The cemetery’s grass was freshly cut; not a blade raised its head over Annie’s or Dad’s flat, simple grave markers. That impressed me—the management had no notice that I was coming. After the Grand Prix had ended, and we’d put the Lifemobile back on Kenny’s trailer for the ride home, the summer solstice sun was still high. We hadn’t won the race, of course, but we’d finished a very respectable 14th, still running strong as the checkered flag waved. The Almightiest Judge of the Grand Prix du Garbage was so ecstatic that he shook up a bottle of beer, sprayed it all over Kenny, and then came out of the closet, publicly proclaiming himself a Corvair-loving, Corvair-owning Friend of Ed. During the revelry, my thoughts had turned to Annie and Dad; they would have rejoiced in Benjy’s triumphant day. The cemetery wasn’t far from the racetrack and it was on the way to Lydia’s father’s house. So here I was.
The first time I’d come here, I had buried Dad while still fuming about the sharp salesman that had him buy these family plots when he wasn’t thinking clearly. The next—and last—time I had visited, I buried Annie. So I never had fond feelings for the place. But now, as the sun set over the Appalachian Mountains, with the grass pristine and the manager patiently waiting for me at the gate, albeit after I’d slipped him $20, I found the place growing on me. Maybe, when Dad bought these plots, he knew exactly what he was doing.
In the parking area below the graves, Benjy paced in a circle, furiously reciting, flapping his hand, still flying high from the exhilaration of his first race. I’d tried to persuade him to come with me up the hill to the graves. “No, thanks,” he insisted. A few months earlier, I might have insisted right back, loudly, that he join me, that it was his duty as a son and grandson. A shouting match might have erupted. But now I accepted his decision. Of course, having Lydia glare at me, silently telling me to let Benjy make up his own mind, was also persuasive.
From atop the hill, I watched them; as Benjy paced, Lydia leaned against our Corvair and chatted with him, her eyes following him back and forth as if she were watching a tennis match. We’d butted heads a lot today, but Benjy was crazy about her, and she had been so wonderfully supportive of him. We both wished she wasn’t moving away.
Although what happened next made me wonder if she was too supportive of him.
“Still wired from the race?” I asked Benjy when I returned to the car.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I can’t wait to do it again.” He stopped pacing. Then he said, “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Mom and Granddad aren’t alive anymore. So when you were up there, you were only talking to yourself. They can’t hear you. You always tell me not to talk to myself.”
“You’re right,” I confessed. “But, standing there at their graves, I thought, what the heck, if they can hear me and I don’t talk out loud, what a waste of time it was coming here. Or maybe I was just talking to myself. I don’t know.”
“Dead people can’t hear, Dad,” he pressed. “So I don’t see why we had to come here. You can talk to yourself at home. We didn’t have to come to a cemetery. I don’t like cemeteries. They’re just full of decomposing dead bodies.”
I eyed Lydia. “Is this what you were discussing while I was up there?”
She shrugged innocently. “Among other things.”
“Yes,” Benjy confirmed, resuming his pacing. “Since you were up there talking to yourself for so long.”
“Well, here’s what I took so long to say up there, in case you’re interested. I told them that the Almighty Judges of the Grand Prix du Garbage unanimously chose you as their Rookie of the Year and gave you that big trophy in the back of the car. And I told them that you passed your driver’s test in our Corvair. Your Grandpa would jump out of the grave and do back flips if he heard that. And I told Mom that you made two friends, Kenny and Lydia. She would love hearing that. And I told them that, after working unbelievably hard to pass your math assessment, you’re going to college, and that someday in the future I have no doubt you will live independently, just like you’ve always wanted. And I told them how incredibly proud I am of you and all you’ve accomplished, and all you will accomplish tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. And that I wish they were here to see it all, to experience the same love and joy and pride that I’m feeling right now.”
“But they aren’t there in the dirt,” Benjy insisted. “So you could have told them at home.” He was not what you might call “sentimental.”
“Benjy,” Lydia chided, “you’re missing the point. Your dad was complimenting you. It was nice. And appropriate. Give it a rest.”
“It still seems like a double standard,” Benjy complained. “You shouldn’t talk to yourself, Dad. That’s the rule for everyone.”
“I won’t anymore,” I pledged. “One rule for everyone.”
“So now tell him what you told me,” Lydia urged Benjy.
He firmly shook his head no.
“What?” I prodded.
Benjy hesitated. “Mom should have gotten a flu shot,” he said finally. “They were only twenty dollars at the pharmacy. I saw other moms get them.”
“I wish she had, too,” I said. “I really, really wish she had. Because I miss her so much.”
Suddenly turning purple, Benjy erupted into tears. I reached to embrace him, but he refused, wriggling away from my touch. “It’s okay to cry,” I told him. “I’m crying, too.”
Soon, Benjy announced, “I’m okay. I’m fine.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
“We’ve been talking about a lot of stuff,” Lydia said. “As you can see.”
I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and looked to Benjy. “Is there more you want to say?”
He shook his head no.
“Say it,” Lydia encouraged him.
“What?” I asked. “She’s right. You can tell me.”
Benjy’s chin dropped to his chest. Finally, he said, “Grandpa wanted me to go to Dartmouth College, and I didn’t. I failed to go there.”
I was relieved this was about something so relatively minor. I smiled. “Benjy, that was a long time ago. Please don’t worry about it. That’s when he wasn’t thinking clearly. It became obvious that was not the best place for you, and Grandpa would have agreed with that, I’m certain. He did for me. The important thing is Grandpa wanted you to go to college, and you’re going to college. So he’d be very proud.”
Then I saw Lydia gesture to Benjy to keep talking. I realized there was more, and it was serious.
“I don’t want to go to college, Dad,” he said.
After a moment, I managed to say, “Oh.”
“I mean, I want to go to college, but—” His voice trailed off. He looked to Lydia, and she made a gesture, encouraging him to plunge ahead. Benjy fixed his eyes on mine. “I only want to take the courses I want, not the ones they want. I want to study English and history and political science and psychology. And car repair. So I can fix Corvairs like Kenny.”
“That’s—wow—that’s a big change from your plan,” I said. I eyed Lydia, wondering what she might have had to do with this; she shrugged as if to say she was blameless. “Benjy, you won’t get your college diploma that way,” I said. “There are certain courses you need to take, even if you don’t like them. That’s just the way the system works.”
“But that doesn’t make sense to me.”
“I know,” I confessed. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. But that’s the way it is.”
“I want to learn about what I’m interested in while I work on Corvairs with Kenny. That’s what I want to do now—work on Corvairs with Kenny.”
“Do you mean work on Corvairs with Kenny as a job? A career?” I sighed a very loud sigh.
Benjy nodded eagerly, despite my clear social cue of disappointment.
I again turned to Lydia to see if she’d instigated this. She raised her hands innocently. “Don’t look at me. It’s what he told me while you were up there. It’s what he wants.”
“Wow, Benjy, this is a lot,” I sputtered. “This needs to be thought through very carefully. Ver-ry carefully. We’ve had a lot of excitement today. Let’s take a day or two to digest all this.”
Benjy didn’t want to wait a day or two. “I want to go to college and study what I want, and work on Corvairs with Kenny, and earn money when we sell them,” he said softly. “He says we can be partners, and it’ll be a good business. Lydia said she’ll buy a Corvair from us, and two other people at the race want one, so we’ve made three sales already.”
I turned to Lydia again. “When I earn enough to buy a car,” she said, pushing a purple lock out of her eyes, “it’ll be one of Benjy’s Corvairs. Because I know it’ll be a good car.”
“Yes,” said Benjy, emphatically.
“I think this all sounds cool,” said Lydia. “Really, really cool.”
I didn’t think it sounded cool. I liked Lydia a lot, but I was very happy to see her father pull into the parking area to take her away. Parking several spots away, he waved dourly to us; he didn’t seem overjoyed to be there. “Pop the trunk,” Lydia called to him as she retrieved her garbage bag of belongings from our Corvair. She hurled the bag in the open trunk, slammed the lid shut, then returned to us.
“So. Long day, huh?” she said to Benjy.
“All days are 24 hours long,” Benjy replied.
Lydia grinned and tried to pull Benjy into an embrace. Benjy held his arms by his side and stiffened. “It’s okay to hug, isn’t it?” she asked. “You can put your arms around me, can’t you?” She slowly raised first his left arm and then his right. “You’re practically an adult now, so you can do this,” she instructed. “And then you bring your hands against my back and squeeze a little. Not too hard. Just enough. And I do the same to you.”
He let his fingers extend slowly to touch the back of her shirt, then gently squeezed.
“Perfect,” she said quietly as she relaxed for a moment in his arms. “Even though I don’t know you that well, Benjy, you’re like the only person in the world I trust. And even though I’m going away, I want to stay in touch with you, okay? I want to hear how you’re doing, and tell you how I’m doing. And I want to see you when I come back to see my mom. Will you promise to stay in touch with me?”
“Okay,” Benjy agreed. “I’m going to learn how to use Facebook.”
“Then I’m going to friend you,” Lydia replied.
“Great,” Benjy said proudly. “You’ll be my first friend.”
“Well, I can’t keep the old man waiting.” Just as Lydia had raised his arms to begin their embrace, now she lowered them to end it. Then she kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, Benjy,” she said softly.
“Okay,” he said.
“When someone says that, it’s nice to say ‘I love you’ back. If you mean it.”
Benjy nodded. He understood. Finally, he said, “I love you.”
Pleased, Lydia turned to me. “Don’t take it so hard, Mister B,” she said as she walked backwards to her father’s car. “It’ll all work out somehow.”
“Goodbye, Lydia,” I said, hoping she was right.
She got into the passenger seat of her father’s car, and they were quickly gone.
“She’s quite a girl,” I told Benjy. “I can see why you like her.”
His chin was on his chest.
“She’ll be back to see us,” I said. “You’ll be friends a long time.”
“Dad?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I want to live at Kenny’s house,” he said.
I sighed loudly again, and looked away to the sunset over the mountains.
“Upstairs—the upstairs of Kenny’s house,” he emphasized.
“I heard you, Benjy, it’s just a lot to process at once. You’re making my head spin.” I sighed and walked in a circle to digest this. “But what about those dogs?” I said finally. “You don’t like those dogs. Benjy, you—I mean—living with Kenny. I mean, he’s Kenny. Right?” I couldn’t even form a sentence.
“I think I’m okay with the dogs now that they know me. And Kenny’s my friend, even if you don’t like him. We would be like a team. I can help him do things he can’t do. And he can help me do things I can’t do. We’ll rebuild Corvairs, and I can be an advocate for them, and be an advocate for people who are different. Like I planned. So it’s really not changing what I want to do.”
“It’s not?” I thought it was changing a lot of very important things.
“No.”
“You really want to live with Kenny?”
“Yes.”
I eyed him. “You have thought about this, haven’t you?”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it,” he confessed. “And you don’t like it. I can tell. You think I can’t do it, or shouldn’t do it.”
He had read me perfectly.
“Lydia said I should tell you. She thinks it’s a good plan.”
I recalled again what Annie had told me so long ago. I would not change Benjy. He would change me.
I fished in my pocket, pulled out the keys to our Corvair, and placed them in his palm. “You’ll need a car while you’re living at Kenny’s,” I told him.
He eyed the keys, then me. “You won’t have a Corvair, Dad,” he said. “The Camry is not as good as the Corvair.”
“I will have a Corvair. Because, if you do this, you have to promise me that I can have the first Corvair you restore. Is that a deal?”
He closed his fingers over the keys. “Deal,” he agreed. “But you have to pay for it.”
“I will pay for it,” I assured him.
He beamed.
“You sold a lot of Corvairs today,” I told him. “You’re good at this.”
He grinned brightly—brighter than he’d grinned in a long time.
I reached over and tousled his hair, and he didn’t resist. “Do you remember when you opened the envelope from Wheeler?” I asked him. “Do you remember what you said?”
He nodded. Of course, he remembered.
But I still reminded him. “You said there was no place in this world for you. But you were wrong. There is a place. You’re making it.”
He nodded, then suddenly yanked me into a bear hug and squeezed, knocking half the wind out of me. I didn’t care. Bless you, Lydia, for teaching him to hug.
The Corvair fired up on Benjy’s first turn of the key. When we reached the cemetery gate, I thanked the manager for staying open. “Not a problem,” he said. “I’ve been admiring your car. My grandparents had one. But haven’t you heard? It’s unsafe at any speed!” Then he winked.
Benjy understood the social cue. From deep in his gut, rolling up the back of his throat, then erupting out his wide open mouth, came a volcanic roar. “HA, HA, HA, HA!” he laughed, his body heaving. “HA, HA, HA, HA!” he rejoiced, proudly and defiantly different, rocking behind the wheel of his beloved Corvair.