
in marriage is above all a privilege. I am sure Reverend Virginia would agree.

There is also the idea of solemnifying the loyalty of two mortal hearts. Far from making me sad, Dillard's line does quite the opposite, making me all the more grateful that Anneliese has agreed to walk beside me of her own free will, despite the unknown. That when the day comes for one of us to release the other we will have shared in this life what we dared hope we might.

 

Now that it's serious, there have been some changes. Until we know for sure if we'll be moving to the farm in Fall Creek, Anneliese and Amy will move in with me, and certain preparations are already being made. At one point early on in our relationship, Anneliese observed that my house was less a home than a museum with spiderwebs. She said this in an amused way, which was nice of her. I have achieved the decor known as
Midwestern bachelor eclectic,
which is to say the large finless bass my great-grandfather caught hangs just below the picture of Johnny Cash, which is nicely accented by the vintage International pickup postcard. Whenever I am asked why I keep the bass, I point to the brass plate screwed to the wooden plaque, clearly stating that Frank J. Smetlak was a
scientific taxidermist
. By this time, however, they have been drawn around the corner to the crimped and rusty four-by-eight-foot steel sign hand-lettered with the word
TRAILERAMA
and dating from an era when the term spoke not to camp, but campers. The sign is held securely in place over the stairwell by twenty-three drywall screws. I rescued it from a ditch during a downpour.

The basement cobwebs were the first to go, and there has been much scrubbing and clarifying since. “It's not so much a cleanliness thing, but perhaps a personal hazard,” she wrote in one love note, which will give you an idea of what we both are facing. I have told her she may remove the billboard panel from the wall in the dining room, but to do so with consideration, because it took a long time to create a perfectly square frame from black electrical tape.

The water-filter sticker has been removed from the kitchen window.

Likewise, the framed WD-40 sticker has been removed from the bathroom.

I have slept on a mattress on the floor since 1988 and there is talk of getting a bed.

As a further adjustment, I regularly find myself responsible for feeding a four-year-old when Mommy is teaching night classes. Sometimes Amy gets teary about this, and so we pull out the special candle from Aunt Barbara and light it for Mommy. It helps. Recently I found myself in charge of Amy during a work night at the fire hall. I radioed the chief and said although I was engaged to be married, I could still do whatever I wanted, and tonight I wanted to babysit. He keyed the mic so I could hear all the hooting.

I have also noticed that Anneliese is sneaking boxes of cookbooks into the house. Deeply troubling, as now the unmade recipe count is almost certainly nudging five figures and rising. This is clearly reckless behavior, and was not addressed in the PREPARE sessions. Then again, I have also noticed that she frequently opens a cookbook, says, “This looks good,” and makes it. No dithering. I come home to notes that say,
Hay comida en la estufa
, and sure enough it is.

 

As the wedding draws near, I get a lot of nudges and elbows and raised eyebrows. Especially at the fire department meeting. “Sooo…! How y'holdin' up? Getcha some socks for those cold feet?” That sort of thing. But I couldn't be more relaxed. I am simply easy with the idea that this is right. I don't see any other way to handle it than to go in whole hog, whole heart. Not that you'll find that embroidered on a pillow any time soon.

But I'm good. I'm happy. Ain't skeered.

I mean, I do worry some, sure. I worry because I know the future is ruled by chaos. Never mind the seven-year itch, I've recently had married friends divorce after two decades together. I worry because lately one of my favorite albums—check that,
our
favorite album, the one Anneliese and I most enjoy playing while we are cooking—is Greg Brown's
Covenant
. These are songs of steady love, of enduring love, these are songs about two people providing each other timeworn com
fort. These are songs about a man desiring his wife in her
raggedyass old cotton nightgown
. And they are sung by a man headed into his third marriage.

Ach, the future. All I know is what I feel now. I feel like a boy who dreamed he could fly. Then he woke up. And he could still fly.

 

When my friends Tyler and Jenny got married, they did the ceremony bare bones in a park with two witnesses, and then spent their honeymoon driving around the country visiting the friends they would have invited had they held a standard ceremony. I still remember celebrating their marriage over coffee on my front porch in the morning sun before they drove on, and I'm not sure there's a better way. In this regard, Anneliese and I are going the more standard route. There are relatives coming from as far away as California and Texas, and Anneliese has friends coming from Mexico. My English friend Tim will make a three-day transatlantic flyer just to be here, Bill and Wilda are coming from just outside Nashville, and my friend Gene and his family are driving from Nebraska, reconfiguring their entire summer vacation to include us. We haven't seen some of them for years, and since many of them will be staying through Sunday afternoon, we don't want to blow town Saturday night and lose precious visiting time. So we are planning to stay in the area after the reception and then rejoin some of them on Sunday. We've been trying to decide where to stay that night, and have dithered. We're both cheap, and Anneliese has made it clear we can go the economy route—after all, why splash out for some suite when you're going to arrive tired at 2
A.M.,
then rise early to catch friends before they hit the road in the morning—but I'm feeling a little pressure here simply as a guy wanting to do right for his girl. Today Anneliese just up and said, “Why not sleep in the back of the International?”