“Yes, young man, I am the wife of the owner,” I said, and I stood up in the third row of the bleachers, slowly, with Hank at my elbow. “Marlene Haskins. The late Lloyd Haskins was my husband. And as you can see, I am not the late anything.” A wave of sound rolled through the auction tent, a gasp and then a murmur and then a kind of delighted clamor. The auctioneer, a rawboned man in a white Stetson, took off his hat and held it against his chest. Out on the stage, under the bright lights, the turquoise Bel Air gleamed like a jewel, every chrome edge glittering. Tammy had not moved. She stood by the staff table as if she had been bolted there.
“Mrs. Haskins,” the auctioneer said carefully, “I regret to say I was told the owners widow had passed away. I was shown a death certificate.” My heart stopped. A death certificate. I looked at my daughter across the tent, forty four years old, in a linen blazer I had bought for her at Dillards. She was shaking her head, her lips forming the word no, over and over, silently, like a child caught at a window. I said, as clearly as I could, “Sir, I would very much like to see that document. Because I have been alive for seventy one years, and I have not once received a notice from the state.”
A staff member brought it over. It was a photocopy, folded, with a state seal that looked, even from the bleachers, slightly crooked. I read it with my glasses on. The date of death was listed as the fifth of March. I had been in a hospital bed in Bartlesville with a tube in my chest on the fifth of March, being told that I would live. I handed the page to Hank, who read it, and his whole face tightened. “Marlene,” he said, low, “this is a forgery.” I said, “Yes, Hank. I know.”
A raised bidder card in the third row of an auction tent stopped a sale and gave a widow back her daughter and her car.
I walked down the bleachers on the arm of Hank. It took a long time. At the foot of the stairs, I stopped and looked at my daughter. She was crying. She was crying in the open, in front of two hundred strangers, her mascara running in black rivers, her whole body shaking. “Mama,” she said, in the voice of the little girl who used to ride on the running board of that car. “Mama, please, I can explain.” I said, “Then explain, Tammy. Right here. I think it is time.”
She did. She told it in a rush, with her hands wringing her blazer. She owed twenty two thousand dollars on credit cards. She had borrowed against her house. She had taken a second mortgage and not told her husband. She had been hiding it for a year, and when I went into the hospital, and the doctors said my heart was failing, something in her had broken. She thought, if Mama dies, the car is mine, and I can sell it and fix everything. “I did not think you would live,” she sobbed. “I am so sorry. I did not think you would live, and then you did, and I could not stop.” The crowd was silent now, riveted.
I put my hand on her cheek. It was wet and hot. “Tammy, do you know what your father said to me when he finished that car?” She shook her head. “He said, Marlene, this is not for the money. This is for the girls. One day it will go to Tammy.” My voice shook. “He wanted you to have it. He wanted you to drive it at your wedding, and to the wedding of your daughter after that.” She wailed, a raw sound, and folded over, and I held her up. We stood there together in the middle of the auction tent, a gray haired woman with a scar and her middle aged daughter, and the whole world looked on.
The auctioneer, to his everlasting credit, did what a good man does. He tapped the microphone gently and said, “Folks, this lot is withdrawn from the sale.” Then he walked down off the stage and shook my hand. Then he did something I did not expect. He said, “Mrs. Haskins, I have been selling cars for thirty years, and I never have seen a thing like that. I would like to drive that Bel Air out of here for you myself.” I said, “Young man, I would be honored. But I believe my daughter will be doing the driving.” Tammy looked up at me with her face blotched and her mouth open.
She drove it home. It took us two hours, down Highway 75 with the windows rolled down and the turquoise hood throwing back the sunset. She drove at exactly the speed limit, hunched over the wheel, her knuckles white, like a student driver. I sat beside her on the wide front seat, with my hat in my lap, and I watched the Oklahoma fields go by, gold and green and flat to the horizon. We did not speak for the first thirty miles. Then Tammy said, in a small voice, “Mama, I will pay back every penny of what I owe. I will not touch a thing of Dad ever again.”
I said, “You will not pay it back by yourself. We are going to sit down with a good lawyer, and we are going to make a plan.” She glanced at me, startled. “Mama, you cannot.” I said, “I most certainly can. I have a husband who left me a good pension, and a daughter who needs help. I will cover the cards. In return, you will tell your husband everything. Tonight. And you will go to a counselor in Tulsa, a real one, on Thursdays, with me in the waiting room.” She said, “Why would you do that?” I said, “Because you are my girl.”
The following spring, on the day of what would have been our fiftieth anniversary, she drove us to Pearl Diner in Bartlesville in the Bel Air, the way Lloyd always had. We sat at the window booth where he and I had had our first date in 1974. She ordered the chicken fried steak. I ordered the peach pie. Tammy reached across the table and took my hand, and said, “Mama, I think I finally know what Dad meant.” I said, “What did he mean?” She said, “That the car was never the point. The point was who you drive it with.” Outside, the sun hit the turquoise hood, and for a moment, it blazed like the sea.