The Canary

There it sat, parked along the curb, waiting for me in all its goldenrod beauty. The “Canary” she’d called it, old enough to have gone out of style and rusty enough to never come back in. I was the new owner of Grandma’s ‘78 Pacer, the only thing she’d left to me, the unwanted thing, the thing that was now all mine. The keys dig into my palm as I head towards it with my coffee mug pinned against my body and backpack slipping off one shoulder.

It feels all wrong to slide down into the driver seat. The pedals were too close for one thing, and for another, it was missing the driver that made it a classic in its own right. I drop my backpack down on the passenger side, push back my seat, and adjust the mirror, noting that yesterday’s mascara has left little black specks under my eyes, and that I look bone-deep tired. I use Grandma’s sunglasses from the dash to cover my day-old mascara and dark circles beneath my eyes, then feed the key into the ignition and give it a firm turn. When it starts, Grandma Clem’s tape deck whirs on. Even though it’s the Mamas and Papas, I can’t bring myself to press the stiff eject button. I’m doing my best to play the part today, trying to be the confident woman she was. With the Canary still in park, I dig out a half-empty lip gloss from my bag and run it over my lips. Then I readjust the rear view mirror, pull the gear shift into drive, and head down Santa Clara Street towards campus.

My phone starts to ring several streets later, and at the light I pull it from the side pouch of my bag and illuminate the screen to see the missed call. His face looks up at me, and I realize today that I no longer like seeing our smiles staring back from the home screen. Grandma Clem’s face I miss, but his face— I feel another wave of nausea roll over me.

“Bea,” he had said. “I can’t. We can’t.”

He saw unpaid internships, years of college debt, and a sea of impossibilities where I dared to part the waters. I dared to dip my toe into the possibility and add “if” to the middle of my sentence. This missed call wasn’t his, like it hadn’t been for the past two and a half months, like it wouldn’t be for all the two-and-a-half-months to follow, months that I knew would stretch into never.

I dial into my voicemail. “Miss Rivera, this is Abby from the clinic. I just wanted to let you know that your bloodwork came back from the lab and everything looks great. When you get a chance, please give us a call and we can set up your next appointment.”

Next.

That’s what the lady had said. Next, a word that propels the present into the future. At the corner, the light turns green, only I don’t remember to go. I sit there, unmoving except for the tears that fall without permission down my cheeks. Horns behind me blare impatiently, but the green light doesn’t feel as tangible as Abby-from-the-clinic’s words in my ear: next appointment. They were out loud and real, words that couldn't be unsaid.

When the police lights flash behind me, beaming and disappearing in my rearview mirror, the world comes back into focus, and I see the cars impatiently driving around me. I hit my blinker and slowly turn right until I come to a place I can pull over, the policeman trailing me as I do. All of the tears that lay dormant inside of me, all of the tears that my grandma deserved and he didn’t, now they came sliding down my cheeks, one after the other with what was left of yesterday’s mascara.

“License and registration?” the officer asks, taking a long look at me as I inhale in jagged breaths through my nose, trying to calm this ugly crying. Even through my sunglasses I avoid looking up at him. My hands shake a little as I fumble for the latch on the glovebox. It’s locked. I never knew my grandma to lock anything in her life, except for the glovebox, this one time. I turn off the car and stick the ignition key in the compartment as the officer bends again to look into my window and see why it’s taking so long. As I pull out the stack of miscellaneous papers and receipts, I notice an envelope tucked amongst them. I keep riffling for the registration, but my eyes glance back to the envelope. I pull it from the rest and set it in my lap. It says, “Beatrice,” in my grandma’s familiar handwriting. I find the registration and hand it and my license to the officer; tears still rolling down my face, and then neck, landing on my t-shirt. I can’t stop crying, it’s like a thin rivulet has seeped through from somewhere deep inside of me. Holding this letter from Grandma Clem in my lap does nothing to slow them.

“This car isn’t registered in your name,” he says.

I nod. “It’s my grandma’s,” I say, even though it’s mine.

“Do you have permission to be driving it?”

I nod and silently question, You think I would steal this?

He takes in the scene of my face, and I’m embarrassed, really embarrassed at how I must look, so unlike my grandma.

He pauses. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asks, not impatiently.

I nod, still not trusting my voice.

“You want to tell me why you stopped your vehicle at that green light?”

I do my best to get words out. “I just—”

Another staggered breath in and slow exhale.

He waited.

“I’m really sorry, Officer. I just shut down for a minute.” At this point, I’m relieved to be saying any actual words again.

He didn’t make me elaborate, just explained how I should pull over if I’m not in an emotional state to drive, and the rest sort of swirled around until he handed back my license and registration. I wind the manual window crank in circles, bringing the window slowly up, an anticlimactic ending to the traffic stop as he stands there and watches me.

I’m still trying to quell the tears. Breathe in slowly, exhale slowly. This envelope that I know is the last letter I’ll ever open from her looks up at me. It’s probably a birthday card she’d forgotten to put on top of my gift, but I need to hold onto something, to not be alone right now. I don’t feel brave like her. I need some of her courage to rub off on me.

Dear Bea, I lean back into the seat, hoping the cop isn’t waiting for me to turn back onto the road just yet. Dear Bea, I know how much you’ve always loved my Canary, and so I thought it fitting that you should be the next one to drive her.

Before I read on, I see the edges of peach and white-trimmed checks under the fold of the paper. I slide them out together, unsure of what I held, counting four $5,000 savings bonds with Paul Revere's face, old and stern, looking into the distance. I can’t register this; I can’t think of how Grandma would ever squirrel away that much money. They say Series EE, issue date 2016, Payable on Death, and then next to that, my name. It makes sense now, her leaving me the Canary, something she was sure no one else would want or take. I tuck the bonds back into the envelope and read the rest.

You’ve always said that I’m the brave one, but I’ve known all along that it was really you. Wasn’t it you who always stood up for your brother in school, never let anyone push him around? Wasn’t it you who pulled straight A’s while working nights and weekends at the Y? You who got into the Biochemistry program at Claremont? You may not know it, but you were my reason to be strong and now you have a reason of your own. More than ever, Bea, you need to see yourself the way I always have.

All of the sudden that little bump nudging at the waist of my jeans, the heartbeat of the unknown became a link to my past and my future. It was like Grandma to somehow know— even when I refused to bring my troubles into her sick days. It was like my grandma to find one more way to take care of me, take care of us.

And someday when you’re pulling in front of her school, when your daughter hates getting out of this old car as much as you used to, do me a favor; call her back and give her a kiss from Grandma Clem. My love goes with you wherever you are. Always know that, Bea.

I unzip my backpack until there is an opening big enough to slide out my little black notebook. It falls open at the bookmark, to the page where I’ve begun to cross an invisible line from impossible to possible, the page where the “if” has become a next appointment. I add one more name to the small list of others: Clementine, after my grandma. I like the way it sounds.