Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time there was a black Mercedes, a zipped-up, low-to-the-ground number that oozed status and symbolism from every curve. The brand-spanking new car was owned by the father of my son’s new friend; a nice enough fellow who was clearly proud of his kids, but was probably more proud of his wheels. Who could blame him for that? Even I, a luxury car ignoramus, could tell that this one was something special.
His son had come to play at our place with my seven-year old after cricket on one of those blistering Perth summer mornings. It was stinking hot. The kids were ratty, and the parents even more so – two hours in the sun was affecting everyone. We were milling around at the end of the cricket session – James my son was scouting for potential playmates. He eyed a new friend of his, George.
“Does James want to come to our place?” the father (let’s call him Mr Mercedes) had asked. No, I said, it’s fine, we live just up the road from the oval so how about George just comes home with us.
I asked him to swing by to pick George up from our place at around eleven.
Which he did.
In the Merc.
I watched him park in our driveway and saw a flash of recognition in his face as he smiled towards our neighbour and trotted towards him, hand outstretched. The two were old Uni friends, apparently, so Mr Mercedes wandered over to catch up with his old mate. I stood and watched watched from the window for a minute, not wanting to be too quick to open the front door and head out to greet him. (I wouldn’t want him to think I had nothing to do but watch and wait for him to arrive, was my logic).
So I was in the prime position to watch the unfolding meeting of the vehicles.
My car is everything that the Mercedes is not. An ageing Australian classic might be a polite way to put it, but “classic” is far too generous a term. Really, it’s nothing more than an old shit box. It grinds and groans whenever I turn too sharply to the left. Or to the right, for that matter. Sometimes I try to catch the eye of other drivers to see if they can hear the groaning noises as clearly as I can. (No one has let on that they can, but I’m sure they’re just being polite). It’s never clean, and that’s because I don’t really see the point. I have no attachment to my car. I laugh about it to my friends, and I pretend that I don’t care, but I actually do. I wish it was something else. And every time I turn the wheel and the shit box emits its groan, something inside me twinges with shame. One day, I’d tell myself, I’ll get a new car. Nothing flash, but hopefully quiet.
On this particular day Gary my husband needed to use the shit box. He never drives it, but it has one advantage – it’s big. It’s just the thing you need to get your stuff home from a trip to Bunnings. The timber planks could stretch comfortably from the back bumper bar through to the front window. The shit box was in demand, and Gary was, as usual, in a hurry.
He’d told me that morning he’d be leaving around eleven.
Apparently it’s almost impossible to use a rear view mirror as intended (that is, to see what you might be backing into) if you are reversing up a hill. And our garage just happens to be at the bottom of a hill. The Mercedes was parked at the top.
The noise from the Australian classic wasn’t so much of a groan this time as a sickening crunch. Metal struck metal. Shit box struck Merc. Merc came off second best. The sleek panel over the rim of its front right tyre had been reduced to a crinkled mess, and it took the efforts of three men – husband, neighbour, and Mr Merc himself – to pull the rim away from the tyre so that the wheels could turn and car could be driven away.
“Totally awks, Mum”, said James, as the car finally backed out and gingerly crept away.
