Black Mercedes (a short story)

The concept for this one came to me back around Christmas time. But the choice to use the cars as a framing device only turned up after I'd fleshed out the first draft.

I

“Oh look! Green Suzuki is back for day two!”

I took my eyes away from the crossing warden—windmilling her arms to the delight of a waiting cluster of kids—and followed Bess’s pointing finger. The indicator’s fluorescent arrow flashed on my dashboard, but its sound thumped away inside my temple: click, click, click. Gosh, I hope the line outside Arabica Roast isn’t too long this morning.

 The Suzuki drew a scoff out of me though. Beaten up bumper, hatchback, back window coated in dust, and worst of all, parallel parked all the way in! Maybe a confidence flex in Green Suzuki’s world, but a rookie-move out here at morning drop off. Anyone banking on a late-to-work mum letting them merge “like a zip” had better hope they’ve got co-workers who can cover for them!    

Those mama bears have found a way to play the standard Rav 4 horn like Coltrane’s sax. Their ability to squeeze five extra decibels of tension out of that steering wheel is something to truly marvel at.

Perhaps if he’d lucked upon Yellow Toyota Golf pulling up alongside him, Green Suzuki might have had a look in. Every third day or so, Yellow Toyota Golf holds up the entire queue to offer the poor crossing warden some “helpful” word of advice. Unfortunately, our hatchback friend drew Teal Mitsubishi this morning. No chance, buddy.

I shook my head with a smile. “What’s your guess? Lost his job, or wifey is putting the foot down?”

“I think he’s just a modern guy.” Bess shrugged. “Y’know, bucking standard gender roles and what not—”

She stopped herself as Green Suzuki poked his neck-bearded mug out the window to deliver a string of expletives at Teal Mitsubishi. Bess exploded into laughter. My head instinctively snapped between the headrests. “Cover your ears.” I raised finger to George. “Both of you,” I added, switching my eyes to Claire, who obliged—bringing her miniature fingers up to either side of her pink beanie, yet stared through her wispy eyebrows at me with a wicked grin.

I waited till Green Suzuki had wound up his window before softening my gaze. “Ok, guys, we’re gonna have to leave you in a moment. Can you each tell me one thing you’re excited to learn about today?”

“Santa wish list!” exclaimed George, his brown eyes popping halfway out of this head. My heart warmed as I took in his beaming pink face, shaking with excitement. Oh, to go back to those days!

A high-pitched scoff rang out from the other seat. I took a cartoonish double take as Claire’s six-year-old’s mouth, scowled back at me—lower lip thrust outward; arms folded. I glanced at Bess, who dropped her gaze and corrected the angle of her Virgin Air nametag, as though she hadn’t noticed the sound. I ignored a toot from behind and turned back to Claire.

“Excuse me sweetie. But what was that little noise about? You’re not excited about Christmas?”

“Santa’s not real!” she answered with the cold delivery of one of the “lifers” I work with down at the TSA.

I almost hit my head on the rear-view mirror as I pulled back. Thankfully Bess jumped in for me. “Claire! Where did you get that from? Just last weekend you were telling me how much you were looking forward to leaving milk and cookie’s out by the fireplace.”

My eyes strayed to George, who stared deep into the back of Bess’s seat with a strain I’d never witnessed in him before, his smooth pale forehead burdened with existential horror. This evolved into a scowl that mirrored Claire’s as the girl drew one miniature sneaker onto her safety seat and slung a forearm across the window’s edge. She shook her head, staring out at the backed-up cars. “Kelly Groll told me all about it.” She drew her doll-like eyes on me. “It’s you who wraps the presents…” I felt like a suspect in the court docks as Claire’s six-year-old nose retracted in scathing accusation. “And you don’t even make the toys. You just go out and buy them!”

George looked as though he’d just been lit up with a dose of Adderall as he straightened in his seat—eyes pinned, appealing to me for an answer. You’d better come clean now lady! He seemed to be saying.

I turned to Bess and found her hands cupped to her temples; head retracted into her neck—her default prey animal state. A second extended toot attacked us from behind. I fought through the wall of sound and asked Bess, “Who does Kelly Gross belong to?” I asked.

Bess stared at me. Not blankly, but rather in defiance.

“Bess….” I said as toots of three different pitch erupted from behind.

Bess’s nostrils flared. She muttered, “Black Mercedes.”

II

I drew my nightdress in close as a draft crept in from the hallway. Turning away from the door, I let the phone line snake around my thigh and hip as I bent down to twist the dial on the oven.

“—no. She left work early today. I drove home by myself,” I said.  

Warming one hand in the orange glow, I shook my head as I listened. Any guilt I might have felt over what this would do to our power bill diminished by the time he hit the end of his sentence.

“Hey, that’s not fair, Terence! This is a dilemma involving our son. Of course, you’re the first person I wanted to share this with.”

 I rolled my eyes and cranked the dial up to 220 degrees. Teeth clenched.  

“—anyway, you clearly won’t be back by the time I next see her. So, how should I do it? Just confront her?”

His voice lifting to the high, whiney tone I hate. But I bit my tongue. Over the years I’ve learned this is “his way” of meeting me in the middle. I nodded and listened.   

“Well, she works at this high-level firm down in the city—Laurette and Gowen, I think.” I swallowed, letting my voice soften. “To be perfectly honest, she intimidates the heck out of me. What if she uses her lawyer-speak on me when I confront her?” 

Some glitch in the phoneline fed back a series of humming sounds I didn’t even realise I’d been making as Terrence spoke. I cringed.

“Yea but you know what her type is like—”

My face fell.

“No, I mean lawyers. That type! She’s white. Too white. Looks like the product of some thirty’s era breeding program.” My heart thumped away as I glanced towards the stairs, at the top of which, George was—hopefully—sleeping. I mimed thumping the headset against my head, grabbing a fistful of hair with the other and drew the phone back to my mouth. “What I really mean is—these high achiever types are all fact, fact, fact. Get into a good school, chase success from dawn till dusk. You should see the car she drives. I bet she’s part of some atheist thinktank that prays to science like a deity. This is how you get ahead as a single mother etc, etc.” I gulped in a large breath. “How am I going to sell the magic of Christmas to someone like that? She’s probably gonna look me up and down once, and say something like, “Now this is why you work at an airport.” How do I respond to that?”

The phone didn’t feed back this time, but now that I’d heard it once, I caught my humming the moment it came out. God, do other people find my voice as annoying as I do? I nodded along to Terrence’s words, pulling my hand away from the oven as my fingernails began to feel a little melty.

“Hey don’t swear in front of me, even if you’re joking.” I heard myself say the words but had little energy for them. I sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Logic is logic. If nothing else, she’s surely got to be able to see the unfairness in ruining another child’s fairy-tale.”

I nodded some more and twisted the oven back to zero, feeling a renewed wave of guilt in the process. “Great, so you’re gonna be home by five tomorrow? Tell your dad, if he holds you at work for a moment longer than need be, I’ll be retracting my offer to cook for Cheryl!”

My cheeks warmed up as a smile spread across my face. I laughed. “Of course, I’m joking! What time should I expect her to wander over?...” I nodded. “Ok, I’ve taken the day off, so let her know she’s welcome to turn up early and help with the casserole if she likes. Love you!”

III  

Black Mercedes’ real name is Beatrice. She introduced herself to me as B. I felt clumsy repeating that—like a school teacher stumbling over the lingo of her pupils.

B invited me over to her house. This took me right off-guard. My choice to fast-track our talk to first thing in the morning was in-part driven by the hope that she’d be forced to shoot off to work before our discussion had an opportunity to escalate. For what felt like the length of an inflight safety announcement, I entertained the thought of telling her I didn’t have the time. But couldn’t for the life of me produce a plausible explanation for why Bess had driven off without me this morning. Turns out B also had the day off. Those exist for lawyers? Turns out, she lived just a few blocks from George and Kelly’s school as well—two blocks in the other direction.  

Of course, she hadn’t forced her little Kelly to walk.

 The inside of the black Mercedes, smelt like a museum lobby. I thought the leather seats would be cold against my skin, but they had some sort of heater inside them.

The gate we stepped through was fancier than my whole house, her outside stoop would have made the staircase up to George’s room pull our tired carpet up to its neck in shame.

After she’d begun preparing a cup of tea—but before she’d handed the saucer to me—I launched into my heavily rehearsed pitch.

“Now, I appreciate how silly that old Santa tradition is,” I said—voice appropriately distanced, eyes appropriately rolling. “I personally think it’s just a ploy by the retail industry to boost their year end sales targets.”   

Just like when dealing with a customer whose lost bag is entirely her own fault—you let them feel like you’re on their side. Lawyer or not. You and I—we—both get it. It’s the rest of the world that’s crazy.

I made a face for emphasis. “No sane person has time for talk of magic and elves” I said. “….and let’s not even get into flying reindeer!” I suddenly found it impossible to meet her gaze as her scrutinizing eyes studied me. “…but the kids…you know, they absolutely love that stuff. It’s such a special time for them.” I spoke every word to B’s ivory floor tiles. 

“Oh, I believe in magic,” said B with all the conviction of a woman under oath.

I chased her gaze. Blank. Stoic. Rational.

She softened at the look on my face and opened her arms in a relaxed manner. “Magic has earned me everything you see here. This house. My beautiful daughter, my husband Jerry.”

Noted: not a single mother.

She continued, looking around at her surroundings with a thoughtful, though by no means blunted glint in her eye. “Without magic, I’d probably be working at a Wild Bean Café right now.” She thought for a moment. “If not, overdosed in some gutter.”

The adjustment I made in the presence of those few words was akin to how I feel after catching up for coffee with one of the pilots at work, then retiring to the break room and having to kick one of the entry levels out of the fridge. Only this was all contained within the same person!

“Ok….and who taught you how to practice this…magic.” I did my best to keep the condescension at bay. I studied B’s living room for any of the usual signs. Himalayan salt lamp? Bead curtains? The scent of liniment oil? Nope, not even a stray copy of I am the Walrus to be seen. I consulted her face for further hints. I supposed there was something a bit wild about her hair—braided a touch on the unruly side for a professional of her calibre.

She must have sensed the shift in me, because she tilted her head the way George does whenever I give him an instruction he deems to be “beneath” his five years and nine months on the planet.

“I’m not talking elves and witchcraft here.” She glanced away and crunched up her nose.

A ding of defensiveness poked me in the ribs—you’re the one who said you believed in magic, you cow!

B continued. “Real magic is the voice that told me to keep going to school when the only adult I had in my life was a mother who never left the couch, let alone the trailer. Surviving exclusively on dole payments and weed. Real magic is in the opportunities that came to a little girl who had no business escaping her life as the excrement burnt onto the bottom of a cheap oven tray.”

“So, you’re talking about inspiration,” I offered, my stomach churning at the sight of her watering eyes. I sensed this version of B was going to be as much of a challenge as the clinically rational model I’d come here expecting.

She shook her head. “No, don’t get this confused. I am describing an otherworldly force here.”

I sank back in my seat again. She waved both hands above her head before I could get my train of thought back on its tracks. “Forget trying to understand it. People like you are unlikely to ever access that type of magic…shit, people like you don’t need to.”

I opened my mouth to request she didn’t swear in front of me, but something about the way she clutched both hands to her lapels stopped me. Lapels attached to a power suit she wore even on her day off. She pressed her cupcake-icing lips together and spoke to me like I was her daughter Kelly, “All you need to understand is how damaging a myth like Christmas can be to people in my position. Perhaps not Kelly, but kids just like her. Her own cousins. My own brother.”

My heart thumped so hard as I sat there in B’s living room, I had to repeat to myself: we are talking about Santa Clause here. We are just talking about Santa clause.

B didn’t seem to think so. “The danger of that fairy tale is the built-in revelation,” she said—smiling now, but with hateful eyes. “The eventual discovery that it was all a lie. That you were a fool to ever believe in magic, and it’s a wonderful thing you’ve seen the light.” Her lips turned downward. She tapped her foot as she visualized some unseen enemy. “The only saving grace for a kid who’s just had his fantasy shattered is the smug feeling he gets from looking down at all the younger kids who still believe.”

The pang that had started in my ribs, exploded from my throat in word form, “So, you thought you’d let your kid spoil it for everyone?!” I thrust a finger in the woman’s face—in her own living room—and rose to my feet. “That’s not your fucking choice to make!”  

I cupped both hands over my own mouth. My god, perhaps this was magic we were dealing with—Black Mercedes magic.

B appeared wholly unaffected by my outburst. She simply pulled her mouth to one side and shook her perfectly straight, blond hair. “You were right earlier on when you said, Christmas is one big racket. But it’s not run by the retail companies.” She pointed upward. “It’s run by those with the big offices. The ones whose faces you never see, but whose names are registered to the top companies in the world.”

Already halfway to her front door, I held up a hand. “I’m gonna stop you right there, B. Thank you for the cup of tea. But all I came here to say is: I believe it’s extremely selfish to spoil the myth of Santa Clause for the other kids down at PS 24, and I wish you’d tell Kelly not to do it again.”

“I believe it’s very selfish to let kids settle into their stake in life,” answered B. “I believe it’s very selfish to squash out that last flicker of belief that might be the one thing that allows them to transcend their destiny.”

As the woman put down her saucer before me, I thought about the second-hand, red Nissan that me, Bess and Terrence went thirds in. I thought about how we’d chosen that particular model based on the likelihood that it would never break down on us. Not for a few decades anyway. I glanced around the ambition-rife living room that seemed to be closing in on me and considered the word destiny.

“You people.” Did this woman with her furniture-catalogue life really say the words “you people” as though Terrence and I come from something higher than her?

I bit my bottom lip and let air hiss between my teeth, primed for another word beginning with “F.” I raised my finger, ready to give it my everything this time. But just as I was about to burst, I remembered the bag of casserole meat I’d meant to take out of the freezer before I left the house. I slapped my own knee, before Black Mercedes’ judging eyes. The darn thing was still waiting with the frozen peas! I grabbed her polished copper doorknob, and pushed my way out of that enormous house without another word.  

Passing by her spaceship of a car—parked in front of her garage rather than in it—I began to laugh. Letting my arms swing gayly, I shifted into a skip. Suddenly looking forward to my walk home—the frosty lawns beside me, the sun on my neck. The only thing that might have topped it, would have been taking a windows-down drive in the red Nissan.