“Oh?” Helene said, her voice going low and excited with curiosity, such a strange and abrupt transformation that they both laughed.

  “I heard her bell when I was talking to her,” Ina said. “She was immediately anxious to be rid of me.”

  “Do you suppose it was a man? At this time of day?”

  “Perhaps a friend just trying to cool off,” Ina said. She had memories of Vincent coming to her in the afternoon; work put aside, the children in school, the bedroom light perfect.

  “Perhaps,” Helene murmured, preoccupied.

  “She told me your love of air-conditioning was not strong enough to overcome your dislike for her.”

  Helene looked toward Ina. “Are you trying to start a fight? Or ruin my afternoon?”

  “I’m sorry, dear. No.”

  “I love Amanda.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I’m certainly closer to her than someone I know is to her children.”

  “Meany,” Ina said, accepting the blow because she had started the little tiff. “Cruel. My kids are two thousand miles away.”

  “For a reason.”

  Ina took a deep breath. The air felt warmer, closer, the hot light from the alley beginning to worm through the car.

  “I said I was sorry,” Ina replied.

  “You’re right, dear. I’m sorry, too. Who could be at Amanda’s at this time of day?”

  “Go inside and call her,” Ina said.

  “She wouldn’t admit to anything. She could be panting to beat the band and she’d play dumb. I know that girl.”

  “It’s no crime having company. She’s forty-two years old.”

  “Forty-two. Living in an apartment. No husband, let alone kids. A tedious life,” Helene said.

  “No wonder she entertains men in the afternoon,” Ina said lightly, and laughed when her sister faced her to judge the intent in the remark. “We all have to have something to look forward to.”

  “Did you look forward to that?” Helene asked, almost in a whisper.

  “Of course,” Ina said.

  “Well don’t sound so proud!”

  “I’m not—I didn’t. I loved Vincent.”

  “Are you saying I didn’t love Rudy?”

  “I didn’t say anything of the sort. Let’s just drop it.”

  Helene gripped the wheel at ten o’clock and two o’clock. She turned up the air-conditioner. The car had been Rudy’s last major purchase, his way of celebrating when they owned their house free and clear. Even then, it took him almost a year to work up the courage to part with the money.

  “You really know where things are in this car,” Ina said, grateful for the opportunity to praise.

  “I’ve driven it enough. I always thought I was a better driver than he was.”

  “You were,” Ina said. “He scared me. He went too fast.”

  “He was in control, though,” Helene said. “Rudy never put anyone in danger.”

  “Helene.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “I was agreeing with you. I wasn’t belittling Rudy,” Ina said. “Make it go backward.”

  Helene turned her eyes on Ina. “What?”

  “Back it up. Then put it back in. It’ll be fun.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “I’ll guide you,” Ina said.

  “I’m blind,” Helene said, nearly wailing. “You are so cruel.”

  “No. No.”

  “You think I don’t miss being able to drive? You think I’ve forgotten how I used to be?”

  “No. I didn’t mean that,” Ina said. “I just thought it would be fun. What harm can it do? You said yourself you used to be a good driver. Well, you’re still a good driver—only with a slight disadvantage.”

  Helene laughed, a giggle of intrigue.

  “You’ll guide me?”

  “I’ll be your eyes. It will be fun.”

  Helene found the seat belt and fastened it across her insubstantial frame. Ina grew nervous; she might have underestimated the power they were about to tap. Helene reached beneath the dashboard and with a metallic grinding released the parking brake.

  “First time it’s been off since Rudy died,” Helene said.

  “Does the engine sound fast to you?” Ina asked.

  “It sounds rocky.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Scared?” Helene asked, looking over mischievously.

  “A little, yes.”

  “I want to do it now.” Helene placed her right foot on the brake and then by touch and memory moved the shift lever to Reverse. There was a hesitation as the gears took a moment to engage, then a twitch of readiness toward the rear.

  “We caught them sleeping,” Helene said with a smile. “They never expected to have to work again.”

  Ina turned in her seat to look out the rear window. Everything back there was hot and bright. The engine roared in her ear, a blind woman was at the wheel.

  “Is it safe to proceed?”

  “Maybe I should get out and look.”

  “I’d run you down,” Helene said jovially. “If someone is coming they’ll see my rear end and honk.” She suddenly let loose with a mad laugh. “This was a splendid idea, dear. I feel so alive. Here goes.”

  She lifted her foot from the brake. The car did not retreat gradually but lunged half its length into the alley before Helene slammed down her foot. The women were rocked in their seats. The car’s interior was filling up with sunlight, a substance that seemed malevolent. Ina, only recently cool, had begun to perspire all over again.

  “Guidance, please,” Helene said.

  “We’ve moved about halfway into the alley. The car is stationary. Feel free to terminate the experiment.”

  “It’s idling like a damn jet,” Helene said. She tapped the accelerator with the car in Neutral, but the rev did not diminish. She put it in Reverse again and eased off the brake.

  Helene in control, the car rolled back. A gleaming corridor of sun and shadow opened to Ina’s eyes. To her right was the quiet street the alley emptied into. She saw cars parked at the curb, a cat asleep on a garbage can, a trio of boys standing in the alley mouth.

  “If this is going to work,” Helene said in a scolding tone, “I’m going to need more help from you. I know this alley—but I could have mashed a toddler for all the directions you gave me.”

  “Forgive me.”

  Ina looked beyond her sister’s reproachful face to the other end of the alley, where a police car had just turned in.

  “Pull it back into the garage,” Ina said. “The police are here.”

  “Where?” Helene asked, unruffled. She smoothly put the car in Drive and they glided into the garage’s shadows.

  “Easy,” Ina said. “Three feet. Two. Eighteen inches.”

  Helene stopped the car. “Is my ass out of the alley?” It was the question Rudy had always asked.

  Ina watched the police car pass. “You’re fine,” she reported.

  Helene took a deep breath and wiped her hands on her dress. “Let’s drive over to Amanda’s,” she suggested.

  “I think that might not be wise.”

  “It’s only a couple blocks. It’s the middle of a hot day. No one will be on the streets.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Ina said. “There are children at the end of the alley. You couldn’t react quickly enough to my instructions.”

  “Nonsense, dear,” Helene replied. “We’ll go so slow anything in our path will have minutes to get out of the way.”

  “Should we call first?”

  “And spoil the surprise?”

  “She’s allowed to have a life of her own,” Ina said.

  “You just navigate,” Helene said testily. “Leave my daughter’s life to me. How much room between the car and the edge of the garage door on my side?”

  “A foot, a bit more than a foot,” Ina said.

  “This damn car is just so big,” Helene complained. “I remember it was like steering a barge in a closet getting it out of here. But it can be done.” She smiled at where she thought her sister waited, and felt with her hand until it lay on Ina’s thigh. “I’ll need you outside for this part of the trip, dear.”

  Ina opened her door and stepped back into the heat. Helene’s window came down.

  “Over to my side,” she called.

  Ina passed warily in front of the roaring engine. The car had taken on a dangerous element. It was no longer simply a cool pod of comfort on a steaming day. Helene had given it life, set it in motion.

  “How do the tires look?”

  “Maybe a tad low.”

  “We should stop at a service station. Fill ’er up. Check the oil. Inflate the tires to regulation pressure. Rudy was a stickler for that sort of thing. I have a credit card.”

  “Do you have a license?”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “Is it valid?”

  “Do you think I’d drive if it wasn’t?” Helene asked. She put the car into Reverse, her foot on the brake. “Here’s my plan,” she said. “When the car is almost halfway out of the garage I’ll start to turn the wheel to the left. You have to watch the wall on my side and the right front corner of the car. Shall we try it?”

  The car began to roll backward and Ina wanted only to call to her sister to end the escapade.

  “You’re not helping,” Helene chided. “I’m blind, remember. I need distances, positioning.”

  “Park it, Helene. This won’t work.”

  “I’m driving to Amanda’s today. With or without your help.”

  “You wouldn’t get one hundred feet.”

  “But what a hundred feet! Imagine the carnage. The scandal. Are you going to allow that?”

  Ina looked down the flank of the car. She saw herself elongated there, her torso like a ballerina’s in a summer dress.

  “Must I?” she asked.

  “It would mean the world to me if you would help me do this one thing,” Helene said.

  “You’ve got about eight inches between the car and the wall,” Ina said.

  Helene let the car back up approximately half its length, then she began to turn the wheel to the left, letting the car nudge back inches at a time. She stopped at Ina’s word.

  “You’re within an inch of the wall.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Helene brought the wheel back to the right. The car slid forward. Space like stacked slivers appeared between the car and the left-side wall.

  “How’s my right front corner?” Helene asked. She was very hot, perspiring, with the window open, and from throwing the big steering wheel.

  “It will be tight,” Ina assessed.

  She had taken up a position in the alley. Helene sat for several moments without speaking or moving.

  “Are you all right?” Ina asked.

  “I’m replaying something in my mind. Do you ever do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m trying to see how Rudy got this car out so easily. He had such a touch.”

  “We still have time to park it,” Ina said. “I’ll treat you to a cab ride to Amanda’s, then I’ll take you both to lunch someplace nice.”

  “You and your money,” her sister said with a sneer. “You think you can run my life because you have a little more money than I do.”

  “That’s not true,” Ina said.

  “It’s very much a fact, dear. And the answer is no.”

  The car was moving again, and Ina allowed it to shave paint from the garage door frame, producing a shriek of friction.

  “You let that happen,” Helene accused.

  “I want no part of this,” Ina said calmly.

  “I’m going to Amanda’s!”

  “So go. Go!” Ina saw sweat fly with her words; what a hot and miserable day it had become. Helene began to cry. The car wedged against the door frame, she eased her forehead down on the wheel and wept. A moment later she had the presence of mind to put the car in Park and close the window. Ina stood in the alley, in the sun, in her damp clothes. The jutting tail of the car would block any traffic that happened along. She squinted behind her blue lenses and tapped one foot. In time, Helene lifted her head. She found a hanky in her purse and soaked up the tears that had mussed her face, then dabbed at the wetness behind her ears and at the base of her throat. Waiting in the heat, becoming less than amused, Ina nevertheless had to marvel at how much alike they were: the same gestures, mannerisms, and speech, their mother’s same carefully structured feminine style designed to imply competence and effortless grace.

  The window dropped again.

  “Have you abandoned me, dear?” Helene asked.

  “Never.”

  “Standing there in the hot sun?”

  “We’ve been out here so long the sun has practically set. It’s almost chilly.”

  Helene laughed and touched her nose with the hanky. “This little trip is something I very much want to do,” she said. “I’m asking for your help.”

  “Turn the wheel to the right and go forward.”

  Helene smiled and obeyed. Space appeared alongside the car. There was a dark, minor gouge in the garage-door frame, as if it had been pressed by an insistent hand. The surface of the car was unharmed.

  “Straighten the wheel and come back until I say when, then turn hard to the left,” Ina said.

  She felt young—sixty-five, tops—moving from point to point to wriggle the car out. Light on her feet, she called out commands to her sister, a hand shading her eyes to see into the shadows, the other hand on her hip. A sensation in her joints and muscles of looseness, of lubrication, reminded Ina of her youth.

  “Now hard to the left,” she ordered, and like the difficult birth of a monstrous child the car was free.

  Ina got in beside Helene.

  “Bring the wheel around to the right to straighten out,” Ina said. “And close that damn window.”

  Helene giggled, her head of metallic hair swirling in a half-arc of disbelief and an ache to see.

  “We’re out?”

  “We’re out.”

  “Oo. This is scary, dear.”

  “It’s not too late to go back,” Ina said, although now that they were out of the garage they could not go back; they had pushed into a current that carried them now. They could not return without traveling through the circle.

  “No. I want this,” Helene said with a firm nod.

  Ina drew a deep breath of cooled air.

  “Three boys are standing at the end of the alley,” she said. “We’ll give them the chance to move of their own accord.”

  The alley was straight and lined with urban artifacts so common they were invisible. In the distance Ina could see where things came to a point.

  Helene was driving at a pace Ina could have beat walking, creeping up on the three boys. These boys were dressed in cut-off jeans, patchy bermuda shorts, Bulls T-shirts. Their hair was very short. They tossed a baseball back and forth. They appeared not to be aware of the car, though bits of glass, pebbles, and even a beer cup popped and crunched beneath the slow roll of the tires.

  “Stop here,” Ina said. She licked salt from her upper lip; Vincent used to do that to her as a way of lengthening their kisses.

  “Have the boys moved?”

  “No. They don’t seem to see us.”

  “They see us.”

  “Why won’t they move then?”

  “Because they’re arrogant punks,” Helene said, and punched the horn with her little fist, but no sound came forth. She covered the wheel with a frustrated slapping and groping for the magic button that produced the sound that would clear their path. But there was nothing.

  “Our horn seems to be broken,” Ina observed.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “Go forward again,” Ina said. “Perhaps the momentum of the car will convince them we mean to pass.”

  The car ticked and crunched to within a yard of the boys and still they did not move. Ina told Helene to stop. They were nearly out of the alley, far enough for Ina to see up and down the street. Cool shade, no traffic. A perfect day for driving blind.

  The three boys were intimidating. Up close, they looked very young and supple, their muscles aerodynamic and sheathed in skins three distinctly different shades of brown. One boy had a gold cross dangling from an earlobe. Another had a thin gold chain looped through the upper rim of his left ear. The adornment made Ina wince, imagining the pain of the chain’s insertion. The chain shook and the cross danced when the boys laughed, and they laughed frequently. They were where they were and they would not move, and every word or gesture, every passing moment, was a source of amusement to them.

  “Wait here,” Ina said. “Put it in Park.”

  She opened her door. Helene, frantic, clawed for her sister’s arm.

  “Where do you think you’re going? Are you mad?”

  “Wait.” Ina stood up in the heat and hooked one arm over the door frame. She held out a hand that faintly shivered.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said. “We wish to pass, please.”

  Two of the boys did not look at her. The baseball passed back and forth between them. The third, the one with the cross, deigned to study her. His eyes were quite attractive, Ina thought, heavy-lashed, but he had switched them off perfectly dead and cold in the instant it took to shift his gaze from his friends to the car in the alley.

  “We’s here,” he said.

  “What did he say?” Helene asked. Ina hushed her.

  “There’s sidewalk galore for you to play on that is not in the path of our car,” Ina said.

  “Galore?” one asked derisively, getting big laughs from the other two. “Did she say galore?”

  “Indeed,” said another, and the trio hooted appreciatively, then went quickly through a round of slapped palms. To Ina, the boys seemed to tinkle and gleam there in the heat. She thought them absolutely beautiful and snakelike.

  “What did they say? Can I go?”

  “I’ve asked politely,” Ina told the three.

  “You can just politely wait,” said the boy with the cross. “We is here first.” They turned away from the widows.

  Ina leaned down and spoke in a quiet voice to her sister.

  “We’re in Park, aren’t we, dear?”

  “Yes. May I go?”

  “Leave it in Park, but floor it.”

  Helene grinned. “Really?”

 

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