he prefers a vehicle like this: it probably feels normal to him to be seven feet higher than everyone else on the road.
Lou takes us down Willingdon Avenue and I try not to stare in the direction of Oak Shore Mental Health. But I feel a stab in my guts when I imagine her in there, sitting on the edge of her bed. Jill and Lou know she’s in there too. If they’re thinking about it, neither one lets on.
When we pull into the parking lot of the test centre, Jill gives me a big squeeze and a peck on the cheek and says, “Good luck, baby.”
I wonder if she’s left one of her purple lipstick prints on my face. She’s as bad as my mother that way.
“You’re going to do just fine,” Lou assures me. “Jill told me you drove like an old pro the other night.” His voice is especially low and quiet when he gives a compliment.
My face heats up.
“Pick you up at three-thirty,” he says.
Jill grins and waves with both hands. “Make us proud, baby,” she calls out the window.
The Young Drivers of Canada people have arranged for a test car to be here. I look around the lot and spot their logo on a white compact before I head inside.
The test centre has that cheap government-y feel and reminds me of the Social Services office, which makes me want to run. I force myself to walk tall and straight and I sit that way too when I fill out the form they give me. When I hand it back to the woman behind the counter, a wiry man with a craggy face peers over her shoulder at my form, and then looks up.
“You’re my two-thirty,” he says. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot.” He sounds like he gargles Drano and sand every night before bed.
Once we’re both buckled into the test car, he sets the clipboard with my scoresheet in his lap and tells me that first we will do a pre-trip check. He gives me a minute to familiarize myself with the vehicle and then asks me to show him the left indicator, the right indicator, the high beams and the handbrake. There’s a kind of bored fatigue to the way he talks, as if assessing me is just one more in his long list of ass pains. He tells me to demonstrate my hand signals and all I want to do is flip him the bird, but I do the right thing.
Eventually he has me drive out onto Willingdon Avenue, change lanes and change back. I turn on the indicator and carefully check my mirrors and my blind spot both times. Just like in driver’s ed. So far, so good.
He gets me to take the ramp onto Highway One, do some more lane changes and get off at the next exit. We drive up the steep hill on Boundary Road, the street that marks the division between Vancouver and Burnaby, and I imagine myself making a right turn and heading west, driving until I hit the beach, sand flying up from the back wheels.
Just before we reach Kingsway he gets me to hang a right onto a side street, then asks me to parallel park behind a blue Cadillac that is so clean and new, the glare off it is blinding. It’s the flashiest car on the block. Why couldn’t he pick an old beater for me to park behind?
Nerves are zipping through my guts and my face feels sunburned.
In order to parallel park I should pull up alongside the Cadillac and then back up slowly, turning the wheel toward the curb, but my brain keeps saying no, that I’ll hit the perfect baby blue shininess of it and then some pissed-off rich bastard will come out of nowhere and beat the crap out of me. Actually, this car looks like the one Sam used to drive except Sam’s was a two-tone.
As I ease into reverse, Sam’s car keeps flashing through my head—royal and baby blue—and I can’t help but steer away from the Caddy, pushing my car’s back end back into the road.
“Oops. Sorry, that’s not what I meant to do.”
The assessor guy scribbles. “Try again,” he says with his cranky toad delivery.
I put the car in reverse—and do the same thing all over again.
“Sorry. I’m just nervous.”
He exhales through his nose and scribbles again. Did he just deduct points on both of my attempts?
He reaches over and pushes the car