Mr. Zilch's Chevy, as big as a whale: Part 1
My daughter moved four hundred fifty miles away to college last fall. She would have moved three thousand miles away but California state schools only reside in California. She left behind sun-faded communist posters stuck to painted walls with scotch tape and boxes of collage-filled mail art. She also left behind a black dented Toyota Celica and a bill for $1500 to a BMW owner, whose car she dinged one windy night in the Blockbuster parking lot a month before she left.
I paid the bill, cleaned and painted her room, and moved her things to a small alcove next to the dining room. She wasn't going to be living at home much anymore, I figured, why not use her bedroom as my private office? I didn't tell her I moved her stuff when she called home. We talked about classes and her brothers and the rain and gloom of the Bay Area. We talked about her audition for the symphony and the tattoo of an ancient Ibis I planned to get inked on my right shoulder. We talked about how much we missed each other and books and computer problems and rice steamers and cures for migraine headaches. And in between phone calls I packed her things into gigantic plastic tubs and moved my computer and chair and one hundred books into her room, all shiny with new paint, no more communist propaganda lining the walls. In two months time, my new office held my energy, my smell of vanilla perfume and rosemary shampoo and my bad watercolors in a neat row over the bookshelves.
I painted the alcove and bought a pirate's trunk and carved walnut bookcase for my daughter. I hung bamboo on the ceiling and bought a tacky sign labeled "The Tiki Lounge" for the door, and hung her Egyptian hieroglyphics and communist posters and photographs of France on the stucco walls. The space felt cozy and quirky, the way I imagined a nineteen-year-old artistic bohemian communist vegetarian's room should be.
And then, even though I stole her energy and space and told her new room how a bohemian should live, even though I didn't tell her I did these things, and even though I enjoyed the delights of my new sunny office, I did something much, much worse. I sold her car. I sold it for the simple money, to help pay her tuition and room and board, to help cover the costs of that BMW bill, to take the expense off my insurance, to free up the driveway. The car was in my name, and though her far away dad contributed a small amount to the vehicle, I spent the rest on parts and labor and insurance and accidents - oh yes, there were two more minor accidents - and paint for the dents and Hawaiian seat covers. But all of those reasons, good as they are, didn't matter. I sold her car.
So my daughter came home for the holidays, walked into a house she thought she knew, and found her room and car vanished without a trace, only a fake tiki lounge in their place. She was stoic about it. She didn't complain to my face or call me names or stomp her feet. She unpacked her bag and slept on her new geometric futon and ran the ceiling fan at night. We took turns using my car that Christmas, and I tried to give her the lion's share, but she missed a night of debauchery when I had to drive around the geriatric relatives.
My guilt ate at me. I shouldn't have taken her room. I should have sold her car. But that damn dark devil angel all parents know sat on my shoulder and whispered sweet nothings. Yes, I deseve my own private Birdie-bird space. I needed the money. She's only home two months of the year plus a couple of weeks. But she needs a car, I told the devil man. She needs a car, needs the windows rolled down and loud Indy music turned up and several disheveled friends arguing about which movie to see. She needs a car.
She came home for summer a few weeks ago, and I grabbed the classifieds, looked under "Cars for Sale" and circled all the cars in my budget. There's no point going into the car chase gritty details. I settled on a silver 1995 Chevy Caprice sedan with only fourty-seven thousand miles, the pristine car of a dead elderly Polish man.
I bought the car from the dead man's brother. His name was Mr. Zilch, and he lived with his wife in a trailer park by the sea. The name of the Trailer Park was the Bel Age, and it housed seventy-five senior double wides surrounding a club house and pool. Mr. Zilch talked more about his sky blue home than the car.
"Can you believe these homes? They're incredible. Incredible. Just look at it. Look at it."
He bustled around the sun baked lot, showing me purple hyacinth and teeny dwarf orange trees and one lone mission fig. He demonstrated how two large cars could fit in his driveway, both under a canvas tarp garage, and how the redwood deck wrapped around the double width of the mobile home, ready for barbeques on lazy summer nights. Not a speck of dirt clung to the deck, not a stain marred the surface, and I realized that no one ever held a party there, no one ever cooked hot dogs or wrapped ears of corn or roasted a single marshmallow, dancing to Frank Sinatra and Doris Day.
His nose was red and bulbous like the Pope's and his white hair fluffed out beneath a green plaid newsboy's cap. His wife watched from the kitchen window, eyes framed in rhinestone-studded cat eye glasses under a straggly blue beehive 'do. She looked nervous, uneasy, as if I were a grave robber sent to spirit her dead brother-in-law's car to the afterlife.
Mr. Zilch spoke with a Polish accent. I was dying to use the one phrase in Polish I know - "kiss my ass" - but he didn't seem like the kind of person with whom you could test shaky sailor's Polish and share a laugh. I test drove the car and it zipped across the senior park like a Chevy on viagra, and I plunked down two thousand dollars cash, a good one thou under blue book value. I put on my best Avon Lady manners and thanked both Zilch's for the car.
"Thank you both so much. This car means a lot to me and my daughter. I'll drive by with her next week and she can let you know what she thinks of it!"
I held out my hand to shake goodbye and opened my eyes wide at Mr. Zilch's response.
"No, no, don't come back here. We're leaving town, right away, tonight. We won't be home for a couple of months. Don't come back here."
The Zilch's closed their double wide door quickly, and I saw Mrs. Z shut the blinds. What a weird couple, I thought. I should have thought more.
edited to add: this is part 1, and the rest will be posted today after my slow fingers finishing typing
Aaaaaaaannnnnddd.... edited to add that I had a major brain fart and wrote the wrong type of car. It's a Caprice. Not a Cirrus. I looked at a Cirrus during the week of used car shopping (and that in itself is another story that probably won't see the light of day, and count your lucky stars) and all these old man cars have run together.
4:59:20 PM 
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