20 THE SECOND ARGUMENT
The Dealer came up to me and said,
"Trade in your Fo'd,
And I'll put you in a car that'll
Eat up the road!
Just tell me what you want and
Sign that line,
I'll have it brought down to you
In an hour's time."
I'm gonna get me a car
And I'll be headed on down the road;
Then I won't have to worry about
That broken-down, ragged Ford.
— Chuck Berry
Arnie Cunningham's 1958 Plymouth became street-legal on the afternoon of
November 1, 1978. He finished the process, which had really begun the night
he and Dennis Guilder had changed that first flat tire, by paying an excise tax
fee of $8.50, a municipal road tax of $2.00 (which also enabled him to park
free at the meters in the downtown area), and a license-plate fee of $15.00.
He was issued Pennsylvania plate HY-6241-J at the Motor Vehicle Bureau in
Monroeville.
He drove back from the MVB in a car Will Darnell had loaned him and
rolled out of Darnell's Do-It-Yourself Garage behind the wheel of Christine.
He drove her home.
His father and mother arrived together from Horlicks University an hour or
so later. The fight started almost at once.
"Did you see it?" Arnie asked, speaking to them both but perhaps a little
more to his father. "I registered it just afternoon."
He was proud; he had reason to be. Christine had just been washed and
waxed, and she gleamed in the late afternoon autumn sunlight. There was still
a lot of rust on her, but she looked a thousand times better than she had on the
day Arnie bought her. The rocker panels, like the bonnet and the back seat,
were brand new. The interior was spick and span and neat as a pin. The glass
and the chrome gleamed.
"Yes, I—" Michael began.
"Of course we saw it," Regina snapped. She was making a drink, spinning a
swizzle-stick in a Waterford glass in furious counter-clockwise circles. "We
almost ran into it. I don't want it parked here. The place looks like a used-car
lot."
"Mom!" Arnie said, stunned and hurt. He looked to Michael, but Michael had
left to make a drink of his own perhaps he had decided he was going to need
it.
"Well it does," Regina Cunningham said, Her face was a trifle paler than
usual; the rouge on her cheeks stood out almost like clown-color. She
knocked back half of her gin and tonic at a swallow, grimacing the way
people grimace at the taste of bad medicine. "Take it back where you had it. I
don't want it here and I won't have it here, Arnie. That's final."
"Take it back?" Arnie said, now angry as well as hurt. "That's great, isn't it?
It's costing me twenty bucks a week there!"
"It's costing you a lot more than that," Regina said. She drained her drink and
set the glass down. She turned to look at him. "I took a took at your bankbook
the other day—"
"You did
what?
" Arnie's eyes widened.
She flushed a little but did not drop her eyes. Michael came back and stood
in the doorway, looking unhappily from his wife to his son.
"I wanted to know how much you'd been spending on that damned car," she
said. "Is that so unnatural? You have to go to college next year, So far as I
know they're not giving away many free college educations in Pennsylvania."
"So you just went into my room and hunted around until you found my
bankbook?" Arnie said. His gray eyes were hard with anger, "Maybe you
were hunting for pot, too. Or girlie books. Or maybe come-stains on the
sheets."
Regina's mouth dropped open. She had perhaps expected hurt and anger from
him, but not this utter, no-holds-barred fury.
"Arnie!" Michael roared.
"Well, why not?" Arnie shouted back. "I thought that was
my
business! God
knows you spent enough time telling me how it was my responsibility, the
both of you!"
Regina said, "I'm very disappointed that you feel that way, Arnold.
Disappointed and hurt. You're behaving like—"
"Don't tell me how I'm behaving! How do you think I feel? I work my ass off
getting the car street-legal—over two and a half months I worked on it—and
when I bring it home, the first thing you say is get it out of the driveway. How
am I supposed to feel? Happy?"
"There's no reason to take that tone to your mother," Michael said. In spite of
the words, the tone was one of awkward conciliation. "Or to use that sort of
language." Regina held her glass out to her husband. "Make me another drink.
There's a fresh bottle of gin in the pantry."
"Dad, stay here," Arnie said. "Please, Let's get this over."
Michael Cunningham looked at his wife; his son; at his wife again. He saw
flint in both places. He retreated to the kitchen clutching his wife's glass.
Regina turned grimly back to her son. The wedge had been in the door since
late last summer; she had perhaps recognized this as her last chance to kick it
back out again.
"This July you had almost four thousand dollars in the bank," she said.
"About three-quarters of all the money you've made since ninth grade, plus
interest—"
"Oh, you've really been keeping track, haven't you?" Arnie said. He sat down
suddenly, gazing at his mother. His tone was one of disgusted surprise. "Mom
—why didn't you just take the damn money and put it in an account under
your own name?"
"Because," she said," until recently, you seemed to understand what the
money was for. In the last couple of months it's all been car-car-car and more
recently girl-girl-girl. It's as if you've gone insane on both subjects."
"Well, thanks. I can always use a nice, unprejudiced opinion on the way I'm
conducting my life."
"This July you had almost four thousand dollars. For your
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
