The Last Chicken in America by Ellen Litman

Author:Ellen Litman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2011-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Peculiarities of the

National Driving

THIS IS OUR everyday route. Me at the wheel, my dad in the passenger seat. We start on Wendover Street—it’s where we live. I adjust the mirrors the way he tells me. To my left, the road. To my right, the curb, littered with tilted garbage cans. The sidewalk and five almost identical apartment buildings, brick with tarnished trimming. There’s one with all the crazies: at night they come out, sleepwalking and howling. Joe Berman, who lives across the street, says they give him nightmares. Joe studies for his Ph.D. in Russian. Some nights, I see him sitting outside in his Tercel, listening to the songs by Vertinsky: I am madly afraid of your shimmery shackles. Sometimes I sit with him in there and translate.

“Are we driving today?” says my dad.

“We’re driving.”

I check for the cars on the left and ease back just a little.

“Careful,” he says.

I’m careful. We are parallel-parked between a Subaru and Joe’s Tercel.

“Wheel all the way to the left. Wait. Go. Wait.” It’s taking us forever to get out. In fact, it’s taking so long that my mom, who’s been watching us, leans out from our second-floor window and asks if everything’s okay. She herself can’t drive because of her migraines and overall nervousness.

My dad waves her off: “Don’t interfere.”

We drive to the corner, turn right on Beacon, then stop again and wait for our neighbor Liberman to cross the street. He is slow. He is returning from Three Bears, a jar of herring in his string bag. He likes to ask me when Alick and I are getting married. I tell him we’re not even together anymore, it’s been years, Alick is history. But Liberman never remembers. “Can he be any slower?” mutters my dad. Liberman’s hesitating, squinting at our car. He’d like to talk to us, but he can’t see against the glare.

Left on Wightman. This is better; no pedestrians. We fall into a slow line of cars. “Don’t get too close,” says my dad. I don’t. He tells me I’m improving. He wants to turn on the radio but I tell him not to, it kills my concentration.

Straight on Wightman, cross Forbes at the light, then right on Northumberland, where I used to work for Pamela. “Shouldn’t we visit your friend?” My dad’s voice is snaky, like an insult. Of course, she’s no friend of mine. No more lackey jobs, I tell him. Next year, I’ll graduate and move to New York City to be a programmer analyst at an investment bank.

Lariska tells me I’m probably not ready. She thinks New York isn’t far enough. “If you really mean it,” she says, “you’ll move farther.” Farther where? She herself is ahead of me, graduating this spring, having transferred a year’s worth of Russian credits. She’s interviewing with the “Big Six” consulting firms, and it’s making her competitive. She says, “You’re just afraid to leave your parents.”

From Northumberland, we turn right on Beechwood. I like driving here: it’s wide and leafy and full of sweeping, leisurely loops.

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