COUPE DE VILLE

 

They say you never forget your first kiss or your first car.  My first kiss took place on the Manly Ferry in Australia when I was 16.  I was pretending to gaze at moonlit Sydney Harbor, keenly aware that David T. was gazing at me.  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, turning my face towards his.  Then he kissed me on the lips.  Although there was no real relationship—how could there be between a child of 16 and a man of 26—it softened that year of my adolescence.  My first car was a different matter altogether. 

I was 29 years old and living in Los Angeles.  My fate was sealed during an interview for my first American job as a Program Director for a nonprofit agency when my prospective boss asked if I had a California driver’s license.  My Masters in Social Work from the London School of Economics, brand-new though it was, possibly impressed her more than my actual capabilities, and definitely more than my experience.  To be a Program Director in America seemed beyond my reach.  I wasn’t even sure what it meant, but I hadn’t directed anything in my life, never driven a car, let alone owned one, and had no handle on what working in America could mean.  Despite the throbbing pulse above my carotid artery, I looked her straight in the eyes.  “No, I don’t have a California license but I can get one.”  It wasn’t really a lie, but it felt like one.

The next day, I took my first driving lesson.  I had grown up in Sydney and London—both known for their excellent public transportation.  I took the bus, tube, or train without ever questioning the need for a car.  I planned to take public transportation in Los Angeles, too.  It didn’t take me long to discover, however, that taking a bus in LA from point A to point B required an advanced degree in geography, a sense of direction, a robust bladder, patience and a lot of desperation.  I had one out of five—desperation—which soon became my constant guide.

My Los Angeles driving instructor was an elderly man at the end of his career.  He died shortly after our last lesson.  I’d like to think my driving did nothing to contribute to his demise but to this day I’m not sure.  He was astounded by the depth of my cluelessness.  North.  South.  East.  West.  They were just words to me.  Even left and right required me to orient myself by tracing a vague bump on my right thumb that I had sucked as a child.  This led to a terrible time lag from the time he barked directions at me to the time I reacted with the steering wheel, gas pedal or brakes.  But I worked hard and finally, despite his doubts, passed the final test.  He kissed his cross when I left the DMV.

I got the Program Director job, too.  I counted on having time to figure out the driving thing.  I didn’t even have a car and certainly no money to buy one but I was determined that it wouldn’t be a problem.  I’d learn the bus routes to the 21 different locations around Los Angeles County that were the official ‘programs’ of this nonprofit and my boss would forget all about the license. 

On the Friday of my first week, my boss called me into her office.  She was an older woman, my mother’s age, but there the comparison stopped.  My mother never held a job in her life.  Sure, she raised five children, lived in three different countries, and managed to survive the death of two husbands, and marriage to a third, but she was never a friend or mentor to me.  I loved her intensely, but never trusted her.  This boss, I grew to trust and love.  But it was slow in coming. The car thing did not speed things along.

“I have some great news,” she said.  “You know we have a car donation program here.  Well, someone has just donated one.  It’s in pristine shape, owned by a little old Jewish woman who hardly ever drove.  Come, let’s take a look.”  She marched me out to the parking lot. 

There, in the corner stretched the longest, shiniest car I had ever seen.  It looked like some outlandish white bird poised to kill its prey.  Turning it around a corner would require an entire crew of engineers.  My boss ran her index finger along the winged white fins on the back.  There was gold lettering that proclaimed CADILLAC.  “It’s a 1967 Coupe de Ville.  What a beauty!  Twelve-years-old but in great shape.”

I wrapped my arms around my waist to hide my trembling.  No one in London or Sydney ever drove anything even half its size.  This was surely a car for very rich Americans.  That thought calmed me down.  I wouldn’t have to worry.  Not only did I have a mere hundred dollars in my newly opened American bank account, but I also carried no credit cards and had no family money.  And, I hadn’t even been paid yet in my first American job.  There was no way I could afford it.  Politely, I declined, explaining my lack of finances.

“We’ll sell it to you for just $300,” she said.  “It’s an amazing deal.  The interior is perfect,” she said, opening the driver’s side door.  “Vanilla white seats with no nicks.  These are the original French seats and armrest, and look, automatic windows.  Here’s an am/fm radio that works.  I’ve already tested it.  And it’s only got 41,000 miles.  Pristine condition.”

“It’s very nice,” I said, not understanding anything about exteriors or interiors of cars, “but I don’t have $300.”  I didn’t see the point of prolonging the agony.  She needed to know how poor I was.  Maybe she could buy the car for herself.  I understood it wasn’t unheard of for Americans to have two, sometimes three cars each.

“I know you haven’t been paid yet, but don’t worry.  We’ll loan you the money and you can pay a small amount each month, whatever you can afford.  And best of all, you can drive it off the parking lot today.”  She was forceful, competent, upbeat—American—and tremendously pleased with herself.  Helping the poor and the stricken was something she excelled at, as I later learned.  She adopted a homeless man, once, who peed in the front doors of her nonprofit.  But that didn’t faze her.  She struck a deal with him.  He could sleep in the doorway, if he didn’t pee there, and if he helped clean up the parking lot.  Plus, she would pay him a small stipend each week. 

Although I was poor and practically an orphan, I was fully employed with an advanced degree—an easy case for her.  How could I tell her the truth?  That besides my driver’s ed car, I’d never driven one.  That I wouldn’t be able to negotiate getting out of the chain link fence at the back of the parking lot. That I wasn’t even sure I could find my way home without the bus. 

But it was my first American job, so I smiled and thanked her.  She had me sign some papers in her office, and handed me the keys.  When 5:00 p.m. rolled round, the car would be mine.  I waited until 5:30, when she and everyone else had already headed home.

Before I even got over to the Coupe de Ville, I was shaking.  It took me ten minutes to insert the key into the ignition.  The four mile trip from the parking lot on Fairfax Avenue to my small Spanish apartment on Harper Avenue between Sunset and Fountain was the longest trip of my life.  Longer than going from Sydney to Israel.  Longer than going from Israel to London.  Longer even than London to Los Angeles. 

If my driving instructor is still hovering in this world, hoping to see the difference he made, I only have this to say: without your voice in my head, I never would have made it back to my apartment alive.  “Foot on brake, check your mirrors, signal.  You are in control.  Go with the traffic.  Deep breaths.  Here’s a stop sign.  Count to three.  One one hundred, two one hundred, three one hundred.  There you go.”

I proceeded with great caution.  It was like steering an enormous boat down a narrow, twisting canal in Venice, Italy.  Nevertheless, with my limited spatial sense and heightened anxiety, during one of my turns into one of the many side streets, I clipped a parked car.  It was an elegant dark blue car.  Possibly a Mercedes Benz.  Or a Lincoln Continental.  Belonging to a banker or an attorney, who might have been a major donor to my new nonprofit.  Its alarm started to bleep.  I was terrified.  I had never heard a car alarm before.  Bleep, bleep.  I kept crawling along in my oversized boat gripping the steering wheel as I checked the rear vision mirror for the police, who were surely on their way to arrest me.  Bleep, bleep, bleep.  I would lose my job.  I would be thrown in jail.  Bleeeepppp! 

But, miraculously, nothing happened.

Later on, much later on, I realized that I should have stopped and put a note on the car.  If you were the driver of that dark blue car, right off Fairfax Avenue, I am so sorry.  I was a brand-new driver.  I didn’t know about leaving notes.  I don’t recall that in the driver’s manual. It was never discussed in England or Australia.

Gripping the leather encased steering wheel, I periodically wiped my drenched hands on my flowered skirt as I crawled down the street in this stretch Cadillac, like some traumatized victim of a bad Hollywood movie.  Finally, I arrived at my apartment on Harper Avenue in Hollywood.

After the first wave of relief, I realized how cruelly curved the driveway was that led into the parking spots for the apartment building.  How would I ever get this Coupe de Ville around those curves?  With three or four times as much room, I had clipped a car.  This was an impossibility. It was before carphones or cellphones, so I couldn’t call anyone for help.  I was On My Own.  And so I parked two blocks away on the street and walked back to my apartment.

On Monday morning, my boss greeted me in the hallway.  “Don’t you love it?” 

“Yes, thank you so much.”  I had barely managed to get it into the parking lot that morning, and it had taken me three attempts to park between the yellow lines.

“So, today, you’re going to one of our projects at Juvenile Hall.  I need you to assess its viability.  The volunteers are very well-meaning, middle class ladies, but do they really add anything to the lives of these incarcerated kids?  I need your expert opinion.”

“Absolutely,” I said.  I was a highly educated professional who had graduated from The London School of Economics.  I could do this. 

My boss explained that the volunteers would meet me at the Bob’s Big Boy parking lot on La Cienega.  She gave me the address, and I took out my Thomas Map Guidebook.  This was a thick book (presupposing that you knew how to read maps) with detailed street maps of Los Angeles County and an index in the back.  After stopping several times, pushing the automatic button for my driver’s side window of my 1967 Coupe de Ville to ask a stranger which way was west, I finally found the Big Boy’s Parking lot.  I parked the car, a bit crooked but not too bad, and was about to turn off the engine and get out when a white-haired old lady motioned for me to roll down the same window.  “Are you Lisa Horowitz?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m Sophie.  Boy, are we glad to see you.  Come on girls!  It’s her.”  Before I had a chance to explain that I was a brand-new driver, five little old ladies, two in the front on my expansive leather seats, and three in the back, were securely seated, greeting me like I was their granddaughter.  My pounding heart, sweaty palms and trembling legs were hidden from their view. 

“We’re so glad to welcome you to your job,” said Sophie.  “None of us want to drive the freeways.”

And so, Sophie directed me onto the daunting Los Angeles Freeway system, all the way to Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, California.  I thought about telling her that I’d only had the car for four days, but I didn’t want them to panic.  If they panicked, I would panic even more.  It would be best to go along with the plan.

My desperation to not kill them outweighed my fear of driving.  I got them safely there and then back to Bob’s Big Boy.  My evaluation of the Juvenile Hall project:  the kids seemed to really love their little old lady visitors and laughed and talked with them for a full hour.  And those dedicated Juvenile Hall ladies never knew that not only were they were my first passengers, but I held their fate in my evaluation report. 

A traffic cop pulled me over on the Santa Monica Freeway the next day—as I was headed to Venice Beach to meet my boyfriend—for doing an unsafe lane change.  He took one look at my trembling hands and the recent date on my driver’s license and let me go with a warning to drive safely. 

Eventually, I learned how not to clip other cars and buildings, and to safely change lanes.  But as soon as I could, I traded in my Cadillac in for a bright orange VW Bug that a dear friend of mine sold to me for next to nothing. 

It took me years to appreciate the symbolism of that Coupe de Ville.  It’s majestic expanse kept me safe during my first year of driving.  It was my introduction to life in Los Angeles, where one’s dreams could be as wide and unlikely as one could possibly dream.  Because, maybe, just maybe, they would come true.