I got in, and we sped off with the top down. It accelerated so fast the wind whipped through my hair. I shrieked when my ribbon went flying.
My father was driving it as he would a race car, careening around corners and trying the funny-sounding horn.
"Don't you dare drive it this fast," he told me.
"Me?"
"This will be your car eventually," he said. "Of course, I'll buy it now so I can break it in for you."
"My car?"
"Mostly. Your brother will try to steal it, of course, but we won't let him," he said.
I ran my hand over the soft, luxurious black leather seats. He turned on the radio and laughed with delight at the rock and roll. It was as if the car was magical and could turn him or anyone his age back into a teenager.
He slowed down for the return to the dealership. "What do you think?"
"It's beautiful."
"And not hard to drive, as long as you keep within the speed limit. The day you get your first speeding ticket is the day I sell it," he warned.
"I don't even have my license. I have to wait to take driver's education, Daddy."
"It's all right. Years pass so quickly, you wake up one morning and think you've been in some time machine. Take my word for it. It seems like I was just eighteen."
He looked at me, his face taking on that dark seriousness he could muster in seconds, especially in court.
"The thing is, Zipporah, you have a lot to look forward to. These should be and will be your best years. I want you to enjoy them, enjoy your youth. I don't want what's happened with the Pearsons to ruin things for you so much that you let it all pass you by, understand?"
I nodded. My heart felt as if it were bubbling instead of beating. The words were bunching up in my mouth, pressing at my lips, urging my tongue to move and deliver. Tell him! the voice inside me screamed.
Tell him about Karen. End it before it becomes too late, before your parents are so disgusted with you they'll wish you were never born.
"Daddy," I was sure I began, but he was so absorbed in driving the car and listening to the music he didn't hear me. He turned into the dealership and pumped the horn to bring my mother out.
"How do we look in it?" he asked her, beaming and sitting back with his arm over the back of my seat.
"Like it was made for you," she said, looking mainly at me.
Daddy rubbed the steering wheel and nodded.
"I' m going in there and make the deal. We'll have it for the summer," he said. He turned to me. "I'll sneak you onto some side roads and begin teaching you to drive it. Farmer's kids drive at fifteen."
"One little problem, Michael. She's not a farmer's kid."
"So we'll plant some vegetables in the backyard and have her tend them," he said, getting out.
We watched him walk into the dealership.
"You can take the man out of the boy, but you can't take the boy out of the man," she told me, shaking her head.
"He said he was buying it for me."
"Well, he is, in a way. For now, it's a good excuse to buy it for himself," she said, laughing. "I have to admit that it is beautiful."
Who could deny that? I thought. How much fun it would have been for Karen and me to be riding in this to school. What would she feel like when she saw it parked in our driveway and found out it was going to become my car someday? I decided for now I wouldn't tell her.
"It will be delivered by next weekend," my father told us when he finished with the salesman. "I'll take you to school in it," he promised me.