TOMMY AND THE YELLOW CAR

Tommy knew when and where his father had died: during a war and in an airplane. What was unclear was whether his father had died. His father seemed to drift or pop in and out of Tommy’s and their lives. Tommy preferred the drifts in and out to the pops, since drifts were more gradual and gave Tommy a chance to accommodate. But pops, the more frequent mode of appearance, were exciting, despite their unsettling quality.

His father popped one Sunday into the pew at Wesley Methodist. Reverend Barber was finishing a prayer, using his placative small voice. It was a prayer Tommy had heard many times and knew he’d hear again, even in this same service. Tommy had been nodding off, and he came to with a start, finding his head resting on his father’s thigh and his father’s handsome, large hand clasped over Tommy’s hand that lay on his father’s knee. It was disconcerting, since Tommy had felt quite alone in the pew, vaguely aware of the drone of Reverend Barber’s voice and intensely aware that his mother, seated beside but not touching Tommy, was a robot. She’d recently been a man posing as a mother, but Tommy had since settled on a new theory.

It must not have been much of a start, though, because his father didn’t stir when Tommy had the start. Or maybe the start would have produced a response in someone else’s father. Tommy realized his father was steadier than other fathers, imperturbable except for a rare perturbation, usually associated with something displeasing Tommy did during one of the driftings or poppings in of his father into Tommy’s life.

Tommy, of course, didn’t know the word perturbation or the word imperturbable, but he knew full well what they meant and could have used them appropriately had he known them. He knew many things he didn’t have names for but of which he had an implacable sense. It irritated him to know there were words for all the things he sensed and thought, and that it might be some time before he learned them. The stories he read and still occasionally had read to him by his mother all seemed so superficial. Even anodyne to the point of soporific. The fathers in the stories were never dead, even ambiguously so; the mothers were real and not convincingly lifelike robots or disguised men; there were no dark, odd-smelling basements in the story houses with huge black furnace tanks taller than Tommy that turned on and off like his father popped in and out, but even more alarmingly. His father said Tommy needed to learn to read the dial thing with numbers on it sticking out of the tank, because it could, in rare circumstances hardly worth worrying about, blow up.

The boys and girls in the stories had no need for the words Tommy knew existed and was frustrated not to know. Mrs. Stratton at school said some words had one “syllable,” some had two, some even had several, but mainly they learned words with only one or two. Tommy knew to say the one with the little slant mark over it harder and louder than the other. It confused him when there were three syllables and only one had the mark, because he wasn’t sure which of the other two got more effort or if they both got exactly the same amount. It embarrassed him that he had thought nothing was “no thing,” and that Mrs. Stratton had smiled and almost laughed when he’d said it. He usually got things right. But Tommy knew better than to expect Mrs. Stratton to teach them words for those ideas and sensations Tommy had. Jimmy Self couldn’t even read dog some days.

The stories had few words with more than two syllables, but Tommy sometimes picked up bigger words listening to adults talk. He’d thought he’d learned dephisticated to mean something fancy, but Mrs. Stratton smiled and said there was no such word. Tommy envied the boys and girls in the stories, but he was suspicious of them. He thought maybe they behaved differently when not on the pages. He suspected they were hiding something and had secret lives where they knew words and had bad thoughts.

Tommy’s father didn’t stir when Tommy started. But suddenly here he was again, popped in, handsome big hand on Tommy’s hand just inches from Tommy’s face. There was the big silver ring with the wings stamped in the metal beside the black stone, the ring only the men who could fly the airplanes got to wear. Tommy was glad they didn’t take it back from his father just because he did (or didn’t) die crashing the airplane.

It was what he had heard his mother say to his Aunt Betsy while the two women sat on the “good” couch in the living room: “I married Tom. He went to that war and he never came back. Not my Tom. He never came back.” His mother said the He like it had the slant mark over it. Tommy had been pushing a car on the rug close to their feet, the yellow racing car with white wheels. A little man with a tight sort of hat and big glasses over his eyes drove the car, with Tommy’s help. The red roses on the rug were things you couldn’t drive over, like children or schools or churches or forests. The gray parts between the flowers were the roads, and they were just a little wider than the yellow car.

Tommy and the little man had grown adept at staying on the gray even when the car was going quite fast. When Tommy heard what his mother said, though, the yellow car jerked right over a red rose, and Tommy stopped the car dead. It would ordinarily have bothered him to run over the rose (this one was a church), but he sensed he’d have to save that worry for later. Right then, the news about his father was more compelling, almost all-encompassing. Tommy had the presence of mind, though, to tuck away a warning to himself that he and the little man had to retrace that portion of the route properly in order to expiate.

He sat, hand still on the static yellow car, and glanced at his mother. Her eyes were wet and her face was mad, like she got when Tommy displeased her.

“Disappointed” was what she called her mad face. She was disappointed now. Aunt Betsy touched his mother’s hair, and his mother turned away. Apparently this disappointment wasn’t his fault but his father’s for not having come home from that war and airplane. His father must have crashed the airplane and died. Tommy had seen that’s what airplanes did in a war. Seen it on the new TV in the fireplace room with the old sofa. The airplanes shot bullets at people and things on the ground, and the people and things shot back at the men in the airplanes. It seemed to Tommy one or the other always prevailed, and that someone got killed. One of the bad people on the ground must have shot back at Tommy’s father’s airplane and won. Someone always had to win.

That time on the red rose rug had been a long time ago. So long ago that now, resting in the pew with his head on his father’s thigh, Tommy couldn’t remember if he’d ever corrected what he and the little man did that day running over the church. He did remember he’d hidden the car that day and that he hadn’t seen it since. He thought he had to look for it when they got home from church.

His mother’s words to Aunt Betsy had illuminated things for Tommy. He realized why his father was seldom really there. Why his father sat in the fireplace room on the old sofa watching the TV when he wasn’t at work. Why his mother fed Tommy, got him ready for school or church, made sure he took a bath and brushed his teeth, took him to get glasses, and sometimes still even read him the banal stories even though he could read them quite adequately himself. Why his father seldom played with Tommy, and when he did, it was usually teaching Tommy throw and catch, and it usually, always, made his father disappointed that Tommy was slow to learn. On red rose rug day Tommy had learned that his father never came back from that war. His father’s peripheral presence in the house and in Tommy’s life was because his father was dead. It was only a phantom presence because his father was a phantom.

But here he was again in the pew, popped in. The thigh under Tommy’s cheek was warm. The big blood vessels in his father’s large, handsome hand pulsed up and down. His father smelled like his Sunday suit, sort of a good smell. But Tommy knew better than to attribute too much credence to the sensations, not to rely on their dependability. His father would drift or pop out again, almost certainly. But his mother would stay put, rootedly so, the robot that masqueraded as his mother, that is. That was a more pressing worry, even an existential one, because it meant nothing could be trusted to be what it appeared.

Reverend Barber was using his sermon voice now. It was different from his prayer voice, louder, harsher, accusatory. Tommy didn’t like the sermon voice. It was disappointed and angry, and it never made sense that the voice was saying “God loves you” and “Jesus died for you” in such an angry way. Like the wrong syllables had the mark over them. Tommy didn’t trust that Reverend Barber, or Jesus, or God, was what each appeared.

There will be school tomorrow, Tommy thought, greeting it with both relief and apprehension. His father’s big handsome hand moved to Tommy’s head and shook it gently. It was time to stand up and sing. His mother and father sang loud and melodiously about an old rugged cross. They sounded like people on TV, except his father was ambiguously dead and his mother was a robot. Maybe the men and women who sang on TV were also. It was exasperating, enervating. He probably wouldn’t be able to find the yellow car, and if he did, he knew he’d have to sneak into the living room and retrace the route properly to expiate, in case he hadn’t done it back then. It could take a long time to get it right, because he hadn’t pushed the yellow car, or any of his cars, since he couldn’t remember when.

Written December 21 and 22, 2022
©2022 Lawrence Helms