The Authentic Life: Back seat driver

We are driving in circles. From my reclined position in the back seat of the car, I watch the glass square of sunroof above us become blue, cloudy, blue then cloudy again, the mirror image of a hawk turning lazy circles in the sky.

“Keep going, keep going, keep going!” Paul is offering directions and then adds “Sometimes the safest pedal is the one on the right.”

With this bit of advice the car lurches forward.

“That’s it!” he says.

Beanie’s posture behind the wheel is as stiff as a pose from a nineteenth century daguerreotype portrait, her face as stoic and her complexion just as pale.

“You act like you’re driving a piece of glass,” Paul says.

I want to add that we are surrounded by multiple pieces of glass, which can shatter into a million razor sharp shards upon impact, but I withhold this information. My job, as I have been told many times before, is to sit here or in this case, to lie down and look pretty. I am keeping my head, indeed my entire body out of Beanie’s field of vision.

“See how I’m turning my head? I’m always looking left and right, left and right, left and right,” Paul says as he demonstrates, his head bouncing like a bobble head doll and then adds “Ow,” when his neck cracks.

We continue our Sunday afternoon tour of the Lowe’s parking lot in Sanford, Maine. I lie still as a corpse, biting my tongue, while Paul tosses out dubious bits of wisdom, “Don’t think, just drive!”

I don’t remember my father giving me driving lessons, although he did throw out doubtful snippets of word vomit. It was the type of thing parents said when they were navigating their own treacherous intersections and didn’t have time to think about the word pairings.

“The army would make a man out of you,”

“Just join us for one date with my girlfriend’s daughter,”

“Do you really think you can support yourself with a degree in music?”

The words seemed benign enough, but when combined with my own heightened sense of insecurity they sent me in a direction in life that required some back tracking.

I remember when I was eighteen, on a hot summer day when even the breeze seemed to be heated up by the sun, sitting in a diner with my father on a stretch of road somewhere in the middle of North Carolina, a dot on the map. We had come to Asheville to rescue my grandmother’s old blue Chevy Nova from her failing eyesight and trembling hand that was more accustomed to holding a highball than a steering wheel.

“Son,” he said, the same name he used to address all five of his boys, “You finish your lunch up here, I’ve got to go.”

“Honey!” he shouted out to the waitress, the same name he used to address every woman and gave her a twenty. He left to the tinkling of a bell over the door before I could swallow my chew.

Faced with the challenge of finding my own way home, before the advent of gps or smart phones and in a strange car with no air conditioning, I tentatively pulled onto the highway. Within minutes, I peeled off my sweat soaked shirt, rolled down the windows and cranked up the radio. Like it or not, I was driving down this road on my own, searching for signs.

If you were a hawk and could see a great distance, you’d laugh at all of the circles and mistaken exits I have taken. But no one can deny, lying in this backseat, listening to my husband teach our own daughter how to drive, I finally found my way home.

I rarely drive. But I am awesome at giving advice to Paul while he drives.

Unencumbered by all of those driving gadgets like gas pedals, steering wheels and odometer thingies I can really concentrate on the important aspects that make car travel pleasant such as the selection of music and temperature control. I find that being separated from the mechanics of driving makes me a superior and impartial back seat driver.

Paul does not agree.

This morning I offered a bit of obvious advice that I thought he might find helpful. You should not read e-mail while driving on the streets of Boston. Because 1) It is illegal and 2) you will miss your turn. To which Paul countered, 1) did we get the fuck where we were going? Because 2) there is a bus that can take me there.

Paul seems to think that an elephant could fit in the space between our car and the next while I believe only a mouse would fit. Several times I reached for the imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side with both of my feet.

“This brake pedal doesn’t work!” I say with mock alarm.

“Thank God. We’d be stopping every five seconds if it did.” Paul says wearily.

A few months ago, Paul had an asthma attack in the middle of the night. He dressed; tip toed out of the bedroom and checked into the Emergency room. After his treatment, he came back home and slipped back into bed. I was completely oblivious to all of the above, which makes me a rotten husband.

The next morning I woke up, got dressed and went to the gym. I sensed that Paul had a restless night. So I did not wake him, which makes me a loving husband. I returned from the gym and noticed a bracelet on Paul’s arm, which upon closer inspection I identified as a hospital ID bracelet.

Shaking him awake I say “Did you go to the hospital last night?”

“I had a tough time breathing”

“And you didn’t wake me?”

“What could you have done?”

“Well, for starters I could have driven you!”

“Sweetie, your driving would have made it harder for me to breathe.”

Apparently, not only am I a horrid back seat driver, but an equally horrid front seat driver. I’ll admit I suck at parallel parking. Paul constantly says “It’s all about the angles.” Like this should mean something to me. But with ten cars behind me honking their horns the only angle I can think of is how I can slant this to appear as if I really wanted to switch between drive and reverse fifteen times while trying to park.

And OK, I’ll admit that I can be a bit cautious while driving. But driving is a risky business and you can never be too careful when trying to turn at a busy intersection. I check left, then right, then left again and right and then left once more just for good measure.

“Does Polly want a cracker?” Paul says.

“What?”

“You look like a parrot, bobbing your head up and down and back and forth.”

This is the kind of negative feedback that can damage a marriage. But if I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t look that good driving. Not compared to Paul. He has an easy grace sitting in the driver seat with his long legs and sexy confidence. While I look like an eighty year old man hunched over the steering wheel, nervous and fidgety.

So I will be Miss Daisy to his Hoke and let him drive and not say one word. Because those negative comments really serve no good purpose. But, I will still control the selection of music. Oh, the stories I could tell about his taste in music.