My Life In A Car, Part IV

My Life In A Car Part IV

Sarah smiled at me from across the room.  “What’cha packing for?” she asked.  

“I have to go to Detroit for the 2021 Detroit Auto Show in a week.  I get the honor of unveiling the Corvette C-8,” I told her.  

It was the very first Chevrolet to ever have jackknife doors.  I was really proud we’d been able to sell that idea to the corporate boys.  In a time when everyone was running fuel cells or hybrids it was nice to have designed a car that still had a gasoline engine.  Although, I was forced to admit that at a hair under 200,000 dollars it was a bit expensive.  Oh well, Ford wanted as much for their new F-200, so I guess it was all relative.

“When did they drop that on you?” she asked.

“This morning.  I figured I would get ready tonight and tell you and the kids tomorrow.”

Sarah nodded.  “Why tomorrow?”  

“Because it’s Friday and I wanted to wait until the weekend so the kids weren’t getting packed and all wound-up on a school night.”

Sarah looked at me for a moment then smiled.  “Oh, we’re going this time?”  she asked.  It was usually not a family oriented trip to go to the show in Detroit.

I winked at her.  “We are.  But don’t tell them yet.”  I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.   “And let Olivia know that we’re taking her car.  I arranged for Chevrolet to ship it up there a day ahead of us, it’ll arrive the day after we do.”

“Why her car?”

I chuckled, “Baby, who did I just rebuild it with?  Because it’s a darn show piece, that’s why.  It’s a Chevrolet to boot and that makes it perfect for the show.”

Olivia turned sixteen the week before and I gave her the Camaro.  Of course, I had a friend do a little work on it.  What kind of father would give his daughter a worn-out, fifiteen-year-old car?  Even in his sixties Chip Foose still makes magic when he touches a car.  It was a great honor to work on her car with the man himself.

On her birthday she went to school with her little brother like they always did.  She so hated riding that bus.  I was hard pressed to maintain my poker face knowing what she would come home to.  She got up early and Sarah and I both acted like we had forgotten her birthday.  That was the hard part for Sarah; acting like she had forgotten.

At nine o’clock Amy showed up in the old Camaro well after the kids were off to school.  It had been reborn a fire-breathing monster though.  The paint was a gorgeous shade of burgundy red over white.  I would never have chosen those colors, but that’s why Foose is so amazing, the unexpected things he does.  I couldn’t wait to see him in Detroit and thank him for working with me on that car.

Oh, he did re-christen the Z-28.  He put the name “Olivia” on the back deck where we originally had CAMARO stamped into the sheet metal.  That sheet-metal stamped name was a hard sell to the GM big wigs.  Composites have only made it slightly cheaper over time.  It’s a lot more cost effective to put a decal or a chrome and plastic badge on there.

Amy drove up smiling ear to ear and got out with her boyfriend David.  He was really impressed with the car.  Actually, he’s kind of a simple guy; he’s easily impressed.  He doted on Amy like no one else I knew though, so he was good for her.  I remembered thinking she might actually settle down and marry this time.

“This thing flies!” she said.  

I was grinning wide at her.  “Does it now?  What did you have it up to?  120?”

She shook her head.  “Way too fast, let’s leave it at that.”

I giggled and hobbled over with my cane.  I was on my third knee, this one titanium, steel, carbon fiber, and some kind of new high strength material to allow more flexibility.  The problem was it was thirty years too late to really help me by adding a little flexibility.

“She’ll love it!” Amy said.  “It’s got a huge stereo and its glass smooth.  Do you think she’ll be able to cough up six bucks a gallon for gas though?”

I thought about it for a moment and Sarah slipped an arm around my waist.  “I think we’ll be able to help a little with that if she can manage the insurance,” Sarah said.

We put Olivia in the garage and tied a huge red bow across her newly painted hood.  I remember being nervous about whether or not she would like it.  I wanted her to love it.

*

Joshua was born two years after Olivia almost to the day.  Sarah had a much less physically demanding delivery with Josh; he was Olivia’s polar opposite.  He was premature by a month and a half and weighed just a hair over four pounds.  Not a long shot baby by any chance, but enough to make us worry and the doctors frown.  

He grew healthy though.  I think it runs in the men in my family; we soak up adversity and keep on truckin’.

He loved Olivia.  The two of them were inseparable growing up.  Only their age difference kept them apart in school.  They walked to school together in the years they attended the same schools, or rode the bus when the school was further.  They weren’t the kind of siblings who wanted nothing to do with each other.

It was wonderfully ironic that Josh found the car.  When they got home we greeted Olivia with a hug and kiss and once more Sarah and I played like we forgot her birthday.  Olivia was a sweet girl, but you could tell by her body language that she was upset.  She was still so polite it was touching.

Not ten minutes after they got home Josh went into the garage for some reason.  I have a sneaky suspicion that he had figured his sister was getting a car that year and he was hunting for it, but he’s never ‘fessed up to me.

“Hey sis!” he called from the garage.  Josh was sharp but he didn’t have a poker face; the excitement was evident in his voice.

“What?”

“Come here.  I think this is for you.”  I really couldn’t have planned it better had I tried.

She went to the door and he stepped aside and she screamed loud and happy.  I remember laughing like a loon.  She hugged us all and thanked us profusely and kissed everyone of us, even David.

Olivia and Josh went out driving that night.  I was a little scared watching her back that land-missile out of the driveway.  She had her license and the insurance was paid up, but it was still a million-dollar Chip Foose car with over four-hundred horsepower under the hood.  That’s a lot on a parents mind, but sometimes you have to trust your children.  

I remember turning to Sarah and asking, “Do you think us giving that much car to that young a girl was a mistake?”

“No.  You raised them well.  They’ll behave.”  

“I hope so,” I said.

*

Sarah sat next to me on the front porch.  Lancaster, Michigan was nothing like Phoenix.  It was a good place to relax and it was an even better place to rehabilitate.  The new leg was so indistinguishable from my real, un-damaged right one that I couldn’t tell the difference.  “Olivia called,” she said.

“Oh?  Why?  Honeymoon’s are for husband’s and wives, not parents.”

“She wanted to tell us that they got to Barbados all right.  She said the last leg was in a puddle jumper from Puerto Rico and she was certain there was a guy in the back with a goat.  She also said the island is amazing.  She wants to live there now, except gas is over ten dollars a gallon.”

I snorted a chuckle out my nose.  “Wait until tomorrow when they realize that a cold beer is four bucks American.  It’s a banana republic; everything has to be shipped in.  It’s atrociously expensive for the same reason it’s so beautiful.”

“She knows that Alex.”

I smiled at Sarah.  She smiled at me.  In the yard Olivia - the car - stood silent.  She was over twenty years old now, and I fifty-three.  Funny how time had been so much nicer to the car.  “She also said she wants you to give the car to Josh.”

“What are they going to drive?” I asked.  It was their only car and she loved it, I was shocked she would give it to anyone.

“She said if things go well on their honeymoon they’re going to need a back seat that will hold a baby.  I told her to take it easy, but you know Olivia, she’s darn near as fast as that car.”

I chuckled again.  “Yep.  I make ‘em fast.”  

Sarah punched me in the shoulder.  “Silly old man.”

I smiled despite myself.  In two weeks it would be healed up enough to go back to Phoenix.  For the first time in fifteen years my left leg would work well enough to actually drive a standard shift car.  Hell, it was working well enough that I actually got on a treadmill at the hospital and jogged.  

I intended to take the latest hydrogen-cell sports-car we had been working on around the test track.  If the engineers were right it would go over 175 miles an hour.  Our production model was going to be a lot slower than that thanks to government regulations on how fast we could make a car move.  The government wouldn’t matter on a test track though.  The old fashioned car buffs always wanted to know the numbers: what it did in the quarter mile, what its top end was, et cetera ad infinitum.   

“You still going to drive that new car on the first?” she asked as if reading my mind.

“If GM doesn’t stop me,” I said.  “I want to grind me some gears.”

She patted my leg.  After so long with no flexibility and little mobility it felt very strange to have an organic leg again.  Science never failed to amaze, and to think that in the nineteen-nineties stem cell research was actually banned.

*

“My father died a good death.”  Olivia closed the worn leather journal as she spoke these last words.  “He died doing what he loved.  The government points to incidents like his and says: ‘That is why we govern cars.’  They point to fatality numbers from the last decade, but my father was happy when he died.  He got to do something that he hadn’t been able do in years, and he was thrilled to be doing it.  I don’t wish it had happened any other way.  I do wish it hadn’t happened so soon, but I will never be sad about how my father died.”

Olivia shuddered slightly, the loss of her father still weighing heavily on her.  “It was very hard for me and Josh to... to not be angry with Chevrolet, or with the people in Phoenix.  But we forgave them because they never could have stopped my father.  They shouldn’t have stopped him either.  He loved cars and he loved to drive.”

“My father’s life was shaped by the American car.  By making them safe, by keeping others he loved safe, by making them moving works of art.  He loved what he did and he loved us all very deeply.  I am leaving his journal here.  Feel free to look through it.  Alex never said a mean word to anyone, and he didn’t record them here.  He was… he was a man who loved everyone.  I am going to miss him terribly… for as long as I live.”

Olivia walked out of the church slowly.  Her father's Eulogy was spoken mostly in his own words.  

The doctors all said it had been a defect in Alex’s brain.  There was scar tissue from a long-ago accident that caused a fatal bleed within his cerebrum when the car he was driving rolled over.  The engineers said he was going 183.27 miles an hour.  They had said it was amazing that the safety systems Alex had created had kept him from more severe injury.  Only sheer speed had overcome the engineering of that car.  It was G-forces that no one could ever counter that killed him.  

Olivia wept when Josh met her at the church door.  Ahead of them a burgundy Camaro with the word ‘Olivia’ on the trunk sat reflecting the sunlight back toward them as if to add its sentiment.

*

“You see that?” Josh asked.  The only response was a burbling coo from Olivia’s arms.  “Your grandfather built that.  He designed it and made it and named it Olivia after your momma.  Some day it’s going to be yours.”

Alex Junior looked up at Josh and his momma and pappa and smiled wide at his reflection in the mirror-bright chrome…