Russell Banks - A Permanent Member of the Family

“Then we have to let the dogs in,” Erik said. “In, out. It doesn’t matter, goddammit, we’re leaving,” he said.

“You’re the one who wants to leave,” Ellen said and retook her seat next to Raphael. The others stood together in a group at the end of the table.

Ted said to Erik, “C’mon, man, have another glass of wine and chill. Tonight’s huge, man. A cognac, maybe?”

“Leave him alone,” Joan said to her husband. “He’s upset.”

Sam said, “Rafe, honey, what’d you say that upset Erik? Do we need a time-out?” he said and laughed nervously.

Raphael turned to Sam and said, “Erik was boiling mad and all conflicted when he got here. It wasn’t me who upset him. Erik wants his MacArthur to prove he’s a genius but fears it was given to him by mistake. That’s all.”

Erik said, “Ellen, I’m going home. You can come with me or not, your choice,” he said and strode from the dining room.

Ellen said to the others, “I guess it’s his party and he can ruin it if he wants to.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. To Raphael she said, “You’re not wrong about him. But you didn’t need to rub his face in it.” Then she lowered her head and left the room.

By the time she got to the front hall coat closet, with Ted, Joan and Sam close behind her, Erik had already pulled on his shearling jacket. Sam placed a hand on Erik’s shoulder and in a low voice said, “Don’t let Rafe spoil anything for you, Erik. Really, it’s not personal. It’s just… I don’t know, maybe it’s his novel. He works so damned hard on it. But nothing ever satisfies him. He’s a perfectionist. So he tears it up and starts over. The frustration makes him seem intolerant sometimes. Or bitter.”

Ted said, “For most of us life’s too short to be a perfectionist. And too sweet to be bitter. Right, Erik?”

Erik looked back in the direction of the dining room and said nothing.

Ted said, “Hey, listen, man, you drive carefully. And watch for cops. We’ve all had a few tonight, remember. And congratulations again, man. We are truly happy for you.”

Erik nodded, opened the door and stepped outside into the blowing snow.

Ellen gave Joan a quick hug and let Ted and Sam kiss her on the cheek. Then Raphael appeared and leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, too.

She stood for a second at the open door and watched Erik walk heavily down the path, his tracks traipsing behind in the snow. She seemed to look more at the tracks than at the man making them, as if to see where he had been and not where he was going. Beyond the range of the porch light, his footprints diminished and disappeared in the darkness. They heard the car door open and thump shut.

“I wonder if I should drive,” Ellen said.

Sam said, “M’thinks so, m’dear.”

“I’m sorry to leave so early,” Ellen said. “But it’s for the best.”

“That’s all right,” Ted said. “We love Erik the way he is.”

Joan said, “He’s our Erik, after all.”

“And Rafe is our Rafe. And neither one of them is going to change,” Sam said and put a loving arm around his husband. He called into the whirling darkness, “Good night, Erik!”

Ted said, “Hey, good night, man!”

Raphael said, “Congratulations, Erik!”

Joan said, “Yes. Good night, Erik. Goodbye, Ellen!”

Ellen stepped down to the walkway and saw that Erik was in the driver’s seat and had started the car. The headlights cut pale wedges through the falling snow. She stood watching for a few seconds. Then she slowly turned around and walked back up the steps and through the open door into the house. The others followed her, and Raphael, the last to go inside, closed the door on the falling snow and the night.

Ventana steps off the number 33 bus at 103rd Street and Northwest Seventh Avenue in Miami Shores. It’s almost 6:00 P.M., and at this time of year the city stays hot and sticky thick till the sun finally sets at 8:00. She walks quickly back along Seventh, nervous about carrying so much cash, thirty-five one-hundred-dollar bills. She doesn’t want to pay for the car with a check and then have to wait till the check clears before she can drive it home — no way a used-car dealer who doesn’t know her personally will accept a check from a black woman and let her take the goods home before the check clears. She wants the car now, today, so she can drive to work at Aventura tomorrow and for the first time park in the employees’ lot and on Sunday after church drive her own damn car, drive her own damn car, to the beach at Virginia Key with Gloria and the grandkids.

The credit union closed at four so she took the money — one hundred dollars a month secretly saved over nearly three years — out of her account during her lunch break and later in the American Eagle ladies’ room stashed the packet of thirty-five bills in her brassiere. She wore a high-necked rayon blouse, even though she knew the day would be hot as Hades and the air-conditioning in the buses would likely be busted or weak. The number 33 at seven o’clock in the morning leaving from her block in Miami Shores to the number 3 in North Miami all the way out to Aventura Mall and then back again over the same route in late afternoon, early in the day or late, air conditioner working or not, it didn’t matter, she’d be in a serious sweat just from walking from the bus stop across the long lot to the entrance of the mall and back. And the day was hot from early to late, and she did sweat more than if she wore a sleeveless blouse or T-shirt, but she got through the afternoon with no one at American Eagle Outfitters knowing about the money she was carrying and is relieved now to be walking up Seventh and finally arriving at the gate of Sunshine Cars USA with the money still intact in her bra.

She’s forty-seven years old and for twenty-five of those years has been a legally licensed driver in the state of Florida, but this will be the first car Ventana has ever owned herself. Her ex-husband, Gordon, when she was still married to him leased a new Buick every three years and let her drive it with him riding in the backseat as if she were his chauffeur; her son, Gordon Junior, when he went into the Navy bought a new Camaro with his enlistment bonus and parked it in her driveway and let her drive it while he was at sea until he couldn’t afford to insure it anymore and had to sell it; and for a few years her daughter, Gloria, owned an old clunker of a van she let Ventana borrow from time to time to help friends move in or out, but then the finance company repossessed it. In all those years Ventana did not have a car of her own. Until today.

Well, she really doesn’t own it; she hasn’t even picked her car out yet. Most of the vehicles for sale by Sunshine Cars USA are out of her price range, but she knows from reading the listings in the Miami Herald that Sunshine Cars USA nonetheless has dozens of what they call pre-owned cars for thirty-five hundred dollars and under: cars with one previous owner, cars with low mileage, cars less than ten years old, cars still shiny and stylish; Tauruses, Avengers, DeVilles, Grand Vitaras, Malibus, Fusions, Cobalts and Monte Carlos. Nearly every day for three years she has stopped on her way to catch the bus in the morning and on her way home at the end of the day and peered through the eight-foot-high iron spiked fence surrounding the lot and checked out the rows of sparkling vehicles for sale. She almost never passed the lot without saying to herself, That Chevrolet wagon looks about right for a woman like me, or, The black Crown Vic is more Gordon’s kind of ride, but I could live with it, or, Those SUV type vehicles are ugly, but they safe in an accident. Over the last three years she selected for herself hundreds of pre-owned cars and bought each of them on layaway, and until the car was actually sold off the lot to someone else, in her mind it remained hers. It was a trick she played on herself. It’s how she managed to accumulate the thirty-five hundred dollars — pretending each month that she was not saving the money, which is hard to do when you’re always short of cash at the end of the month. No, she wasn’t saving up to buy a car, she told herself, she was making a one-hundred-dollar layaway monthly payment toward her car, that’s what, and if she didn’t make her payment on time, she pretended the dealer would sell her car to a customer who had the cash in hand, and all the money she paid on it up to now would be wasted and gone. So she made her payment at the credit union, made it on time. Today, finally, Ventana is going to be the customer who has the cash in hand.