8956825209375

A Good Talking-To
I
N THE SPRING of 1967 I bought a big, hulking 1960 Ford Galaxie, the rst car ever to sit at
the curb of 36 Helwig Street. Everything about it—exterior, dashboard, vinyl
upholstery—was a dull, battleship gray, so my friends immediately christened it the
Gray Death. It’s hard to imagine the car had ever been shiny, even in the showroom, but
there was no rust on it, which in upstate New York was remarkable. Still, cars didn’t get
much more uncool, and to make matters worse the Death, with its small V-6 engine, was
seriously underpowered. I would own worse cars, but never another in which you could
slam the accelerator to the oor and nothing, absolutely nothing, would happen. You
simply couldn’t express urgency to the fucking thing. Getting on the Thruway at
Fultonville, you wouldn’t get up to the speed limit until Amsterdam, seven miles down
the road.
For our trip across country I hitched a U-Haul to the rear bumper, and into this we
crammed my mother’s books, our clothes, television, kitchen stu, and other
miscellaneous items she couldn’t bear to part with. Her plan was to nd a furnished
apartment in Phoenix, where General Electric had a branch oce. She admitted to being
a little worried she might not make quite as much money there as she did in
Schenectady, but we had distant relatives who lived in Scottsdale, and they claimed that
the cost of living was much lower, so hopefully the two would cancel each other out.
Later, after she got established, my mother could move into an unfurnished place and
have the bulk of our furniture shipped out from Gloversville. She kept this scheme
hidden from her parents as long as possible, knowing they’d consider it rash and do
everything in their power to dissuade her, as indeed they did. Phoenix was a big city,
they pointed out, in which she didn’t know a soul. Did she have any idea what rents
there were like? Where was that kind of money going to come from? In nine months,
tops, she’d be broke, and then what would she do? How would she even get back home?
My grandfather’s emphysema had progressed to the point where he couldn’t work
anymore, and his meager pension and retirement barely covered their monthly needs.
Eventually my mother would discover her mistake and rely on them to rescue her, like
she always did. Did she understand that now they simply couldn’t manage to?
But all of this was assuming we’d make it there in the rst place. Our whole trip,
according to my grandfather, was underfunded, my mother’s calculations based on
wishful thinking. Gas. Motels. Food. Auto repairs. At the wheel of our unsafe car was
someone who’d had his license only a few months, and my mother couldn’t even spell
me at the wheel. Did she understand that what she was proposing wasn’t just nancial
folly but also dangerous, potentially even tragic? To all this, my mother responded that
she wasn’t a child and didn’t appreciate being treated like one, adding for good measure
that their refusal to treat her like an adult was one of the reasons she was leaving. She’d