Read Online The Spark and the Drive by Wayne Harrison - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Wayne Harrison
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certified at GM. Start fooling around with computerized engines. Figure out how to modify them before anybody else, and there’s your virgin soil. There’s your million-dollar franchise.”
Eve picked up her Tom Collins and lifted it to Nick. It wasn’t really a toast, though I felt the impulse to pick up my glass. Before I could, she said, “And let dinosaurs go extinct.”
Gone from the night was any semblance of reality, and the future seemed limitless as we stood outside watching the black Suburban pull into the warm exhaust smell of East Main Street, when ironically it was Nick, the one I most associated with the abstract, who brought Miami back down to earth. He turned to the three of us, gathered under the bird shit–stained awning, and said, “Not a word to Mary Ann.”
It was going to happen. Nick was going to reinvent the American muscle car and redeem himself. He was already making plans for Florida, the most grave and radical of which was that he wasn’t going to bring his wife.
8.
April was still up, pouting in her time-out chair, when I came in through the kitchen door. I took off my boots and walked into a fizzling puddle of Sprite by the stove. “You could have warned me,” I said. She wanted a hug, and I bent down to her. “You’re all sticky.”
She peeled her arms from around my neck. “Because I shaked it up first, like you did.”
“That was outside. Where’s Mom?”
“In here,” I heard, and followed the voice. The lights were off in the living room, and the last speckled dusk drew back from the windows. At the far end of the couch she was still dressed for work, an elbow on the armrest and her temple in her palm. “I had one nerve left, and guess who found it.”
I took April upstairs for her bath and then untaped the soggy bandage from my hand while she played in the tub. One of the blisters had popped, and the skin bunched like wet tissue, while the other blister was at its waxy peak. April gently rubbed her bubbles on my hand and then kissed it, and I laid my cheek on the cool enamel. Bath time was a constant in my life, her urgent little voice tinny on the water, the humid perfume of Pert and Ivory, and I felt my shoulders drop as if they’d been unhooked.
Early one morning a few months after April was born, I found my mother facedown on the living room floor. Liquor was new to her, and I woke her trying to lift her legs, thinking I could carry her up to her bed. She got off the floor saying, “Your father blew it. No, he’ll come back. Hands and knees, you watch.” A few days later, I came in from the garage and saw the empty cocktail glass as she lathered April in the kitchen sink. I tried to project a sense of delicacy when I offered to start giving April baths for a bump in allowance—I was fourteen and saving up for a car. Mom was relieved. “You’re my rock,” she said, and she called me Rocky for a few days, until I told her to quit.
Now April shot at me with her rubber squeeze tomato.
“Keep it in the tub.”
“Did you know Mommy has a fuzz booty? When she goes potty.”
It took me a second to get what she was saying, and when I laughed she said, “What’s so funny?” in a slow, dramatic way that she must’ve learned from TV. “Sometimes I get a fuzz booty.”
“No, you don’t. You have to be a grown-up.” And finally it struck me that I was considering a move fifteen hundred miles away. The sense of doubt washed over me so strongly that I fell into a laughing fit to escape it, laugher that made my eyes run and caused April to stutter and howl in that genuine way kids do when they see adults laugh.
Mom was asleep on the couch when I came downstairs. I took a long drink of her Tanqueray and tonic and was just heading back upstairs to bargain with April—another book if she could go to sleep with a kiss from just me—when the phone rang. I picked up in the kitchen and was shocked to hear the voice of Lou Costa, the cop.
“You miss me
Eve picked up her Tom Collins and lifted it to Nick. It wasn’t really a toast, though I felt the impulse to pick up my glass. Before I could, she said, “And let dinosaurs go extinct.”
Gone from the night was any semblance of reality, and the future seemed limitless as we stood outside watching the black Suburban pull into the warm exhaust smell of East Main Street, when ironically it was Nick, the one I most associated with the abstract, who brought Miami back down to earth. He turned to the three of us, gathered under the bird shit–stained awning, and said, “Not a word to Mary Ann.”
It was going to happen. Nick was going to reinvent the American muscle car and redeem himself. He was already making plans for Florida, the most grave and radical of which was that he wasn’t going to bring his wife.
8.
April was still up, pouting in her time-out chair, when I came in through the kitchen door. I took off my boots and walked into a fizzling puddle of Sprite by the stove. “You could have warned me,” I said. She wanted a hug, and I bent down to her. “You’re all sticky.”
She peeled her arms from around my neck. “Because I shaked it up first, like you did.”
“That was outside. Where’s Mom?”
“In here,” I heard, and followed the voice. The lights were off in the living room, and the last speckled dusk drew back from the windows. At the far end of the couch she was still dressed for work, an elbow on the armrest and her temple in her palm. “I had one nerve left, and guess who found it.”
I took April upstairs for her bath and then untaped the soggy bandage from my hand while she played in the tub. One of the blisters had popped, and the skin bunched like wet tissue, while the other blister was at its waxy peak. April gently rubbed her bubbles on my hand and then kissed it, and I laid my cheek on the cool enamel. Bath time was a constant in my life, her urgent little voice tinny on the water, the humid perfume of Pert and Ivory, and I felt my shoulders drop as if they’d been unhooked.
Early one morning a few months after April was born, I found my mother facedown on the living room floor. Liquor was new to her, and I woke her trying to lift her legs, thinking I could carry her up to her bed. She got off the floor saying, “Your father blew it. No, he’ll come back. Hands and knees, you watch.” A few days later, I came in from the garage and saw the empty cocktail glass as she lathered April in the kitchen sink. I tried to project a sense of delicacy when I offered to start giving April baths for a bump in allowance—I was fourteen and saving up for a car. Mom was relieved. “You’re my rock,” she said, and she called me Rocky for a few days, until I told her to quit.
Now April shot at me with her rubber squeeze tomato.
“Keep it in the tub.”
“Did you know Mommy has a fuzz booty? When she goes potty.”
It took me a second to get what she was saying, and when I laughed she said, “What’s so funny?” in a slow, dramatic way that she must’ve learned from TV. “Sometimes I get a fuzz booty.”
“No, you don’t. You have to be a grown-up.” And finally it struck me that I was considering a move fifteen hundred miles away. The sense of doubt washed over me so strongly that I fell into a laughing fit to escape it, laugher that made my eyes run and caused April to stutter and howl in that genuine way kids do when they see adults laugh.
Mom was asleep on the couch when I came downstairs. I took a long drink of her Tanqueray and tonic and was just heading back upstairs to bargain with April—another book if she could go to sleep with a kiss from just me—when the phone rang. I picked up in the kitchen and was shocked to hear the voice of Lou Costa, the cop.
“You miss me
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