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Show house// 373 I had a car of my own. (She, of course, didn't drive since Aunt Helga drove her everywhere she needed to go.) Then, I explained, I wouldn't have to depend on him for transportation to Pep Club performances, school plays, musicals, concerts, and the ubiquitous student-body activities which now hung like a heavy, over-sized trophy chained about my neck. My father agreed to let me use Aunt Helga's c a r a^ handed me the keys smiling tightly, as though something was recompensed in the bargain. I was truly grateful, but in the weeks which followed the car became another freedom - like the ability to read, the permission to date-, the capacity for social articulation, and the money I earned - that I did not know how to handle. I dropped the boy as I had promised my parents, not thinking he might be hurt^for our relationship had always been somewhat distant and gruff, and clearly based on the wheels in which he took so much pride. He came one afternoon asking that I go for one last ride - he only wanted to talk for a minute. He drove to the church parking lot and as I turned to hear him, there was the fist coming at me over and pumping methodically as a piston. over again/i I was only grateful that he shoved me into the snowy street and left me there without running me down as he squealed and skidded his way down my street. I walked slowly to my car, sobbing softly. I did not want the neighbors to notice me, didn't want my mother to see. I drove blindly through familiar streets that had lost even the shadow of warmth, past the grocery store where Brian worked. I'm not sure how I knew that he worked there or why I suddenly leered across the highway in the face of oncoming cars, |
