Midnight Traffic

I didn't feel safe with my parents, but they engrossed me. My father with his fast cars, always something small and brightly colored parked in the driveway, my mother spending too much money on slim skirts and fancy shoes my father worried weren't for him. I watched them like they were a TV program.

During our days in Rome, my father left the apartment to write music for Italian movies that were too racy for Bay and me to watch. When things were going well, he'd be waiting for us when we got home from school, pacing the front sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, brimming with some great idea.

"Gelato!" he'd say. "Go upstairs and get your mother. Bring scarves."

My mother would at first tell us she couldn't go and my father would have to come upstairs and talk her into it. I think she liked to be cajoled, because she'd soon give in and help me and my sister cover our hair in kerchiefs, and then swaddle a silk Pucci scarf around her head and knot it under her chin like Audrey Hepburn did.

We'd go for a spin around the seven hills of Rome. "The pines of the Appian Way!" my father would say, pointing at the skinny trees. "Respighi," he'd say to my mother. "I know," she'd answer, because she did know.

He'd zip us around tight turns in #27, the curvy white Lancia convertible, to get us to an overlook at the top of one hill, too fast for me, and not fast enough for Bay who liked to hang her arm over the side. "Careful," my mother cautioned, which made my father go faster. "Fine cars deserve to be driven," he'd say. "I know that," she'd say. She liked to get the last word. I hated the outside edge on the trip up and second-guessed my fear on the way down. My father knew what he was doing. "Goddammit, quit braking for me," he'd say to my mother, who must have been mashing her foot into the floorboard.

Bay would sit closer to me. "I have to pee."

"Hold it," I'd whisper, and give her a poke in her bladder.

We'd get our ice cream and drive home for dinner, our appetites spoiled.

I was used to hearing them snipe at each other. They had long talks late at night when the house was dark, and I sat at the top of the stairs. I could hear the ice in their drinks, the scrape of chair legs, my mother walking through rooms to get away from him, her high heels clicking on the polished oak floors, muted by the hall carpet, clicking on the kitchen linoleum, and then his heavy footsteps following, begging her back to us.

(From "Speeding In The Driveway")