Free Greedy Little Eyes by Billie Livingston

in the other lane, cars in front of us and behind. I would get excited, flinging myself half over the front seat, seconding the request, yelping for him to stop.
    He’d zoom right past, though, and she would look back out the rear window with her mouth open and say, “Alan! Why didn’t you stop? They’re back there . Stop!”
    Calmly, he’d reply, “Honey, they’re on the other side of the road. There’s nowhere to stop.”
    Then she would say something like, “Of course there is. Don’t be silly. Come on, go back. You’re taking all the fun out of it!”
    He would chuckle as though she had to be goofing with him. He’d try to explain that he couldn’t just pull over in all this traffic. There wasn’t a turnoff. He needed a spot to pull off the highway.
    She’d begin to sputter, “A spot ? That was a spot. For god’s sake, Alan, why can’t you just pull over instead of making a big production out of everything?”
    My father would grip the steering wheel with one hand, and start fiddling with the radio or something, or maybe just rub at his forehead as if he were trying to get a stain off. But usually he’d take a deep breath and sigh. After all, part of my mother’s effervescence was her spontaneity. She liked to just do, rather than to “make a big song and dance out of it.” It was about here that he would try to jolly her up again, laugh, and put a hand on her leg. She would most likely tisk and swat him away,and keep looking out the window, her elbow balanced on the bottom of the open window frame, touching the top with her fingertips. She might sigh again and drop her hand into the wind so she could swim her fingers through the air. This is where he would get her—reach over again and squeeze her leg, say something like, “You better watch your hand out there; you’re going to accidentally punch a cow and make some farmer awful mad.”
    In those days, my mother would still tuck her chin and laugh in spite of herself, call him an idiot through giggles.

    She’d been working as a sort of Girl Friday at a used car lot for two weeks the afternoon she showed up at school. I was in grade six. She walked into the classroom in her office clothes, informing the teacher that she had to take me for the rest of the day, smiling brightly and chucking my chin as she explained that I had a dentist appointment.
    “What dentist appointment?” I asked.
    “I don’t like to get her upset by telling her ahead of time,” she told Mrs. MacConnel. “It’s easier to do it this way.”
    My teacher nodded, Of course.
    I stared, wondering at my mother as she beamed, stuffing my arms into coat sleeves and pushing me along out of the classroom as if I were a toddler.
    “Nice to meet you,” she called as we left. “Thanks very much.”
    Outside the school, I wanted to know what dentist appointment.
    “Oh, there’s no appointment. I made it up. I was just tired of today and I felt like seeing you.”
    I stared over my shoulder at the school and back at her.
    “Don’t you ever just feel like tap dancing?” she asked me.
    I waited for some sort of punch line, but she put her arm across my shoulders and we started walking.
    She’d been at the car lot, she said, calling people all morning from a list they’d given her. She was supposed to call each number and ask how they were making out with the used car they’d purchased at Bobby Gordon’s.
    “Now the object of the game,” she told me, “was not to find out if they really liked their car, it was just to make sure they still lived at the same address so fat old Bobby Gordon’ll have a place to mail his flyers. He’s starting up a carpet cleaning business. I had people on the phone screaming in my ear all morning, telling me what a horrible heap he’d sold them, how it was a piece of junk and fixing it cost more than the car did in the first place. All I could think about was tap dancing. I used to be a tap dancer, you know.”
    I knew. In a scrapbook