P E C F D

Today, I’m keeping my grandmother company. She’s older, her renewal is on the line. My parents don’t think she should be driving much anymore. She sits beside me, wearing cut-off pants, sandals, her feet swollen and caked in grass clippings.

Her car, a 1981 red Camaro sits out on the lot, a headlight duct taped to the hood. She can afford to buy a new car, “You should buy a new car,” I tell her, but she refuses. This is her lifeline, her one way of traveling between home and drug store, home and grocery store, home and bird store, home and clinic. Sometimes, at night, she drives to drive, tired of sitting in her living room, staring into a dead television, tired of hearing the ghost of my grandfather’s breathing from the master bedroom. She drives slowly, clipping mailboxes or garbage bins now and then, but thankfully avoiding serious accidents. She’ll drive as far as South Beach, walk the pier, stare out at the darkness. She’ll take all those back roads, the ones my grandfather showed her when he warmed up to the idea of her driving. But today she fails the test twice, confusing the E for a B, and later the F for a P.