"New Old Car" by Helen Longstreth
Photo Credit: Max Simonov, obtained and licensed through Unsplash
New Old Car
One summer, when I was nine, my father bought a used car. A battered red Volvo, from a friend-of-a-friend. The boxy kind with a deep, rectangular boot. Inside it smelt like rotten fruit and the seats were patchy with stains. But he didn’t seem to notice. He was very excited.
‘Look at this trunk!’ he kept saying. He went on and on about how we were going to get bikes and tents and go camping. His eyes bulged and darted around wildly behind his glasses and he kept patting the back of the car as if it was a dog. He told me to bring out mugs of water to baptise the car’s back wheels. Even my mother came out, who hated camping and didn’t know how to ride a bike. We stood on the road with the water while he told us all the things we already knew. How he loved camping, how much fun he’d had with his own father. Such great memories! The best memories of his father he had. They’d seen bears, racoons, beavers. Sunrises and sunsets over mountains and creeks. Wouldn’t that be fun?
We didn’t say no, that these things didn’t exist in England, that neither of us were interested in camping or bikes. We just splashed the water on the car’s back wheels and tried to smile along.
‘I’m not going camping,’ I told my mother later.
There were lots of phases. Phases of drinking coffee after coffee and doing impulsive things. Like when he fitted the house with speakers in every room, or when I came home from school to find him attacking a stone wall in the kitchen, smiling behind a mask and an electric sander.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Suzie,’ she said laughing. ‘It’s just one of those phases.’
There were lots of phases. Phases of drinking coffee after coffee and doing impulsive things. Like when he fitted the house with speakers in every room, or when I came home from school to find him attacking a stone wall in the kitchen, smiling behind a mask and an electric sander. Phases of listening to the same Neil Young song over and over, singing, ‘Hey! Hey! My! My!’ while cleaning the house, his white hair stuck up in spikes. Phases of sleeping on the sofa in his old study, drinking whatever alcohol he could find and making strangling yells all through the night. My mother would get up every few hours to make sure he hadn’t burned down the house or left the front door open. There were phases when he disappeared. Phases when he came back looking sorry and wandered around like a ghost in wrinkled shirts, only eating bananas.
Once my father had taught at a university. He had written a notable paper that people still quoted sometimes. He still read big, boring looking books and cut out articles from newspapers that we weren’t allowed to touch. But by then he couldn’t hold down a job and it was only my mother who worked, teaching at a university on the other side of the country or writing in her office, getting as much work done as she could before she couldn’t. She was good at managing disaster. In fact, she excelled at it. That might have been part of what drew her to my father in the first place. When he fell apart, she came to life. When he was fine, she worked. My father was the one at the school gate, the one who plaited my hair, the one making dinner every night. He was until he wasn’t.
When he didn’t pick me up from school one day while my mother was in London for work it wasn’t a surprise. The nervy school receptionist called my mother over and over, staring at me over her desk with flitting beady eyes. But I didn’t show her anything to worry about. I smiled back at her, drummed my fingers on my knees. In the end they arranged for our neighbour to pick me up. A man called Jeremy who lived next door and ran a man-bag business from his living room. He picked me up and when we got to his house he told me to make myself comfortable, moving a pile of bags from the sofa to the floor.
‘The best dressed men carry bags,’ he told me.
‘Oh right,’ I said.
I sat on the sofa and listened to Jeremy talk about the business. After a while, when Jeremy seemed to be running out of things to say, he put the TV on and handed me his latest catalogue filled with pages of the same bags modelled by a handsome men in jeans and a few different blazers. The model reminded me of a shiny brown-haired man from a hair dye advert I’d seen on TV. I couldn’t help thinking about what it might be like to have a best dressed dad with brown hair and a blazer, going to work with his brown leather bag.
*
Our house was dark and eerily silent, but nothing was out of place. My father’s slippers by the door, his book and ashtray on the table. Just him and the car missing. He might be back, she said. We turned on the lights, put on music, inspected the cupboards and the bins for bottles.
At night she took long baths and would emerge foggy eyed with only half her hair wet. I was allowed to sleep in her bed, and I would hold her as tight as I could, pretending I was a limpet.
‘Maybe he finally went camping,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Imagine that.’
I tried to imagine it. Dad out in the cold trying to put up a tent, shouting and swearing at the sky. It was funny but after a while the image made me go cold. Something different must have happened to my mother because, in front of my eyes, she began to change in that way that she could. It was like one part of her was gearing up and the other part was closing down. Her brain lit up, but her face closed its doors. I could see her brain ticking ticking, trying to find the words to save us. Sometimes I wished she would just cry.
‘There’s no use trying to look for meaning in the random actions of a crazy person,’ her ticking brain told us both. ‘It is not fair on you Suzie, growing up to expect disappointment. But you should know he doesn’t mean to do the things he does.’
I wasn’t trying to make meaning out of anything. In many ways, I just liked it when he wasn’t there. Liked having my mother all to myself. For a week we ate dinner at 10pm, hot dogs and pasta, hot dogs and potatoes. I followed her everywhere. While she wrote or spoke on the phone in her armchair, I brushed her hair and put it in little plaits. Whenever she tried to stand up, I sat on her feet. Sometimes she’d get annoyed and tell me to get off. Sometimes it made her laugh. Other times she’d wear this blank expression and just sit there, her feet glued to the floor, not even noticing.
At night she took long baths and would emerge foggy eyed with only half her hair wet. I was allowed to sleep in her bed, and I would hold her as tight as I could, pretending I was a limpet. Sometimes we’d stay up so late watching TV that in the morning we’d just keep sleeping through the alarm.
‘Whoops!’ she’d say when we realised what time it was. But she didn’t care if I was late for school. She’d sing, “Wake Up Little Suzie,” ’ even if I was being slow. We’d throw my dirty clothes around looking for tights and pants and then eat donuts for breakfast. One time I wet myself on purpose.
‘Suzie!’ she said when she found me in her room with a wet patch around me on the carpet. She looked horrified, and I started crying.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy.’
‘Oh my little Suzie,’ she said holding me tight.
It was like a holiday.
*
The holiday ended on a Saturday when Dad’s voice came booming in through the letterbox.
‘Papa’s got a brand new bag!’ he shouted. My mother looked at me wide-eyed and then got up to open the door. All I could see were crumpled clothes and a brand new lump on his forehead. The lump was very round, like a tomato.
With his combed hair and tartan scarf, he looked like he belonged in a nice park somewhere. Not here talking to my father, with his brown leather jacket, the bump on his head, his loud American voice.
‘What happened to your head?’ my mother said. He looked surprised.
‘C’mon, aren’t you gonna say hi to your old dad?’ He said to me. Outside the house the red car glinted behind him. The front was bashed in, had crumpled like an old crisp packet. There were scratches all down the side.
‘What happened to the car?’ my mother said.
‘It’s fine!’ he said. ‘So how about we all go for a ride, eh? How about a road trip?’ He was shouting and smiling wildly. Sprays of spit came out as he spoke. ‘How about it, Suzie?’
I didn’t know what to say, just stared back at him, at the bulbous bump, his wide, glassy eyes, the bashed in car. He looked deranged.
‘You need to sort yourself out,’ my mother said.
He tried to step inside the house and my mother told him that if he took another step, she was calling the police. It was daylight outside. A man and a dog walked past behind my father on the path. It was Jeremy, he was wearing one of his bags.
‘Is everything …’ Jeremy said, letting the ‘ing’ hang in the air.
‘We’re fine!’ my father yelled, waving him away. Jeremy looked strange next to my father. He was about a head smaller than him. With his combed hair and tartan scarf, he looked like he belonged in a nice park somewhere. Not here talking to my father, with his brown leather jacket, the bump on his head, his loud American voice.
‘I think it would be best…’ he was saying to my father.
I didn’t want to see anymore. I slipped upstairs. Sat on my bed with my fingers in my ears, like I saw girls do in the movies. Tuned out the rest. Eventually the door slammed, shaking the house on its hinges. I watched the car drive off from my bedroom window, wishing that he and the car would just break down somewhere and not come back.
*
Of course, he did come back. At first there were phone calls. It turned out he was now staying at the flat of a friend-of-a-friend in town. ‘Some brain-dead woman who thinks I’m a monster,’ my mother told me. We weren’t sure if this was the same friend-of-a-friend who had sold him the car.
Dad wanted to come back but my mother said not yet. When he called, I’d shake my head and whisper no no no, but my mother would make me take the phone.
‘How about a rabbit?’ he asked one time as soon as I said hello.
‘What?’ I said.
‘A rabbit for your birthday?’
‘A rabbit?’
‘Well, would you rather have a boyfriend or a rabbit?’ he said. I was stunned and couldn’t respond.
‘A rabbit it is!’ he said. I passed the phone back to my mother. She took it into her bedroom, and they spoke quietly for a long time.
*
The next week she told me he was taking me to the cinema.
’You can see whatever film you want,’ she said. ‘He’s really looking forward to seeing you. It would mean a lot to him. He’s really been pulling himself together.’
I stared at his shoes. They were the same as ever. Lace ups made of sturdy brown leather. The same ones he bought every few years when his old ones had worn out. I wondered how he could keep his shoes so clean. I didn’t want to look at his big red eyes, my mother’s strange expression.
This time he knocked on the door quietly. The bump had shrunk and his face looked thin. His chin and cheeks were grey with stubble, his jacket and hair damp from the rain.
‘Oh, Frank,’ my mother said.
He came in and hugged me tightly. His jumper smelt of smoke and rain and other people’s houses. I stared at his shoes. They were the same as ever. Lace ups made of sturdy brown leather. The same ones he bought every few years when his old ones had worn out. I wondered how he could keep his shoes so clean. I didn’t want to look at his big red eyes, my mother’s strange expression.
We saw the film Cats and Dogs. He slept through most of it. He started snoring in the middle, all through the quiet part when one of the dogs looked like it was going to die. He kept snoring even when I nudged him.
‘Sorry, Suzie,’ he said when we were walking out of the dark at the end. ‘I’m just tired. I’m just not feeling well.’ And he did look tired. In the light, his eyes were still half closed. The skin around them was yellow and veiny, like an old bruise. He pulled me towards him limply. ‘How about a chocolate bar for my favourite girl?’
In the supermarket he left me at the chocolate aisle and said he had to get a few things. When he returned, he had a basket filled with bananas, pasta, sliced bread, and salad leaves. The red lid of a bottle of vodka poked out underneath. I stared at the basket, wondering if he would be cooking and eating and drinking at the friend-of-a-friend’s flat. Where was he sleeping? What did he do with all his time? I saw him how he would look later, the way he sometimes looked at the school gates, swaying with white all around the edges of his mouth and his white hair uncombed like he’d just got out of bed.
He saw me looking at the basket and jerked it to his other side.
‘I’m just going to buy this. Wait here,’ he said and disappeared again. When he came back, he was holding two heavy-looking plastic bags. I thought of Jeremy and the best-dressed men, of all his best-dressed men carrying bags.
When the trip was finally over, he parked the car down the road from our house and handed me a piece of paper with song lyrics typed on. The paper was crumpled like he’d been carrying it around in his pocket for too long.
He turned around to face me in the back seat and started singing it shakily. It was horrible. I willed him to stop. All day his voice had been dull and low. But now as he sang it squeaked.
‘Remember the song?’ he asked.
I nodded. It was one of the songs he played and sang to me whenever he was feeling soft or sorry or sad. Above the song’s title “To my daughter Suzie” was handwritten in blue pen. I imagined him listening and typing and printing the lyrics at the friend-of-a-friend’s flat and the thought burned a hole somewhere inside of me. Just like when he’d passed out in his study and his cigarette left a black, singed hole in the carpet.
He turned around to face me in the back seat and started singing it shakily. It was horrible. I willed him to stop. All day his voice had been dull and low. But now as he sang it squeaked.
He smiled at me desperately and it didn’t look right. Like his cheeks were being pulled up by somebody else’s hands. I fixed my eyes on the little rain drops, racing down the window pane. When he finished singing, he turned back around and started speaking to the windscreen about how he was sorry, how he loved us so, so much, but he was getting better, things would be better soon. While he spoke, I folded the sheet of paper until it couldn’t be folded anymore and let it fall to the floor. It felt like that burned hole inside me was growing and growing and would soon take over everything. The car, the path, our house. Everything.
‘We can see another film next week,’ he was saying. ‘Would you like that? It would mean so much to me…’
I opened the car door while he was speaking. My wet shoe left a faint footprint on the folded piece of paper as I got out. ‘Suzie!’ he called after me. If he said anything else the sound was lost in the rain. I didn’t look back at him in that old car. I knew he’d be watching, making sure I got to the door, waiting to see my mother. The hole was chasing me now. So I skipped. Down the street, across the road, up to my front door. I just skipped all the way.
Helen Longstreth is a writer based between the US and the UK. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths where she was awarded runner-up for the 2019 Pat Kavanagh award. She also received Highly Commended in Spread the Word’s 2019 Life Writing Award and was long listed for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award in 2020. She is currently working on a novel.