The Bentleys Buy a Buick

by Pamela Morsi

  She rang the doorbell. It was the overwhelmingly loud sound that Erica recalled from her night as a neighborhood peeper. The wait seemed just as long as well. The neighbor, still sweeping, made a sound as if she wanted to say something. Erica was not going to waste one word on the nosy busybody. She froze the woman out with a look as sharp as an ice pick.

  On the drive Erica had imagined what she would say to her rival.

  Perhaps she should pour on the guilt. Tom not only has a wife, but he’s got a little boy who adores him. You mustn’t destroy that.

  Or maybe a threat like her mother might make. I’ll take him for everything he’s got and the two of you will be left with nothing.

  But what she really wanted to say was pure Loretta Lynn, You ain’t woman enough to take my man!

  Erica heard the dead bolt click. She stiffened her spine and set her jaw tightly, ready for battle.

  The door yawned open and standing on the threshold was a tiny old woman in men’s trousers and a cardigan sweater.

  “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying,” she said directly.

  “I’m a…”

  “And if you’re wanting me to go to some church, well, religion and I parted ways some time back.”

  “No, I’m…”

  “Speak up! I can’t make out a blame thing if you mumble.”

  Erica did speak up, loud and clear. “I’m here to see Clara.”

  “Clara?” The woman appeared momentarily caught off guard before she answered. “Clara’s not here.”

  “Where is she?”

  Erica’s sharp, unfriendly tone was contagious.

  “What’s it to you?” the old woman asked.

  “I…I am Mrs. Tom Bentley,” she declared. Erica rarely used the old-fashioned, formal description of herself. But at this moment she felt certain it was called for.

  The woman’s brow furrowed for a moment and then the expression on her face changed completely into a warm, welcoming smile.

  “You’re Tom’s wife?” she said. “Well, come in, come in. No sense standing on the porch. There is such a chill in the air today.”

  Erica hadn’t noticed any chill. And the woman’s unexpected friendliness was more disconcerting than her hostility. However she was determined to confront Clara and this woman knew where to find her, so Erica followed her inside.

  “Come on back into the kitchen,” the woman said. “It’s a bit early, I guess, but I’m having my afternoon toddy.”

  The kitchen was retro, not by design but by default. The dark wood cabinets and green appliances were relics of a bygone era. But the place was clean and the sun streaming through the double windows, where Erica had gained her experience as a peeper, made the room cheerful.

  “Sit, sit,” the woman insisted.

  Erica took the same chair she’d seen her husband occupying.

  On the table a tall green bottle with the name Laphroaig took center stage.

  The woman tapped the whiskey adoringly on its cap. “This is my absolute favorite. In my opinion it’s the best scotch malt money can buy.” She laughed lightly. “Of course my money doesn’t buy a lot of whiskey, but I drink one bottle a year of this and we’re nearly to Thanksgiving. Let me get you a glass.”

  “No, thank you,” Erica told her quickly. “I don’t care for any.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to try it,” she insisted. “Good whiskey is the best thing in the world. It doesn’t give you a headache like wine, or make you sick to your stomach like mixed drinks. And don’t even talk to me about beer. A woman just can’t drink that and keep her girlish figure.”

  From the cupboard, the woman produced a square and stubby glass into which she splashed about a quarter of an inch of the liquor.

  “Just have a taste,” the woman said.

  “Look, Mrs….” Erica hesitated.

  “Oh, call me Guffy,” the woman said. “My friends call me Guffy and I am absolutely certain you and I are going to be great friends.”

  Erica could not imagine such a circumstance. The mere suggestion of it caused her to bring the glass of whiskey to her lips.

  The taste was not at all what Erica expected. She’d always found alcohol to be kind of medicinal, best when disguised by orange juice or tabasco or blended into the official drink of San Antonio, a margarita, essentially a limeade Sno-Kone. But this ten-year-old scotch was smooth and smoky. It smelled like the ocean, but the warmth and sweetness on her tongue was strangely invigorating. Erica felt more alert, more in control. She’d always thought that the term “liquid courage” meant too drunk to think straight. But this was different and immediate. It was like the alertness of coffee with the addition of self-assurance. Erica needed both.

  “The whiskey is very nice, Mrs…. uh…Guffy. But I am not here to socialize.”

  She nodded. “Of course not, you’re here about Clara,” she said. She clucked her tongue. “I have to admit, I’m surprised he even mentioned her to you. Or maybe he didn’t,” she suggested, looking at Erica questioningly. “Maybe he just told you about her generally and not how much I think the two of them belong together.”

  Erica nearly choked on her whiskey. “I’m his wife,” she said. “You can hardly expect him to say something like that to me.”

  Guffy shrugged. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But now that you know I hope you would consider it.”

  “Consider what?”

  “Letting Tom take Clara off my hands,” the woman answered. “I love her, she’s important to me and we’ve had a lot of great times together. But the future is not so bright for me as it once was. My doctors tell me that these seasons of feeling okay will get to be fewer and fewer as this endgame proceeds. I want to make sure that Clara goes on. That someone who loves her is taking care of her. And I’m convinced that the person who can best do that is your Tom.”

  Erica didn’t know what to say. She drank her scotch instead of speaking.

  “I truly like and admire your husband,” Guffy told her. “And I’m not particularly partial to men. If you want the truth, I’ve been quietly batting for the other team for the last sixty years.”

  Erica wondered if the whiskey was numbing her brain. “Batting for the other team?” she repeated.

  Guffy nodded. “I’m a lesbian,” she answered. “Isn’t it interesting that I can just say that out loud. When I first knew I was one, I couldn’t even whisper the word to my girlfriend. Now they say it on TV.”

  The woman chuckled as if delighted by the idea.

  Erica was trying to take this information in and sort it with what little she already knew. Somehow it was not adding up easily.

  “Is…uh…is Clara a lesbian as well?”

  The older woman seemed momentarily stunned and then literally guffawed.

  “You are funny,” she said. “You are really funny. You seem very proper, but what a dry wit. No wonder Tom is so in love with you.”

  “He is in love with me,” Erica stated firmly.

  “I know,” Guffy agreed. “He talks about you and your boy all the time. Everything he says and does is about you. Even his decision to reject Clara is all about that. But I don’t want you to let him do it. He and Clara have a special bond. I understand that. She has great meaning to me, too. That meaning is important to preserve. It may be as important as preserving Clara herself.”

  Erica repeated the words that rang loudest to her. “Tom rejected Clara.”

  Guffy nodded. “Oh, yes. And more than once. He keeps saying how he’s a family man and he has responsibilities. I believe in that. I applaud it, but these two just belong together and I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen.”

  “You can say that, right to my face!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say it behind your back,” Guffy told her. “I’d think you’d welcome it. An honest hardworking man, who cares so much about his family deserves a reward.”

  “Not a reward like that!”

  “I’ll make it as easy on you
as I can,” the old woman said. “But your Tom is a proud man with a strong sense of what’s right. He didn’t take advantage of me, even when he could have. I don’t expect he’d do that now.”

  “No, he would not,” Erica said. “Tom doesn’t ‘take advantage’ of women. He looks tough and he’s a man’s kind of man, but he’s a protector when it comes to women and children.”

  Guffy nodded. “Probably because he grew up taking care of his mother and fending for himself.”

  Erica tried to keep her jaw from dropping. Tom never talked about his early life or his mother. He deliberately kept his past in the past. And even direct questions from curious neighbors and acquaintances earned answers that were vague enough to be meaningless.

  “He told you about his mother?”

  “Not too much,” Guffy answered. “Tom’s childhood is not a place he wants to revisit. But we’ve spent a good deal of time together, talking about Clara. Things come out.”

  Guffy shrugged as if that meant nothing. But it was something to Erica.

  “I think perhaps he sees me as the grandmother he never had,” Guffy said. “I’m sure I would have loved to have a son or grandson like him.”

  And what would that make Clara? Erica thought to herself. His sister? Or his wife?

  “I need to go,” Erica told the older woman. “Do you know where I can find Clara?”

  “She’s at your husband’s shop.”

  “She’s with Tom.” Erica stood up so quickly she spilled the rest of the liquor in her glass. She quickly began sopping it up with the tiny cocktail napkin she’d been given.

  “Grab that dish towel hanging on the drawer handle,” Guffy said. “This whiskey hits you kind of quick if you’re not used to it.”

  “I didn’t drink enough for it to hit me,” Erica assured her. “Now thank you for your hospitality, but I really must go.”

  “You’re going to see Clara, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, if you must know, I am going to see her and my husband,” she said. “I believe I have the right.”

  Guffy nodded. “Sit back down,” she said. “I’m going to call him and tell him to bring her over here. You shouldn’t be out on the road in your condition.”

  “I’m not in any condition,” Erica insisted. “I hardly drank any of this at all.”

  “Well, I’m going to pretend that you did,” Guffy said.

  “It’s time that this discussion was out in the open and I’m not going to be left out.”

  Tom couldn’t have been any more startled by the call from Mrs. Gilfred. Stranger yet was the conversation. It wasn’t really much of a conversation, more of a dialogue with responses from Tom that were either ignored or met with a “what did you say?”

  “Your wife is here at my house,” Guffy told him. “I’ve plied her with liquor to get on her good side. Now bring my Clara home and let’s see if the three of us can work something out.”

  “I think I’ve been very clear,” Tom said. “I’d love to buy this car, but I just don’t think I should.”

  “What was that?”

  Tom raised his voice. With her hearing problem and the noise of the shop he was practically yelling into the phone.

  “I said I’d…I’ll come over there.”

  “Good, good. And bring Clara. Pretty day like this would be perfect for getting her out into the sunshine.”

  Tom was shaking his head and muttering under his breath as he went back into the work area. What on earth was going on? And why was Erica up in Leon Valley talking with Mrs. Gilfred? The old woman must have gone around him. She’d really become too fond of the idea of Tom buying the Buick. Now she’d probably roped Erica into agreeing with her.

  He found Briscoe where he’d left him, beneath the chassis of an ’86 Fiero.

  “I’m going to have to leave for an hour or so,” he said. “Do you think you can finish this on your own?”

  The young guy glanced into the undercarriage of the vehicle and then over at Tom. “Uh…yeah…yeah, I think I can.”

  Tom nodded. “Don’t trust yourself completely yet,” he cautioned him. “Get Gus or Hector to take a look before you call it done.”

  Briscoe nodded.

  “I’ve got to take the Buick up to her owner,” Tom announced. “I guess it’s time for her to get a road trial anyway. Gus, you’re in charge. Keep everybody working, we’ve got too much to do to have anybody slacking off today.”

  The man nodded with a solemnity that was unexpected. “You do what you have to do, Tom. I can keep this crew on task. And nobody’s a better teacher than Hector. He’ll probably be better for the youngster than you are.”

  Tom nodded. “Okay, then,” he said.

  In bay four, Tom raised the door. He grabbed a chamois and wiped the dust off the car as he put down the convertible top. She was looking good. Her heavy amounts of polished chrome were like a beautiful woman covered in expensive jewels. She didn’t need the bling, but it was certainly eye-catching. Her new wide-stripe whitewalls, recently arrived from the antique tire distributor in Tennessee, added the kind of elegant glamour that one associated with famous actresses of a bygone era walking carefree in impossibly high heels.

  Tom opened the driver’s-side door and sat down inside. He slid the key into the ignition and turned it over. She started up immediately and purred with the smooth efficiency that defined the Nailhead V-8. He slipped her out of the bay and into the front lot, allowing her a minute and a half to warm-up, a necessity for vintage engines.

  It was a gorgeous afternoon, the air was dry and crisp, but the sun shining directly down on him was warm. In San Antonio, convertibles were not a summer vehicle. And summer was often the longest season. But there were plenty of wonderful days in spring and fall and even the depths of winter when an open car was exactly the right thing.

  Tom slid the variable pitch Dynaflow transmission into Drive and pulled out onto West Avenue. He felt as if he were playing hooky. He should be back in the shop with his head up a busted muffler. Instead he was cruising down the road on the finest set of wheels he would never own. He was loving it. And it was part of his job, he reminded himself. An old car was like an old person, life was pretty much use it or lose it. Clara had already spent too much time being carefully garaged. She needed to be driven. And he wanted to be the person to do that. At least while he could.

  Tom tried not to speculate on Erica and Mrs. Gilfred. What if the old lady had convinced Erica? What if she was going to push Tom to buy Clara?

  That scenario was too pleasant to be seriously considered. Tom had learned early to take a healthy dose of reality with all his dreams. Santa Claus didn’t really leave stuff for kids on December 24. And his smart, sensible Erica wasn’t going to throw judgment out the window just because an old lady asked her to. Even if Erica was convinced, Tom had known all along that owning classic cars was too rich for his blood. That’s why he’d wanted to open his kind of shop. He got to care for them, repair them, restore them without having to pay for the upkeep.

  He pulled to a stop at a red light. The brakes were almost completely silent. All the sound was in the pedal not the rotors or the pads. And they responded efficiently, just as they should without the slightest veer to the left or right.

  The driver of the compact Honda next to him rolled down the passenger window.

  “Great car!”

  “Thanks,” Tom answered.

  “Did you restore it yourself?”

  “It’s mostly original,” Tom told the guy. “I did some work on it. It belongs to one of my customers.”

  “You a mechanic?”

  Tom pulled one of his cards out of his shirt pocket and leaned left as far as he could to hand it through the guy’s window. He took it and glanced at it quickly.

  “My father-in-law has an old Shelby he’s been working on for years,” the guy said. “He’s always complaining about not being able to find the right mechanic.”

  “Tell him to drop by,” Tom said. �
��And bring his Shelby if it’s drivable. If nothing else I’d be happy to admire it.”

  Behind them a car honked. The light had changed.

  “Thanks,” the guy called out before he continued on.

  Word of mouth was the best advertising. If the guy’s father-in-law liked working on cars, he would probably have friends who did, too. And often they were in that age group where they had more money to have things fixed than time to fix it themselves.

  Tom entered the freeway, eager to blow the cobwebs out of Clara’s tailpipe and see how she liked it. She accelerated with all the power he’d expect of the 322 and she was up to sixty by the time he left the ramp. It was hard to hear engine noise over the noise of the wind, but she was driving smoothly, with no rattles or vibrations. Tom couldn’t keep from smiling.

  He exited the interstate at Bandera, wove his way through the traffic to Mrs. Gilfred’s subdivision. Once there he leisurely took the twists and turns, not detecting any jerkiness or whine in the power steering.

  When he got to Mrs. Gilfred’s house, sure enough, he saw Erica’s car parked in front. He turned into the driveway that had been Clara’s for many decades.

  He turned the car off and walked to the front door. Tom glanced in the direction of Miss Warner’s house and caught her peeking out from between the plants on her porch. He smiled and waved before pressing the button on the doorbell for the hard-of-hearing.

  The old woman opened the door, looking, as she always did these days, happy to see him. Behind her, standing near the kitchen, Erica did not look so pleased. Even from this distance he could see the lines in her forehead and the set of her jaw. She had her hands clasped together tightly. Guffy must have upset her somehow. He hoped she hadn’t been pressuring her to buy the Buick. Surely she knew he wouldn’t push for that. Of course Erica would know that his responsibility to his wife and son came way ahead of his love of any car.

  He gave her a big smile, hoping that it offered reassurance. She returned one that was more tentative.