Rules of the Road

by Joan Bauer

  If I were God I would wipe out every disease in the world beginning with the A’s: AIDS, Alcoholism, Alzheimer’s . . .

  CHAPTER 3

  It was 6:56 A.M. A fine summer mist covered the expensive brownstones on Astor Street. I never got to talk to my mom about Dad or Mrs. Gladstone or what a person needed to know to be the driver of a demanding rich person. I was extra loud in the kitchen making my breakfast to hopefully wake my mother up, but there are just so many times you can drop a stainless steel bowl without seeming suspicious and Mom slept through all of it. I thought of all the good drivers I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what made them that way. They just got behind the wheel, drove, and didn’t run into things. The not running into things was important.

  I stood in front of Mrs. Gladstone’s ritzy three-story brownstone building. It was surrounded by pink and white azalea bushes and a black and bronze fence. I was wearing my khaki suit and my stacked heel leather shoes that were very good for driving. I pulled back the gold lion door knocker, gave it a ram.

  A curly haired woman in a black maid’s uniform opened it.

  “I’m Jenna,” I said, smoothing down my hair that had reached warp-frizz.

  She looked me up and down, uncertain, then led me into a hallway that was filled with things that looked old and expensive. The wallpaper had gold peacocks and thick stripes, a grandfather’s clock with gold around the edges bonged seven rings.

  “I appreciate promptness.” Mrs. Gladstone walked slowly down a spiral wooden staircase like a queen. She stepped onto a fat oriental rug. Her gray eyes studied me. A huge oil painting that looked like Mrs. Gladstone in better days hung over the fireplace the next room over.

  This was not a place where you hunker down and have a grilled cheese.

  “And what do you think is the most important qualification for being a good driver?” She asked this like we’d been talking for a while.

  “Well . . .” I almost said luck, but that seemed irresponsible.

  “Come now. A person with a six-month-old license should have an opinion.”

  Six months and a day. “Focus,” I said loud and clear, which surprised me.

  Mrs. Gladstone’s face registered mild appreciation. “My late husband, Floyd, always said that the mark of a man was his ability to focus.”

  “My grandfather said if you weren’t watching the knife you could hack off your thumb.” She looked at me strangely. “He was a butcher,” I added.

  She laughed, the good kind from the heart, and motioned me to a door. “It’s time you met the car.”

  “I’d love to meet him. I mean . . .her.”

  “Believe me, I’m not that attached to it.”

  I groaned inside and followed her down the stairs.

  “Floyd always said that a Cadillac offered the world’s purest driving experience.”

  We were standing in the garage by the car—a white, spotless beast of a thing with a hood ornament and blue leather interior. I kicked the steel-belted radials like I knew what I was doing. The car was pointed away from the garage door, which meant that to get the car out, I would have to back it up. I was a C-minus backer-upper.

  “A Cadillac, Floyd always said, is entirely trustworthy. It has been tested in any and all conditions and will perform to the utmost to protect its driver.”

  Was this a car or a Seeing Eye dog?

  Mrs. Gladstone handed me the car keys like they opened the gates of heaven. I unlocked the driver door, started to get in.

  “A driver always lets the passenger in first.”

  “Right.”

  I got out, slammed the door shut.

  “And don’t slam the door. This isn’t a truck.”

  “Sorry.”

  I let Mrs. Gladstone in the back and gently shut the door like it was holy. Mrs. Gladstone nodded to me, which I guess meant I could now get inside the car. I squeezed behind the wheel. Mrs. Gladstone pointed at a button near the dashboard. I pressed it. My seat adjusted perfectly.

  I checked the mirrors, the dashboard monitor, buckled my seat belt. I felt like I was in a tank.

  She sniffed. “Start the motor.”

  I fumbled with the key, started the engine, put the car in reverse, and decided not to ask if she was a praying person.

  “Here we go,” I said, inching the huge car backwards.

  “Freeze!” she shrieked.

  I slammed on the brake.

  “I believe it’s customary to open the garage door before backing out of it!”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Gladstone . . .I’m kind of nervous.”

  “Press the button on the controlboard.”

  I pressed it. The garage door went up.

  “Proceed,” she said stiffly. “And may God Almighty be merciful.”

  “Amen,” I said and slowly backed the white beast up the driveway onto Astor Street.

  I inched down the street. Three cab drivers began honking behind me. This was probably because I was going fifteen miles an hour. They could honk their rotten little hearts out for all I cared. I wasn’t going any faster. Numbers were blinking on the dashboard: Inside/outside temperatures, gas mileage. The cab drivers moved from honking to threatening gestures. I wanted my mother’s twelve-year-old Honda. Gas, speedometer, broken radio. Nothing fancy.

  “Turn left and take LaSalle Street downtown,” ordered Mrs. Gladstone.

  I turned left, steered the Cadillac behind a LaSalle Street number 11 bus for protection; it was the only thing on the road bigger than this car. My neck muscles tensed as I gripped the wheel and obeyed all the commands from the back.

  “Turn left . . .not there, here.”

  “The light has been green for some time now.”

  “The driver to your left making those filthy gestures does have the right of way.”

  Driving makes you a trusting person. You’re on the road with potential dangers everywhere and like an idiot you keep moving forward. Maniacs could be driving next to me and I wouldn’t know until they cut me off and propelled me into oncoming traffic. A teenage girl honked loudly and raised an angry fist when I obeyed the law and stopped at a yellow light changing to red. There was no loyalty in my age demographic.

  Finally, I pulled the car to the front of Gladstone’s Shoes on Wabash Avenue, rolled it over the curb, actually, but at this point, I wasn’t going to be picky. We were there. Murray was unlocking the protective chain and fence around the door that guarded the store from nocturnal shoe thugs. Gladstone’s always opened at eight A.M. to get a jump on the competition. He nearly dropped his teeth when he saw us. I smiled my indentured servant smile, got out, gave the door a little tap shut, opened Mrs. Gladstone’s door, held a hand out for her, helped her up. She told me to pull the car into the twenty-four-hour parking garage where Lorenzo would take care of it. Lorenzo could have it as far as I was concerned. I wanted to say we both had a lot to be thankful for, beginning with the fact that we were still alive.

  I stood rigidly as Mrs. Gladstone walked past me.

  “At ease,” she said, and walked strictly into the store.

  I sold shoes like crazy all morning. I did talk one customer out of a sale because the shoes she wanted were all wrong. I never sell just for style, always comfort. If a customer is scrunching up her face, looking miserable in a pair of shoes that she says will probably break in, I tell her no, don’t buy them. Your feet will guide you. Listen to your toes. Cordovan leather and pinched tips aren’t worth torture. The next time she needs a pair, she’ll probably come back to me.

  I don’t know what it is about selling shoes that I love the most. There’s something about the whole experience that brings you closer to people—working with feet that aren’t considered the most glamorous part of the body but are one of the most important parts; getting down on your knees to wait on people you’d never meet any other way. Murray Castlebaum said selling shoes is the quickest road to humility in all of retail.

  I was going to have lunch wi
th Opal Kincaid, my best friend, who worked in a Fotomat booth on State Street and had to get out regularly or her brain would bake. Opal had a fender bender with her father’s new Dodge last week and was grounded until August, except for working (her father got her next six paychecks as payment) and having lunch with me. She had a huge calendar in her room that she used to mark off the days like a prisoner in solitary confinement. She was standing on the street waiting for me, desperate for teen companionship. I was halfway out the door when Mrs. Gladstone grabbed me.

  “I’ve asked Mildred to substitute for you at the store this afternoon,” she announced. “You will drive me to Evanston.”

  Evanston was a near north suburb that required a trip on Lake Shore Drive, a piece of road where people tended to go very fast. Lorenzo pulled the Cadillac in front of the store, got out, and handed me the keys.

  “I have a lunch date with my friend, ma’am.”

  “Which you will postpone.” Mrs. Gladstone marched to the car.

  Opal grabbed my arm. “Tell her you can’t go, Jenna. We have things to discuss.”

  The things were boys—Bob Goldblume and Jerry Burgess—Opal’s two new crushes. Opal always fell for boys in pairs—if one didn’t work out, she had a backup. I’ve only liked one guy really—Matt Wicks—a seriously intelligent tall senior who (a) did not follow the crowd and (b) did not know I existed. Opal couldn’t cope with my dateless state and kept trying to fix me up with sub-par guys like Morris, her second cousin twice removed, who, believe me, you want to be removed from at least twice.

  “Important things,” Opal said, hissing.

  Mrs. Gladstone was glaring at me like a vulture who’d just seen mouse meat. “Ahem,” she said pointedly.

  Opal looked at Mrs. Gladstone and shivered.

  I sighed in defeat, released Opal’s clenched hand from my arm. “I’ve got to go. We’ll have lunch tomorrow. I promise.”

  I walked to the Cadillac, opened the back door for Mrs. Gladstone.

  Starving Teen Shuns Lunch for Servitude.

  “Mrs. Gladstone, what is happening?”

  “Take Lake Shore Drive,” she ordered, “and then we shall see.”

  CHAPTER 4

  It could have been worse, I suppose.

  I pulled up to Mrs. Gladstone’s brownstone at 5:17, having made it to Evanston and back without anything too perilous happening, like premature death. I did get lost four times, forgot to click my turn signal on twice, almost got sideswiped by a library Bookmobile, in addition to being tailgated by a man in a Porsche with an advanced case of road rage who kept leaning on his horn to pass me even though I was surrounded by cars on either side. My grandmother used to say that some men become their cars. I almost ran out of gas because I wasn’t watching the Cadillac tripometer that blinked digital displays that only a graduate from MIT could understand. I say almost because I was pulling into a Sunoco station just as the gas gave out and the great car sat there gasless in the middle of the street. This caused Mrs. Gladstone to have a screaming fit about responsibility and how people in Texas never let the gas gage go below empty because Texas is so big, it’ll eat you up as sure as look at you. When the two attendants pushed us to the pump, I said wouldn’t it have been awful if this had happened on Lake Shore Drive and she didn’t say anything.

  “Here we are,” I said coming to a lurching stop by her front door. “Safe and sound. Technically.” I pressed the control button for the garage door. Up it went. I eased the behemoth car inside, pressed the button to close the garage door.

  “I suppose you’ll do,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You may be my driver.” She said this like she was giving me a present.

  “Mrs. Gladstone, I need to be honest with you. I’d rather sell shoes.”

  “I need a driver.”

  “I understand that, but I bet there are whole communities of people in this town who could—”

  Madeline Gladstone stomped her foot at the back door. I got out, opened it, helped her out of the Cadillac.

  “I need a driver for the summer, young woman. Someone who can drive me down to Texas for the annual stockholders meeting where I will officially retire as president of the company and hand the reins of leadership over to my . . .son.” She said son quietly.

  “You want me to drive you to Texas?”

  “Not initially. First I want you to drive me to Peoria, Springfield, St. Louis, Kansas City, Little Rock, Shreveport, and then to Texas. There are stores there that I must visit.”

  “Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Gladstone, but why don’t you just fly?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I’m seventy-three years old. I’ve been in the shoe-selling business for fifty of those years. Shoes get sold on the ground, not in the air!”

  Got it.

  I leaned toward her. “You want us to go on a road trip?”

  Her cheek twitched slightly.

  “But why me, Mrs. Gladstone? I mean, I’m not so good at this.”

  She looked at me hard. “Because you remind me of myself when I was a young girl.”

  I studied her. To begin with, I was nearly a foot taller. Maybe she started out larger and shrank.

  “I’m not only in need of a driver,” she explained. “I need someone who has a rudimentary understanding of the shoe business. I’ve watched you at the store. You have an unusual knack for appreciating the customer’s needs. I will pay you double your daily salary and commissions because the hours will be long. I will pay all travel accommodations, meals, and provide reasonable spending money. Upon our safe return to Chicago, you could receive an additional bonus. We will be gone for six weeks. I trust that will be satisfactory.”

  Driving for Dollars. She wasn’t that crazy.

  “I’ll have to ask my mother.”

  “I would be happy to discuss any concerns your mother might have.”

  “She’ll have some, Mrs. Gladstone.” I didn’t say beginning with your sanity.

  I looked at the Cadillac and tried to picture myself on the open road, driving away from everything.

  CHAPTER 5

  My mother put down her favorite paring knife, pushed aside the vidalia onions that were about to become baked sherried onion soup, and uttered a loud, immovable, “No!”

  I had just thrown out the plan.

  “Absolutely not,” she continued. “You haven’t been driving long enough, honey. It takes time to become a mature driver.”

  I tossed back my hair with total maturity and looked at the Rand McNally Road Atlas on the kitchen table that I had opened to Texas. My finger followed the wavy border separating Texas and Oklahoma.

  “I think I’m being reasonable, Jenna. Six weeks is a long time.”

  I studied the map. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio.

  “Just tell her you’re terribly flattered, you wish you could help, but your protective, yet enlightened mother said no.” Mom held her head like she was getting a migraine and let the window fan blow her short black curls back. “It’s not,” she added, “that I don’t trust you.”

  I looked at the map and sighed.

  Trusted Teen Takes Texas by Storm.

  “It’s the other people on the road,” Mom said. “The maniac drivers, the idiots, the—”

  “Rest-stop serial killers.”

  “It’s been known to happen, Jenna.”

  “I’ve never been to Texas, Mom.” I watched her face for signs of guilt. Her black eyebrows furrowed. Not good.

  “Dad’s back.” I had to tell her.

  The paring knife crashed on the cutting board.

  “What?” I saw the shadow cross her face.

  “He came to the store,” I added.

  “Drunk?” Her voice was thick with anger.

  “I’ve seen him worse.”

  “How comforting.” Mom slapped an angry fist on the counter. “What did he do this time?”

  I threw up my hands. How do you explain it?

  “What did he do?”


  “He was yelling my name, he kept falling over, he embarrassed me in front of the world! Just the usual, Mother! Okay?”

  Mom closed her green eyes that exactly matched Faith’s. “I’m sorry, Jenna.”

  “Mom, I want to get out of town. It gets so weird when Dad—”

  “You don’t have to see him!”

  “He’s my father! What do you want me to do when he comes around? Walk away? Leave him lying in the gutter! I can’t do that! I’ve got to know he’s okay! I’ve got to make sure he gets some place safe! I don’t hate him like you do!”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “None of this is fair!” I slammed the atlas shut. “Every time Dad comes back in town we all get crazy! He makes things so hard!” I picked up the atlas, hugged it to my chest.

  Mom gripped the sink, steadied herself. “I need to think,” she said quietly.

  “I do, too. Mrs. Gladstone’s offering me a lot of money.”

  “Yes,” Mom said guardedly. “She is.”

  I kept thinking about Mrs. Gladstone’s job offer, mostly with my calculator to get the full monetary impact. We were talking big bucks. Enough bucks with what I already had in the bank to buy a significant used car in the fall.

  A car.

  Freedom.

  But then, as Opal said when I talked to her about it, there was the amount of money I would spend on psychiatric care because Mrs. Gladstone would drive me over the edge.

  “Two weeks tops,” Opal warned. “You’ll be whimpering on the Interstate, pleading to come home.”

  “She’s not that bad.”

  “She’s a bonafide Hansel and Gretel–eating witch! We’re talking here, Jenna, about the ultimate summer from hell!” Opal leaned closer, her blue eyes dulled by confinement. “And I know from hell.”

  Mom was thinking about it, too. Collecting facts, actually—that’s how she thought about things. She talked to Mrs. Gladstone. She talked to Murray. She took me out on the Kennedy Expressway in the Honda during rush hour and barked orders at me from the backseat. She gave me wrong directions and made me find my way home. She even pretended to have a heart attack when we were getting gas and I had to lay her out flat on the backseat and tell the woman in the Plymouth Voyager not to call 911 because my mother was a real kidder.