Even then, I wasn’t a “car person.” My husband and I once took a cross-country road trip. I kept telling him I didn’t know how to drive, but he didn’t listen. When he saw me going 45 in a 65-mph zone, he said: “Wow. You really don’t know how to drive, do you?”
After which he fell asleep, napping for hours as I tried (and failed) to merge on a highway. With clenched teeth, and a passed-out passenger, I did my share of the journey from California to New Hampshire, never once daring to pass another vehicle.
We bought our own car in 1999. It’s a silver Volvo station wagon. (A cliché!) I kind of mildly appreciated that we could now skip town more easily. Eventually, we drove our children to camp, to college, to their first jobs. But even with a quarter-century’s worth of miles and dents, and its Beverly Cleary books on cassette tapes still in the glove compartment, I never truly loved it.
My 24-year-old daughter and 21-year-old son moved back into our 2.5-bedroom apartment. (My daughter’s room is a closet.) I was glad to have them home! But the world was a scary and endlessly upsetting place in 2020. In New York City, sirens screeched at all hours, and the streets were dead-empty. In the beginning, none of us went outside.
We developed a routine as a family: work, cocktails, dinner, TV, movies. We took solace in one another’s company. But in a small apartment, we also craved solitude and separation.
Then I got sick — very sick. I had covid, then long covid. I quarantined in our bedroom while the rest of the family sprawled around the house, working or finishing college on their computers.
Finally, after weeks in bed, when I felt well enough that I could rejoin the living, I found that my legs could barely hold me. It was very hard to stand, much less walk.
So, I remember vividly the first day I masked up and left our home. I put on plastic gloves to wait for the elevator — we were allowed only one person or family at a time in our building. When I got outside and smelled the fresh air, I began to cry.
There was no one else on the street. I walked to the mailbox on the corner and back, returned exhausted and crawled into bed. These short forays continued until I built up the stamina to walk the four blocks to the park. How happy I was to get out of the house! How happy I was to get away from my family!
I sat on a bench and listened to the birds. Again, no one else was outside. It felt as if we’d been neutron-bombed.
On the way home, I saw our car parked across a street where my husband had apparently left it, its bashed-in fenders and sideswiped doors sparkling in the sun. It looked like a mirage.
All the parking rules had been suspended, and the Volvo, like everything else, seemed abandoned. I walked toward it. If only I had my keys with me, I mused, I would take a nap inside.
I leaned against the hood to catch my breath. It looked so cozy in that beat-up old car; we still had towels and (sigh) sand in the way back. I thought: I could get a Thermos of coffee and read a book in there. I could be alone.
And so, for the rest of covid, I had a new room, a place to go. Privacy! I charged up my computer and wrote in that car. I talked on the phone with friends, happily complaining about my family, safely out of earshot. I turned on the radio and listened to NPR and blasted Led Zeppelin from the CD player. I returned to therapy, on FaceTime, talking to my shrink from the front seat.
In the winter, when the car was totally snowed in, my husband dug it out for me so I could be warm and not die of carbon monoxide poisoning. In the summer, I’d bring an iced tea and turn on the air conditioning, stare into space and think of nothing.
As the world began to reopen and pedestrians and cars again filled the streets, people would sometimes drive up to my window and honk: Leaving that parking spot? I’d shake my head. Nope! I’m not going anywhere, I just live here.
Over time, the car became less of a sanctuary and more of a fishbowl. Once, a woman let her dog poop right next to the car during my therapy session. My shrink could see her through the glass. “That’s nice,” my shrink said.
Even so, I learned to appreciate my car-based life. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Virginia Woolf wrote. I had finally found mine.
After a while, we entered a new normal. My daughter moved back to her apartment in another state. My son graduated from college and got a job in Buffalo. My husband kindly left the house so I could talk to my shrink from the comfort of our apartment instead of from the car.
Still, she was a lifesaver — the car, that is. (Though the shrink is, too.)
As time has passed and I have, thankfully, mostly returned to my life, I continue to walk by our car — on my way to work, a restaurant, a movie, the farmer’s market, the pharmacy, a bar — and fondly give her a pat on the hood.
I no longer need her. But I love her.
