Chapter Thirty-Five
“A,” I said.
“BKH.”
“TPEG.”
“DCRF.”
Then:
“A. Use the left lane for passing only.”
“C. Bicycle lanes are marked with a solid white line.”
“D. Some offenses remain on your record for life.”
Then I took the road test.
I hasten to add that none of this was required.
My driving privileges were revoked by my daughters, not the state, so all I needed to get a replacement license was eleven dollars.
Even if it had expired, I was young enough—under seventy-nine—that I could have renewed online because, hard as it was to believe, it had only been a little more than a year since Father Frank cut up my license by the side of the road.
But I went in person. I took all the tests.
I wanted to prove I was still a good driver.
I wanted to prove it to my grandchildren, my ex-husband, my friends and fellow residents, my paparazzi—though the world had mostly gone back to ignoring me—my Episcopal priest, and, especially, my children, my four children, though one seemed content to trust me without official sanction.
Everyone needed proof but my beloved. Moth had never had anything less than full faith in my abilities.
After acing all the tests, I stood in front of a blank screen and had my picture taken—by a person, not a horde—and five minutes later, that person handed me a still-warm driver’s license, official and legal with my very own name on it, pesky but, for better and for worse, mine.
Then I made a call.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “I have it in my hands.”
“Mazel tov. You ready?”
“Ready.” I sounded sure. Eager, even. But I imagine it’s not a question you can really answer honestly until after you’ve done it. A few times. And maybe not even then.
It was my one-year anniversary at Vista View, September come again, time for more beginning, time to restart.
Jews celebrate the new year in the fall for reasons having nothing to do with the academic calendar, but it has always seemed right to me that New Year’s coincides with back-to-school.
You make a full circle, and at the end, at the beginning, you’re ready to grow some more and learn something new.
This is true even for people who haven’t gone back to school in sixty years. There was a flier in the lobby:
SENIORS WANTED FOR AFTER-SCHOOL CENTER
CAN YOU TUTOR? MENTOR? HELP WITH MATH? READ ALOUD?
AUSTIN’S STUDENTS NEED YOU!
INFO SESSION FRIDAY 10:30 A.M. IN THE MULTIPURPOSE ROOM
Other than the no doubt teeming germs, this seemed like a good idea.
Kids need joy, patience, time, and tenacity, all of which are in short supply when you’re parenting.
(Irony.) And all of which the residents of Vista View have in abundance, precisely because they are not parenting anymore (present company excepted).
So nearly everyone turned out for the information session that morning.
Gita came in pushing a box so large she couldn’t see around it. “Bob!” she called from behind it. “Look what my Jiya dropped off for you!”
Inside the box was a rocking horse. Actually, upon inspection, it proved to be a rocking unicorn.
Gita started detangling knots from its rainbow mane and tail. “I said what if you have more children, and she said never again, and I said children are a blessing, and she said children are a scourge. So it’s yours!”
You eyed it from Maisie’s lap. She bounced her knees and sang the theme song from The Lone Ranger.
“Unsafe!” Roger galloped across the room. He retrieved a handful of rubber corner-covers from his pocket and slotted them over the unicorn’s horn and each ear. Then all four tips of the rocking runners for good measure.
“Bob’s not even crawling,” Moth said.
“You can’t be too careful,” said Roger. “You know how many kids get impaled on unicorn horns every year?”
“None?” I bet.
“None on my watch, anyway.”
Annalisa arrived, clutching something lacy to her chest. “Look what I unearthed.”
“Your wedding dress,” Moth guessed.
“Matthew’s christening gown.” She held it out to you. “For Bob. Try it on.”
“Matthew was christened in a dress?” said Moth.
“Not a dress. A gown.”
“Matthew was christened in a gown?”
“It was tradition at the time. Anyway, Bob’s a girl, so it’s perfect.”
“A Jewish girl,” I said.
“So?”
“So probably not getting christened.”
“She can wear it to play dress-up.” Annalisa was undeterred. “Try it on!”
But you weren’t having it. Loudly. Which at first was why we didn’t notice the program leader when she came in.
“Welcome, everyone,” a voice called over your fussing. “Thank you for coming to hear about this nirvanic new project.”
My head snapped from you to her. “Evangeline!”
“Pepper! It’s good to see you again. I was hoping you’d be here. Is this your little one?”
As if you could be anyone else. As if you hadn’t been front-page news all over the world.
Which was Moth’s first concern. “Are you here to take pictures? Talk us into a campaign? Use Bob to raise money for She’s Worldwide? If you snuck in here under the guise of signing us up as volunteers, you should know security moves a lot faster than we do.”
“And our daughter’s a lawyer,” Roger added.
You started to fuss harder, so Moth retrieved you from Annalisa, jettisoned the gown, and bounced you till you giggled. Then he hugged you to his chest so no one could get a photo.
But Evangeline laughed. “I’m not here to do any of that. I’ve changed jobs since the last time we met.”
“Tired of sneaking into people’s homes without cookies?” Maisie said.
“I mean it does get old.” Evangeline opened her hands. “But then so do I, older and less willing. We should never have asked you to do what we asked you to do, Pepper, and certainly not the way we did. And then they decided you were a lousy example anyway, which was even worse.”
“A lousy example of what?” I fought the instinct to apologize.
“She’s Worldwide gets more mileage from women who desperately want to be mothers but can’t. They find out their pregnancies aren’t viable, and they’re as sorry about the need to terminate as those Family Futures girls you met. It’s very tearful and hard to argue with.”
“That’s terrible,” I agreed. “But—”
“Them and sympathetic victims. Incest. Rape. The more horrible the better.”
“That is horrible, but—”
“Yes, exactly. But.” Evangeline nodded. “But you shouldn’t need any justification for choosing an abortion. But the whole point of She’s Worldwide is for everyone to have that right. But you weren’t sufficiently disempowered, so you weren’t who the fundraising department was looking for.”
Imagine looking at me and thinking I had too much agency and control. My concern was the same as the last time I’d met Evangeline. If even the people on our side aren’t on our side, what’s the point?
“They are on your side, but they have to be more patient and flexible than you do,” Evangeline sighed when I cornered her by the snack table after her presentation.
“And they need money to fight. They think the best way to get it is to focus on what’s hardest to argue with and most likely to appeal to the greatest number of people. ”
“It’s not working,” I said.
“Which is why I quit to do this instead. Trying to help children after they’re born when they actually need it. I do, however”—she leaned in to whisper—“have a secret side gig right here in Austin which might interest you. Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?”
We left you and Moth and everyone and went up to the apartment. We sat out on the balcony where I’d waited for her to fail to bring me cookies.
“Have you ever heard of abortion fairies?” she said under her breath, even though we were the only ones there.
“Fairies with wings or ferries like boats?”
“I think it’s a pun.”
“Oh good.”
“We’re looking for volunteer fairies to quietly spirit—or ferry, if you prefer—abortion seekers across state lines.”
“How?” Enormous wings, I thought.
“You’d drive them.”
Ahh. That made more sense. Though it was just as impossible. “I don’t have a license anymore.”
“Get one.” Evangeline shrugged like this was no big deal.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Evangeline was lucky to not yet understand that you didn’t get anything back, not at my age.
Some things you lost all at once—your driver’s license, your car, your home, your independence.
Some things you lost more slowly—upper body strength, cardiovascular endurance, a full set of cognitive faculties, a clean bill of health.
But regardless of how fast or slowly they left, they went in only one direction.
You lost them, and they did not come back.
I knew people who injured a knee, wore a brace for a month, then didn’t need it anymore.
I knew people who felt tired, adjusted their meds, and found themselves full of energy again.
But they were my kids and their friends, not anyone I lived with.
Some of what you lost, you forgot you ever had.
Some you learned to live without. Some you never stopped mourning. But none of it ever returned.
“I know a lot of people who don’t drive anymore,” I told Evangeline. “Practically everyone here. And I don’t know anyone, not a single person, who ever got their license back.”
Evangeline softened her eyes and pursed the corners of her lips and nodded that this made sense, was true and serious and important and a little sad.
Then she said, very softly, “Given all you’ve experienced, Pepper, that no one else ever dreamed, the challenges you’ve weathered you’re the only one ever to endure, the abuse you’ve taken that would bury anyone else alive, being the only senior citizen you know to renew a driver’s license isn’t even going to make the list of most impressive things about you. ”
So I got a new driver’s license. It was easy.