Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 15

Drive

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Catch up on chapter 14 here.

Grayson and I exchange numbers before I go inside, and part of me thinks maybe Riley is right about how serious something is when you have someone’s number. But having a team doesn’t mean we have a plan. The only way to get proof is to talk to Dad, but he’s sitting in the living room with the TV turned up too loud and a phone in his hand.

I slump onto the piano bench because there isn’t anywhere else to be. Cinnamon and pine from the Christmas tree mingle with the lemon from my cleaning, creating a cluster of pleasant smells that mix like oil and water. Like me and Dad. Like my whole entire family and telling the truth about anything.

Time passes in waves I measure in measures. I don’t care what Dad thinks about me playing this song now. Maybe if I play it enough, he’ll have to come talk to me about it. I learn the first page: twelve measures. Move on to the second. As it becomes too dim to see, I study three more pages, because reprises make things easier, and I’ve settled into the song like it’s my friend by the time Dad tells me I have to stop playing.

Dad makes me feel like I’m living in the past, but not far enough back to discover what I need to know. When he brings me dinosaur chicken nuggets for dinner. When he tousles my hair at ten thirty and tells me to quiet down now that he’s going to bed.

By morning, after the song permeates my dreams like a soundtrack, I’m ready to start looking for that proof. I am going to talk to Dad until he tells me something, one single new thing, about my brother.

I figure I should meet Dad in his territory and make us both bowls of cereal. “I feel like I made a lot of progress playing that song yesterday, don’t you?” I say between bites of Fruity Pebbles.

“I tried not to hear it.”

I cringe. It hurts to have him admit it.

“I wish you’d tell me why. You can’t bring up something life-changing and then ignore it. Everything is falling apart, and I have no control over any of it. How am I supposed to let it go?”

“Embrace your inner Elsa,” he says, shrugging.

But just because something was my favorite movie when I was five… It isn’t my fault that I roll my eyes, I swear. It’s done and over before I’ve even thought about what I’ve done.

His authoritative mask comes quick and ill-fitting. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.”

I have a hard time admitting to feeling things I have no right to feel. So I ignore them, hoping they go away, but they don’t. Instead, they eat at me until they develop a mouth of their own. These little monstrous feelings have had a day of buildup now, and I devour him. “You don’t tell your daughter that you’ve been lying by omission her whole life and then just stop talking about it. You shut down this conversation. You walk away whenever I bring it up. I don’t think it’s me who has the problem letting things go, Dad. I’m pretty sure it’s you.”

Dad’s glasses slip down his nose as he stands up. His cereal bowl is still full of milk, punctured with a bleeding rainbow from the cereal. He doesn’t clean it up. “Come with me,” he says, then turns around without even checking to see if I follow.

The thing is? I do. Ella Enchanted, they should have called me. Adaya the Acquiescing. He leads me to the front of the house, where his truck is parked squint in the driveway. “Get dressed, good shoes. Grab your permit. Didn’t your mom say you got your permit?”

And Dad’s moving to the passenger side of the truck.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“You want something to absolutely never let go of? A steering wheel is great for that. Let’s get you some practice away from California.”

I hadn’t even seen snow since we moved away. There’s no way I’m driving in it. But Dad isn’t kidding. He doesn’t budge from his side of the truck except to throw the keys at me.

“But where will we drive to?”

“Does it matter? Drive wherever you think we should go.” How can he not be calculating every single way this could go wrong?

I come back with my permit and good shoes anyway, though, because I can’t prove anything to him by staying inside, and maybe I can get him to talk if I’m not looking straight at him. It takes one hand on the inside of the truck and a good heave before I’m in the cab, and I can sort of see what Dad likes about this machine. The road looks different from the driver’s side.

What it doesn’t look, to me, is navigable. Not when the first thing I have to do is back out of the mess he got this truck into with his careless parking.

“Where do you want to go?” Dad asks me. His phone is ready, maps open.

“I’m not even sure I could make it down the driveway.” Sure, the truck is four-wheel drive. It has chains on. But my mom drives a Civic. This isn’t anything like I’m used to doing, and I hate that he’s making me do it at all. This isn’t what I want him to trust me with.

“You want something you’re in control of? Driving is something you can control. Put it in reverse.”

It’s one of those ridiculous things about driving, how you can’t get started without going backward. I don’t listen to Dad right away, though, instead adjusting the mirrors and the seat, because even though we’re about the same height, we don’t look at things the same way.

“I’m not going to rush into this. That doesn’t make sense.” Snow beats down on the windshield and I fumble, looking for the switch for the wipers. The first button I try makes the left signal flash. Dad laughs at me, muffling it behind a hand like he doesn’t want me to hear. Doesn’t change that I do.

“It’s on the right side. Above the ignition.”

When I’m at a piano and I need to do something hard, I close my eyes so I can focus. That won’t work when driving. I have to keep my eyes open, look past the snow to see the road, concentrate on a million things at once. “You only brought me out here so you could make fun of me.”

“I brought you out here because I wanted to prove that you could do it. You can get through something that you don’t think makes sense at first. Now check your rear-view mirror, keep your foot on the brake, and shift into reverse. Just drive.”

Dad can say “Just drive,” all he wants, but that isn’t a thing yet, not three months in. It’s still “Use your right foot on the gas, two hands on the wheel, right hand to shift, this is how you use a blinker,” a million steps all jumbled in my head at the command to drive, and I don’t know how to synchronize them. It’s like learning to play left and right hand on the piano at the same time, without the chance to break it down.

But before I know it, I’ve eased down the driveway. I feel the chains gripping the ground against the snow, bracing us, doing their job. Admittedly, I stomp the brake too hard at the bottom of the driveway. Instead of stopping too quickly we begin to slide.

“Don’t panic.”

I laugh like that’s a possibility — not panicking. It’s my resting state, this sense that everything will go wrong soon, like I’m on the brink of an unfixable disaster unless I can be absolutely perfect.

“Want to drive to Fred Meyer? It’s not too far, and maybe we can bring back ice cream.”

“It’s freezing. And it’s too early for ice cream.”

Dad smiles. “No such thing. Hot chocolate and cold ice cream by the fire? I can’t think of anything better.”

It’s a good thing not many people want to be out in this weather, even in Bend. I drive way too slow the whole way, even when Dad tells me I’ll be better off if I go faster. Three different cars honk at me. I let them, and let them pass. We arrive at Fred Meyer in one piece, buy two cartons of ice cream — vanilla bean for me, rocky road for Dad — and get back in the car.

I immediately head for the passenger side, but Dad shakes his hand. “You got us here. You can get us home.”

The snow falls more like a pounding on the door than a tap on the shoulder now. I don’t believe him. He hardly knows me. But a small part of me wants to prove it to myself as much as to him.

By the time we’re halfway home, I realize I’m not focusing all of my attention on driving anymore. I’m mentally composing a text to my mom about how I did it. I guess that’s the thing about scary things — as terrifying as it is to start, doing them right feels amazing.

The moment I think it, we slip on a patch of black ice in the road. Immediately my heart thuds so hard it’s lunging out of my chest. My hands shake even as I grip the steering wheel until my whole hands are white with the effort. I slam my foot onto the brake, but the cab slides out to the right, the bed fishtailing behind us. I’m not breathing. I know I’m not breathing. I twist the wheel to the left to try to correct. Somewhere I’m pretty sure Dad is calling my name, telling me to stop, but stop what? I am doing everything I possibly can.

We spin in a circle. Everything I tried to do backfired. I wanted to stop, but I just made it worse. We slow, but not enough. Headlights come from what must be the opposite direction, but I’m not sure. Right now, everything feels opposite. Everything feels wrong. A horn blares, echoing in the silent air.

Dad reaches over and grabs the wheel. “Don’t touch a pedal at all,” he says as he steers.

We stop, half-buried in the snowbank on the side of the road. The other car stops, too, on the same side as us, but unlike us, their parking looks intentional. A man gets out, leaning hard on a cane that sinks into the snow with every step. “Everyone okay?” he asks. “That was quite the spin.”

“Hit some ice,” Dad says. He’s studying the stranger, but the way he’s looking I don’t believe they’re strangers. “Adaya’s been in California. Just got her permit. I thought I’d try to get her used to it, but — ”

“It’s a lot to get used to,” the man replies. Then he looks at me. “You were brave to try. It’s good to see you, Eric. It’s been — God, I don’t even know if I’ve met your daughter.”

So I was right. They’re not strangers. I try to guess who it could be, but mostly I’m shaking so much it’s hard to stay standing, debating if I should text Mom after all. Maybe this is a thing she doesn’t need to know. I send a quick message to Riley instead, most of my attention on the man and my dad as they talk.

“How are you, Eric? You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral.”

Dad kicks at the snow. He won’t meet anyone’s eyes. “Just lost my mom, which has been hard, but I’m getting by the best I can. I hear you have grandkids now?”

The stranger leans hard on his cane. “ Headlights from our cars cast deep shadows on his face, but I realize, cane and all, he’s not much older than Dad. “We don’t have to talk about this. I’m sure it hasn’t gotten any easier. Especially with losing your mom.” He pauses, takes half a step like he’s going to shake dad’s hand, or hug him, but decides against it. He looks at me instead. “Nice to meet you, Adaya, but maybe let your dad drive the rest of the way home.”

“That’s the plan,” I say. Whether Dad knew it or not.

As he labors back to his own car and I climb into the passenger seat, their conversation replays in my head. If Dad had to tell him about losing Grandma Nancy, hers wasn’t the funeral the stranger meant.

Which means there’s no way he wasn’t alluding to Brennan’s.

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