C Hribal - The Company Car

It was a sign, had anyone taken notice: in the natural world, things were not right. Any dramatist worth his salt knows what that means. But who wanted to believe the gloom and doom predictions of a couple of plant pathologists at Elmhurst College? Two plant pathologists, skinny and poorly married, the sort of geeky, eggheaded academics that it was already fashionable not to listen to. They didn’t come off well in town meetings, their noses buried in the reports from which they were reading, and what they recommended would have cost lots of money—clear-cutting trees with early infestations or in proximity to said trees and squirting the bejesus out of the rest with chemicals. They said with such precautions you could save probably 60, perhaps 70 percent of the trees. But who believes that scientific claptrap? It wasn’t until after the town had been denuded that they remembered the two pathologists and said to them, “Why didn’t you warn us about this stuff?”

Our parents, no doubt, felt the same way. Threats were everywhere. There were drugs in the high schools now—marijuana, LSD. Even in the private high schools, which had once seemed so safe. Sure, terrible things happened at York High—kids beaten up, beer parties—but at Montini, the private school where Sarah wanted to go? The older sister of one of Sarah’s friends had gotten pregnant there after a prom. Pregnant! How could that be? And, of course, the Duckwas’ marriage was on the rocks. We pictured them hung up in a boat, so busy blaming each other over how they got there that they hadn’t realized yet they were taking on water.

There was a sense now that accidents, when they occurred, were permanent. After falling down the stairs with Ernie still inside her, our mother had gotten pregnant one more time, even though the doctor had warned her that another pregnancy would be dangerous. “It was an accident,” she told Dr. Wilton. “It wasn’t like we were planning on it.” Dr. Wilton said accidents like this could be prevented, and she and our father hadn’t planned any of the rest of us, either. She did realize, didn’t she, that it was possible to have sex without getting pregnant? Our mother said she understood that, and though it wasn’t any of his business, just for the record she and Wally “you knowed” quite often. As Catholics, however, they practiced rhythm. Ah, said Dr. Wilton. Practiced. And did she know what you called someone who “practiced” the rhythm method? Our mother said she didn’t. You called her Mommy, said Dr. Wilton. “It will be the last one,” our mother insisted. “It had better be,” said Dr. Wilton. “You don’t have enough hormones in you to make more than one.”

When Meg was born, so tiny, with one leg slightly shorter than the other and with bones that broke easily (she was two when she repeated our mother’s swan dive down the basement stairs), Dr. Wilton’s warning seemed oddly prophetic. Permanent accidents, Dr. Wilton called us, and our mother all but agreed with him. Our mother recounted her visit to Dr. Wilton to our father that evening. Cinderella, Robert Aaron, and I were on the stairs, listening intently—the Hear Evil, See Evil, Speak Evil little homunculi. It was like we had radar that picked up whenever they were talking about us.

“They were accidents, Marie, every last one of them,” said our father.

“But they’re our accidents, Wally, and I seem to remember we had a pretty good time making them.” We could hear them kissing. She was probably on his lap again.

“No argument there,” said our father. He was making smoochie sounds.

“We knew what we were doing, Wally. If they were accidents, they were planned.”

“You mean intended?” More kissing. Our father groaned; our mother sighed. Good God, were they going to… you know… right there in the kitchen? Our mother was already pregnant. Was this how you got twins?

“Intended, planned, and permanent,” said our mother. “Every last one of them.”

“What if there are problems?” said our father. “These last few haven’t been easy for you. Dr. Wilton’s right about that.”

“There are always problems,” said our mother. “We’ll deal with those as they arrive.”

Which was what our mother did when Meg arrived with one leg shorter than the other. Was this because Meg was an accident? No, said our mother, she was a gift from God.

Still, if this was God’s idea of a gift, He had a pretty perverse sense of humor.

___

Our father got more and more restless. He wanted his dreams to be taken seriously. He had grown up watching Al Capone’s cars whiz past him in an alley, and he knew Capone had numerous getaways and lodges up in Wisconsin. These weren’t just places where he could “lie low until the heat wore down.” These were places where Capone went to hunt and fish, to reflect, to unwind—in short, to renew his soul. Our father, I think, wanted a new soul. He wanted to be a farmer. A gentleman farmer, anyway, and Dinkwater-Adams wouldn’t let him.

For some time he’d been railing about this, particularly whenever he came back from the Office. “Jesus, Susan Marie,” he’d say at night, when we weren’t supposed to hear him, “they won’t let me breathe. All I wanna do is just goddamn breathe. Is that so much to ask?”

“No, Wally, no. Now drink your milk and come to bed.” Our mother possessed the unique ability to be distraught with and angry at our father while also pitying him.

Our father had been trying to find meaningful ways to exorcise his restlessness besides spending time down at the Office. To that end he began building a boat in the basement. Not in our basement—he didn’t have the room or the tools—but in his parents’ basement in Morton Grove, which offered him spaciousness and plenty of woodworking tools, Grandpa Cza-Cza having acquired them over the years in the manner that many men do: by going to the hardware store on those Saturday mornings when the prospect of spending the entire day with his wife was simply too much to bear. As our father’s helpers, we were allowed to witness the phenomenon every Saturday. Whenever Grandma Cza-Cza started to harp on Grandpa Cza-Cza, Grandpa Cza-Cza zipped a jacket up tight to his chin, put on an English driving cap, and announced, “I’m going to the hardware store. We need more wood screws.” Or sandpaper, or C-clamps, or pipe clamps, or a screwdriver, or a wood steamer, lightbulbs, coping saw blades, carpenter’s pencils, steel wool, tack cloths, paintbrushes, turpentine, adjustable wrenches, wood chisels, a wood-splitting wedge, and an ax—these last even though there were no trees on their property and no fireplace in which to burn the wood he split. For Grandpa Cza-Cza, the hardware store was the Office.

Had it been up to our father, we would not have been designated his helpers. He would have gone up to his father’s alone, worked all day, maybe spending the night if he didn’t have to usher at church the next morning, and come home Sunday evening at dinnertime. Our mother did not let him indulge in his druthers. If our father was going to visit his parents, shouldn’t he take his children along, at least the older boys, and give them a hobby, a lifetime skill, not to mention some time with their father?

So we were our father’s designated helpers, only we weren’t allowed to help. Our father was an immensely patient man when he was by himself—when he was behind the wheel of a car, say—but he was easily frustrated. His patience with us was wide but shallow, like rivers in Nebraska. He could irrigate us with his love, but we shouldn’t count on a steady stream. “Here, you kids, sand this,” he’d say and give us a block of wood. Sometimes it was a piece meant to go on the boat, sometimes it was a block of wood.