Being careful not to touch the wallpaper in the hall because mom would notice the handprints, Jeff and I pushed each other down the carpeted corridor to the garage. Jeff pushed harder.

 

“Front,” he called bursting into the garage where dad waited.

 

I sat on the concrete steps that led down to the cars, “Nuh-uh, you got it last time.”

 

Neighbors envied our garage not because of the two cars it sheltered, but because it was cleaner and better organized than most people’s homes. Everything in my mother’s world was clean, freakishly clean. One could perform transplant surgery on any floor, including the garage.

 

In response to my mother not pulling his two-door blue Oldsmobile in quite far enough, my dad hung screwed a white string into the ceiling and dangled a tennis ball on each side of the garage. Once you drove in and the front windshield touched the ball, there was no way for the garage door to crunch the bumper.

 

I’m pretty sure the reason “Bluey’s” (my brother named all of our cars and sobbed when they were sold) bumper was munched, had something to do with Jeff and me. Of course Bluey went almost straight to the body shop without passing go and collecting $200. In this family, there was no way a car would remain damaged. (Dad was a perfectionist, too.)

 

If I had to guess, mom was probably riled up after spending time in the car with her two adopted children. She wasn’t riled because we were adopted. Well, maybe she was. As a Mormon mother, she was devastated when she didn’t conceive.

 

No, mom was riled because we weren’t quite what she expected. “No” wasn’t a part of our vocabulary. If mom said “no,” we heard, “figure out another way.” For instance, mom told Jeff he couldn’t make waffles. So, Jeff waited until 2:00 am, snuck into the kitchen, mixed up a batch of waffles, phoned Nana and Grandpa at 4:00 am and invited them to breakfast. When they said, “no,” he cleaned up the kitchen and went to bed. The next morning, Nana called to find out why my mother let Jeff make waffles in the middle of the night. My mother thought she was crazy; the kitchen was spotless. But, when she took out the waffle iron, there was a perfectly browned waffle resting in it.

 

I don’t think Jeff heard “no” from me, either when I complained about him riding shotgun next to dad.

 

Three-years older, taller, faster, and, in general, bigger, he made it to the passenger side of “Brownie,” the family’s 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood before me. Jeff considered Brownie to be “his” because he was born in 1967, just like the car.

 

“You know,” my father began before Jeff could open the door, “if you were rich and famous, you’d have a chauffeur.” Our ears perked up, I got off the step and walked closer to the car. Knowing he had our full attention, dad continued, “Yeah, if you were being driven around by a chauffeur, you’d sit in back behind the passenger seat.”

 

“I get the back right rear side,” yelled Jeff while lifting the handle.

 

“Nuh-huh, you called the front. I get the back. Move,” I commanded in my small, but shrill girlie voice. As I spoke I tried to sit on him.

 

Unbeknownst to us, Dad effectively moved the arguing as far from him, the driver, as possible in the giant car.

 

Driving Brownie was like driving two sofas, a front and a back. Brownie, like Jeff, had been on the planet for almost a decade. Due to Jeff being bigger, faster, stronger, and dare I say, smarter, I crawled over him, making sure my feet didn’t touch any part of the interior of the car, and settled into the seat behind the driver. I didn’t feel rich or famous.

 

But, nestled into the tan brocade upholstery, trying to reach the footrest, with my lighted tray table in front of me, on my side of the imaginary line down the middle of the back seat so that we didn’t touch each other, I felt safe behind my father and next to my brother.

 

To write about my favorite place, the back seat of our Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, I called Jeff, my 39-year-old brother whose jet-black hair has flecks of gray in it between salon visits and who, now, manages a car dealership, because I couldn’t remember the details of the car.

 

Different from my 6’-something dark-skinned brother who remembers every detail of every car he or my parents ever owned (even the ones they had before he was born), I’m a 5’4” petite girl who remembers the way I felt.

 

In his dealership, surrounded by European cars, he’s still got a Cadillac heart. I called on Saturday, his busiest day, and left a message around 10:00 am on his voice mail.  But, the mention of Brownie got a return call quicker than an invitation to dinner.

 

Brownie was loaded. Now, thirty-plus years later, our lives our loaded with all the creature comforts of the 21st century, cell phones and computers. Jeff left me a message. His voice animated, “Julie. I got your message. I’m sorry I was in a sales meeting. I called as soon as I got out. That was a 1967 Cadillac, the same body style as the ’68. It was a chocolate-brown Fleetwood Brougham with a tan vinyl roof. The interior was a brocade cloth and was tan, too. It had everything; reading lights, lighted trays in the backseat, AM/FM stereo, climate control, automatic trunk release and a 429 cubic inch V8 engine. It was the greatest car there ever was.”

 

In the hour between our voice mail messages, I Googled the car and came up with the following luxury details to describe the car:

 

The Brougham featured a padded Cordova vinyl top with model identification scripts attached to the roof "C" pillar. The Brougham also included lighted fold-down trays; adjustable reading lamps and carpeted fold-down footrests.

 

* Auxiliary horn ($12)

* Automatic Climate Control on Sixty-Special models ($516)

* Firemist finish ($132)

* Cruise control ($95)

* Rear window defogger on models Sixty-Special ($27)

* Door guards ($8)

* Soft Ray glass ($51)

* Guide-Matic headlamp control ($50)

* Head rests ($53)

* Leather upholstery on Sixty-Special ($138)

* License frame, single ($6), pair ($12)

* Power door locks ($68)

* Power door locks for Fleetwood 75 models ($116)

* AM radio ($162)

* AM/FM radio ($188)

* AM/FM stereo on Sixty-Special ($288)

* AM radio rear controls on Fleetwood 75 models ($242)

* Six-way power front seat on models M-P-R ($83)

* Rear center seat belt ($11)

* Front shoulder straps ($32)

* Tilt-telescope steering wheel ($90)

* Remote control trunk lock ($52)

• Twilight Sentinel ($32)

• White sidewall tires, size 9.00 x 15 four-ply 8PR-5, except nine-passenger    models ($56 exchange)

• * White sidewall tires, size 8.20 x 15, four-ply 8PR-5 on nine-passenger models ($64 exchange).

 

The prices surprised me. I’ve never shared a piece of writing with my brother, but I’ll forward this to him so he can see the prices. He won’t need the list of options. In fact, I bet he knows what my dad paid for the car. I know he knows how much dad sold it for because I remember him crying and offering to use all of the money he made mowing lawns to buy it.

 

I can’t remember when my parents sold Brownie. It was after numerous trips to Bear Lake and countless rides to the grocery store, to church, and to visit Nana and Grandpa.

 

Where’s my favorite place? Next to my brother. In the backseat of the Cadillac, there was an invisible line to separate us. Over the years, the line disappeared.

By Julie Hooker

Julie is involed in public relations, grant writing, editing, business writing, ghost writing, poetry, and nonfiction.

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