AUTO REPAIR

   There's no place to go in Detroit that's half as fun as getting there. Especially in my daddy's Olds. The closest thing to heaven on earth is being on the freeway when Aretha comes on. I turn the volume up until the music is coming from inside me and go as fast as I can.
    "What you want," sings Aretha, "baby I got it..."
    She's telling me to floor it.
    I don't want you to think that I don't drive responsibly. I am a responsible driver. Responsible, but accelerated. I go to the community college, though I'm just seventeen, because I'm accelerated. I still live at home, though. So I can drive my daddy's Olds. 
    My father taught me to drive when I was fourteen. He took me to the parking lot at the Tel-Twelve Mall, told me to get behind the wheel, sat back in the passenger seat, and lit up a cigar.  "Do your worst, babe," he said.
    He put on the country-western station. "Now I've got a gal that's sweet to me, but she ain't sweet as she used to be," sang  Earl Scruggs as we lurched around the lot. Dad slouched back in the reclining seat and gave me advice.     "Don't squash that poodle, honey." "Watch out for the Winnebago."
    One morning he gave me a key ring with the keys to seventeen cars. "They're all yours, Mercy," he said. I gave him a bear hug and he smiled. 
  "Sure wish your mom could see you now," he said. Mom died when I was only two. She died in her car, a red Trans Am. Coming home from the supermarket one night, she was broadsided by a drunk car-door salesman in a Lincoln Continental. The car was totaled. She was killed instantly. The groceries in the trunk survived.
    Dad didn't junk the car. He had it towed home. He rebuilt it. He wanted to salvage something, he says. Repairing the car made him feel better. He started collecting them. He buys wrecks and puts them back together again. It's like a hobby. He tells me it's therapy. "Auto repair -- the poor man's analysis," he says. He must have over twenty cars now, plus junkers he keeps for parts.
    Some of Dad's cars are stashed in friends' garages; some are out in our driveway or sitting in the backyard. We've got a peach-colored Studebaker down in the basement, because he took it apart in the driveway one summer and reassembled it down there, just to see if he could.
    Everything in Detroit comes down to cars. If you don't work on the line like my dad, you work for a company that makes car-door handles or cruise controls. Or plastic saints for the dashboard. Or you're that company's lawyer, or the shrink the auto execs go to, or the funeral director that puts them all in the ground. Remember that guy who was buried sitting behind the wheel of his Caddy? He wasn't a Detroit man, but he had the right idea. Detroit is all auto showrooms, muffler shops, and intersections with a gas station on each corner. Motown babies are born groping for the steering wheel, and by the time a local kid is five she can call out the model and year of every car that drives by. 
    My dad never remarried. He's got girlfriends. He's got me. He's got reconstituted Chevys, Fords, Pontiacs, a Studebaker in the basement, and job security. He's got pals on the line to go drinking with.When he gets too drunk to drive, he phones me from a bar and I drive out to get him. His friends help him into the backseat. He sits with his feet up and lights a cigar.
    "Where to?" I ask.
    "East of the sun, west of the moon," he'll say if he's really sloshed.
    "Dad?"
    "Anywhere you want, babe," he says. "It's all the same to me."
    The streets around Detroit -- long wide roads under a big midwestern sky -- are made for cruising. I'll drive down Woodward Avenue. We'll put the radio on or just sit quiet and watch the world go by. Woodward is the main drag-- miles of glittering neon signs and fast-food stands. Everybody in this city learned to drive on this street.
    Sometimes we'll cruise all the way out to Dearborn to see Ford Motor Company World Headquarters, a complex of gleaming skyscrapers sitting all by itself in the middle of nowhere. Or downtown to the Detroit River to see the Renaissance Center, which was supposed to revitalize the inner city but didn't. Or to Canada, crossing through the tunnel under the river, driving through sleepy downtown Windsor, and returning across the Ambassador Bridge.
    I drive by my mom's cemetary. Over the entrance is a sign in lovely pink neon script -- Roseview Cemetary -- that I remember from way before I had any idea what it meant. Eventually Dad falls asleep and I drive home.

* *

    I fell in love with Todd in his daddy's Eldorado. Dad didn't take to Todd at first. 
    "He's too short for you," he said. "He looks like a hoodlum." 
    Dad was wrong about that. Todd was a rich kid from Bloomfield Hills. He wore faded jeans and a beat-up leather jacket because it looked cool, not because he couldn't afford better. He had long dark hair, beautiful gray eyes, and loads of nervous energy, and he played lead guitar in the Vomiting Ballerinas, a local band. He was at our place watching television with a crowd of my friends. A girl I didn't like had brought him, so I started flirting with him. I could sense Dad lurking by the front door later on as I walked Todd to his car. The girl he'd been with was long gone. Todd got into the Eldorado, and I leaned in the window of that gorgeous black car and kissed him. That's when I fell in love.     
    Todd didn't seem too surprised -- as if strange girls leaned in his car window and kissed him all the time.
    "Call me," I said, dizzy.
    We gazed into each other's eyes. Then he turned the key in the ignition and the engine blew up.The next thing I know I'm sitting on our front lawn, with Todd and my father running around the car yelling instructions to each other, trying to get our old fire extinguisher to work and swatting at the burning Eldorado with blankets. A crowd of neighbors came out to cheer them on, but the Eldorado burned to a crisp. 
  Dad decided to like Todd then, either because he felt sorry for him or because he wanted his car for parts. But Todd didn't phone. Maybe because our kiss had set his car on fire. I didn't see him again till months later. His band was playing at a bar out in Ypsilanti, and Dad went to see them without telling me. I guess he was getting sick of my moping around telling him how the love of my life had passed me by. 
    Dad ended up having a pretty good time. After the last set, Todd drove my father home. Todd rang the doorbell. It was late, and I came to the door in my pajamas. He was the last person I'd expected to see. 
    "Guess what?" Todd said.
    I didn't have to guess - I could hear my daddy snoring away in the backseat of Todd's new Chevy.
    "Let him rest," Todd said. 
  He got out his guitar and I put on a bathrobe, and we sat on the warm hood of Todd's car, where he recycled all the love songs he'd written for his last girlfriend. Between the songs we kissed. Hours later the car door opened and Dad stepped out. 
  "What a night!" he said.
    He squinted at us sitting there on the hood. I could tell he didn't really remember Todd's driving him home.
    "Nice car," he said. "Is it ours?"
    He circled the Chevy, patting the hood, stooping to admire the whitewalls, tracing the chrome with a fingertip. Finishing, he bowed to us and shuffled toward the house, still wrapped in the blanket I'd thrown over him. He looked like the drawing in my grade school civics textbook of Pontiac, the Indian chief for whom the city of Pontiac and later the car were named. He paused on the front steps.
   "Call me if you need help putting any fires out," he said.
    Todd phoned the next night.
    "Want to come over?" he asked. He gave me directions to his house. It wasn't till I got there that I recognized the
neighborhood, a posh subdivision that had gone up a few years back. When it was new, my friends and I used to cruise through and laugh at how grand and silly the houses were. They were all monsters, each flashier than the last. And Todd lived in the grandest one. It was a little castle, complete with three turrets, a (waterless) moat and a fake drawbridge.
    Todd met me at the door with a skinny girl with wild red curls and thick glasses. She looked about twelve.
    "I'm baby-sitting," he said. "My parents are out of town. This is my sister, Gladys. She's a computer nerd."
    "Computer hacker," Gladys corrected. "Want me to access your school records and change all your grades to A's?"
    "They already are."
    "Cool." She grinned. "If you're so smart, what are you doing  with my brother?"
    "Come on," Todd said to me. He led me through the place, which looked like something out of a magazine, to his room, which was ten times the size of my room at home. Guitars and stereo equipment lined one wall, and his music collection took up half of another. I'd never seen anything like it. We sat down on the bed.
    "Where are your folks?" I asked.
    "Geneva." He sounded almost apologetic.
    Silence.
    "I missed you," he said finally. Then we started kissing, and I felt at home again, even in that outlandish place.We got to the point where if we'd been in a car, we'd have dusted ourselves off and gone to get coffee someplace on Woodward and talk. I'd never known anyone whose parents vanished to Geneva and left them a castle to hang out in. I wasn't entirely comfortable about it. I began wondering how I was going to get out of this. Did I really want to?
    Then Todd stopped kissing me and looked into my eyes. I waited.
    "Want to climb a tree?" he asked.
    Climb? A tree?
    "We have to take Gladys, though. I'm responsible for her."
    "Climb a tree?" I asked.
    "You'll see," he said. "It'll be fun."
    It was. The three of us drove to Ferndale, a small residential neighborhood. 
    "We used to live here," said Todd as we cruised through the quiet streets. "Then Grandpa died and Mom inherited." 
    We got out of the car at a sleepy little park. There was an old beech with thick, sprawling branches -- perfect for climbing.
  "This is my favorite place," Todd said when the three of us had climbed up to the top. We sat in the branches, looking out over the park and talking. When we ran out of things to say, Todd and Gladys sang me Elvis songs. I'd never been happier.
    "And what have you been up to?" asked Dad when I got home.
* *
    Todd and I started going out. We usually took his car. I'd sit beside him, my head against his shoulder and the radio playing. He'd chain smoke and we'd cruise and talk for hours. Or I'd just sit, quiet, feeling so happy I wanted to freeze the whole thing and stash it in a time capsule somewhere.
    All this bliss made Dad a little nervous. 
    "Don't get in over your head," he warned one night while he and I watched the Tigers pulverize the Red Sox on television.
    "Too late," I said.
    "He's a nice kid," said Dad. "But he's got a few problems." I got a kick out of that. Dad spoke as if Todd were a faulty engine that needed a few days in the shop.
    "What kind of problems?"
    "You think that boy spends a tenth the time thinking about you that you spend thinking about him?"
    "It's a relationship, Dad, not a see-saw."
    "Do you two ever talk about anything besides his music and his band and his plans? Ever talk about your plans?"
    "I don't need to talk about my plans."
    "That's not the point," he said. "And you know it."
    Of course I knew it, though I wasn't going to tell him so. I wasn't stupid. I knew deep down that I was in love with Todd and that Todd was in love with me being in love with Todd. As neat and talented as he was, he was too insecure and unsure of himself to be able to focus on me. But that would change. I'd make it change. It was as if Dad could read my mind. 
    "That boy's a do-it-yourself model," he said. "You deserve a finished product."
    I blew up at him.
  "I'm not one of your cars!" I said. "Don't try to take me apart and put me back the way you want."
    He smiled. "Okay, honey." he said. "I'll back off. But maybe you'll listen to an expert."
    He took a folded-up piece of yellowed newspaper from his wallet and pushed it across the table to me. It was an old Ann Landers column about how to tell love from infatuation. I asked him how long he'd been carrying it around.
    "Five, six years," he said. "You never know when something like this could come in handy."
    "I was only eleven when you clipped it?"
    "Just thinking ahead," he said, rummaging around in his wallet. "The concerned single parent."
    "The overprotective single parent," I said. "The nosy, interfering single parent." I told him I didn't give a hoot about 
what some old lady had to say five years ago about love. I was happier than I'd been ever with Todd. Dad would just have to trust me.
    He kept poking around in his wallet. Finally he took out my mom's high school graduation picture and sighed. "You're the spitting image," he said. "On the outside. But on the inside you're just as pigheaded as your old man."
    "I could do a lot worse," I said.
* *
    A few weeks later Todd and I were sitting in his car parked in our driveway, and Todd told me that he wanted to break it off. 
    "It's getting too serious," he said.
    I had the feeling that wasn't it at all. He'd found someone new to listen to his love songs. He just didn't have the nerve to tell me. I tried to joke. 
    "You want it to be more shallow?" I asked.
    He stared at me, looking as if he were about to cry. I could tell he wasn't enjoying this, and my heart went out to him. Then I realized that if I didn't stop myself, I'd end up comforting him for leaving me. 
    "Ann Landers tried to warn me about you," I said. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and went to my daddy's Olds, parked at the foot of the drive. I started her up and began searching for a good radio station.
    Todd came over and leaned in my window.
    "Where're you going?" he asked. "You live here, remember?"
    "East of the sun, west of the moon," I said.
    "Can't we be friends?" he asked.
    I was so angry I wanted to back up my daddy's Olds, floor her, and smash right into Todd's beautiful car. You break my heart, I'll wreck your Chevy.
    But I'm my father's daughter -- I couldn't do that to an innocent auto. Instead, I found Stevie Wonder on the dial and took off with a squeal of tires. Todd ran after me, but I floored it until he was just a tiny dot in the rearview. The music was good. It carried me through our subdivision and the quiet side streets over to Telegraph Avenue. I decided to drive down Telegraph, past all the Mile Roads. Ten Mile Road, by the all-night kosher Dunkin' Donuts. Eleven Mile Road, by my old high school. Twelve Mile Road. All the lights were with me and I was cruising. I love this car, I was thinking. Nothing can get me in here. It's when you get out of your car that the trouble starts.
    There was a groan from the backseat, and my daddy's face appeared in the rearview.
   "Apparently a man can't take a little nap in his own Oldsmobile without getting hijacked?" he said.
    "What on earth are you doing back there?" I asked.
    "I was sleeping," he said. "It's usually real peaceful back here."
    I glared at him. I didn't need this. Not now.
    We rode a few minutes, silent. I could see it was funny. And I knew he loved me. Still, I had planned to drive for hours -- a heartbroken blond racing down the freeway at night with tears in her eyes. A real American cliche. Having Dad pop up in the backseat like that kind of ruined the picture. 
    "Are we headed anywhere in particular?" he asked a few moments later.
    "Nope."
    "Care to talk about it?"
    I wanted to drive. Alone. I wanted to drive for miles and miles and dwell on my sorrow. But it was too late for that. 
    "There's a twenty-four-hour car wash out on Lone Pine Road," Dad said. "Your mom and I used to go there to talk. If we couldn't get things straightened out, we figured at least the car would be clean." He smiled. "We don't have to talk if you don't want to. But the car could use a wash."
    The most miserable night of my life and we're talking about whether the car needs a wash. Of course, the car did need washing. It couldn't hurt to wash the car. So at the next intersection I turned toward Lone Pine Road and switched over to the country station. Dad leaned forward to squeeze my shoulder, then settled back in his seat, smiling. 
  "No rush," he said. "We've got all night."
    It wasn't that I stopped being sad. There was a heavy feeling in my gut that I knew would be with me for a while. But as we cruised along, the idea of driving along in the middle of the night to take a beat-up Olds through the car wash for a heart-to-heart talk with my old man didn't seem so bad.