Lucky Roxanne. She’s had three weeks of R&R snugged in a container crossing the Pacific, the car equivalent of a luxury cruise, followed by two weeks in a climate-controlled Beijing warehouse. Not so me. I’ve spent the intervening weeks since her shipment in a dither of anxiety. About what? For starters, everything. Because with Roxanne out of the picture, there’s now nothing to prevent every other possible calamity from getting its fair share of my attention.
Yet even the most inveterate worrier knows she’ll eventually have to get down to business. The day has come to collect Roxanne and, if the gods are willing, get her back to our hotel unscathed. That the organizers provide buses for the 45-minute shuttle to the warehouse is an act of kindness for which I’m abjectly grateful. I’d give anything to postpone having to direct Bernard back to the hotel, an endeavor sure to prove what I’ve been saying: that I have no navigational ability whatsoever. We’re on the fourth bus to leave the hotel, which delays the inevitable for an extra hour. I’m test driving what will be my outfit for the next month: sand-colored eightpocket cargo pants, fetchingly rolled up to capri length to expose my white cotton socks. I’ve put on my favorite lavender short-sleeve shirt, which has two more pockets. Sturdy shoes are on my feet, in case walking to Ulaanbaatar becomes a reality. The overall effect is one of baggy competence. It does not boost my vanity, but does make me feel efficient.
The moment has arrived to make something good out of our year and a half nightmare. Still, I feel shaky with uncertainty as we enter the vast, nearly vacant, Quonset warehouse. What if Roxanne’s been damaged in shipment? What if she doesn’t even start? Though I am a worrier, that doesn’t mean I’ve forsaken rudimentary shrewdness. I know this is a perfect opportunity to evaluate the competition, or at least what’s left of it. By the time we reach the warehouse, 75 percent of the cars have been collected. Still, I take my time, striding across the polished concrete floor, shoe soles squeaking, marveling at the beauty of the cars around me. It’s like a museum, and the thought crosses my mind that, if only it were, I wouldn’t have to get in one of those cars and guide it half way around the world. “Oh for god sake,” I mutter to myself. “Get a grip.” Then I see her, parked between two cars of similar vintage. I’m overjoyed and overcome. My heart races so hard I suddenly wish the medical kit sitting in the trunk included an atrial defibrillator. What if, after all this drama, we can’t even drive her out of the warehouse and have to just ship her home? I’d be humiliated without even having done anything, or more precisely, humiliated because I hadn’t been able to do anything.
Bernard reconnects the battery and in the immense echoing silence of the warehouse I can hear the click as he turns the ignition. A quick pump of the accelerator and Roxanne rumbles to life. He flashes me a brief smile, then cocks his head to listen to her engine. I want to run around shrieking and dancing with delight. Instead, I stifle my relief and walk to the passenger side. I wish I could have come up with something pithy, some words befitting the magnitude of the whole scene. A couple of months ago I wouldn’t have bet my last bag of nuts and bolts that we’d be here, let alone about to drive through Beijing. Instead, I force myself to open my mouth, and out come words of utter banality. “So, I guess this is it,” I say with feigned composure. “Time to hit the road, honey.” That’s the thing about extraordinary times. Sometimes all you want to do is diminish them to the ordinary, make them mundane so you don’t have to come to grips with all the strange things that could happen next.
Roxanne rolls smoothly out the warehouse double-doors. “Make a left to the exit,” I say with aplomb. This is my first direction of the Rally, so I throw in a broad smile for good luck. It comes out with calm certainty, as if directing a nearly seventy-year-old car onto Chinese pavement is something I do every day. Nothing in my voice betrays the ecstasy I feel. I have to gulp hard to stifle a shout of, “My first direction as a navigator and I got it right!”That would have been unseemly. I knew I couldn’t be wrong because there’s a warehouse worker standing outside the door pointing left. Beside him are the rest of the Chinese warehouse crew, in ill-fitting trousers and knockoff Nikes, grinning, waving, holding cell phones in front of their faces as they snap shots of one exotic car after another. They are so pleased for us that for the first time in many months I, too, relax and enjoy the moment.
Leaving the warehouse complex, we turn down a street of crumbling pavement lined with block after block of anonymous gray warehouses and shipping facilities. The neglected saplings planted on the divider look like they’ve run a marathon, too exhausted in their struggle against polluted air to do anything but slump. Within three blocks we pass one of the truly ancient Rally cars parked by the curb. A sense of foreboding blankets me. We don’t yet know who’s associated with which car, so all I can do is feel generally sorry for driver and navigator. They’re standing next to their black four-square 1909 Model T Ford with its jaunty red-spoke wheels, faces engulfed in a cloud of steam rising from the raised hood, getting the first of what may be many a roadside spa treatment.
There’s no chitchat going on in our car. Bernard is intensely focused. Everything from the trace of a squint in his eyes to the impassive expression on his face and the way he rolls his shoulders every few minutes tells me he’s analyzing each burble and bang that Roxanne emits. At times like this, it’s as if his hands are wire sensors, sensitive enough to detect everything about Roxanne’s handling and transmit it from the steering wheel to his brain. His ears are data collection devices, able to discern an errant engine sound the way I, a classically trained pianist, can detect when a performer strikes one wrong note in a Beethoven sonata. I interrupt only to announce an upcoming turn.
The directions provided by the organizers note a gas station nearby, where we pull in behind three other Rally cars. Like all the other cars, Roxanne’s gas tanks are pretty much dry, emptied before she was strapped into her private Sealand container for shipment across the Pacific. While attendants fill the fuel tank, drivers and navigators bustle, exuding purposefulness, checking engines, tugging straps that secure petrol cans to running boards. “Learn as you go,” I tell myself, and begin extracting all manner of things from my shoulder bag, snapping giant red and yellow plastic clips onto the sunscreen to hold future toll slips and small currency, stashing extra pens in the door pocket, arranging maps in the glove compartment. Meanwhile, the gas station attendants are having a field day. They haven’t sold this much fuel in ages, and none of them are lounging. Given the cars they’re pouring that fuel into, they vie with each other for the honor of operating the pump. Service has never been so good.
One crew pulls out a thick stack of postcards and starts passing them out to the crowd of Chinese workers who seem to have materialized out of nowhere, as there are no shops or businesses apparent on this road. Arms stretch, eager hands grasp a card, turn it over and over. People point, and laugh. Some hand the card back for an autograph. Peering over someone’s shoulder I see the crew has created a black and white image of their vintage car.
“Damn it, that’s brilliant,” I think, wishing I’d come up with the idea. They’ve printed easily a thousand cards, enough to hand out to everyone forever, delighting all ages. I, too, have gifts to give, little stuffed animals, bright plastic solar-charged calculators, and bulk pens, which I thought kids would enjoy. I felt clever when I bought them. Now I feel embarrassed. I had no notion we’d be mobbed. If the sheer number of people pressing around the cars at this first stop is any indication, my gift satchel will be empty within a few days. Worst of all, I didn’t think about the adults and their pleasure in receiving something from my faraway home. All my giveaways were made in China.
Back on Beijing’s ring road, each move I make smacks of huge accomplishment to me, whether it’s getting into my seat again, rolling down the window, arranging my navigator nest, making sense of the directions back to the hotel. Even I can tell it borders on absurdity to be so hugely selfconscious, so I turn my attention to the several stuck Rally cars we pass. After passing the Model T, I’ve had time to realize that, not only are we rolling along without mishap, but we have a trunkful of tools that these crews might need. I roll down the window and shout “Need help?” Then I’m instantly grateful for two things. One, that the window crank doesn’t fall off in my hand, and two, that they all say no. Because while we could have maneuvered Roxanne through the zippy Beijing traffic to pull over, we’d have wound up a mile down the road before being able to do so. As it is, cars whiz by within inches of my door, and sticking my arm out to make a space for us to pass would result in it being smashed in seconds. I’m rattled by how fast everything moves, but I have sworn not to yelp, and I don’t.
This is a major triumph. My small screeches while Bernard drives are emblematic of the biggest difference between Bernard and me, and why we are hopelessly inappropriate teammates. The Rally already is chipping away at my character, creating raw patches that wouldn’t hurt so bad if I didn’t feel they exposed the very essence of who I am. Of course we both can compromise. We are grown-ups, after all. But it’s usually about little things, things like how to set the table, or when to get rid of the breadcrumbs on the cutting board, things where I can shrug and say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll give you that one,” because it doesn’t really mean much. The bruising comes with the big stuff, like Bernard’s near-obsessive desire to get things right, which clashes with my belief that good enough is, well, good enough. I arrive at decisions in a somewhat fanciful and circuitous way, whereas his conclusions rest on a solid foundation of rational building blocks. I like to leap to conclusions. If there’s a problem, he wants to think it through. Thoroughly. My approach, of wondering about the best and worrying about the worst, gives him conniptions. His thoughtful, considered manner makes me twitchy with impatience. Probably the most dire aspect of our incompatibility is that Bernard is supremely self-confident, which is why he can thrive on uncertainty. I’m as opposite to this as lobster to lamb, which is why uncertainty makes my shoulders go stiff with tension and leads to unsightly skin breakouts. Though I always jump at the chance to try something new, I can only do so if I have a fairly good sense of what the future holds. I don’t need to know all the details of what lies ahead, just enough to soothe me.
If anything’s uncertain it’s what is going to happen in the days to come. To even sign up for the P2P, I made up stories, because agreeing to do something that was one big unknown was less than thrilling to me. There was no way I could go forward with thirty-five days of ‘what-ifs’, unless I created my own scenarios of beauty and light, camaraderie and success. All our friends know that, when it comes to control versus lack thereof, Bernard and I do not get along. They have placed bets on the number of days we can remain civil in Roxanne’s close quarters. They’re only half joking, and I can’t disagree with them. There have been times in my life when my desire to be Dina-in-charge, to change the predictable course of events, has almost overwhelmed me, especially on those repeated drives down the mountain to work. As we’d reach what I privately called “The Gauntlet of Nausea,” I wanted to demand that Bernard stop the car now. I wanted to be done with dramatic swerving and braking. I wanted to get out and locomote to our office on my own. But I never did, because a greater rationality prevailed: it would ruin my shoes. With the Rally, shoes weren’t the issue. Sheer unremitting isolation was, which gave me unhappy dreams that popped up even during the day. In them, I’d be standing outside the car, crying in frustration, fists clenched at my side. Around me was a hardpacked, gravel plain. Bernard sat in the car, grim-faced with frustration, too. He was not crying. Then he’d drive off. Our car would disappear over the horizon in a trail of dust, leaving me stumbling across the Gobi on foot. Alone.
So one day months ago, when we weren’t battling a car fiasco, I raised the matter.
“You know, Bernard,” I started out calmly, using my mild, nothing serious tone of voice. “I can’t do this Rally if I’m worried that every time I make an error you’ll snap at me, or worse, that you’ll get all huffy, grab the GPS, and tell me you’ll just do it yourself.” Bernard wiggled his eyebrows, as he does when he’s trying to project patience but can barely contain himself. “And then do that crazy eyebrow wiggling thing you do when you’re annoyed.” I heard myself getting strident, as I do when I think I’m being helpful and Bernard can’t see it.
Then I offered my bargain: “And I don’t expect you to drive 7,800 miles with me flinching and gasping every time you get closer to the car next to us than I’m comfortable with. So let’s make a deal.” The eyebrows were still.
We made a pact. Bernard vowed not to sigh with exasperation, nor to wrench the route book, map, and GPS from my hands to figure out for himself where we should go. I swore to assume that the way he was driving was, in his best judgment, the absolute right way to handle the car at that moment. And I pledged to stifle any vocal accompaniment I might ordinarily have contributed. Which is why it simply would not do to let out a startled shriek only one hour into the race.
We’re both on our best behavior on the way to the hotel. I focus on the mileage displayed on our Tripmeter and the route book directions, trying to find the buildings, overpasses, parks, railroad crossings, and exits it mentions before we’ve zoomed past them. Bernard repeats each direction I say, to confirm he’s heard it correctly. It’s a dialogue of lefts, rights, and straight aheads that we’ll repeat daily for the next five weeks, sufficient distraction that soon the cars around us fade into a blur. The route book turns out to be a practical affair, and despite my misgivings I rattle off one instruction after another without error. That we’re right behind another Rally car has no effect on my pride. Bernard can follow the car if he wants, but I know I’m giving the correct directions.
When we reach the hotel I flash my P2P badge at the guard, though it’s obvious by our car alone that we’re to park in the heavily guarded Rally lot. As he lifts the security bar I think, “We’ve won. Right here and now we’ve won. Because arriving in Paris isn’t going to feel any better than this.” Roxanne runs, we’re back at the hotel, we’re still married.
What more could I want?