What Remains

Yesterday, a pair of men came with a truck and chains and a check for a few hundred dollars, and they hauled away the car that I inherited from my mother, when she died, and I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t let it go, and it’s been sitting in front of our house for long enough that the leaves that gathered under its tires, and against the curb, where the rain pushed and channeled and piled, sheltered from the wind, where those leaves had not only begun to turn grey and decompose but deeper down had turned into a fine layer of soil, and after they hauled it away, I spent about 20 minutes filling the green bin with those leaves and that soil, but I left the space still marked by where the car used to be, where the “abandoned car” had been, a streak of black and brown, the spot where it had been for enough years that the registration sticker that once was current had gone wildly out of date, to be replaced by a brand new sticker on the window of the vehicle, in bright orange, and the two men didn’t say anything about the “abandoned vehicle” sticker when they hauled it away (though I asked them if they had hauled away cars in worse condition than this one, and the man just nodded yes), but that bright orange sticker still sticks in my mind, which an apologetic lady from the city had put there the day before, sitting awkwardly in her idling car, explaining to us that someone had complained, and she showed us the complaint, and she had to put the sticker there or she could get in trouble, but are you the owners? Oh so ok, if we moved the car, that would be fine then, she would come back in three days, well, ok, I’ll tell you what, in six days, just drive it somewhere else, but of course the car didn’t drive—this was too complicated to explain to her, we were simply trying to understand our options—so we didn’t tell her that the car didn’t drive because I never drove it and that made the battery die, and then once the battery died, it was impossible to drive, and when it was impossible to drive, it just sat there, accumulating leaves and dirt and cobwebs and years, and the effort it took to keep it driving, to keep it alive, had been beyond me, ever since the pandemic when I stopped going anywhere, and then the habits of not going anywhere became the life of a parent of twins, and if you don’t drive it at least once a week, the battery will die, and a car that doesn’t drive won’t go anywhere, it will just stay there, you can’t believe how long it will remain, even though there’s always been something finicky about the electrical system, and it’s a good car, not so many miles, my mom didn’t drive it that much, she mostly stayed home, sitting in her chair looking out at the green and the flowers, it’s the car I drove across the country to get it from West Virginia to California, it took me about ten days, I saw the country in my mom’s car, still filled with her chapsticks and pens and barrettes and an old apple she had left in the cupholder, to rot, and maybe if my dad hadn’t sold the house I grew up in, the house he didn’t want to live alone in, maybe the car could have been left to spend its last years sitting there in that driveway, looking down over the tulips where we scattered my mom’s ashes on a rainy day, on her field of tulips, no, they were lilies, my mom always wanted me to love flowers as much as she did, but I never did, when I was a kid, I was a dumb kid and I didn’t know anything or love anything enough, and all my memories have roots too shallow to keep me connected to that past, I was always trying to get away, from West Virginia and all the assholes that live there, and only later understood that it took me away from her, too, until it was too late, until she died, and all I had was her car, and it didn’t drive anymore, and maybe there was something that felt a little West Virginian about leaving a rotting car in front of our house, to gather leaves and cobwebs and disapproving stares from the California assholes that worry about parking, the map of West Virginia is your hand with middle finger extended, so what’s the plan for this car, that man said, whose face I didn’t see clearly enough to know him again, when I’m sure I’ve seen him on my street, it was dark, and he said well yes, I understand that, about your mom, but you know you could get some money for that car, I’m sure you could use that, and there’s never enough parking on this street, and I wouldn’t, but you know all someone would have to do is report it to the city, it’s been sitting there a long time, and I just nodded, what could I say, and didn’t meet his eyes, and didn’t really see his face, so I don’t know who he was, and if it was him that called the city and reported the car, my mom’s car that’s been sitting there since the pandemic, that I’d fixed more times than I’d needed to drive it, that still felt like her, or maybe it was that sitting in that car, that ungainly, slow, deliberate car, maybe it reminded me of what it was like to remember my mom being alive, instead of having to dig through all the memories of her death, and the pain, and everything that started to happen when she stopped living, and the dream I had where she was sinking into the ground, and she wasn’t gone yet, but she was mostly gone and she would disappear completely, soon, and that was a long time ago, now, years ago, the car was still driving, and registered, and now when I have dreams where I’m a child again, I see my dad clearly but my mom is hazy, indistinct, barely there, and all I have is this car, with her with her chapsticks and pens and barrettes and an old apple she had left in the cupholder, except that old apple core is long gone, it’s an apple I left there, to rot, and watched it rot, the way she would have and did, and I’ve always felt guilty that I didn’t take better care of her car, but she never took care of her car, it was just a car, it was covered with dings and scratches and she never bothered to take care of it, it was just a car, and then one day, yesterday, two men came with a truck and chains and a check for a few hundred dollars, and they hauled away the car that I inherited from my mother, when she died, and when they did, I’ve decided to decide that it was just a car, and oh, how my daughter’s face reminds me of the face of her grandmother, when she smiles, her grandmother that she’ll never know, my mother that will never know her granddaughter, except when she smiles, and it’s her, and I think about how my mom never cared so much about things, like a car, things that remain, that don’t need to be tended, that just stay where you’ve put them, that don’t grow, that refuse to be moved by the sun and the wind, and if things that don’t end are a comfort, that go on, that remain, then I think about how my mom was a gardener who planted perennials that grew and died and then grew again, and my mom would have never been silly enough to get stuck with a car, she’d have said, turn the soil over, put some shit in it, give it some time, and let it grow.