Today I went to the Carousel Museum in Bristol, which I learned upon arrival was not, in fact, open on weekdays. It did look fun though. On the way back, a radio station was giving away tickets to the World of Giant Insects exhibit at the Springfield Science Museum, and I thought awesome, even better. So I headed back to Middletown to Google the Springfield Science Museum and prepare for the World of Giant Insects.
But on the way home, after taking exit 14 into Middletown, driving past Destinta, Peltons, and through the green light, something bad happened to my car. Its stomach fell out! I was just driving along and then all of a sudden it sounds as if I am dragging fat, iron intestines below me. I immediately pull over into the Senior Center where I am overcome not by sadness or concern, but by embarrassment in case anyone saw. “Man, that girl’s car is shitty,” the old people would say from their windows. “Boy what a piece of shit car she is driving,” the Big A Driving School people would say. So I sat in my car, forcing myself to smile.
I got out, still smiling, and inspected the damage. Poor Altima. It looked as if there was a long part of a robot skeleton falling out of it. My car reminds me of a big, black, dirty dog that waits for me dutifully, getting scraped by anonymous bad drivers, or its license plate bent backward by mean kids. I feel very fond of it, so naturally I feel guilty when things go wrong, as if I don’t drive it carefully enough, or I use the brakes too hard, or I refuse to change the “cooling system” or whatever it is. Looking at its sad silhouette in the gray afternoon light, I was guilt stricken.
Revealed also were the intimate details of the plastic bag incident that happened in December when a large trash bag wrapped itself around my muffler and melted there, dragging its white train behind it in tatters. At first, people said, there’s a sweatshirt under your car, but then as it got rattier they would say there’s something weird under your car, and I would say yeah, that’s a plastic bag. Anyway the upper portion of the bag was now visible and I could see how bizarrely and tenderly it was hugging the muffler.
I will now admit that for some reason I sped up going through the stoplight at Peltons, I don’t know why, my foot just kept pressing down, and when I hit the sudden incline, the belly of the car just exploded and everything fell out. So yeah, it was my fault. But the muffler had already been hanging out already like a loose tooth from some previous mistake I’d made, so really it was just a matter of time.
I walked up to Didato’s auto repair shop on the corner, and because everything was so convenient—the parking spot in the Senior Center, the auto repair shop 100 feet away—I felt like somehow this was supposed to happen here, now, and I felt better. I almost felt good.
In the shop office I said, “My car just fell apart down there,” gesturing vaguely down the hill. And I knew it was the muffler—I mean I really knew it—but just in case, I played it safe and said, “Some important part just like, fell out of my car.”
“Hmm,” said Sal, smiling. Sal was sweet. He had fresh, rosy cheeks. He lay on the pavement and tied the muffler back up temporarily with some wire, the way my mom used to partially fix my broken braces before I could get to the dentist. Driving carefully up to Didato’s I realized that there was a lot of weird stuff in my car. Not only was it filthy—tissues, pistachio shells, beer cans (just kidding, I guess those are illegal)—but for some reason there was a lot of lingerie and a bag of regular, ugly underwear too. I suppose they don’t care about that stuff anyway, but I piled it all together in the back in an inconspicuous pile of “jackets.” I imagined Sal and his coworkers trying on my fur boots and tossing around my bras saying, “Ooh, she’s a lay-dee!”
But seriously, has anyone besides me ever had car repair before? I can go on if you’d like.
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