White Cadillac

Brown leather, deeply striated and worn to slippery perfection. My sister, her hair, all feathered and swirling, a perfect orb enveloping a head confidently ready to enter the teenage fray. The dopp kit under the driver's seat, never zipped closed, lid flapping open to readily divest the giant pink lipsmacker to three sets of clamoring hands, two so alike: large time-worn, squared off capable ones, smaller squared off but no less impressively confident ones. Other and various sundries under the supplicant lid, a mystery to my shy, side-glancing, decidedly pre-teen brown eyes.

Her Dad's perfect moustache, years before lingering food remnants had to be frequently broached, before the skin mirrored the striated leather in appearance, in comfort, before I could acquiesce to "our" Dad. His skin as brown as the supple leather, his smile supplanting his face, in its place a moustache with teeth. The soft top, always open, seatbelts a 70s option, my sister and her awkard, adulating dark shadow both perched on top of the seatback, rolling through the double-wide filled lanes of our tiny park, where two plus one landed, and the feathered orb never came to roost. Sharp white edges cutting a swath through the tinsel desert, a horse with no name, husky CB radio voices in strip mall parking lots, Handles suggestive and sweet, my Mother, the Velvet Vulture.

Scenes from a White Cadillac