A Set Of Wheels

by Robert Thurston

Talk about alligators! Standing at the door of his modest-sized but over-decorated house, Harold looks something like an alligator who’s just mastered the upright position. Except what this reptile wants to do is get back to the floor and start devouring us at ankle level.

  Harold, this is Cora.

  He gives a bit of a start as she ambles into the living room light. He had not expected my friend to be either female or black. I’ve scored a point, but points don’t count for much with Harold. He takes her skinny little hand and puts it almost to his mouth.

  Je t’adore-a, Cora, he says. She’s a bit taken aback. I had decided not to prepare her for either Harold or my mother. She hadn’t asked any questions anyway. After glancing my way, she flashes him a different brand of smile. The obvious staginess of it reminds me of Lincoln Rockwell X’s darkie act.

  Where’s Mother? I say.

  She’s in the boudoir, arranging her face. The sculpture takes somewhat longer nowadays.

  Harold’s lips look wet. They always do. He used to have a walrus moustache that hid his mouth and that was better. He’s wearing a blond wig these days, shaggy with a few locks falling over his forehead. He doesn’t need a wig, he’s not bald. He just doesn’t like the natural color of his hair and hair dyes make him break out in a rash. I feel like I always do when I enter Harold’s happy home: I don’t want to be here.

  Harold’s added a lot of junk to the living room. I am particularly taken by the plastic replica of a spinning wheel. Mother lets him do whatever he wants with the house. With anything, for that matter. How she can stand to live in a tacky junkyard, I’ll never know. He’s added some new pictures, framed reproductions of covers from Popular Mechanics. I almost like them.

  Cora inspects the living room by walking a circle around it. She says:

  Nice place you got here.

  I nearly choke on that, and she notices.

  There’s no place like this place so this must be the place, Harold says and beams happily.

  It’s good to see you again, Lee, says my mother, who has managed to come into the room without anybody noticing her. No mean feat, if you look as good as my mother. She’s wearing a pale blue bathrobe pulled tight about her to emphasize the fact that she still has the same figure she had when she was twenty. Her hair looks like she’s just left the hairdresser behind in her bedroom; I expect him to rush out to pat the last few locks into place. Her most recent beauty treatment, the Swiss miracle Dad told me about, has moved the age of her face back a few years. Again. She will go to the grave looking no more than thirty-five, I’m sure. She will become the poster girl for Old Age Clubs of America Inc., if such an organization exists and it probably does. Every time I see her my eyes tear up, both from gladness and appreciation of art. At the same time I remember I hate her for turning myself and my father out to the wolves. Some day, some day when I’m good and drunk or doped or out of my mind or canonized as a saint, some day I will tell her what I think about her leaving us—some day when I’m sure she won’t hate me for saying it.

  Hello, Mother, I say. She puts out a cheek for me to kiss. It is not like kissing skin. Rubber or porcelain, but not skin. I introduce her to Cora.

  You’re black, Mother says.

  Am I? Cora says. Really? Doggone!

  That is Cora’s usual rejoinder to whites who feel compelled to point out the obvious. Mother is a bit disconcerted.

  Of course I did not mean any racial slur, she says, I just let a thought rise to the surface and vocalized it unintentionally.

  Mother is well-read. What she just said probably relates to whatever self-help book is currently on her nightstand.

  She takes Cora’s hand (she and Harold are compulsive handgrabbers) and says:

  My dear, you’re beautiful. I am quite willing to take you into my family as a daughter. Then, glancing at me: That is, if the intention of this visit is for us to welcome you as our new daughter.

  I am always amazed by the alacrity with which Mother leaps to conclusions.

  I’m not in the market for a family, Cora says, an edge of bitterness in her voice. I recall what Emil told me about her slaughtered family and I understand.

  Cora and I just need a place to stay, I say, hoping to diminish the tension in the room. And some help later, if possible of course.

  Always glad to chip in to help a chip off your mother’s block, Harold says, and grins again, looking for a reaction. I’ve usually found it better to just ignore his jokes. In a way, they’re better than chatting about knick-knacks, lawns, and TV.

  What do you need from me? Mother says warmly as if she’s always in there pitching whenever her son requires a helping hand.

  We just had all our gas stolen from our car, I say and am about to explain in detail when Harold interrupts:

  You have a car? A real gas-driven car, not a kiddie car?

  Of course it’s a real car. And some guys took—

  Since when have you been a safedry? Harold says. I can see now what he’s up to. Why didn’t I just wait until I could talk to Mother alone? Because, dummy, Harold never leaves Mother and me alone. Smart Harold.

  I’m not a safedry, Harold. It’s bootleg wheels.

  Ah-ha, an outlaw then?

  If you want to call it that.

  What else should I call it? It’s against the law to own a car without the proper licensing, right?

  Sure, Harold.

  And those who drive without the proper licensing are outlaws, by legal definition, right? By legal definition.

  He is clipping off his words again.

  All right, Harold. Outlaw. I need your help. Just one can of gas, half a gas can, enough to get us back to—

  No way, stepson of mine, no way.

  But all I need is—

  No way. N. O. W. E. I. G. H.

  Mother takes a couple steps toward him. He backs up a step, away from her.

  Harold, she says. Dear. It’s only a little gas. Why can’t we help him out?

  He sighs, the patient commanding officer about to address his shortsighted subordinates.

  You know I can’t. I worked hard to get safedry status. Being a safe driver is an achievement, not a privilege.

  Depends on what side of the thruway you come from, Cora mutters, but apparently neither Mother nor Harold hear her.

  It’s only a small thing, Harold, Mother says in her smoothest gentlest voice. I have to acknowledge a begrudging admiration for Harold, for being able to resist the pull of that voice. I never could.

  A small thing! he says. All I have to do is give him a thimbleful of gas for his stupid joyriding. If they trace it back to me, there goes my safedry status, and all for nothing.

  What are they gonna do, I say, follow the gas trail right back to your doorstep?

  Don’t get angry, Lee, Mother says, then turns back to Harold: It won’t hurt, dear, to take a little risk once in a while. Make you tougher, more masculine, more—

  Damn it, don’t hang that masculine rap on me.

  I don’t mean to insult your masculinity. Of course you are masculine from my point of—

  A eunuch’d be masculine from your point of—

  Calm down, dear, we don’t argue. Remember that, we don’t argue.

  Harold, amazingly enough, settles right down.

  You see, Lee, he says, I just can’t let you have the gas. Your mother means best but she knows, too. If we get into any kind of trouble, the council might get together and vote us out of the community. Think of that, dear. You know what happened to the Steeses and that was just for—

  Yes Harold, I understand, Mother says. Of course I understand. I had just hoped for otherwise. I am sorry, Lee. But please stay the night. In the morning things always look better.

  A little sun brightens the son, Harold says.

  I nod wearily.

  Mother leaves the room without looking back at any of us. Cora stares at a metallic portrait of a wide-eyed clown, purses her lips and nods as if she thinks it’s fine art. I ha
ve a duty to make conversation. Only catch is I got to make it with Harold.

  How’s your Pontiac? I say.

  Resting in peace. Requiescat in pizza.

  Huh?

  The Pontiac has gone to the happy hunting grounds. Get it? Pontiac? Hunting grounds? Pontiac was an Indian name and—

  Okay, I get the joke but what happened to the car?

  Traded it in. Somebody bought it off the lot the next day. Some imbecile who’d just gotten his safedry papers and promptly racked it up into the nearest wall. Totalled it. Made me unhappy, I’ll tell you. I put so many years of care into that vehicle, should never have traded it in, in the first place. As the fellow says—

  Why did you trade it in?

  It was time. A time for reaping, a time for trading. Time to move up, as they say. I’ve been promoted and I’m at the Buick level now, so I managed to arrange for a nice reconditioned Buick. I'll show it to you in the morning. What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.

  No, just shock. I can’t imagine you without that Pontiac. Somehow it’s all wrong, you without the Pontiac.

  Some are born with Buicks, some achieve Buicks, some have Buicks thrust upon them. From the look of you, you’d like to thrust a Buick right on my head. Sorry, Lee. Really.

  Don’t, Harold. I understand the safedry mind. Even from my outlaw point of view.

  You’re entitled to your views, but I say no views are good views.

  He’s used that line on me before. I feel if I stayed around Harold long enough, I’d experience a cycle of the same lines without any new ones to break it up.

  Mother comes back in, carrying a tray of tea and cookies. She always ignores my hatred for tea. I don’t much care for cookies, either. She’s been giving me tea and cookies since I was a baby and she sees no reason to change the habit. I gave up long ago telling her I don’t want them. I take the tea, which is in a pretty pink willow pattern teacup. Mother has always had such good taste in her own things, I don’t see how she can stand to allow Harold s junk to dominate the look of the house. It’s been one of the great mysteries of my life.

  Cora devours her cookies.

  You must be hungry, dear, Mother says to her.

  In a way, Cora says, but really I’m a freak for cookies.

  She’s never said she was a freak for anything before. Sounds like slang from teenage rebel movies that show up at two a.m. on the TV. Freak? She says it so sweetly I begin to wonder if she is fitting in here or something. When she laughs politely at Harold’s pair of word plays on the word freak, I really begin to worry.

  Mother remarks that it is the wee hours of the morning and we all need our sleep.

  I can’t of course allow the two of you to sleep in the guest room, she says, so we’ll put Cora there and you can have the couch here, Lee.

  I had that couch back when I was a bachelor, Harold says, used to call it my debauch-couch.

  Cora goes hysterical over that one. Harold clearly likes her. Even Mother seems to like her. What is Cora up to?

  I should demand to sleep in the same room with Cora. I should say I fuck the woman, and it’s right we should be housed together. But that’s the kind of thing I can’t say to Mother.

  Cora stretches her pipestem arms and yawns.

  I am tired, she says. Thank you for your hospitality.

  Think nothing of it, dear, Mother says. We are happy to have you as our guest.

  Gladda see ya, Harold says in a peculiar voice and blinks his eyes several times. Gladda see ya.

  Whatever that means.

  Mother leads Cora out of the room. Before leaving, Cora says goodnight politely to Harold and gives me a kind of dainty feminine wave that she would make fun of in others. Harold and I sit around in silence for a moment, then I say:

  Say something about wooden nickels.

  What? Oh, you mean don’t take any. Hell, these days don’t take any nickels. Even dimes are suspect. It’s hard dimes, everywhere, kiddo.

  Fortunately Mother comes back into the room with some linens for me to use on the couch.

  We must let Lee get some rest, Harold, she says.

  Harold looks bemused for a minute and then gets the message that he’s supposed to leave the room.

  Happy trails, I say to him. He looks back, startled. Then he decides he likes it, says gosh Roy happy trails too, and goes off.

  Mother makes up the couch for me while telling me where everything I might require for any emergency, from hunger to sudden blindness, is located. As she retreats from the made-up couch, she says:

  That should do you just fine. She touches me as she walks by, a light stroke on my arm, I can barely feel it. Then, leaving the room without turning back to look at me, she says:

  I love you, Lee. I wish you’d come and see us more often. She’s out of the room and I’m feeling lousy. Lousy about me and her, and lousy about touching those clean sheets with my dirty clothes.

  — 7 —

  In my dream I am suddenly in a monastery. It’s got stone walls and religious icons in alcoves. But there’s also metallic pictures of gardening tools on the walls. A monk passes by me, muttering. He says, Hearty Burgundy, Gallo Be Thy Name. He goes into a time step, but is chastened by a passing Mother Superior, who is of course Mother. The Monk, of course Harold, shuffles off to Buffalo. I become more and more aware of the tinkling of bells in the distance. The tinkle has been there throughout the dream, it seems, and it is getting louder.

  I am suddenly awake, staring at the soft copper reflections of the clown picture which hangs above the couch. The tinkle continues, next to my left ear. I turn my head toward the sound. It originates from what appears to be three dark lines rattling directly in front of my eyes now. They are drawn back and I see that it is a set of keys on a chain and Cora is holding them. She whispers:

  You’re ’bout as hard to wake up as anybody I’ve seen.

  I point to the keys.

  What’re those?

  Whatta you think? Our exit visa.

  Exit visa? Cora, what’ve you—

  Keys. Car keys. Buick keys. Mr. Harold’s Buick’s keys.

  Harold’s. How’d you—

  Keeps ’em under his pillow, the obvious place. No imagination, that man. I can see—

  You stole ’em?

  Crept tiptoe in his room. Didn’t need the tiptoe, he snores like a freight train going uphill. My dainty little hand under the pillow and voila! Let’s get outta here.

  Put ’em back.

  What? Lee, what’re you saying?

  Put them back. I’m not gonna steal from Harold. Not from Harold.

  Cora leans back on her haunches, stares her squint-eyed stare at me.

  Oh? she says. Not from Harold. Not from your mama, you mean.

  Not from either of ’em.

  Not from your mama.

  Okay, you say so. But put the keys back, whatever you think.

  Go to hell. I’m using these motherin’ keys, and you can go on back to dreamland, wake up all innocent in the morning and commiserate with your mama about how this evil demon child you all trusted has put the double hex and double cross on you. Those hand puppets you call people in there’d probably love it, you commiserating with ’em. Sleepy-bye, Lee.

  No, wait.

  You give the alarm, you bastard, and I’ll stuff your balls ’tween your teeth ’fore you can say sorry.

  I give up. Okay, let’s go. That’s your blacker-than-thou voice and I can do naught but obey.

  Naught, huh? You got high-quality shit for brains, know that?

  I love you to pieces, Cora.

  At first she doesn’t get it, doesn’t remember. Then she does and her eyes become fierce.

  You bastard!

  Oddly enough, I mean it.

  That’s not the point. Oddly enough. You been saving that line just to slice me once. And I don’t like that. I don’t like that ay-tall.

  Let’s get out of here.

  * * * * *<
br />
  Harold’s Buick is a bright yellow. Canary, I think. As usual the garage looks like it’s tended by a live-in maid. All the tools on the shelves are shiny, polished. Whatever stuff he uses to take the grease marks off the cement floor works. There’s another damn clown portrait hanging above an empty garbage container with a neat ribbon of green plastic bag encircling its upper rim. The bag is clean inside.

  You got the keys, I say to Cora. You unlock the trunk.

  What do you mean, unlock the trunk?

  Harold keeps gas cans in the trunk like everybody else. If we’re gonna steal one, we’ve got to unlock the trunk.

  She doesn’t like the sarcasm in my voice. She puts her hands on her hips, says:

  Look here, white boy, I ain’t gonna grab no gas can, sneak by those ugly face guards, and trek back all those miles to your wheels. We’re taking Mr. Harold’s car.

  All the blood drains out of my body. I glance down at the floor, fully expecting to see my blood staining its pristine whiteness.

  Jesus Christ, Cora, no! Take Harold’s car? That’s insane, that’s—

  That’s what we’re gonna do. What I’m gonna do, anyway.

  You don’t know Harold. He may act like a real simp but you touch his car and suddenly he’s—

  Look, Lee, he’s not my Mr. Harold. I don’t give a shit he’s got a hardon for this Buick. All I want is to get out of here, back to where I can breathe again, where the bedsheets don’t stink of Clorox.

  He’ll have the fuzz on us before we get two blocks.

  Look, Lee, the way that man cuts logs when he snores, he won’t wake up for an explosion.

  That’s what you think. When it comes to messing with his car, he’s psychic. He’ll be on the phone and—and anyway what about the barriers, the guards, how the hell do you expect to get the car out of here? This community’s—

  Use your head for something besides jello. The guards, they’re out there to keep people from crashing into this place, they’re not ready for somebody crashing out.

  But then—but then we’ve really had it. I mean, that canary yellow’s not exactly the kind of unobtrusive color we need for an escape run. Too conspicuous.

  She leans against the car door, fiddles with the side-view.