How To Steal a Car

by Pete Hautman

  He looked puzzled.

  “The one the police left in the Hallsteds’ door,” I explained. “The one I gave you last week?”

  “Oh! That was just…apparently someone got into the Hallsteds’ garage and stole their car. It was found abandoned the next day over on Dakota Avenue. As far as we can tell, they didn’t break into the house. The police are keeping the car at the impound lot until the Hallsteds get back next week.”

  I must have looked worried, because he set his trimmer on the grass and gave me a hug. “I didn’t want you to worry, Kell. It was probably just some kids. They must have used a remote to get into the garage.”

  I hugged him back. The hard plastic earmuffs around his neck ground into my cheek. My dad had been doing a lot of hugging the past couple of years, ever since the sensitivity training program his law firm had to go through after one of the lawyers got sued for harassment.

  “You haven’t seen any strangers hanging around the neighborhood, have you?” he said into my ear.

  “Nope.”

  He released me. “Well, let me know if you do, okay?”

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  That was my experiment.

  “Me too, honey. I love you too,” he said as if it was the most natural and true thing in the world.

  He lifted his earmuffs onto his ears, picked up the trimmer, smiled at me, and pulled the starter cord.

  I had to show Jen my new jacket, but when I called, her dad told me she had gone down to Red Wing with her mom for an overnight antiquing trip. That was Jen’s mom’s thing—antiquing—and Jen had gotten dragged into it the same way I had gotten into Pilates with my mom, though I have to admit that sometimes she came back from these trips with some really cool stuff, like the Scooby Doo thermos she’d bought for two dollars at an estate sale. So with Jen off bonding and scavenging with her mom, I was kind of at a loss. I could show the jacket to Will but he’d be like, Hey, cool, which was the way he was all the time, unless his sexual preference was questioned by Alton Wright.

  I wondered if Jen had told Will about the Cadillac.

  I wondered if Will would think stealing the Cadillac was cool, or just stupid.

  I wondered if Will really was gay. It would be ironic if he’d had me steal Alton’s Hummer because Alton had told the truth for once. I’m not sure if ironic is the right word, but you get what I mean. But just because Will was not constantly trying to get naked with Jen and me did not mean he was gay. He sure didn’t seem gay. For example, he dressed really sloppy and his preferred music was of the high-testosterone, head-banging variety. It wasn’t like he was all into fashion and listening to Madonna or Cher or George Michael or something.…I don’t know, maybe those are just stereotypes. My point is that Will did not exactly set off anybody’s gaydar, but then, neither did Abraham Lincoln, and somebody once told me he was gay. It’s probably not true though.

  I hung the jacket over one shoulder and walked to Will’s. I figured if he happened to be out in the yard or something he could tell me how cool my new jacket was or whatever, but when I got there I saw no signs of life. I kept on walking and eventually got to Charlie Bean’s, but nobody I knew was there and I didn’t have any money anyway, so I turned around and walked back. This time when I went by, Will was out on the driveway, shooting baskets.

  “Hey,” he said when he saw me. He looked at the jacket hanging on my shoulder and raised his eyebrows like, did I not know it was eighty degrees out?

  “It’s new,” I said. “I’m breaking it in.”

  “Cool.” He bounced the basketball onto the lawn. “I saw you earlier,” he said.

  “Earlier when?”

  “When you walked by.”

  “I went up to Charlie Bean’s but I didn’t have any money.”

  “Come on,” Will said, grabbing my hand. “I’ll buy you a Phrap-o-whatchacallit.”

  It was like an electric shock when he touched me. I couldn’t remember Will ever doing anything like that before. He had always been so standoffish.

  The hand-holding only lasted about two seconds. As soon as we started walking, he let go and we were like before, moving along in the same direction, but with about twelve inches and my new jacket between us. I shifted the jacket to my other shoulder.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something,” Will said. Another shock. Will never wanted to talk. Ever.

  He said, “I was thinking about what we did. You know, with Alton’s Hummer?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too.”

  “Really?” He slowed his pace and peered at me sideways.

  “Yeah…” I was about to say, It was really fun! Or Let’s do it again! But something I saw in the set of his jaw—or maybe it was the wrinkled forehead—made me pause. Instead, I said, “That was really something,” which is one thing you can say about absolutely anything.

  “It was really stupid,” said Will.

  Ka-thunk. That wasn’t what I’d been thinking at all.

  Keeping my voice light, I said, “So you think the dead rat would have been more effective?”

  “Equally stupid. What I wanted to say was…I want to apologize. We could have gotten into a lot of trouble. You could have gotten killed. It was like, you took that car with Jen that time? And for some stupid reason I got jealous, like you guys were having this exciting life, and at the same time I was all pissed off at Alton because of him telling everybody I was gay, and then, I don’t know, I guess I wasn’t thinking. We were just really lucky we didn’t get caught is all.”

  “Or drownded,” I said.

  “Or drownded.”

  We walked up to the outside ordering window at Charlie Bean’s. Will put his hands in his pockets, then looked at me with a funny expression on his face.

  “Oops,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I forgot. I left my wallet in my other pants.”

  Will was the kind of guy who, when he did something like that, you didn’t get mad at, even though he never actually said he was sorry. This one other time he took me and Jen out for pizza and did the same thing after we’d eaten the pizza. Jen just paid for it. It was understood that Will didn’t do it because he was cheap or broke; he just wasn’t thinking, and even though he didn’t pay, you still liked him because he had wanted to pay. How a guy like that ends up with two girlfriends, I don’t know. So even though I wasn’t mad at him exactly, I was kind of irritated because I’d really wanted that Phrap-o-chino. So on the way back to his house, I decided to make him squirm.

  “Do you like me?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “How about Jen?”

  “I like Jen too.”

  “Did Jen tell you I stole another car?”

  Will stopped walking.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “It was an emergency.”

  He waited for me to explain, but of course I couldn’t, since it involved Jen going off to Taylors Falls with Jim Vail.

  To change the subject quick, I said, “So, if you’re not gay, how come you’re not always trying to have sex with us?” I watched his face. It took a few seconds, but I could see a blush creeping up his neck.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “It’s kind of weird. I mean, if we don’t have to fight you off all the time, how do we know you really like us?”

  “I don’t know.” He wouldn’t look at me.

  Funny thing: If I had thought he might say anything else, I’d never have asked the question.

  I called Britt Johnson, who was friends with Deke’s sister Callie, or so I thought.

  “Why do you want Callie’s number?” Britt asked. “She’s a total skank.”

  “What did she do?”

  “You know Aaron? She’s like all over him.”

  “I thought you and him broke up like months ago.”

  “So?”

  I told Britt I’d found a book with Callie’s name in it and I wanted to return it.

  “I’
d just trash it,” Britt said.

  I laughed. “C’mon.”

  Britt said, “Whatever,” and gave me Callie’s home number.

  Deke wasn’t home but he called me back later that night. I was already in bed but I’d left my cell on just in case.

  “Hey, it’s me. What’s up?” he said.

  I told him what I wanted.

  He said, “I knew you was a freak.”

  Several days went by and I didn’t hear from Deke. I was starting to think he was full of crap just like everybody else, so I tried not to think about it. It was around then that Jen and I had a heart-to-heart over a bottle of wine she’d swiped from her parents’ “wine cellar.” That was what her dad called the two or three dozen bottles stacked in a corner of their basement. The wine was white and kind of sour. I don’t remember what it was. It could have been worth a thousand dollars, for all I know.

  Jen’s parents were gone on an overnight to Chicago, so we sat in her living room and drank the wine out of their fancy wineglasses. We would have been smoking cigarettes too, except neither of us smoked.

  Our heart-to-heart was mostly about Jim Vail. Jen was still messed up over what had happened, and what had almost happened at Taylors Falls, and about two-thirds of the way through the bottle of wine I blurted about me and Jim and the puppies and how I was mad at her for going with him, and she started crying and saying she was sorry and I started crying too, saying I knew it wasn’t her fault ’cause she didn’t know I had been supposed to go and I would have done the same thing except I’d probably have gotten myself raped and so actually she saved me by being the one to go, which was ridiculous, of course, because it was actually my grandmother who saved me by dying.

  We also talked about Will. Jen was convinced he was either gay or a eunuch.

  “He’s not a eunuch,” I said. “Eunuchs don’t have deep voices.”

  “Then he must be gay.”

  “I think he’s just shy.”

  Jen sipped her wine thoughtfully. “That is so sweet,” she said.

  We talked about other things—I don’t remember what. But I never mentioned Deke Moffet.

  I stayed at Jen’s overnight to sleep it off. The next morning when I got home from Jen’s with my head pounding and my stomach churning, my mom was all dressed in her Pilates outfit, waiting for me. I had completely forgotten about Pilates. I quick changed and in about five minutes we were out the door, with her driving. She was in a chatty mood, and I was finding out what a hangover felt like. I thought about her that night after she went out with Becca Ekman, how hard it must have been to sit at the dinner table listening to my dad talk about his day and probably wanting to puke the whole time.

  Just to be perfectly clear, I am not this big-time drinker. I had drunk three times in my life and splitting that one bottle of wine with Jen was the most I’d ever had at one time. But even with my limited experience, I can offer some solid advice: Do not get drunk the night before your Pilates class.

  After an hour of building my core strength (a Pilates thing) and trying to not throw up (a wine thing), I went with my mom for brunch to Chez Colette in the Sofitel hotel, way out in Bloomington. My mom had this thing for their croissants. Also, the place made her feel all French and classy.

  I drank two café au laits and ate a chocolate croissant while my mother chattered on about I-don’t-know-what. I finally got tired of whatever it was she was talking about and asked her how dad was doing with his rapist.

  “Your father is very serious about his work, Kelleigh,” she said, putting on her we-are-your-parents-and-we-are-a-team face. “He believes that every person accused of a crime deserves vigorous representation.”

  “Vigorous representation?”

  “That’s how he puts it.”

  “Do you think he’s really going to get that guy off? Do I need to start carrying pepper spray?”

  She shook her head, looking thoughtful, and said, “I don’t know. With that break-in at the Hallsteds’, pepper spray might not be a bad idea.”

  On the way to the car, my mom handed me her keys, even though all she’d been drinking was coffee. I didn’t really feel like driving because I still had a headache, and driving with a parent watching your every move is not nearly as interesting as driving on your own. But it would have been weird for me not to want to drive, so I drove.

  As I was crossing over the freeway to get to the eastbound entrance ramp, I saw my dad. It was just a flash. White Lexus, my dad’s face through the tinted windshield, and then I was turning onto the freeway.

  “I just saw Dad,” I said.

  My mother looked at me.

  “What? Where?”

  “He was going the other way.”

  She looked around. “Are you sure?”

  “I think so.”

  “What on earth would he be doing way out here? His office is downtown.”

  I shrugged. I was already wishing I hadn’t said anything.

  “You must have been mistaken,” she said.

  “It might have just been a guy who looked like him.”

  “There are a lot of white Lexuses.” She flipped open her cell phone, stared at it for a few seconds, shook her head slightly, closed it, and put it back in her bag.

  “Be careful here,” she said, pointing ahead. “The right lane is closed.”

  I changed lanes, signaling and checking both mirrors like you’re supposed to.

  “We should stop at the store,” she said. “We need milk.”

  “Okay,” I said. I did not mention that my dad had not been alone in his car. Or that the woman sitting beside him looked like a younger version of my mother.

  I decided if Deke ever called I would laugh and say something like “Hey, I was just kidding. Ha-ha.” That’s what I thought I’d do. But then he did call. It was the same day I saw my dad with the woman by the Sofitel. And instead of saying I’d just been kidding, I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” But I still didn’t think I was really going to do it. I told myself something would happen. My other grandmother would die or there would be a tornado or something.

  That night when my dad got home from work, we had BLTs and baked beans for dinner—as minimal a meal as my mother was capable of preparing. I had thought she didn’t believe what I’d said about seeing Dad, but I could tell by the way she was acting that she did believe me. Maybe she’d seen him herself, and seen the woman in the car too, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to me.

  As we were eating, my dad told a long story about something that had happened to him in college but I wasn’t listening. I was watching my mom. Usually she’s full of questions, always keeping the conversation going. Like And then what happened? or What did you have for lunch? or What were you doing way out by the Sofitel in the middle of the day?

  She didn’t ask him anything at all, the whole meal.

  I think she was afraid he would lie to her.

  After dinner, my mom cleaned the kitchen in that loud, potbanging sort of way she did when she was upset. My dad went into his study to shuffle papers around or whatever it was he did in there. I turned on the TV and watched an old Sex and the City rerun, except I wasn’t really watching it, I was thinking about how I was going to get out of meeting Deke.

  I had told him I would meet him at Charlie Bean’s the next afternoon, but I’d decided I wasn’t actually going to do it. The easiest thing would be to tell him I was sick, so I was trying to decide what kind of disease I should have—something that lasted a while—when the phone rang.

  My dad picked up the phone in his study, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that something bad had happened. My head went to all the usual places: another death in the family, a serious financial crisis that would force us to live on macaroni and cheese, a diagnosis of cancer or plague, a death threat from terrorist rapists—all the standard horrors. Then Sarah Jessica Parker’s heel broke at exactly the most embarrassing possible moment, and my mother turned on the garbage disposal, and all the con
versations with Deke I’d been rehearsing kind of smooshed together and I thought how nice it would be to be bulimic at that moment so I could go to the bathroom and puke. Instead of puking, I turned up the volume on the TV and tried hard to care about Sarah Jessica Parker’s shoe crisis.

  What happened: Elwin Carl Dandridge got knifed.

  One of the other inmates thought that raping eight girls was sufficient cause for murder, so he stabbed him three times with the sharpened handle of a spoon. Apparently, it is not that easy to kill someone with a spoon, because instead of being dead, Dandridge was in the prison hospital. My dad felt he had to rush right over there to sit with his injured serial rapist and, I don’t know, write down his dying words or something. Actually, I think he was looking for an excuse to get out of the house, what with my mom acting so weird.

  He didn’t get home until almost midnight. I was slouched in his recliner, reading about Captain Ahab and his leg made out of a whale’s jawbone, when he walked in and told me that Elwin Carl Dandridge was going to be all right.

  “His wounds were superficial. But he’ll have to be placed in solitary confinement when they release him from the hospital wing.”

  Like it was the best thing that could possibly happen, keeping the rapist safe.

  Then he asked me if Mom was still up, and I told him she’d gone to bed an hour ago. That seemed to make him happy too.

  The next morning when I got up, my dad was packing his suitcase. I had this stomach-dropping moment when I thought he was moving out, like they were getting divorced or something, but he told me my mom was driving him to the airport for an overnight trip to Colorado.

  “We’ve located a man who can alibi Elwin Dandridge for several of the alleged rapes. I’ve been trying to find him for the past month, and it turns out he’s been in jail in Denver. I just need to get a statement from him.”

  “What’s he in jail for?”

  “Auto theft.”

  “Oh. Are you going to defend him too?”

  “He has a lawyer. It’s a first offense, so I doubt he’ll do any jail time beyond the time he’s already served.” He shrugged. “Nobody gets too excited these days about stolen cars.”