Page 73 of Someone Like Me
Still the shadow of the Supra lurks like the spectre of a boogeyman under a child’s bed. As though it could pounce on me like an animal, my whole body is strung tight. Grandma ambles into the darkness, and with thechinkof a pull-string, the garage is lit in yellow incandescence.
Maybe it’s the jacked up state of my nerves, but the overlapping of images — my tiny, housecoat-clad grandmother and my dead brother’s muscle car — are both darkly funny and oddly mythic, like an allegory. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The gyroscope holding my own sense of balance spins wildly for a second, and I reach for the garage door above my head to steady myself.
My heartbeat is all I hear.
I blink and refocus on the sight in front of me. Grandma Quincy opens the driver’s side door, but no interior light comes on. She disappears into the car, her slippered feet jutting out the open door the only sign that anyone is there. I hear athunkfollowed by aclick, and then I watch her feet kick for purchase before my grandmother rises out of the car, holding something.
“I kept up the registration,” she says, handing a slip of paper to me. “It’s in your name—”
“I don’t want it.”
Grandma stares at me for a moment before dropping her knuckles to her hips. “And why not?”
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, dry as ash. I try to swallow, lick my lips. Then I shake my head, my gaze falling to her flowered polyester slippers.
“I can’t,” I croak.
She pads over to me and lays a hand on my elbow. “You can.” When I begin to shake my head, the hand on my elbow squeezes. “Youmust.”
A sound like a dry laugh escapes me, but my throat aches and my eyes sting. I make myself meet her gaze. Her old eyes aren’t gentle, but fierce, and for this I’m grateful. Gentleness now would ransack me.
“Grandma, I couldn’t bear to drive it.”
One brow lifts under a rainbow of wrinkles. “That’s okay. It doesn’t drive anyway,” she says, an impish smile shaping her mouth. “Chip says mice have chewed through the wires in the starter. And the battery corroded long ago. Hell, all the belts have probably dry rotted.”
In the back of my mind, a tiny voice whispers something about how pissed Anthony would have been about this.
That’s my fault, too.
A sigh escapes me. “If it doesn’t even start, then why are we out here. Why are you doing this to me?”
Both brows climb now, and she looks at me with ironic surprise. “To you? You think I’m doing thisto you?”Those eyebrows drop to the stern, scolding expression I’ve recognized my whole life. “Andrew, I’m doing thisfor you.You gotta stop dragging your guilt around like it’s a boulder tied to your neck.”
At this moment, it feels like that boulder is in my throat. I can’t make her or Annie understand. Separating myself from this guilt is impossible.
And who would I be if I did?
I’m choking on the violence of emotions, but I manage to force out two words. “I can’t.”
Her mouth sets. Her shoulders rise and fall with her breath. Suddenly, my grandmother looks very tired again.
I swallow, my own distress receding in the face of worry for her. “Are you alright?”
She blows a breath out her nose and shakes her head. “No, I am not. I am worried about you, and I refuse to watch you waste the life you’ve been given.” Disappointment seems to weigh down the lines around her eyes. It gives the heft of my guilt a run for its money.
I feel so heavy I want to sit down. I want to lie down. I want to collapse on the ground and form a sinkhole so dirt caves in on top of me, filling it up until there’s nothing left but a bald patch of dry earth.
“There’s nothing I can do,” I tell her, and my voice already sounds like its coming up from underground.
At this, I swear, if lightning bolts could shoot from Grandma Quincy’s eyes, I’d be struck dead. “Nothing you can do? I willtellyou what you are going to do.” She points a weathered index finger at me as though the gesture alone could poke a hole in my chest. Then she jabs at the Supra with the same force. “You are going to fix that goddamn car so it runs like new. And if you’re not going to drive it, you’re going to fetch the best damn price for it you can—”
“I don’t want the car or any money—”
She reels back as if I’ve spit on her. “Who said anything aboutyougetting the money? You can put that straight into my IRA,” she snaps. “I love you more than life, Andrew, but you live here rent free, eating from my table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’ve held onto this wreck all this time for you. The least you can do is make it worth my while.”
I know what she’s doing. In my head, I call this what it is. She’s manipulating again, saying everything she needs to say to make me do what she wants. But, my God, it works. Even though I see right through her, I can do nothing about it. I don’t want to touch Anthony’s car. I can barely stand to look at it.
But how can I tell her no?
