more guttural grunt echoÂes throughout the car.
âIâm really sorry about this,â says Grandma. âI know I ate a bit too much, but I couldnât have grown this much from lunch, could I? I shouldnât have eaten so much. Sometimes I just canât resist.â Sheâs starting to laugh now. âItâs from those little dandies.â
âSorry, the what?â
âThose doohickeys.â Iâve got my right arm all the way behind her seat now and am trying to work the belt from underneath. I canât see her. âThose silly little wontons. I didnât need them but I can never resist.â
Sheâs giggling hard now; Iâm fake-laughing harder. Her twitching torso is making this belt brouhaha worse. Another car has pulled up behind me. Iâm getting flustered. âWhy donât you just drive, Iâll be fine,â she says.
âWe better get you buckled in, Grandma.â I peer at the person behind me in the rear-view mirror. They donât look annoyed or angry, more perplexed at whatâs happening in the car in front of them to the little old lady with white hair.
Itâs when Grandmaâs laughing subsides that Iâm able to latch the belt. âThere,â she exclaims, âyou got it! Way to go, Iain!â
Still concerned that she canât breathe with the restrictive belt, I distractedly turn out into traffic. Grandma is still praising me. Instantly, weâre almost struck. I have no idea how I didnât see the oncoming car, but I didnât. It was very close. Maybe I was still thinking about the belt, the car behind me, or the wontons. The encroaching car is able to swerve nimbly into the left lane, narrowly missing the left side of my back bumper. Grandma doesnât notice the near miss. She hears the horn blast, though. My heart is pumping.
âWhatâs their problem? I hate those stupid horns.â
âI know, eh. Just a jerk, Grandma,â I say. âClearly he has an axe to grind.â
âThose people shouldnât be driving.â
âYouâve got that right.â
Arriving at the next traffic light, I timidly pull up alongside the car I almost hit. Iâm still rattled by the near miss. I look through my window and through theirs. The jerk with the axe to grind is a middle-aged woman with a deflated perm. She doesnât look over at us but stares straight ahead pacifistically. She has a plastic yellow air-freshener in the shape of a foot dangling from her rear-view mirror.
What a bitch.
3:19 p.m.
THIS WASNâT PART of the grand plan. Weâve stopped speaking. Not for any discernible reason. Weâre just not talking. Silence isnât usually bad in itself, but this one is uncomfortable. Maybe itâs the heavy lunch. It could be all that greasy food thatâs muzzled us. Or the realization that weâll be spending every minute of every day, for the next five, together. Grandmaâs half-whistling, half-humming meekly through her teeth. Sheâs thinking, Why has my grandson taken me on a trip when he has nothing to say?
Without the distraction of chatter, my sense of smell has been heightened. Iâm holding my nose high like a tentative marsupial. But I can extricate only two smells. My usual car smell: a mix of burning oil and metallic grinding. The second, more unpleasant smell is reminiscent of lunch. Iâd been anticipating a third â old lady scent. I have no idea what old lady scent is, but I was legitimately concerned. I feel like most grandmas in their nineties would either smell oddly sour or, if they resorted to perfume, too flowery, too manufactured. Grandma is determinedly scentless.
âHow about a goofball, Grandma? My treat.â
âWhatâs that, dear?â
While driving, even cruising, my car gives off a tremendous groan. The muffler is long-ago shot. I have to speak up.
âA coffee. Would you like a