My husband is a redheaded, perpetually sunburned man who laughs when he's angry. I can tell his angry laugh from his happy laugh because the angry one is hard and short, like a cough. Right now, he's laughing. It's the morning of my twenty-ninth birthday and we're in his garage looking at my present, a cherry-bomb red Subaru, used. The car is parked next to Troy's gun-metal gray Accord, filling the empty space in the garage like a long-lost family member.

I'm thinking what an extravagant gesture this is for him. He usually gives me earrings, or paperbacks, or pastel sweaters that are invariably too small or too sweet. I'm a city girl. I don't know how to drive and, what's more, I don't want to learn.

"We can't afford this," I say.

"You just don't want it," he says. "If it was something or other you wanted you wouldn't be giving a damn how much it cost."

I've been patient with Troy for almost three months now. He's going through a “thing”—that's how he puts it—and taking the “thing” out on me. I've been a pretty good sport about the whole business, all things considered, but really don't feel like being snapped at on my birthday.

"Excuse me," I tell him, "I don't think you're quite being fair." My voice is calm and measured, as it should be under the circumstances.

Troy looks at me and then across the yard at the tall maple. Our charlatan tree-man drove a set of metal spikes into its trunk last week, said it needed support because of the frost cracks. Now I think of it as the Frankenstein tree.

"Well I guess I'm just not a fair guy, Kelly," he says.

I tug at his arm. "Look, honey. Just look at me. I'm a simple soul, aren't I? I don't ask for a lot, do I?"

Troy sighs and shoves his big hands in his pockets. He's a handsome man. I could fill you in about his slippery red hair, his broad freckled back, but I won't. Troy is not someone I've ever felt like sharing. Leaving, yes. That's another story. My problem is that I'm too in love with my own husband.

"My needs are very simple," I say. "Really."

"Sorry," he tells me, sheepishly. "I just wanted to do something for you. Something big." He starts sniffing the way he does.

"There's nothing for you to be sorry—"

"Ugh!" he grunts.

I stroke the hood of my new-old car with my fingertips, investigate the front fender. What I don't know about cars is a lot.

"Well, it's lovely, at any rate." I look at him. "Hope I don't smash it up my first time out." I laugh, but the truth is I'm nervous as all get out. I don't relish the idea of trying to control such a great big thing. I don't fancy the idea of rain-slicked highways and sudden hairpin turns, of large signs that say, "Caution: Blind Child Area."

Troy says, "You might just do that."

"What do you mean?" I can see my reflection pout in the automatic window.

"As an unconscious gesture, you might," he tells me gravely. Troy studied psychology at Urbana-Champaign. Now he works in a bank.

I kiss him on the mouth, massage his bullish neck. He kisses back, but he's stingy with his tongue and keeps his eyes open, a vacancy. I read somewhere that when a man finds a woman attractive his pupils contract. Only later to bloom like black flowers. I stare hard at Troy, drop my arms from around his neck, and take a step backwards. My hip collides with the workbench where he keeps his collection of power tools.

"I'm not going to let you get to me today, honey," I tell him.

 

 

After breakfast, we decide to take my new car out for a test drive, and me for a driving lesson. There are a million other ways that I'd rather desecrate my birthday, but I think a change of scene will be good for Troy. I think it'll chill him out, that maybe relaxation is the key. Besides, it's a beautiful day. The October air is warm with buttery light. The oaks spill their yellow leaves across the brick streets. It isn't even noon yet. It's idyllic. I want to stay home and make jam.

Our house is on a hill, which is nice because we like the privacy, or used to, but the driveway is impossibly steep. Troy regards it as a challenge, especially during the iciest of winter months. I stand by the little Spring Green flag and think about all the weird chemicals seeping in our lawn as he backs the car out. It glides out all at once, the tamest of horses.

"You want to watch this, Kelly," he yells at me. "This here is a three-point turn!"

The back wheels spin on the grass, and I jump sideways. Whistling like a sailor, Troy maneuvers the car into position alongside me. He's glowing. Coasting a few yards down the driveway, he stops, yanks the emergency brake, and clambers awkwardly into the passenger seat. "You're up," he shouts.

"I don't think someone should have to do this first time out," I say, folding myself into the car. "It's like driving down the side of a building."

"You can't go around being so afraid of everything, Kelly. You can't just let your life keep shrinking. Take charge! Expand your horizons!"

He's chortling now. I never could stand his chortling. I could say something to bust that smug smile off his mug, but I choose not to. It feels too strange to be sitting in the driver's seat with the steering wheel so close to my chest. My hands are shaking, so I drop them in my lap. They brush a pink plastic key chain dangling limply from the ignition. It says, “CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER!”

"How about that," Troy says, grinning. "Just kidding atcha!"

I laugh to show him that I haven't lost my sense of humor. "You're lucky I'm such a good sport," I tell him.

"I'm the good sport," he says, barking like an asthmatic seal. "Now, with your foot on the brake, put the car in drive."

I do as he says. The weight of the car shifts and I can feel it straining to rush headlong into the street.

"Foot off the brake now, please."

We fall forward and are snapped back just in time.

"Foot off the fucking brake, Kelly."

I'm sitting ramrod rigid, fingers clenched white on the wheel. Across the street, a ragged brown ravine gapes in the sun. Locust Street is suddenly utterly terrifying. I feel Troy's hand around my ankle, and I scream and hit him.

"Christ, Kelly!" he screams, rubbing his throat. "That's how you kill a person! That's where they train you to hit a person if you want to kill them." Jerking up, he has slammed his head on the glove compartment also.

His red face, his yelling, his pain, calms and satisfies me. I ease up on the brake and clamp down again, ease up and clamp down, and we bounce merrily to the bottom of the driveway.

"You're doing OK," Troy says. It's the first thing he's said to me for the better part of an hour besides, "Slow," "Wait," "Turn right," and "Squirrel."

"It's like skiing," I say, pleased with myself. "It's just a matter of relaxing and finding a rhythm."

Troy looks at me and furrows his brow.

We're out on Hokum Rock Road. It's a straight, quiet road that goes forever. I'm cranked up to thirty miles per hour. We pass enormous homemade signs for cold-pressed cider, pumpkins, maple syrup, and squash. I flick the blinker, slow way down, and drift over to the side of the road. A group of horses stands grazing at the edge of a faded green field, intermittently sniffing one another's butts. Today of all days, I want to feel my hand on their dark satiny coats.

"You coming?" I ask Troy. He shrugs, but follows me out of the car. We lean over the barbs of a three-wire fence. A sway-backed mare pushes her velvet nose into my palm and backs away. I cluck to the others, but none come over.

"Kind of a motley group, huh?" Troy offers.

Something about his bored expression, about the lazy thrust of his upper body, makes me want to see the horses run.

I shout, "Hey!" and kick the fence post, clap my hands together. There is an irritable shift among the horses that moves them off towards the middle of the field. "Well, you are a sad bunch, aren't you?" I call. "Big fat old maids!" Troy laughs at that, but for some ridiculous reason I feel like crying.

We’ve been driving awhile when Troy says, "It'll be nice for you, being able to get around without me or the Metro."

"Yes, I can take long trips all by myself, won't that be wonderful?"

"Sure will. Slow. You can take the next left."

We're rattling down a dirt road called Beecher's Way. It's a narrow path really, potholed and rutted, bisecting a cornfield. Troy looks concerned suddenly. It's his new car, after all.

"Stop," he says.

I brake hard and dust settles around the car. It's incredibly quiet. The corn is dry and golden on either side of us. The light shines warmly through the windshield, prickling my scalp. I can smell the horse's breath on my fingers still.

Troy looks at me. I look at him and wink. "Let's try some turns," he says.

Turns. I anticipate the tight circles we'll make, the loony, awkward angles, the forward and the reverse, all performed with me hunched over the wheel like Quasimodo. I put my hand on Troy's thigh and squeeze, cautiously.

He looks down at my hand. "Um. . ." he says.

It's the nervousness that enrages me more than anything. That such a big man should be so nervous, should feel the need to make himself tiny under the covers, bracing his arms so close to his body whenever I come near. As if he were engaged in trench warfare, ducking though some murky crawl space, holding his breath ‘til he made it through.

"Kelly, what the hell are you doing?" he asks. I've got one leg around him already. I drag the other one over, snag the hem of my dress on the cool metal brake, and hoist myself onto my big husband's lap.

"I just want to sit like this a minute," I say, looking down at him, tongue parting my lips.

We spend a while kissing. He doesn't bother to guard himself against my hands. Then, the sound of my breathing, amplified in the small still silence of the car, embarrasses me, and I start to cry.

"If you'd just get angry, Kelly," Troy says, wearily.

I bury my face in his shoulder, feel the warm steady pulse just under his skin. "I'm not angry," I say. "It must be me. Must be you're bored with me or something."

"Now that's just crazy," he says, patting my back. But there is relief in his voice, and I'm aware of the need for composure now. I struggle back into my seat with as much dignity as possible. Briskly and efficiently, like a woman who has made a sad spectacle of herself in public, I adjust the seat, grasp the wheel.

"Kelly," Troy says, smiling. "How's about I drive?"

It takes me forever to figure out the lock on the door.

Troy smooths out his blue khakis with the palm of his hand and nods towards the wheel. "I nearly drove into a deer once," he says. "Out by Leesburg. Came bounding out of nowhere." He looks at me. "Massive fellow with antlers."

Then he flicks on the ignition and he drives me home.