Driving With the Top Down Read online

  “I’ll be in soon.” She met his eyes, trying to read them, and nodded once more. He turned and she watched him head into the house, whistling tunelessly.

  And she stood in the dark evening air, not particularly motivated in any direction. She remembered a time when she and her best high school friend used to sit outside on nights like this and look at the stars and plan their glorious futures while the moon crossed the sky. She didn’t even realize at the time how precious those nights were or how sad it would be when they ended.

  Somewhere along the way, they had ended, and a long time ago. Completely.

  Now she stood in her suburban driveway, unsure which direction to take, whether to go to her workshop, which was almost painful to enter anymore, or to leave the comfortable shroud of night to go into the blaring lamplight of suburbia and, undoubtedly, a TV on too loud. Or worse, utter silence. A lifeless home.

  She couldn’t move.

  Then it hit her. Not a bolt from the blue, but more like a weight that had been on her shoulders until finally her knees were buckling.

  Something had to change. That was it. Something, somewhere in her life had to change.

  She went to the garage side door, reached under a loose slate in front of it, and picked up the key. The garage hadn’t housed a car for years. They decided not long after buying the house that it would be her workshop, where she’d work on the antiques she bought, repurposed, and sold at her Junk and Disorderly shop.

  She flipped on the light switch and looked at her inventory. It was getting low. The best of farm auction season was over, and she’d barely gotten anything good this year. Most of what she had seen lately were things like chairs missing legs, shutters missing shutters, and trash cans from Target circa ’98. Nothing like the dusty but grand headboards and slightly bent but still beautiful candelabras she found at the best time of year. At this rate, her stall at the sale would be all but bare and she’d lose her following as a result. Her clientele had been limited enough last year, and now she feared losing it all. Once upon a time, she had been kind of a rock star in the area. Her name was starting to mean something. But then last year she came up short on inspiration, time, and inventory, and did not do half as well as she’d wanted to or usually did.

  Every year she fantasized about taking a road trip down the coast to go to auctions, and staying in quaint little bed-and-breakfasts, no chain hotels. She saw herself flying down the highway in her red convertible with a hitch attached, driving through dinky southern towns, pulling a Shasta trailer full of treasures behind her.

  Unfortunately, she’d never had the nerve to up and leave on her own. She had grown timid, full of what-ifs.

  What if the car breaks down on the road and there’s no cell phone reception?

  What if some weirdo watches me go into my motel room, then crashes through the window in the middle of the night?

  What if I get sick and there’s no one around to help?

  It was ironic that a woman who spent her life fixing things—repairing antiques, repurposing “another man’s trash,” kissing boo-boos and wiping fevered brows—had such a hard time taking care of herself. Or at least feeling the confidence and independence of one who could and did take care of so much.

  So a trip like that, while it might be a pure blast for another person, made her more nervous than she cared to admit.

  Now, though … Now she had an additional mission. Yes, she needed inventory—she always needed inventory—and she needed the change of scenery to mix things up a bit. But what she really needed, she’d needed for fifteen years, and it was time to finally go after it.

  She needed peace of mind.

  She needed to confront the biggest mistake of her life and somehow come to terms with it.

  She went to the refrigerator, where she had always kept extra lunch box fillers for Jay when he was younger. Now he just walked to the 7-Eleven with his friends at lunchtime. Now the garage fridge housed only bottled water, a box of wine that had been there so long, it was stuck like glue to the glass shelf, and the beers they almost never drank except for when there was company, which there rarely was. She considered the wine, but even at its best, it was too crappy to cook with, so instead she took a beer out and carried it to the tool bench to knock the top off with the heel of her palm. A trick from college days.

  She issued a somewhat satisfying curse at the pain now shooting through her hand. She looked at the bottle. At least the top had come off clean—she still had that.

  She sat down in a refinished French rocking chair, lavender with shiny gilding across the top—another thing she’d refurbished instead of working on herself—and let the beer—which she might once upon a time have referred to as “skunked,” but which she thought of now as just “my savior in this moment”—trickle down her throat.

  She sighed. What if she went her whole life without facing this? Fixing it, whatever that meant.

  God, one sip of beer, and she was all drunk-philosophical-girl.

  The old Colleen would have hated her.

  Her imagination returned to the perks of the trip—the positives she’d enjoy: open road, new people, new places, and best of all, new old things and the fun she’d have fixing them up.

  Like the portal window on her shelf right now. That was a find from an auction on the Eastern Shore a few years ago. So far she hadn’t done anything with it, because she couldn’t decide on what to do. The window had been salvaged from an ancient Victorian house near Rehoboth Beach, and its panes of water glass were original. She couldn’t bear to ruin them and whatever past the piece might hold.

  Had a lonely wife looked out that window, waiting for a husband to return from sea? Had he ever returned?

  Or had it just been a dust-covered portal between a stuffy attic and the sky for decades before someone decided to upgrade the house and throw the window out in favor of something more modern?

  Maybe it had hung over the sink, looking out over a garden through the many sunrises and sunsets of one family’s life in the house.

  That was what Colleen loved most about what she did—everything had a story.

  Even if she had to make one up.

  So, filled with romantic notions, at Christmas she’d hung the portal window on an otherwise empty wall in her own house, with a tea light candle behind the glass—then got so nervous about Jay or Kevin knocking into it that she took it back out to the workshop to think of something else to do with it.

  She needed to begin living now, fully and honestly.

  She took another sip of the beer, pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, along with the reading glasses she couldn’t leave home without anymore, and sat down to start looking up auctions by state. There were more than she’d expected.

  One hour and four empty beer bottles later, she had a list of auctions, a list of B and Bs, and a solid determination to hit the road.

  * * *

  “YOU’RE GOING TO do what?”

  Kevin was generally supportive of Colleen, no matter what. Even when it came to what sitcoms in the ’70s would have called “harebrained schemes”—like the time she spent an unusually large amount of money on old Erector Sets and various tools, with the idea of making retro robot sculptures. Most of the items she’d purchased were still in their shipping boxes, torn open and then cast aside. Usually he would sigh deeply with a resigned smile and encourage her to do whatever it was until the next whatever it was came along. This reluctance from him now was an entirely new thing.

  Did he somehow sense her real mission? Was his resistance a sign she shouldn’t go through with it?

  “Kevin.” She was calm. She was always calm. “What is your objection to me taking the week you’re gone anyway to drive south and collect amazing things that I will make ten times more amazing?”

  He gave a small laugh. “What if the proprietress at one of those quaint little B and Bs has an ax hidden under her crinolines?”

  She had to laugh at the mental picture. I
t was exactly the sort of scenario she would have come up with herself. She liked that he teased her so familiarly. “Then I’m pretty sure I would, you know, leave. But don’t worry, I didn’t book the Bates Motel at all.”

  “Hm.”

  “Plus I saw this cool book once that has a list of places to stop along the way on I-95. All of them legit, and I can write off my travel expenses on our taxes.”

  “I want you to do what you want to do—I just want to make sure you don’t end up stranded somewhere, wishing I’d stopped you.”

  This was the right decision, and she knew it. “Kev … I’m so sick of not contributing. I’m so tired of trying to do this housewife thing and failing at it.”

  “You’re not—”

  “I am. I’m not great with the ‘handling’ of things. Finances and things like that. I know I asked to take over because I didn’t want you to have to do everything, but … I felt so much better when I was bringing in actual money and had something to do with my days. My life can’t be just failing at being an adult, failing at being a mom, and looking longingly at Pinterest all day, wishing I had anything to work on.”

  “Colleen”—he tilted his head a little at her—“none of that is true. You are a wonderful mom, and you’re not failing at being an adult.”

  “I’m just not made for that—” She gestured at her phone, at the irritation of being stuck on hold earlier. “I’m just not made for that kind of thing. I’m creative. I have an art degree. And I’m not using it, and I think it’s driving me crazy.” She couldn’t bring up what was weighing more heavily on her mind lately—that she hadn’t been his first choice—she couldn’t even say why the issue had become so compelling and awful. Maybe because Jay had left childhood and was careening so rapidly toward becoming a man. Those halcyon days of being Mommy, of being indispensable, were undeniably passing.

  What did she have to offer Kevin, apart from parenting his child? What did she really have to offer that he couldn’t get elsewhere, perhaps even with other bonuses (financial, sexual, and so on) thrown in?

  Kevin sighed deeply. “Look. You know ordinarily I would absolutely be in support of this, my hesitation going no further than a few practical concerns. But there’s one more thing.”

  The thing he’d wanted to talk to her about.

  Nervousness hit her again. “Kevin, what is it?”

  He gave her a pained look that could have suggested she’d unknowingly been exposed to some disease and that for the next few weeks, she was legally required to go into quarantine. Or maybe that she’d committed some horrid crime while in an Ambien sleep haze, and now they were awaiting her lawyer and the police.

  But no. What he said was worse than either of those things. It began and ended with one word.

  “Tamara.”

  “Oh God…” Tamara was Kevin’s niece. Well, technically, Tamara was her niece too, but at age sixteen, the girl had already been in and out of the legal system so much that the cops in Frederick all knew her about as well as Colleen herself did: Tamara’s name. Her record. Her birthday. Her address. (And even Colleen wasn’t 100 percent on her birthday.)

  She had known Tamara for only three years, actually, since the girl’s mother died and Chris, Kevin’s brother, gained custody of a kid he’d never even admitted having.

  So what, she was afraid to ask, had happened to Tamara now?

  “Chris was called out West for work,” Kevin said. “He’s desperate. There’s no way he can leave her at home alone, obviously. You don’t have to watch her if you really don’t want to. Of course, I told him I would ask you.”

  “But … what does he usually do with her? When she’s not in juvie, I mean. He goes out of town all the time for work.”

  “The woman he usually hires declined.”

  “Great. Even she can’t deal with her.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Colleen sighed. She already knew she was going to be stuck with this if she didn’t think of something—someone—fast. “He doesn’t have anyone else?”

  “He never would have asked us if he did.”

  She let out a deep breath. “Tamara hates me.”

  “She does not.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, she does. Ever since the Instagram Incident.” Why the girl had posted pictures of herself smoking weed right there for everyone to see—and then made public plans to meet her friends behind McDonald’s to do it again the next Friday night—was a mystery to Colleen still, but when she’d mentioned it to Kevin and he’d mentioned it to Chris, somehow Colleen’s anonymity as the source was lost in the shuffle and Tamara had never forgiven her.

  Even though it was possible that Colleen had averted an even worse disaster for her. A pretty girl messed up on drugs in some deserted field behind a fast-food restaurant off the highway was begging for all kinds of trouble.

  “Look, I know Tamara is a huge responsibility,” Kevin was saying. “You don’t have to do this. I can cancel the trip maybe or—”

  “No, no, no. I want you to go. Jay would be so disappointed. You’re going.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe she can go with us.”

  She blinked at him. “I’m sorry? Maybe you can introduce our mercifully clean thirteen-year-old to a total delinquent near his age and have them hang out for a week on your ‘guys’ trip?” That galled her; it really did. Thanks a lot, Kevin. Way to make me feel unwanted again. “No thanks. I’ll do it.”

  His face showed he was not surprised. “Honestly, I think maybe there’s a small chance it could be good for you both.”

  “How do you reckon that one?”

  Kevin shrugged. “She doesn’t have a mom. She’s messed up, but she’s a smart kid. And for you, I don’t know, I think it just might be a good thing for you.”

  He locked eyes with her and tightened his lips before looking away. He didn’t have to explain. Colleen knew.

  “It’s not even the delinquent thing—I’m just afraid she still hates me and she’ll just be one more thing I screw up.”

  “Stop thinking you’re screwing up! Seriously, Colleen. Just look at her as a—” He searched for words. “—like a grimy, dull tiara or something. And you’re going to polish her up and fix her just like your other stuff.”

  Colleen gave a soft laugh. “That was cute. A tiara.”

  He laughed too, and squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll help him figure something else out if you really don’t want to do it. But I don’t want you to say no out of fear. You’re a great mom. You’re a great role model. And she needs both those things. You know I’ve spent some time around her when I’m with Chris, and I’m tellin’ ya, she’s not the worst thing in the world. She’s smart.”

  “Sure, you said that. I mean how bad can she be?”

  They looked at each other, and then looked elsewhere. They both had an idea of how bad Tamara could be: two tattoos, a pack a day, (at least) one delinquent boyfriend who’d been arrested for assault no fewer than three times, and a couple of stays in a juvenile detention center. That’s how bad she could be. Or no—that’s how bad she could get caught being.

  Colleen knew nothing about dealing with a girl like Tamara. Yes, she’d been a teenage girl once too. But she had been a completely run-of-the-mill teenage girl. An embarrassing story or two, a pretty cute high school boyfriend who always drove the speed limit, and a couple of regrettable nights and punishing mornings from stolen beers and bottles of peach schnapps. She’d always had a date to the dance, but no queen titles; played girls’ lacrosse, but never well enough to take it very seriously.

  As far as her own delinquency went, she had none. She’d gotten detention three times in high school: once for tardiness, once for spaghetti straps that showed her bra straps beneath them (the height of sexiness at age fourteen, or so she and her peers were somehow led to believe), and one time for skipping school on Senior Skip Day. Which she’d been nervous about doing from the beginning of the year, but her friends had talked her into it. She was t
he last to agree and the first to get caught.

  Story of her school career, actually.

  She was no high school badass.

  And now she would be going on a road trip with one.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Tamara

  Tamara Bradley took her index finger off the tiny hole on the side of the bowl and breathed in deeply. The smoke hit the back of her throat like a thousand knives, just as it always did. She held it in until it started to rebel, burning and tickling her lungs at the same time, and she exhaled.

  Long and slow. Trying not to cough at the end rattle of breath.

  The feelings that came next always hit her in the same strange and confusing succession: Dizziness. Relief. Hope for oblivion and, inevitably, a vague sense of disappointment that she was still present.

  Then, always unexpected, a guilty tightening in her stomach.

  After that, she just had to wait the next couple of minutes until she started to fade into the hazy cloud that started to soak up her thoughts like a single paper towel in a pool.

  “Let me hit that.” Her boyfriend, Vince, took the bowl from her hand and then mimicked her, drawing the smoke in, holding out, and exhaling ungracefully, uttering, “Fuck, man…”

  She stared at the TV surrounded by different game consoles and controllers. The number of nights she had spent down here in this ugly, wood-paneled, mildewed basement and watched as Vince and his friends played Call of Duty was too high to count. She and the other girlfriends would sit there and watch, like groupies. Every once in a while, the boys invited them to play a round, which was always embarrassing and presented like some novelty trick. Like, Hey, look, the dog is in a hat! Like a person! But instead it was, Hey, look, a girl is holding an Xbox controller! She has no idea what she’s doing! The game wasn’t really even any fun anyway, so why bother to figure it out?

  Tamara usually declined at this point. Who cared anymore? Who was she trying to impress? She was just sick of all of it, and she got the sense that everyone else talked about her behind her back like she was just no fun. The pissy girlfriend who couldn’t even play a fucking round and would rather sit there with her eyebrows up, flipping through her phone.