Chapter 2
A long time ago, on one of our rare visits with her, my grandmother had told me a weird story about a friend of hers who had become a nun. A cloistered nun, in Spain. There was probably supposed to be a lesson in the story for me, but I only remembered how strange it was.
My grandmother had gone to visit her friend once, after she had taken her vows. She could only talk to her through a window in an old stone wall, in a dark room. Her friend had a hard time with the conversation, because besides living apart from the outside world, the other thing the nuns did was practice silence. She was out of the habit of talking. My grandma had shaken her head, telling me. Could you imagine, Rebecca? she had asked. Could you imagine? She forgot how to talk!
That story always came to mind at our family dinners as we sat in near silence together. My father insisted that we all eat in the dining room, him at the head of the table and my mother at the foot, Ian and I on either side, facing each other. We did this every night, no matter how late my father came in—the only exceptions were for Ian’s games, soccer, basketball, and lacrosse, depending on the season.
When we all sat down, my dad would grill Ian about school, or rarely, my mom would ask my dad about his day, but then we ate in silence. We were out of practice with talking to each other, nothing like the happy, chatty families on TV, or even the bickering conversations that went on at Tracey’s when I’d had the rare occasion to eat with her family. We ate slowly, because my dad liked us to appreciate our food, the only sounds in the room the clinking of the silverware on the plates. Then when he was done with his meal and his wine, we were allowed to leave.
The nuns in Spain were supposed to be quiet so their minds could focus on higher, more important thoughts. That definitely wasn’t the case with me at our dinner table any night, and especially after what I had done that day. I thought about Lorelei at Brody’s Automotive and how much it must have hurt to put discs that size in her lobes, and all the hoops in the cartilage along the tops of her ears. She had tried to help me, by making Digger take the car out with me to listen for the mythical noise. That had been nice of her. She had been smiling sympathetically when I tripped my way out of the garage, with Digger frowning at me—
“Ian, I spoke to your college counselor at school today,” my father stated.
Ian’s head swiveled to him. “Oh?”
“I called her because I’m concerned that she isn’t devoting the time necessary to your college selection process.” My father sipped his wine.
“I think they start meeting with us more next year, when we’re seniors,” Ian said slowly.
My father frowned heavily. “You need to work on it now. I’ve hired another counselor. You’ll meet with him after your basketball practice on Friday.” He spun the stem of the glass and light played through the crystal onto the tablecloth.
“On Friday I was going to—” Ian flushed. “Ok.”
My father continued to frown. “You don’t have enough leadership activities.” He talked for a while about Ian’s extracurriculars, then he started on my brother’s grades. They weren’t high enough, he wasn’t taking enough honors and advanced classes. My brother sat without moving a muscle, still flushed, looking miserable. Our father never let up on him.
“I took my car in today,” I said, interrupting. He turned his attention to me. We had the same blue eyes. I hated how his bit into me. “But the car is fine. They fixed it,” I said quickly. “Just a minor repair.” Ian watched me from across the table, his own blue eyes worried.
“What was the problem, exactly? The car is new.”
My mouth going dry under his stare, I reached for my water glass and spilled some on the table, then had to use my napkin to mop it up. My clumsiness infuriated him. “I can’t remember exactly what they said was the problem. But it’s fine. All fine. I took care of it.”
“You took care of it. With whose money, whose insurance?” My father stopped spinning the wine and his fists came up on the table.
“Did I tell you that Hudson got hurt?” Ian asked us. “He may be out for the season. The coach is moving a guy up from JV, we have so many injuries.”
My father’s attention diverted away again, on to happier topics. “What does that mean for your minutes?” he asked, interested, and they talked about the state of Ian’s basketball team. My dad had been an athlete in high school and college and he loved that Ian had inherited his speed and strength and tenacity. Ian, my father had told me many times, was a winner. Then he would frown, because obviously, I was not.
“I ran into Linnea Bowen today,” my mother said quietly to me, so she didn’t disturb their conversation. “Do you remember the family?”
I nodded. Everyone knew about the Bowen girls. Five beautiful daughters, all smart and successful. Like they all drank a magic potion making them perfect. I would have liked to get my hands on some of that.
“Sylvie, the youngest? She’s pregnant with her first baby.” My mom looked off into the distance. “She’s Margot’s age.”
“I remember Sylvie Bowen.” She had been nice to me at school, even though I was younger, and a mess. A wreck.
Now my mother looked at me. “Not too much older than you. Of course, we don’t expect that kind of life for you, Rebecca. I don’t mean to imply it.”
“No, of course not,” I said sarcastically, but my mom would miss that. There were no expectations for me, except that I would mess things up.
My mom looked away again and I studied my plate, but carefully adjusted my features so my father wouldn’t catch me appearing what he called “sulky.” He hated when I looked that way, because I’d had everything handed to me, so there was no reason for me to ever be angry, or sad, or lonely. I was happy for Sylvie, really, I was.
I took out my hearing aid to go run on the treadmill in our exercise room for as long as I could, watching home improvement and decorating shows with headphones on as I did. Then I went up to my room and worked more on my dream house. I had picked out almost everything, for every room, but I liked to go in and adjust when I got new ideas. Now I was thinking about planking the ceiling in the master bedroom with whitewashed boards. And I was questioning my decision to paint the powder room. Maybe a cool wallpaper? I spent hours looking at different wallpaper samples online, too busy to answer Tracey and definitely not looking at all the pictures she had posted of her weekend. As long as I wasn’t in them (and even Tracey kept to that rule), I wasn’t interested in how she reframed everything she did as fun and exciting and glamorous.
Before I went to bed, I went to talk to Ian. He was hunched over his desk when I came into his bedroom. “What are you working on?” I asked him.
“Calculus. It’s killing me.” He ran his hands through his curly brown hair. Ian wasn’t handsome, in a traditional sense, like say, James Dean. But he was so sweet and funny and approachable, he had girls from his school all over him. Girls from multiple schools all over him. They even came to our house looking for him sometimes, the losers. Sort of like I had done, going down to Brody’s Automotive. Another wave of shame went through me.
“I wish I could help you,” I told Ian. I sucked at math, and I hadn’t gotten as far as calculus. I generally sucked at school. In his junior year Ian was well beyond what I had done in all of high school and college, too. I reached and patted down his crazy hair. “Sorry that dinner was hard for you.”
“Dad’s a dick.”
Out of habit, I glanced over my shoulder, but I had closed the door behind me. “Yeah.”
“You should move out,” he told me seriously.
I couldn’t leave him. There was just no way I could leave him. “When you go off to college, then I will.”
“College.” He ran his hands through his hair and it stood right back up, like a troll doll. “Did you see Dad’s list of potential schools for me?”
I had seen it. Because after dinner, he had printed out multiple copies of that list, and taped them in strategic places all over the house. I was sure he thought it would inspire Ian, like the word “WIN” he’d had painted on Ian’s bedroom wall. “It’s just a wish list. It doesn’t mean anything,” I lied.
“I’ll never get into those places. I want to go somewhere and play lacrosse, and I’ll never be able to at any of those schools. Their lax programs are too good.”
“You’re great at lacrosse,” I said loyally, but he was frowning.
“You don’t understand college sports. You don’t understand about getting into schools, either.”
He was right. I had applied to one school, the one our father had picked out for me, the one he said he would pay for, the one I could live at home and attend. And sports had never, ever been my thing. So I nodded and turned to go, but Ian held up his hand.
“I’m sorry, Wreck. I’m really…frustrated.”
I nodded. He was angry, and I totally got it. “It’s ok. I think it will all work out. Maybe your coach can talk to Dad.”
“He never listens to anyone. He thinks he knows more than everyone else.”
That was also right. “It’s worth a try. Goodnight, Ian.”
“Goodnight, Wreck.”
I went back to my room and redesigned the back yard. I put in a larger sports area, for when Ian visited, with a bounce back net for him to practice lacrosse, and a half court for basketball. I wanted him to come a lot and have fun at my house.
Whenever I managed to get there myself.
∞
Melina wasn’t a work the next day, which was happening more and more as she got bigger and bigger and madder and madder about being pregnant. It had been mostly her husband’s idea, I had heard her tell multiple friends and coworkers, and she was pretty pissed about it. Her absence made the day about a thousand times brighter for me. She had emailed me a list of tasks, bullet points with detailed, idiot-proof directions and firm instructions to call her if/when I got confused.
Melina knew I had a hearing loss, and in her mind that meant I had other issues, too. She talked slowly, using small words. She told me things like, “Before you try to print, make sure there’s paper in the machine or it won’t work” and “Do you know how to alphabetize so you can file these invoices? You know, ABCs?” She assumed that the one difference that I had was a signal of multiple systems gone wrong.
Of course, this belief wasn’t entirely her fault. She and my father were in direct communication about me, and I knew that he had told her to watch out. To be careful—to review my work, to prevent me from making decisions of any size. I couldn’t totally blame Melina for her attitude, but it didn’t make me hate her any less.
I finished everything she had planned for the day for me in a few hours and was just starting to sneak out to go home and try tweaking my blondie recipe for Ian’s next game. The phone on my desk rang, a very uncommon event.
“Hello?” I answered, then said quickly, “Warehouse Services, may I help you?” because it was probably my father calling, and that was the way I was supposed to answer.
“Is this Rebecca?” a voice asked me, a man’s voice, and my heart stopped for a moment.
“Yes,” I said. “Who is this?”
“Digger Brody. You were at my shop yesterday.”
“How did you get my number? Why are you calling me?” I burst out, then realized I didn't care about the answers to those quesitons. He was calling me, no matter why or how!
“You said where you worked, I got your number,” he responded briefly. “Listen, Lorelei, the woman at the desk, she was worried that there’s something wrong with your engine, from how you described it to her.”
“Yes?” I asked cautiously, because I knew I hadn’t described any engine problem to Lorelei.
“You better bring the car back down here,” Digger ordered. “I want to take another look.”
“Ok. Sure,” I said breathlessly, then got a hold of myself. “I can leave in a few minutes, after, um, I take some calls.” What the hell was I saying? “I mean I can, I can right now.”
Digger mumbled something I didn’t catch even with my good ear and hung up. My heart was now pounding. Carefully, I gathered up my bag and then walked quickly past all the other office doors. It was snowing outside and the wind was swirling. I was an anxious driver to begin with, so it took me forever to get back down to Detroit. When I pulled up, Digger was waiting in the opening to one of the bays, arms crossed and frowning. He was still just wearing a t-shirt, even though the icy air was blowing around him.
He opened the door and got into the car on the passenger side. “What took you so long to get here?”
“It’s snowing,” I explained, in case he hadn’t noticed it.
“Let’s drive.” Digger reached down and turned off the heat, which I’d had blasting. “Like the fucking Sahara in this car.”
I pulled cautiously down the street, leaning forward to peer over the wheel. We went for a few blocks in total silence, before he pointed to the curb. “Pull over,” he instructed me. I put on the blinker, looked carefully for other cars, pedestrians, and bikes, and eased over to a stop.
He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised. “Are you driving like that because you’re scared something is wrong with the car?”
“It’s snowing,” I said again. “It takes much longer to brake and it’s slippery.” Yes, I was a very nervous driver. I always thought that I would miss something—a mother calling to her child, a horn, a siren—and then what would I do if I hurt someone or caused an accident? Besides the fact that I could never live with myself, my dad would take the car away, for sure, and it would be a disaster.
“Trade with me,” he said, and I got out to walk around the car and get in the passenger side. I turned in the seat so that my good ear was angled toward him. “Now we’ll see what Lorelei was talking about. Tell me again what you’ve been hearing in the engine.”
I hesitated. “What did she say I’d been hearing?”
Digger laughed suddenly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. She thinks she’s so conniving, but she’s like a piece of glass. Transparent.”
My heart sped up. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you don’t. Where did you meet Lori? How long have you known her to set this up?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t know her at all.” For crying out loud, this was worse than the first time he had caught me lying! Now I was trapped in my car with him.
“Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t make sense.”
“Huh?” Maybe I hadn’t heard him correctly, because I didn’t understand.
Digger made a sharp left. “I mean you couldn’t have planned that with the pimp.”
“My God, how far do women usually go to meet you?” I blurted out.
He started laughing so hard he shook. “I sound like an asshole, huh? Never mind.” We were quiet for a moment. “What were you doing down here, down at that club on Saturday night?” he asked me. “It didn’t seem like your scene.”
“My friend Tracey likes to go out. She drinks, and I have to drive her.” And watch her, just in case.
“Doesn’t sound very fun for you.”
“I don’t mind, very much. She’s my best friend and she needs me, so I have to go.”
He glanced over. “But you don’t like bars.”
“It’s too loud,” I explained, and ran my fingers over the hair covering my left ear. “I like it quieter. Not too many people talking.”
“Then you shouldn’t go with her. Tell her that.”
Sure. Ditch my only friend. Great advice.
“We’re going back to the garage,” he told me. “You’ll tell Lorelei that your car is fine, no reason to keep bothering me about it. Otherwise she’ll be like a god damn dog on a god damn bone about you. Then you and I will see what we’ll do next.”
“What do you mean?”
He just grinned at me. “There are all kinds of things we can do together. Riding around with you is giving me plenty of ideas.”
What I was thinking couldn’t have been what he meant, I told myself, but I was suddenly glad that he had turned off the heat in the car.
“What does that mean, ‘warehouse services?’” he asked. “That’s what you said when you answered the phone. That’s your job?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t do very much. I’m supposed to watch the inventory, stuff like that. We take consignments of items and we handle entire estates, too.” God, I sounded like an ad for the business.
“Like when someone dies, you sell their stuff and pocket the money.”
I turned my head away from him. “Some of the money. I don’t pocket it.”
“You like it, working there?”
“No. I don’t like it at all. I want to have my own bakery.” I was shocked at myself. Why had I told him that?
“Why don’t you do that, then?” He pulled the car back up in front of Brody’s Automotive.
I almost laughed, it was so farfetched. “Is this what you always wanted? Your own garage?” I asked him, pointing to the devil car on the sign.
“It was in the cards for me. This shop was my grandfather’s, then it was my father’s, then it was mine. Family business.”
“Like mine is.” Except that I would never be in charge of Lindhart Detroit Auctions. “Do you like working here?”
He nodded slowly. “I love it. I love coming here, every day. Except when I’m going to fight with Lorelei, like now.”
“Oh, no, please don’t. She thought she was helping me. She was trying to help me because she felt sorry for me.” And now I was just so, so embarrassed.
“Why would she feel sorry for you?” He was studying me with clear, dark brown eyes. Almost black. I just shrugged.
I got out of the car and the wind whipped my hair back from my face, driving the snow. I held my hand over my ear, to keep the hair down and keep the water out, and walked back around to the driver’s side.
Digger had gotten out too. “You’re coming inside, remember? Lori is going to need to hear this from your mouth.” He shut the door and draped an arm over my shoulders. “Are you shivering?”
I tried not to rub my cheek against his bare arm and the tattoo of the devil car on his bicep. “It’s freezing! Aren’t you cold?”
“Nah, I have an internal thermostat. I’m never cold.” He let go of me to hold the door to the garage and I ran inside. Lorelei stood up from behind the desk and smiled widely.
“More car trouble?” she asked happily.
“No. It’s all fine. There’s nothing wrong with my car,” I told her. “But thank you for…for worrying about it. He doesn’t need to fix my car.” I tried to send her a message with my eyes: please don’t try to make him have to see me again.
Digger laughed. “Hear that, Lori? She means for you to leave me the hell alone.”
She sighed. “Digger, you’re an asshat. Ok, I’ll stop trying to make this happen. Good to meet you, Rebecca.” She looked at me a little wistfully. “Sorry I couldn’t make it work, you seemed like you would have been a nice one. All of Dig’s other women are skanks and bitches.”
“No, we’re not interested in…that.” One of us wasn’t, anyway, and I was making an idiot of myself. “I have to get home. It was nice to meet you too, Lorelei.” My stint at playing Tracey, girl who gets the guy, was over. Time to stop running after strange men and make my exit.
Digger walked me to the door, frowning. “Next time you have real car trouble, you should come on in.”
I nodded again. “Bye.” I skidded a little as I walked to the car. The snow was coating the road and sidewalk, and it was going to take me forever to drive home. I started the car with the brand-new engine that ran beautifully, turned the heat back up, and cautiously backed onto the street. I was driving slowly away, feeling worse than the first time I had left Brody’s Automotive, when a man appeared beside my car and I jammed on the brakes to stop.
Digger knocked on the glass and I rolled down the window. “I can run faster than you’re driving,” he noted.
“I’m careful.”
“Uh huh. You thinking about going out with your friend again this weekend?” he asked me.
“I’m not sure. Maybe.” My breath was moving quickly in and out of my chest.
“Well, you may not be interested, but I want to see you again. So if you come back this direction, let me know.” He dropped a card in through the window, with a picture of the demon car on it. “That’s my cell.”
“Ok.” I was nodding so vigorously that I probably looked like a jack in the box. “I mean, if we don’t have other plans,” I corrected myself, trying to summon Tracey’s blasé attitude. You never wanted to seem eager, that was what she always said.
“Try to get home before sunrise.” He slapped the top of my car and I put the window up.
Even though I was scared driving in the snow, and worried that I wouldn’t make it home before my father, I smiled all the way back on the expressway. Digger Brody wanted to see me again. He had said it.
I did beat my father home and I had time to start working on the blondies, which Ian consumed after dinner and said he liked a lot. Dinner had been all right, too—no spills, no blow-ups or criticisms of Ian. That spelled success. Late that night, I got a cup of hot chocolate and made myself call Tracey back to hear about her week so far. There was always something going on at school, and really, I was surprised she had lasted this long at the job. The only thing I could imagine was that they were really desperate for help.
Her biggest complaints were always about the main classroom teacher. “Then she told me that the way I was dressing was not up to the standard of the school. Can you believe that? She dresses like crap!” Tracey whined.
“What were you wearing?” I asked.
“God, not you, too! That’s the first thing my mother said. When are women going to stop judging other women?”
“Ok, sorry. You’re right.”
“My shirt wasn’t actually see-through. I had a bra on, after all.”
“Trace, for a kindergarten teacher?” I asked, aghast.
“I’m only the aide!”
I rolled my eyes, since she couldn’t see me. “What do you want to do this weekend? Anywhere you want to go?”
“Well, I was thinking…” She named at least five different places, none of them in Detroit.
“Know who I was thinking about? That guy you met last weekend. I wonder what would happen if you saw him again,” I said casually.
“Teddy bear man? No thanks! You know I don’t go back for seconds, anyway.”
“No, I meant the other guy, not the one with the bear. The bartender who said your eyes were luminaries. I was thinking, he was really cute.”
“Yeah, he was, wasn’t he? That’s what I mean, Wreck! You should have made me stick with him and then I wouldn’t have ended up with that creepy teddy man,” she complained.
“I wonder if he would still go for you if you saw him again. Maybe,” I hedged.
“Of course he would! That’s a good idea. He was cute. Let’s go back!”
I smiled to myself. Ok, I could do that.
But by the weekend, I was a mess. I tried on everything I had in my closet and briefly debated borrowing something from Tracey, but then she would have wanted to know why. It had been hard enough to get her to stop asking me about “that guy with the funny name” I had met up with. Really, I didn’t have enough nerve to wear her going-out clothes anyway. So I went through my closet again, then again, and finally settled on my tightest jeans and a shirt with a V that I thought I could tug down farther. I put on a big sweater over the top and went downstairs.
My parents were sitting in in the family room and my father looked up from his laptop when I came in. “Where are you going?”
“Tracey and I are going to a movie. And then coffee. She invited me to sleep over at—”
“No.”
I flushed. “Dad, I’m twenty-four, now, and I—”
“No, Rebecca.”
I knew better than to argue with him further, but I did look over at my mother. She was staring down at her tablet, flicking gently with her index finger. As always, there was no support in that corner. “Then I’ll be home at my curfew,” I said softly.
“You will,” he told me.
"Enjoy the movie," my mom added.
I took off my sweater when I got into the car and fixed my hair, taking it out of the temporary ponytail and brushing it until it was sleek and smooth around my shoulders. When I pulled into Tracey’s driveway, I put down the mirror and added more lipstick, blush, mascara. I had a while to wait before Tracey came out. It looked like she may have had a skirt on, but it was so short, it was hard to tell.
“What’s all over your face?” she asked me, staring.
“Hello to you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I drove toward the street, turning away from her.
Tracey grabbed my chin and tilted my face toward hers. “You’re all done up!” she exclaimed. “Why? What’s going on?”
I pulled away from her. “Nothing’s going on! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit. Are you seeing that guy again? Dugan?”
I stopped myself before I corrected her on his name. “No. Remember, I asked you to drop that? What happened at school today?”
She moved easily into complaining about the annoying kids, the annoying teacher, the annoying everything, and that conversation lasted all the way into Detroit. I didn’t have to say anything except, “Oh, yuck” and “That’s too bad,” so my mind was free to wander. It wandered all the way back to when I had sent a message to Digger about tonight, struggling over the words to choose, the tone to take, the timing—too soon after I saw him and I’d look desperate, and too close to the weekend and maybe he’d have made other plans. I agonized and worried and re-worked what I’d written, finally just saying where we’d be and when. My heart pounding, I finally pressed send, and then spent the next several hours staring at the screen. The next morning when I’d gotten up he had answered: “Sure.”
Just the one word! What did that mean? Would he be there tonight? I nervously ran my hand down over my hair.
I didn’t see him anywhere. Tracey and I had been at the club for more than an hour, and she had danced and drank and definitely reconnected with the bartender. I was sitting at a table with a bunch of people I didn’t know, sipping a drink which tasted nasty, trying not to be disappointed and upset. It didn’t matter, I told myself. I didn’t care. “Sure” hadn’t meant that Digger was coming. I tilted my face up to the ceiling so the tears wouldn’t run down my face. He had said he wanted to see me, but it wasn’t true.
For crying out loud! I was acting like the little girl my father thought I was. I didn’t even know this guy, there was no reason to get upset. Why would he have been interested in me, anyway?
Tracey was kneeling on a stool and leaning over the bar, making out with the bartender. There was a small crowd gathered, watching them. I tugged her skirt down over her thong and she broke free of his mouth.
“I’m leaving,” I told her. “Have fun.”
“See you,” she answered carelessly.
“I’m not picking you up,” I said. “Get a car this time.”
“What the fuck, Wreck? We came together!”
“Get a car,” I said over my shoulder, and put my hands over my ears. I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I seemed to be making a string of bad decisions. Maybe my father was right about me, and I just couldn’t be trusted. Maybe—
Two hands grasped my shoulders and I looked up into Digger’s eyes. He was there. “Let’s go,” he mouthed to me, the words exaggerated so that I could read them in the half-darkness. Gratefully, I followed him out of the club.
I saw Digger laughing as we left and he said something else.
“What?”
He leaned down and I quickly turned my head so that he was spoke into my right ear. “I said, I never saw anyone look as miserable as you just did. Fun night?”
“It was fine.” I put my chin up. “There were a lot of interesting people.”
He laughed harder. “Right. So much fascinating conversation.” He threw his arm around my shoulders. He did feel warm, even in the bitter cold. I let myself press against him. “Come with me.” We walked up to an old car, polished and shiny. “This is mine.” He looked at me expectantly. “Fairlane.” I must have looked blank. “It’s a 1966 Ford Fairlane. It was my dad's.”
“It’s very nice,” I told him.
“You don’t know cars,” Digger stated. Maybe not, but I could learn. Suddenly, I was interested.
He started the engine and pulled out, driving at least twice as fast as I generally did. “I was late,” he told me, and squeezed my leg, above my knee. I jumped. “I got stuck at the garage.”
“It didn’t matter to me,” I said loftily.
“Right,” he said, and squeezed again. The car’s engine roared.
“Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly a little nervous, and Digger grinned.
“Wherever we want to, baby girl. Enjoy the ride.”