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The
Week of Rental Car Disasters PAGE
TWO: The next day, we had to go to the courthouse for the guardianship proceedings. I was driving again, and I was trying not to dwell on how weird this was, and my grandmother's dirty hair, and all the hassles the attorney had warned us to be ready for, and how to keep my mom from freaking out, and also --- I swerved left into oncoming traffic. My mom screamed and I started to brake. There was a semi barreling down on us. And then, when we were already halfway into the opposing lanes, a green left-turn arrow flashed into life, and we had the right of way that I'd somehow decided already belonged to us. Miraculously, nobody had already started into the intersection, or they would have rammed us. When we got to the courthouse, I let go of the steering wheel very slowly and then breathed at the top of my lungs. I think I'm good in a crisis. I'm just not a good driver in a crisis. After all the lawyer's warnings, the court proceedings turned out to be pretty straightforward. The judge more or less rubber-stamped the power of attorney and guardianship, and the Army didn't object to anything. We went back to Sun City to sit with my grandma, even though I wasn't sure why. She wouldn't remember our visit, and we wouldn't get to communicate with the parts of her that had meant something to us. But we went anyway. This time, Grandma seemed calmer, probably because the nurses had medicated her. We sat on folding chairs in the little patio at the center of the rest home. She stared into space and made nonsensical stabs at conversation, and it was almost worse than seeing her weep and run from her pills. It was like she was already mostly somewhere else, except a small part of her grudgingly rested in the shady courtyard. We had no more traffic scares that day, mostly thanks to luck. Sun City's drivers come in two kinds: the ones who've worked hard all their lives and now nobody is going to stop them from driving 80 miles an hour, and the ones who are in no hurry and always go 20 miles per hour. You can't slow down too much, or the speed freaks will crush you, but you have to be ready to hit the brakes the moment you see a sedan (or golf cart) almost standing still in the road. Back in Phoenix, I felt exhausted and sore in my load-bearing muscles, as if I'd been carrying instead of sitting. I was maybe a lost penny away from melting down, but I was also hyper-aware of the need to keep from upsetting my mom. She just looked drained past the point of having anything to give. That's when we stopped at a drug store to get a few things, and I locked the keys in the car. With the engine still running. Even in the late afternoon, the sun was still kicking our asses, and I just looked at the car and listened to the hum of the engine. My mom swayed on her feet, as if snake-bitten in the desert. She could start screaming or just pass out, and I wasn't sure which would be worse. I steered her to the air-conditioned drug store, and looked around for a pay phone. The sun did another gaudy desert fade. Our plans for our last evening in town eroded with each passing minute. At least it was no longer so hot that you felt like you'd been spitting for hours. I can't remember what our evening plans had been, but they probably involved eating more hash and watching a movie. Something to get our minds off the week we'd had. A Sherrif's
Department car cruised through the parking lot, and a cop got out.
He spent 20 minutes trying to jimmy the lock with a thin metal ruler-like
object. He said he had tons of experience breaking into cars, but
ours had some kind of newfangled security. I almost called the rental
place, but I was sure they were sick of hearing from us. My mom wandered back from the drugstore. By now, it was fully dark except for all the parking lot lights. I said I was sorry about this, about all the automotive mayhem of the past week. My mom was just glad I'd been able to be there for the whole Grandma ordeal, car crap or no car crap. Eventually some guy did show up and charged us a shitload of money for thirty seconds' work, and we went back to our motel to collapse. Mom and I cemented our friendship as adults that week, but she never again got into a car that I was driving.
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It
was around this time that we discovered the corned beef hash. I
don't remember the name of the diner that saved our sanity, but
it was near our motel on the outskirts of Phoenix. It was old-school,
with a long counter and greasy yellow wallpaper. And it had this
amazing corned beef hash, it was warm and salty and basically the
purest expression of comfort food in the physical world. I had never
eaten corned beef hash before, and I've never had any as good since
then. We resolved to eat that hash at least twice a day for the
remainder of our visit.
