Impala

Last fall, six weeks after President Nixon resigned, my father went out. He went out through the kitchen, into the garage, into the 1971 Chevy Impala, impeccably white, the dark green vinyl seats cool and smooth, heavy with the scent of cigarettes. I smoked in that car when I was thirteen, in the back seat with Kevin Harrison, smoked and necked and knew Daddy would never smell the difference. Would never know the scent of my cigarettes laid over his, my desires drowning his. Daddy loved that car. More than he ever loved me.

I smoked in that car when I was fourteen, smoked and screwed and said screw you to Darren Fuller, who dumped me for Susie Fiedler, who already had everything. A big house, the best clothes. Her daddy loved her, why did she have to have my boyfriend, too, except just because she could. And I smoked and drank and screwed Kevin Harrison who would then dump me for someone, anyone else in the weeks after Daddy left. And sometimes I smoked and did my homework. I did my homework because I was always good at school and that gave me hope.

Nixon had been a big disappointment to Daddy. Just like me. On that day, when Daddy went out through the kitchen, into the garage and into that goddamned white car, here’s what he might have done:

He might have gone to the 7 Eleven, sat outside in that car, in the parking lot, his face lit by the neon 7 and the neon Eleven, awash in disappointment. He might have let the engine idle in park until he put it in
gear, into reverse, backed out of the parking lot, not spraying gravel because it might fly up and chip the paint, and drove down the highway into the middle of the night.

But he didn’t. We know he bought cigarettes, Lucky Strikes, we know that from the guy behind the register, Kevin Harrison’s stupid older brother, Scott. ”Yeah, Regina’s dad was in here-two nights ago-bought cigarettes and a six-pack of Coke.” Scott Harrison wasn’t cute like Kevin.

And he wasn’t smart like Kevin. He always let his greasy hair hang over his
forehead, as if that would hide the pimples.

But I knew before we talked to Scott that Daddy had stopped for cigarettes and Coke. He always did.

Here’s what else he might have done:

He might have broken open the carton, fished out the first pack, stripped off the cellophane right there in the parking lot, in the front seat of that white car, smelled the fresh rush of new tobacco before the sulfur and smoke of the match. Daddy never used a lighter, not even the one in the Chevy, just matches. The glove box of the Impala was stuffed with books of matches from the places Daddy had been-the White Horse Bar, the Zanzibar, P.T.’s Topless Bar, the diners all along East Colfax and the truck stops between here and Reno, the far west end of Daddy’s territory. He had matches from just about everywhere in the known world. The lighter stashed in the crack between the deep green cushions in the front seat was mine, not his. He might have turned on the radio to listen to the news.

Daddy might have inhaled that first full drag, shaken out the match and
settled back into the dark green seat. He might have let his arm dangle out
the window until he’d smoked that Lucky Strike down to the filter, then
flicked it away in the dark and said, “Fuck it. I’m outta here.”

He might have driven through the night, moving from one radio station to another, from one call-in talk show to another, far west into the mountains then down into the Utah desert. He might have driven as far as he could and then fallen asleep behind the wheel, nodding over the dotted white line into the semi rolling east towards Grand Junction. He might have crashed in a shower of glass, talill1g the Impala with him, but sparing the truck driver so he could go home to his wife and kids. He might have done that.

Or maybe he got all the way to Salt Lake City, ringed by the same Rocky
Mountains you can see from the hill at the top of our street. Maybe there he
had another family. I read a story about that once, a cowboy with two wives, two families and two houses. The cowboy’s first wife didn’t know until he died, kicked in the head by a horse. Maybe Daddy had another family, one with a daughter who didn’t smoke and screw and get drunk on rum in the back seat of the Impala. Who didn’t hate the war. Maybe he liked her
better because she was smarter and prettier and funnier and didn’t slam
doors and cry in her room. Who didn’t think she was better than everybody
else because she was smart. Maybe he liked her better because she didn’t
know he was screwing slutty Lois Johnson across town and probably every
other woman from here to Reno because my daddy was so good looking
that all the ladies loved him.

And maybe the woman in that house really didn’t know, instead of
pretend-not-knowing, all the time with her pinched angry mouth, like
somebody made her eat soap for telling the lie of it-ain’t-so, my husband’s
not a drunk and a liar and a cheat. I never smoked or screwed in my mother’s car. That would have been too much for her to bear.

Maybe on that clear crisp day in the fall, when the cottonwoods and elms
had all turned to yellow, and the maples and Virginia creeper to orange and red, and the nights turned cold, maybe he bought those cigarettes and then went down to the EZ Pawn and bought a gun and bullets and then drove out somewhere and blew his stupid fucking brains out and a stray bullet bounced out of his skull and hit the gas line of the Impala and instant immolation. Maybe Daddy died in a funeral pyre like those Buddhist
monks. Only not so pure.

And here’s what else didn’t happen.

I did not sneak out of the house after him, find him at the 7 Eleven, have a smoke with him in the front seat of that car. I didn’t hear the neat snick of my lighter, then see him smiling in the flare lighting his face, brighter than the dashboard lights, as we drove down the highway, smoking those Lucky Strikes. I did not drink rum and Coke in the back seat with my daddy, crunch the ice before it melted, while he cried and told me he loved
me but he was leaving, then pass him the rum until he was too drunk to get out of the car to take a leak without falling down, much less drive me home. That’s how I learned to drive, when I was twelve. Driving Daddy home. Home from the White Horse Bar or the Black Horse Bar or from Lois
Johnson’s stupid, run-down little house, with her grass all brown and dead,
but mowed. I was twelve when I started mowing our grass, so my mother
wouldn’t have to.

I did not take the little Army surplus shovel from the trunk, folded up and tucked in by the spare, for digging out of the snow if he got stuck before he got the chains on. That Impala always did handle like a pig in the snow. I did not bash his head in as a single unlit cigarette dangled from his face as he tried not to piss on his feet.

I did not use my lighter, the little silver one engraved To SK with Love, the one I swiped from some guy sitting at the counter at the White Spot on East Colfax that night we stayed out, Kevin Harrison and me, to see The
Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight and then didn’t go home until later, much later.

And I did not comfort Daddy with shhhh… it’ll be all right, shhhh… don’t cry, while he whimpered it was cold, so cold and his white car lay in the bottom of a gully up above Morrison, south of the interstate. I did not say Daddy, I love you, I love you, I love you. And I didn’t hold him until the shaking stopped and his breathing stopped and the fire ate up his car, blistering the white into grey and then black, char where it used to be green, smoke all over now and not just on the seats, and he could never leave us again.

And I don’t sit in the front seat of my mother’s car on Saturday mornings, looking out the window, hating him, while my mother cries and drives me across town to that house where I watch him mow the grass.