Mimi gets into the car...

San Diego, California - 1932/3

Mimi is ready to get into the car even before June honks the horn, even before June appears in her driveway, even before she’s made the turn onto her street. Mimi’s ready to get into the car from early in the morning, anticipating. She’s always been ready for this car.

She gets into the car and dreams it will make her into someone else.

She thinks about getting into the car the night before, and the night before that. For weeks: from the time she last got out of that car, she started thinking about getting back in, about going back. Every time the phone rings, she hopes it’s word: that she’ll be needed again, to get into the car, to help her family, as service to them. The only gesture she makes for them so eagerly, so willingly, although they all see it as a sacrifice. As always, she thinks, she’s one step ahead in the game.

She dreams about the car, or any car like it: driving it herself one day, owning it herself one day.

Mimi gets into the car with a different dramatic gesture each time. Today it’s the stocking pull. Last time it was the single gloved hand gliding over the leather seat then ever so lightly caressing the steering wheel, the one she’d been forbidden from touching after the incident with their last car, even though that was completely the other driver’s fault and even the policeman would have said so if he had been able to see it from the same angle as she had.

She gets into the car because it’s the one thing that she ought to do that she’s actually good at.

She gets into the car and tilts the rearview mirror to check her makeup quickly, before June pulls it back into place. The conversation is always the same. “I need that to drive.” “Party-pooper.” “I just want to get home in one piece.” “What’s the point of getting home in one piece if that piece looks like shit?” “You look fine.” “But I need to look devastating.”

She gets into the car and notices that June has wrapped her purse strap around her leg. Mimi sighs loudly, overly accenting her disappointment. Ever since that incident no one trusts her anymore, not even June.

She gets into the car with “dear sweet June” “darling angel” “my favoritest niece” and smiles sincerely. “No reason to be glum,” she tells June. “It doesn’t get you anywhere. Smiles are what take you places. Just watch. You’ll see.”

She gets into the car and starts whistling the tune from the Jack Benny show. June likes Jack Benny, too; Mimi is counting on this. After what happened last time it’s vital to break the ice properly before they even start again.

She gets into the car even though she knows she’s only a proxy. It doesn’t matter, not really. And anyway, she does a better job than any of them could. She’s got more courage than all of them combined, more gumption, more smarts. And she’s sure June would agree.

She gets into the car and immediately starts talking, or continues talking; she never really stops. More than anything, it’s the silences that make her anxious.

Mimi gets into the car because there’s no reason to be bland. She sees Edgar’s point, or at least pretends to understand him, or what he is going through, or why he might so desperately needs it in the first place. “You’d never catch me touching that stuff,” she tells June, “but it helps him. Drift off into dreamland, somewhere else, where no one’s screaming at you and no rent is due and no little kids or husband or wives or mothers-in-law need, need, need from you. Sort of a cloudy-like peace.”