mommy direst

by emily bittner

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Most of my best stories originate in exotic locations like Morocco or Munich. Or they recount fantastically improbable conquests like Jorge the Real Man. This one, boys and girl, is about machinery, buffoonery and Mother’s Day.

To celebrate the holiday, I decided to come home to Twig, Minn., just outside Duluth. I planned to pick up my brother in Minneapolis and bring home a cake and flowers, a prodigal daughter’s classic Mother’s Day effort.

I’m four hours from home, zipping along I-94, weaving through traffic and playing chicken with a Pontiac whose bumper sticker reads: "Gas, Grass or Ass: No One Rides Free." My battery light starts flashing intermittently.

Enh, I think. No big deal, it’s been doing that for a week. It comes on and stays on longer and longer.

OK, OK, I’ll pull over at the nearest gas station. Moments later, the tachometer needle drops to zero, the speedometer seesaws and plummets. I’m cruising around 80, pressing my foot to the accelerator – nada. "Shitfuck!"

I ease off the highway onto the shoulder, barely avoiding a bridge and guardrail. Looking under the hood, I see that the belts are working. The battery is dry. It must be the alternator.

A man in a black truck pulls behind me and motions me to hop on in. Lloyd, whose name is sewn on his jacket, suggests we drive to Eau Claire, about eight miles out. ("Eau Claire?" say the travel-wise. "I spent a week there one night.")

Years of alcoholism have stained Lloyd’s face scarlet, and the veins of his bloodshot eyes bulge out. During his time in the Navy, his bosses threw him in the brig a coupla times, but just for insubordination. He didn’t hit nobody or nothing. Sure, he knows Duluth — would go up there on vacations, used to make his 12-year-old daughter drive ‘em home if he was too tired.

Now he’s a construction worker in his fifties, and on my lap I’m grasping his orange hardhat, which holds a rebuilt alternator for his daughter’s Camaro. A heap of Mountain Dew cans and Little Debbie snack wrappers on the floor overwhelm my ankles.

Lloyd drives me around town in search of a service station that is open at 5:30 on a Friday evening. No luck. (With good reason — Woo’s Pagoda is hopping.) The next mission is to find an auto parts store with an alternator for a ’91 Honda Prelude. Four stores and 90 minutes later, we hit the jackpot — or rather, the jackpot hit my Visa card, with a $188.34 car part that I’m not sure anyone can install. But its existence is the first sign that I might somehow escape Eau Claire.

That kernel of hope returns us to the interstate, where my car is intact. There’s not much daylight left, though, and Lloyd hurries to attach the jumper cables to my battery for some temporary juice. My car starts and gets as far as the Menard’s parking lot, about 12 miles away. Lloyd and I crawl under the front end to check some wires and the underside of the alternator. (Technically, I hold the flashlight, he checks.) Something slimy and wet dribbles onto my calf, then hamstring. I’m lying in someone’s oil puddle.

Lloyd slides out from under the car and tells me that he can’t fix the alternator himself. He offers to bring me back to his home, in Bloomer, Wisc.

I opt to try my luck in Eau Claire.

All I need to find is the nearest hotel. I can’t. (Why? God? Luck? Fate? My own blinding incompetence?) With a left turn here and a hard right there, I’m suddenly driving in the middle of nowhere. If I turn on anything electrical — radio, air conditioning, headlights — my car will die and I will have to fend for myself on the side of the road. There’s only a hint of light in the sky. One woman passes me, blinking her lights on and off, on and off, on and off to signal that I need to turn on my lights. I hide my face, pretending that I can’t see her, so that she’ll stop bothering me. The emergency battery light keeps flashing on. Each time the red warning glares out from the dashboard, I redline the engine, kicking it up around 7,000 rpms. That solves the problem for a minute or so.

I stop for directions three times. I eventually reach the Badger Motel (Motto: "Sorry, we’re full!") and end up at the Evenox on the other side of town. The bathroom smells like piss, and someone’s leftover razor blades are sitting in the soap dish. Usually I sleep naked (and, if possible, with company), but the bed was so gross that I wore my clothes and stayed on top of the comforter with the heater on full throttle.

In the morning, I call dozens of repair shops, but none are open on a Saturday. Someone answers the phone at Joel’s Water Street Auto, but only because he’s building parade floats. Finally someone at Midway Auto tells me they can fix my car. Saved! While they install the new alternator, I eat next door at Randy’s Family Restaurant. My muffin and fruit come from the page of the menu titled "God’s Healthy Menu."

My car’s good as new, for only a few hundred dollars and a few hours that I'll never get back. My dad calls soon after I get back on the road. I tell him to be patient, I’m in traffic, I’ll call in 20 minutes. He calls again in five. His voice shakes; something is wrong.

"I’m about to lose the signal on my phone," he told me from his boat, which was sailing off the western shore of Lake Superior. "I wanted to make sure you were OK." He pauses.

"You know Heidi?" (My two-year-old half-sister, brought into this world because my dad’s new wife, Peggy Jo Fetchelkotter, is a conniving bitch.) "Well, Peggy and I had a little accident. We’re going to have another."

I muster enough calm and sincere goodwill to mutter congratulations, assure my dad that I love him anyway and ask what the hell they used for birth control. "Well, Peggy’s still nursing Heidi. And we’re both pretty old, so we just pretty much... No, I guess not a lot, really."

Moral of the story:

Happy fucking Mother’s Day.

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