Oil Change

January 20, 2003

My husband needed the oil in his car changed, and I volunteered to do it, squeezing the time in around my constant migration between Greenwood and Cleveland and all of the things that mostly never get done. I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I wanted to do it quickly. Slam, blam, thank you, m’am….get in, get out, get on to something really important.

My irritation meter counter quivered on neutral as I pulled onto the rack at the lube-in-a-hurry place. It skittered up the negative scale when I couldn’t find the hood release. I rarely used his car, and didn’t know the location of the levers and dials.

I found the latch, and the hood popped open. The attendant who had directed me onto the rack with hand signals disappeared beneath it. I sat behind the wheel, closed my eyes and breathed in and out. I tried not to think of my unmade bed, the dirty kitty litter that remained one of the few household chores I still did at my own house, the bags of unread books I insisted on ferrying to and from my father’s house each week, the minutes ticking off the time before my father’s morning help was due to leave and I would need to be on duty. I tried not to think of all the things I had to do to survive, and, if my life was going to be worthwhile, all the things I needed to do but never got to.

On my in-breath, the attendant rapped on the window. “Need the mileage,” he told me.

I looked at the black square in the center of the instrument panel. Nothing there.

I rolled down the window. “Should I turn it on?” I said.

“Just click on the ignition,” he said, “don’t turn it over.”

I clicked the ignition, and we looked at the black square together. Nothing.

“You can click it one more time,” he said. He didn’t have a lisp, but a way of thickening his words that made him sound less than bright. My irritation flared. If I were going to give this place my time and money, they should give me an attendant who knew more than I did.

I clicked. Still nothing. The attendant reached in and turned the lights on. Nothing again. My lack of knowledge about the car frustrated me. I wanted to rev the engine to get the information he wanted, to be shed of my ignorance, to get my show on the road without any more minutes shaved out of it than necessary.

“Now I see it,” he said, his thick voice almost gleeful, as if we had pulled this chestnut out of the fire together.

I looked harder at the dark glass and could still see nothing. I squinted my eyes, waiting for numbers to cohere.

“Here,” he said, laughing and tapping to my left. Once I would have considered the stupid joy in his voice that of a slow man accomplishing a simple task with great difficulty, but in one glad instant I recognized the laughter. I knew Who was speaking to me. I knew a message was coming. I needed only to listen. With a deep thirst I drank in the foolishly beaming face.

“We was looking in the wrong place,” he grinned.

“So we were,” I answered with a rippling joy of my own.

My Brother grinned bigger. “I bet if we had started up the car,” he said, “we still couldn’t of seen it.” He tapped the odometer again. “Because we was looking in the wrong place the whole time.”