Guilt Trips and Cadillacs

My grandmother was driving an ancient Cadillac in the Waldbaum’s shopping center today. This wouldn’t be considered monumental if not for the fact that she’s been dead for fifteen years.

I might not have noticed, had she not begun to pull out of her space except that my car was behind hers when she began her maneuver. Naturally, I honked my horn, but she ignored both the sound and sight of my car behind hers. She would have succeeded in t-boning my car had I not hit the gas. After parking my car, I noticed the Caddy was still working hard at unparking. The car backed up over a curb, nearly scoring a strike by knocking over a mother and her stroller.

I had to see the driver so I could imprint the face onto my brain cells and avoid any future confrontation. Okay, let’s be honest, I was reasonably sure an old person was driving and I wanted confirmation.

The face that quickly glanced in my direction as she attempted to avoid oncoming traffic belonged to my long dead grandmother The ditzy, mindless, self-absorbed granny who I knew best through too many guilt trips.

I recognized the mottled, deeply tan skin that hung loosely from her face, the rooster comb of wattle around her neck, and the stark, purple pink lipstick that mocked her mouth. What struck me as odd was the fact that she was driving at all. Granny never bothered to get a driver’s license, preferring to be chauffeured by whomever she could corral into offering.

My brothers and I used to refer to those excursions as guilt trips. It was the penance we were forced to pay for passing our driving tests. Sure you can have a car, as long as you take Granny wherever she needs to go. The dread I felt in those days was deep. I had waited until my final semester of high school before signing up for driver’s ed, trying to minimize the lifespan of my guilt trip obligations. I figured shlepping her for two active summer months before starting school couldn’t be overwhelmingly horrible. Boy was I wrong.

That July and August was my own personal hell. My brothers bailed. They had all taken their turns at the wheel, so they made sure they were out of sight and out of mind. As a result, my wheels would on perpetual call for the old harpy with the cigarette habit and the rampant hypochondria that required near daily doctor visits to keep in check.

It seemed like Granny was incapable of making an appointment for first thing in the morning or the end of the day. No, Granny liked mid day appointments; that enabled her to ruin both my morning and afternoon on the perfect beach days that were strewn together that summer. It was as if the gods had conspired to make my life perfectly awful.

The doctor visits were the worst. She’d chain smoke on the drive over, trying to calm her nerves, with her window cracked a mere inch. “Too much fresh air is unhealthy,” she would proclaim, coughing up ping pong ball lougeys and spitting them into the handkerchief she stashed an inch or two up her right hand sleeve. I would push the green trees closer to where she sat, but after one trip with Granny, they smelled like Kent cigarette butts instead of fake pine.

By the time we reached the doctor’s, I would have a contact buzz from the nicotine that stained the windshield of my 1979 Nova a lovely shade of amber. She’d have a cigarette in the hallway before entering the office, and then she’d sit, coughing and hacking until finally the nurses took pity on me and whisked her into the examination rooms.

During the time she was gone, I would scout the other old folks, wondering if I would be able to pull off a swap without anyone notice. No such luck. She would eventually come shuffling out the middle door, complaining about anything and everything as she reached for her cigarettes. The fastest I ever saw her move was invariably in the minutes following her visits, as she raced for the chance to suck great clouds of grey smoke deep into her lungs.

Ironically, it wasn’t the smoke that killed her. No, that would have been too easy. But it was the cigarettes. A year or two after the summer of my personal hell, Granny had raced to the parking lot following one of her forays to the podiatrist. She loved that they would cut her toenails for her – sometimes she brought nail polish with her and would try and convince the foot doc to paint her toesies a shade of pink and purple that matched her lipstick. Anyway, she was in such a hurry that she neglected to look before entering the roadway and a tractor trailer hauling cartons of cigarettes flattened her in an instant. My oldest brother had been stuck driving her on that guilt trip. Fred told me he couldn’t talk to the truck driver because tears of laughter were rolling down his face. In his head, he heard the words “free at last” repeating over and over.

I wonder what Granny was doing in that Caddy. I’ve been thankful for years that her guilt trips don’t extend past the grave. But every time I see someone ask for a cartoon of cigarettes, I smile just a little.

By: Lauren J. Walter July 13, 2009