No bananas

Cars are hard for me to remember. They're a lot of plastic to me and I've spent a lot of time sleeping in them. I like the feel of the wind against my face as we drive along highways. It's like a quiet airplane overhead, drifting at high speed.

The trunk of my father's 1968 Buick is the only thing I remember about it. We were constantly looking through it for toys, jackets, boxes and the spare tire. I carried things out of it to the house and then hid in my room until my aunt emerged mysteriously from out of the oven with dinner. To me, she seemed nine feet tall and she unfurled from out of the broiler with the steak she had cooked to medium rare. I couldn't even see my father's face, but I remember his hair was frizzy and his voice soft as a bubble. My aunt seemed to want something from me -- like to be neat, or something. Whatever it was, I couldn't do it.

"You're just like your mother." That's all I remember her saying to me across the Baked Ziti which I forked through softly. I didn't know what I had done and mostly I kept my focus to within the first foot around me on those rare weekends when my father picked me up for visitation rights. I didn't really want to see him. I don't know if he wanted to see me.

He died five years ago. I used one of those 10 dollar internet searches and found his phone number. He was living with my aunt in Florida. They lived together all of their lives and she hadn't had it in her to take his name off of the phone directory. She said he thought it was better for me to live with my mother. I guess it was.