Rachel's Machine by Martin Wagner

As soon as Rachel saw the VW Beetle she knew she had to have it. It was blue and cute and sexy and had a little dent in the front, just like Kirk Douglas. It was the most beautiful thing Rachel had ever seen in her seventeen years of existence, not that she could think of too many beautiful things to see in Everton P.A. If there were she must have got used to them by now.
On her one school trip out of state to Washington D.C. she'd been sick and had spent most of the time leaning out of the bus window, in hotels and rest rooms throwing up. Theory had it at the time that she was homesick. Homesick of Everton ? Everton P.A. ? But people got homesick in all kinds of places given half the chance, even prisons, she had heard someplace. Rachel contemplated her new-found blue friend. If I ever get used to you, sue me.
It, she, the VW, all shiny and all cleaned up as if she had been fresh through a car wash, sat there looking at her, almost smiling, almost knowing that she had found someone who was planning to own her, proudly displaying a sign stuck behind its windshield wipers 'Frank's Used Cars - VW Beetle, blue', as if Rachel didn't know, and most importantly '$999', not exactly in her price range, but within reach. Well, not within reach exactly, but she'd think of something. Rachel usually did.
After breakfast (toast, decaff, orange juice) Rachel had strolled through the deserted car yard, under her arm her school-books (Physics, Calculus, Home Economics) and the ring-binder (blue, shabby, much-loved) she had carried around with her ever since she had started high school. She had decided to kill some time and look at some cars. She was good at cars and physics and mechanics and not so good at home economics. Home economics: cooking dead things she'd have to pick up cheaply at the local Pricebusters for her husband-to-be and screaming children- to-be and not having time to hear herself think, something which could easily happen if she let things run their natural course and didn't get out of this godforsaken town she had somehow been born into. But didn't God only hang out in the small towns these days? Rachel couldn't imagine God hanging out in New York or London or Calcutta, wherever that might be, too much.
Rachel, not yet late for school but perhaps hoping to be, carefully investigated the cars as if she hadn't seen them before, occasionally checking a few more promising models for rust and dents by standing at the back and xpertly looking first under the bonnet, then straight along the sides looking for imperfections in the bodywork, finally taking a look at the ground to check for oil leaks, just like her dad had taught her. That had been back in the days when he was still interested in cars, not just cars on television, actors in cars on television or anything on television for that matter. Rachel couldn't remember the last time her father had talked to her about cars as he used to, with that passion in his eyes people had when they talked about something that really mattered to them like their new girlfriend, their newborn and, well, maybe their new car. Now the only time she saw him remotely interested in anything was when he checked the TV Guide for what was on that evening. Or remotely disappointed for that matter.
Back in the old days her old man had been more fun. He used to take her for rides, to the movies, to fun fairs and to all the things she asked to be taken to. And, as far as she could tell, not at all disappointed that she hadn't turned out to be a boy, he had shown her how to service cars long before he had taught her how to drive them.
The first time she was allowed behind the steering wheel of his battered but cherished Chevrolet, Rachel already knew how to change the oil, check the battery or replace a wheel in three minutes flat. She had once challenged him to a tire-changing race and had won. To his credit her dad had barely sulked, but he took his sweet revenge by making her change the tires from then on whenever they burst, taking pleasure in staying inside the car, wind or shine, listening to phone-ins on the radio. She got drenched on more than one occasion.
Driving was saved to the last. The best for the last, as it should be. She still remembered the feeling when for the first time she was in control of the car as if it were yesterday. That moment when her father had stopped hovering his hand near the steering wheel in case she made a mistake and put it in his side pocket as a sign of trust, looking out the side window as if to admire the landscape. At that moment she had been in control of that machine. As he eventually turned back to look at his daughter he had smiled at her with pride, but he was also a little sad as he knew that as soon as she would be able to drive she would be able to drive away from him, from her family, rarely to be seen again, only for visits at Thanksgiving and Christmas and perhaps not even then once she had a family of her own. He'd have to drive to see her, never quite knowing whether he was really welcome or not.
Later that day, just after the sun had set and a magical twilight illuminated the streets of Everton, accentuated by the warm glow of the occasional neon sign, he had let her drive round the block on her own. She drove flawlessly, in control of her dad's car, and felt in her element, like a proper adult, only a little disappointed that no one was there to see her. A born driver. That night, after her mother had finally put her foot down and sent her off to bed, Rachel had cried herself to sleep - tears of joy, not sadness.
When she got up the following morning and entered the kitchen, she felt like a grown woman for the first time, more so than when she had her first period - she had been prepared for that - more so than after she had lost her virginity which had been the obligatory disaster she had wanted to forget as quickly as it had happened (back-seat, pain, ending in humiliation), but she hadn't been prepared for what it would feel like to drive. She had been fifteen. And now, two years later, new driver's licence - of course passed with flying colours - in her pocket, she was ready for a car of her own.
She wanted a car like her: small, sexy and beautiful. Not that Rachel was particularly vain or anything, but when practically every boy in high school asks you out on a date - the ones who didn't, didn't because they were too shy, she could always tell - you knew that you were more than just O.K. looking. And she took it for granted that none of them gave a fuck about what was going on in her head. Not that she had much reason to complain, really, she wasn't exactly famous for picking her boyfriends according to their SAT scores either.
Rachel had been car hunting on-and-off for months now but with less and less enthusiasm. The cars she sort of liked were always far too expensive and she wouldn't want to be caught dead in some rust-bucket she would've been able to pick up for a couple of hundred bucks. Other people and the pride they had in their rust-buckets made Rachel sick. Most people's first cars looked like someone else's final car, cars people had died in. No, just anything on four wheels won't do for me, Rachel had long ago decided, I want a car I can relate to.
And today, just as she was about to give up hope, she had found it. Her car. Behind the endless rows of big and ugly cars - cars that boys would dream of because they were big rather than beautiful, powerful rather than sexy, fast rather than charming - she discovered the Volkswagen Beetle unfairly demoted to the back of the car yard. Rachel briefly wondered how she could have failed to notice it in the past - few of the cars at Frank's ever seemed to get sold so there was rarely the need for Fred to get new ones - but that wonder quickly gave way to love.
She'd have to give it, her , a name, not now, she had to belong to her first, but it was the kind of car you could imagine giving a name to once you paid your money and were allowed to take it home with you. Take her home with you. She'd give her a name on the first drive home and not think of it before that. Giving things a name too soon was bad luck.
They say that love at first sight with boys was a thing of the movies, but as far as love at first sight with cars was concerned, on that spring day Rachel had conclusive proof that it was possible in the real world. She had to have the car, no matter what.

© Martin Wagner

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