Page 11 of Until Landon
“Everybody sleep good?”
“You know I did,” Dad says, getting off the barstool and moving to the wall. “Like a fucking bear.”
Kim playfully punches him in the arm. Uh oh. Don’t say fuck around the girl.
“Well said,” she states, contradicting my take. “I had the most restful night.”
I’m batting zero for two.
“Let me tell you about this pretty baby,” Dad says, pointing to the black and white photo of his first and favorite car. “My father gave me this when I was eighteen. She’s a nineteen-sixty-three convertible Ford Galaxie 500. Ever seen one?”
“No. I don’t think so. What color was it?”
“Tell her, Landon!”
“Wimbledon White with Lipstick Red interior,” I recall without effort.
Kim’s grin says she appreciates our shtick.
I was conditioned to think about that car with reverence. Dad would talk about her that way. When I was a kid they got a big kick out of me knowing the car’s details. It would eventually be passed to me, he always said.
“What are these seats called? I can’t think of the name.”
My father looks shocked. He is used to women who know their motorcycles and cars. This one does not.
“Bucket seats. Yeah. Honey, you need to go to a car show.”
I know he means no insult. It’s just fact.
“This is an automatic, right? I thought car people liked to shift.”
A sly grin shows up on Dad’s face.
“My hands had better things to do. Besides, I wanted my woman to be able to sit on the console. She looked real good there. We were young.”
The expression on Kim’s face says she just saw a new layer of the man. Ronnie Podesta is not just the old guy he appears to be today. Belly, scruffy beard, his “robes”. He was young once and a beautiful woman loved everything about him.
“Victoria was a lucky woman, wasn’t she?” Kim says, meeting his eyes.
His answer is to press his lips together. He would say he was the lucky one. I’ve heard it before. He cannot risk the tears though, that would accompany the words.
“Oh! The eggs!”
She crosses back into the kitchen and resumes cooking. A piece of bacon gets torn in half and fed to her greatest fans. They have expertly figured out the path to least resistance is the woman in the kitchen.
“Did you keep the car?”
“No. We sold it in the nineties. A guy in Kentucky. He knew what he found. Well, at least he loved it. He was going to care for her.”
He leaves out the part about having to sell because they needed the money. Or the fact Mom sold her Harley too. I don’t know which hurt him more. I never heard her bring it up again. And when he would, she’d say, “It’s just a “thing”, Ronnie.”Reminding the man they were bigger than that.
“I don’t know cars,” Kim says. “I just gave my twelve-year-old Honda to my son for college last fall.”
College? Didn’t peg her for being that age.
“Did you give birth at twelve?”
She giggles. Attention brain to dick, Bond girl giggling.You are a cliché, man.
