If You Can’t Find a Broom, Try a Jaguar

In one of your novels, you wrote about an accident occurring on the same mountain curve. Have you any idea what it’s like to come across one’s own life while reading? Do you understand how glorious I felt while reading a book set in my city, on roads I drove on, among my people, how visceral my reaction? My world was being shared with the world. Do you understand why I love you so much, you fool? How can you hate yourself when I love you so?

Granted, the narrator’s mother in your novel drove a Jaguar, not a Peugeot. Mrs. Peel, anyone? The accident was not the mother’s fault. You had her drive off the road to avoid a truck that lost control. You had her fly off into the air while the saints in the shrine watched enraptured. I saw myself as her, flying away in a wonderful Jaguar. That was me.

A few years ago, I decided to make my fantasy a reality, to incarnate my dream. I knew that I was in the throes of a midlife crisis, but still, I wanted to buy a Jaguar. I may no longer have been able to fit comfortably in a slinky catsuit, but I certainly could in my fancy car. Francine said she would support me as long as we took some time to think about it. No need to speed through a decision.

You know how she does things. Ever so gently, she caressed the doubts of my desire and nurtured them into bloom. Did I really want such a car in the city? It could go from zero to sixty in about four seconds, which would be great for getting onto Lake Shore Drive unless it was gridlocked. In other words, the Jag might be fun to drive between two and three in the morning. Was the attention a sports car garnered what I wanted? Was it the right image? Did I really want to be envied by every teenage boy watching my dream car idling in traffic?

I didn’t buy a Jaguar. She and I haggled over what kind of car I should get, and I won. She tried to make me get a Volvo V60 station wagon, but I would have none of it. I ended up with a Volvo S60 sedan.