“Okay,” said Katie, not yet ready to leave the stolen car story, “so, this can’t be the car you got pulled over in, when, you know. I’m trying to be delicate here.”
“When I was drunk? No, it wasn’t this car. If it had been, once they ran a check on the plate, well, I’d have been in even deeper shit.”
“What did your wife think about you keeping a stolen car?”
Bruce smiled sadly. “It was, as they say, a bone of contention. She’d never ride in it with me. She was too scared. Figured if I got stopped she’d be considered an accomplice.” He grinned. “I was Clyde without a Bonnie when I went for a joyride.”
Katie remained dumbfounded. “For fifty years you’ve had a stolen car. How did you get your other car back?”
“Drove the Caddy home, hid it, took the bus back to Malden. Simple. Even saw the cops questioning people.” A broad smile. “They even asked me if I’d seen anything. I said, who’d do such a thing, the bastard.”
He paused and looked thoughtful. “That actually might have been when it started. Or when it got worse.”
“What?”
“My drinking. It’s not like I didn’t have a guilty conscience, stealing this car. I kept worrying, those first few years, the cops would show up one day. That they’d catch me, charge me. Even if they didn’t send me to jail, I’d be finished. The school board would have fired me in a New York minute. So I started drinking. After five years, once I was sure I was going to get away with it, I was pretty much set in my ways, drinking-wise.”
“So maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, after all.”
Bruce stuck out his jaw and shook his head. “Don’t regret it for a second. This is my father’s car. Even if a couple of others had it over the years, this was and always shall be my father’s car.”
“What about... after?” Katie asked.
Bruce smiled wryly. “After I’m gone?”
She nodded.
“You want it?”
Before Katie could answer, Bruce pointed again. “There’s one.”
Katie, who had her eyes on the road, knew he did not mean another deer. They were, finally, encountering a car on Gull Road. A silver Arrival could be seen, about half a mile ahead, approaching in the opposite lane.
“Silly little things,” Bruce said.
Katie squinted. “Doesn’t even look like anyone’s in it.”
“Maybe whoever’s in it is havin’ a nap. Gotta say, for a guy who’s not allowed to drive, that might be just the ride for me.”
“Can you have an Arrival if you’ve had a drunk driving conviction?”
“Don’t see why not.”
“Why am I even asking?” Katie said. “If my brother’s dumbass friend can go around town in one, I guess it’s okay if anyone—”
“Hello,” Bruce said.
Katie’s jaw dropped. “What’s he — what’s it doing?”
The Arrival had moved into their lane. It was coming straight for them, but was still far enough away.
Katie hit the horn.
“Out of my way, idiot!” she shouted.
“Flash your lights,” Bruce said. “Might be easier for its sensors to pick up.”
Katie, who had been doing her practice drives in the middle of the night, needed no time to find the light switch. She turned them on and off quickly.
The Arrival kept on coming.
“Slow down a titch,” Bruce said, “and start pulling over onto the shoulder.”
Katie nodded, took her foot off the accelerator, and turned the wheel slightly to the right. As the right tires transitioned from asphalt to gravel, stones could be heard kicking up into the wheel wells.
The Arrival, continuing to advance, moved over onto the shoulder.
“Christ on a trampoline,” Bruce said. “Get back on the road! Crank it hard! Head to the other shoulder!”
Katie spun the wheel, the back end of the car fishtailing, gravel spraying out from the rear right wheel. She aimed the car for the left shoulder, tromping on the gas at the same time. The massive car lumbered from one side of the road to the other like a whale with wheels.
The Arrival mirrored Katie’s moves, and continued to close the distance.
Twenty
Lillian Bridgeman sat in her wheelchair and watched the cars and people go by. It was a way to pass the time. It was about all she had these days.
Lillian was stationed at the end of the driveway, a good place from which to observe the world. Well, not the world exactly, but wasn’t Gilbert Street, in the town of Garrett, on Garrett Island, part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, within the magnificent United States of America, as good a representation of the world as anyone could want? Didn’t Gilbert Street have everything anyone could ever hope to see? You didn’t have to go to the big city to watch life’s dramas played out for you. They happened right here.
Just this week, one of the McClatchen kids from down the street had taken a tumble off his skateboard and scraped his knee. Anthony, his name was. Eight, nine years old. Lillian had called out to him, asked if he was okay as he got back on his feet. He hobbled his way over to her, close enough that she could see the ragged skin and the blood dripping down his leg. He was biting his lip, trying not to cry.
“That could get infected,” she said. “You need to go home, get that cleaned up and bandaged.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Anthony said.
“Get your mom to do it,” she said.
“She’s at work.”
Lillian frowned. “Who’s watching out for you all day?”
The boy shrugged.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said, and then gave him very specific instructions about where in her house he would find what she needed to patch him up. He was afraid, at first, confessing later that he had never forgotten the story of Hansel and Gretel and the witch that tried to eat them. But finally he was persuaded to head inside and get the kit. Once he returned with it, she leaned forward in her chair and fixed him up.
There was a bit of drama for you.
And then there was the Salters, across the street and one house over. Blake and Nina. The newlyweds. Well, that’s what they were two years ago. But judging by their conversation the other morning, the honeymoon was definitely over. They came out the front door every morning at eight, both getting into their little Toyota — Blake in the passenger seat and Nina behind the wheel. This was before they were given an Arrival, of course. A few days before everyone surrendered their cars for one of those newfangled ones, Nina had come striding out of the house first, letting the door swing shut on her husband as he followed her. She wouldn’t look at him as he said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, if you want your mother here, fine, but for a weekend, not for an entire fucking week.”
She got into the car, and when he went around to the passenger side, he’d found the door locked. “Come on,” he said, banging his fist on the window. “Stop being a cunt.”
Lillian Bridgeman could hardly believe her ears. But what she saw amazed her more. Nina unlocked the door for him, let him in, and off they went. Lillian couldn’t imagine her late husband ever using that word with her. If he had, she could imagine what she might have done. A cast iron frying pan upside the head next time he turned his back on her, she thought.
She liked being close to the road so she could have a front row seat to these little dramas. If she were up on the porch, she wouldn’t be able to make out the cast of characters as easily, what with her eyesight declining these past few years. You got to be eighty-one and some of the equipment started breaking down. Some of it already had. Like her legs, which still worked but didn’t keep her standing for very long.
It was a good thing her son had arranged for that girl, Daniella — okay, young woman — to check on her a couple of times a day while he was off being the island lawman. She’d wheel her back up the ramp and into the house, make her some lunch, or assist her on a trip to the bathroom. She’d be coming along shortly, and just as well, because Lillian was feeling a tad peckish, as her own mother used to say, so many years ago. Lillian could manage to make herself a lunch if she had to, but getting back into the house was something she could not manage alone. She no longer had the strength in her arms to get up the ramp to the porch and her front door.