Notes from the Backseat

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We were just passing Point Reyes Station, getting close to Tomales Bay. The sun was long gone but there was still a fiery pink clinging to the underside of a few smudgy clouds—the leftovers of a messy sunset. The air was turning a harsh, coastal-cold against our faces. I’d been debating for the past twenty minutes about asking if we could put the top up, but I hated to be the hothouse flower amongst tough native shrubs. The irony here was that I was the native. I’m the one who comes from apple country; Coop’s from Philadelphia and Dannika spent most her life in Ventura—what do they know about the strange, hostile territories north of the Golden Gate Bridge?

As I sat there freezing my ass off in my wool chemise suit and my yummy little leopard-print car coat, I kept dreaming about the full-length mink I’d almost run back to grab this morning. If I had that, I could bury my face in its silky depths until the numbness in my nose and ears went away. Again, it was Dannika who had kept me from following my instincts. All day we’d been bending to her will—why? Because she had a perfect, perky little nose, gleaming blond hair, a supple, pinup girl body? And what part of all that wasn’t store bought? Even if it wasn’t—even if she was as all-natural as that gag-inducing juice I’d choked down earlier—what right did that give her to call every shot?

Suddenly, I didn’t care if it was her car or if they thought I was a total city girl. I was going to ask them to put the damn top up. What was this, some kind of naturalists’ boot camp?

I was just leaning forward to make my request when two things happened at once. Coop turned his head slightly and said, “You cold, kitten?” The words weren’t even out of his mouth when the engine coughed a few times, sputtered briefly and died.

Coop guided it onto the crumbling, almost nonexistent shoulder and stared at the dash. “That’s weird,” he said. “Sounded like we ran out of gas, but the gauge says we’re still half full.”

There was a pause.

Dannika broke the silence. “Actually, the gauge is sort of…broken.”

I leaned back and sighed.

Coop just looked at her. “You’re kidding me.”

“No,” she said. “It’s busted. It hasn’t worked for months.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you mention this before we got all the way out here?”

“I thought you knew!”

His voice turned incredulous. “How would I know this, Danni?” I didn’t like the nickname, but I relished the tone of their conversation. They were bickering and if they kept it up the exchange would escalate into a proper fight. Usually I hate violence, but in this case, I thought I could make an exception.

“Jesus, I’m sorry, okay?” Her voice didn’t sound very apologetic. “I forgot you haven’t driven my car in a while.” The subtext was complicated but clear: I forgot you’ve been so wrapped up with the little bitch in the backseat that you’ve neglected me and my precious car for months.

Coop backed off. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Who’s got a cell phone?” We all looked at each other blankly. “Dammit,” he said, slapping the steering wheel, but he was laughing a little now. “A couple of technophobes and a retro purist. Why couldn’t we have one normal, mainstream American on board?”

It was kind of funny. I laughed with him.

Dannika didn’t even crack a smile. “Great. So what now?”

“You have a map?” he asked.

She shook her head, no.

“Shit.” Coop wasn’t laughing this time.

“It’s a straight shot up the coast,” she told him. “Why would I need a map?” She was whining now, and I thought, careful, girl, your Donna Horney’s showing.

We all looked around at the sloping hills turning rapidly darker. There were a few stars out, now. The stretch of highway disappeared around curves both ahead and behind. There were scraggly coastal trees, bent over like old people from all those years of wind. We were truly out in the sticks. The air smelled of cypress and salt—clean and cold. In the distance, I could hear seals barking.

I closed my eyes and visualized where we were on a map. Remember how you used to call me Navigation Girl? You always said it was my superpower. This time it was easy, since you and I used to drive this stretch a lot in high school, although usually we’d head south at Point Reyes Station so we could sit on the beach in Bolinas and watch the hippies surf, scanning the waters for sharks. We were maybe four miles north of Point Reyes Station now; the stretch ahead was pretty desolate.

“Our best bet is to backtrack to the last town we passed,” I said.

They both looked at me in surprise, as if they’d forgotten I was back there.

“We haven’t passed anything for miles,” Dannika snapped.

“Yeah, we did,” I said. “Point Reyes Station. It’s easy to miss, but I’m pretty sure they have a gas station.”

“I would have noticed,” she said.

Coop smiled at me in the lengthening shadows. “That’s right. You grew up around here, didn’t you?”

I nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.”

I know you’re proud of being a Sonoma County girl, but for me it’s a lot more complicated. I never talk about the past with Coop if I can avoid it. I know it’s beautiful up here, rustic and quaint and all that shit, but in my mind it’s a big tangle of memories and misguided impulses, most of which I’d rather just put behind me. You were the best thing Sebastopol ever gave me and I got to take you with me when I left. Everything else I’d just as soon never talk about again. I guess that’s why Coop had half forgotten—didn’t even really know—that we were only about fifteen miles from the town where I was born and raised.

“So, what’s the plan?” Dannika was the princess waiting for her incompetent advisors to suggest a solution. I suppose it didn’t occur to her that our current situation was entirely her fault.

“How far back is Point Reyes Station?” Coop asked me.

Before I could answer, Dannika barked, “There wasn’t any town.”

I forced myself to stay calm. She was really starting to get on my nerves. To Coop I said, “Maybe four miles back.”

“I swear to God there was nothing back there.” She sounded close to a meltdown. “The last town I saw was Stinson Beach, and that’s not far from San Francisco.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s back there. Trust me.”

“Right.” Coop got out of the car. “I guess I’ll try to hitch a ride and get us some gas. If worse comes to worst, I can probably walk there and get a ride back.” He leaned against the driver’s side and looked at the surfboards. “If we all go, our gear might get stolen. Then again, I hate to leave you two here…”

“Yeah, but think about it,” Dannika said. “We can’t all three hitch a ride—it’s easier if you just go. Besides, is Gwen going to walk four miles in those shoes?” She shot a bitchy look over her shoulder at my kitten heels. I wanted to tell her if she didn’t stop whining I’d happily plunge one of these sharp little heels deep into her heart (provided I could get past the silicone) but I bit my tongue. In some ways, I liked it better when Dannika was a pouty little wench. It made her even easier to hate.

“Kitten?” Coop put his hand on my head. His warm fingers made me want to curl up in his arms—more than that—I would have curled up inside his lungs right then, if it were possible. “What do you want to do?”

As much as I hated the thought of spending the next hour or three stranded on the side of the road with the satanic blonde, I couldn’t come up with a better solution. “I guess Dannika’s right,” I said. “We’ll just stay with the stuff. But be careful about who you get a ride with. There are some freaky people out here.”

“Can’t be worse than L.A., right?” He grinned.

“You’d be surprised,” I said.

One of the reasons I never go back to Sonoma County with you is because the land itself is polluted by my childhood. When I drive through Sebastopol, it’s like navigating a minefield. The deli on the corner reminds me of the time my dad and I went in there for Junior Mints and he left with the salami slicer’s phone number. I can’t drive past the old ballet studio on Valentine Avenue without thinking of my mother acting rude and tight-lipped with Miss Yee, my favorite teacher there; later, in the car, she blurted out that Daddy was sleeping with “that Chinese slut in the legwarmers.”

I never took lessons there again. How could I concentrate on my pliés, when images of my father doing vague, obscene things under the covers to Miss Yee were burned into the eight-year-old folds of my brain?

Sebastopol is riddled with these traps. Every store and restaurant, every open field and parking lot, every strip mall and house can be traced through an intricate mesh of connections back to some messed-up snapshot from my childhood. I can see the whole town in my mind; it’s a vast, convoluted topographical map. Remember Mr. Colwell telling us about the experiment with spiders on acid—how their webs were all wonky and haphazard? The lines of my map are like that—way too complicated and crazy to follow.

It’s sad, really, because I know that good things happened here, too. I mean sure, most of the kids at school thought I was a certifiable nutter, which made at least eighty percent of my adolescence excruciating and torturous, but after I met you, everything changed. I was still considered a freak, but when you signed on as my friend I could feel the rest of my life opening up and beckoning me forward. You were an ambassador to the future sent to remind me that there was so much beyond that myopic, claustrophobic little high school. Remember that night when we snuck out and drove your mom’s car to Salmon Creek? We stood in the dunes, staring out at the water. The moon was so bright that our shadows were etched into the sand. You sang that Cat Stevens song “Moonshadow,” and I called you a hippie and then we ran down to the crashing waves and closed our eyes and let the mist pour over our faces in the dark while the cold foam licked at our bare toes.

You see what I mean? Get me within county lines and I become a font of nostalgia. Actually, that’s not accurate. I become more like AM radio; every once in a while there’s a good song that comes soaring out of the static, but mostly it’s just a bunch of lame, reactionary crap.

Enough careening down memory lane. Suffice it to say, I’m not happy that this dog-hair infested couch I happen to be writing you from is the epicenter of all those bad memories.

So there I was, trapped in the ’57 Mercury with my gorgeous nemesis. As I snuck glances at her profile, I couldn’t help thinking about the bags of silicone inside her boobs. Do they still use silicone—isn’t it like saltwater now? If she had it done eight years ago, what did they use back then? I was overcome with an irrational impulse to ask her about the surgery. What did it feel like, rising from the operating table like a sexed up Frankenstein? Did it take her long to adjust to her new proportions—did she run into things for a few days? What did people say when they first saw her? Were they too polite to comment on her new cleavage or was it so in-your-face they couldn’t help but blurt out something inappropriate?

“Sure is dark.” Dannika’s voice in the front seat was surprisingly squeaky. “You want to sit up here?”

Was the queen actually inviting me out of the servant’s quarters? “I’m okay,” I said.

She turned around to face me. “You’re not cramped back there?”

Gee, I’ve only been wedged between two surfboards and a steamer trunk for eleven hours, now—how kind of you to notice. “It’s not too bad.”

An awkward silence ensued. The barking seals started up again, so far away you could barely hear them. It comforted me, knowing we were close to the water, even though we couldn’t see it from here.

“It’s getting kind of cold,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

An owl let out a high-pitched, lonely hoot. Dannika shivered and pulled her sweatshirt together at the throat. “Why don’t you come up here?” she said. “That way I don’t have to turn around when I talk to you.”

It’s all about you, isn’t it? I thought, but I went ahead and climbed over the seat into the front. She was sitting dead center and I climbed into the passenger side so she had to scoot over behind the wheel. I couldn’t see any reason why I should contend with the steering wheel—not when her surfboard had been dripping cold, waxy blobs on my beautiful car coat for the past two hundred and fifty miles.