Romancing the Auto

My late-life love affair with a Rav4

My handsome new beau

Dear friends and followers: I am still hard at work revising the first six chapters of Rotten Romance, under the auspices of a truly brilliant freelance editor, but I wanted to take a break because I miss this audience. And because I wanted to tell you all about my new car. So here goes….

I never ever wanted to own a car. I never even had much interest in driving, until it was of necessity forced on me in my 30s, when Mr. Landi and I moved to a suburb of Boston. I spent my teen years in Manhattan, as I have recounted in this ongoing saga, and neither I nor my classmates seemed to feel much compunction about learning to drive. Not the way kids in rural areas or the ‘burbs feel the pressure to have wheels and make out in the back seat as soon as their hormones start acting up. Through most of my young adulthood, I assumed I would take public transportation for the rest of my life or hold out my hand and sweetly warble, “Taxi!”

When Mr. Landi and I were first living together on the Upper East Side, we rented a car when we wanted to get out of town. He drove. When we moved to Vermont, as I have also recounted, we had a 1974 Jeep Wrangler for transportation, and he attempted to teach me to drive a stick, a skill I have never completely mastered, though I had fun practicing the transitions from one gear to another on his sturdy erection (hey, we were newlyweds!)

After the Vermont idyll ended and we camped out for a few months at my parents’ little summer house in Montauk, we drove my dad’s beach car, a 1976 Ford Torino, affectionately dubbed the “Tower of Power” by our local mechanic, for its eight cylinders of unstoppable automotive muscle. This was the one that stalled in the driveway of an imposing East Hampton mansion when we were on a Sunday outing to see how the other half lived. As I related earlier (and forgive me for quoting myself, but if I don’t do it, who will?): “A silver-haired WASP-y grandpa type emerged from the house, a look of horror passing across his patrician features. Through prayer and sheer force of will, we got the Torino rolling again and merrily waved good-bye, imagining the entry in the police blotter: White Trash Leaf Peepers Busted in East Hampton!

A much spiffier Torino than the one we drove

I went through six learner’s permits, because I was always in the car with another driver, before finally getting a license at the age of 34. Mostly because we were about to move from New York to a Boston suburb and I would have to navigate the territory on my own. Also because I was terrified of the New York drivers’ exam, imagining that I would be forced to parallel park between cars on a busy city street, or execute a K-turn in Times Square. The exam turned out to be a cakewalk. Accompanied by my darling Bajan teacher from Taggart’s, who looked to be about 12 years old, I smartly completed the driving part of the test in a big vacant lot in downtown Manhattan. Plenty of room for K- and U-turns. A snap to go from zero to 50 on a nearly empty side street. No wonder so many New York cabbies are such bad drivers. If I can pass this easily, just think about all the dummies the NYC MVD lets loose on the streets every year.

Just as I had an aversion to getting a license, so I regarded cars with suspicion and indifference, if not outright hostility. This was not always so. As a young girl in Allentown, PA, I built classic cars, like a Stutz Bearcat and Model T Ford, from hobby kits. I marveled at my dad’s 1956 Mercedes Benz, with its dashing hood ornament and luxe tan leather interior. When the family moved to Manhattan, we eventually acquired a Dodge Omni, which seemed to me a truly forgettable waste of metal. Boys in college (and they were mostly boys at Princeton) had spiffier conveyances, like my friend Joel’s flaming red TransAm and boyfriend George’s bronzy-orange Mustang convertible. But I did not lust for a car of my own.

Sorta like my dad’s Mercy B,

Car ownership was more or less thrust on me when we moved to Weston, MA, and my newly rich husband bought two, a Jeep Range Rover for himself and a gray Camry for me (“You can have any car you want,” he said, “as long as it’s a Camry and as long as it’s gray.”)

After we split, after my parents became too elderly to visit the Montauk house again, and after my alimony went down the toilet along with Mr. Landi’s fortune, I still needed a “beach car” to get around the Island. And so for a time I owned a 1996 Chevy Lumina, which was the comfiest, most grandmotherly conveyance I’ve ever encountered. Such was the wear and tear on the vehicle, however, that when I tried to sell it to Car Cash a few years later, they would not offer me even $100. I gave it to NPR’s charity drive.

Somewhat like the Lumina even Car Cash wouldn’t buy..

(As a sidebar here, I should note that my favorite road game in the Hamptons, of which Montauk is a part, was the foreign-car count. You get 5 points for every Porsche you spot, 10 for a Bentley or Rolls, and 15 for truly exotic vehicles like Lamborghinis and Ferraris. BMWs and Mercedes don’t count, because they are far too common.)

I’ve skipped over a few cars here—like the Ford Escort I acquired in Seattle—so that we can fast forward many years later to Taos, where I’ve had a reunion of sorts with Mr. Landi (as friends, never again as romantic partners because that simply doesn’t work). He advised me to buy another Jeep for $1500. It was a piece of shit, but what can you expect at that price? The air-conditioning never worked properly, a side mirror got swiped off in the Walmart parking lot, it stuttered and stalled. I dumped that as soon as possible and started leasing from Toyota, a situation I don’t recommend to anyone because, in effect, you sell your soul to the dealership for a monthly sum and it’s damn near impossible to keep the car beyond the term of the contract—unless you’re willing to fork over a tidy sum, which I never have in my bank account, or take out a loan. So in my dozen years in the Southwest, I’ve been through one Rav4 and a couple of Corollas to arrive at the Rav4 parked in my driveway as of 10 days ago.

And suddenly I’m in love. I can’t explain it. It’s an unexpected late-life infatuation. The car is boxy and sturdy, and to me indefinably masculine, though it’s the same deep crimson red as my toenail polish. Landing this hunk, not surprisingly, required the intervention of a matchmaker, my next-door neighbor Ani, who hears a lot better than I do and doesn’t accept attitude from sales guys. She knew to ask all the right questions, and a proposal was hammered out, with the beloved scheduled to arrive a month hence.

There were a few difficulties with an insurance claim on the Corolla, which was falling apart at the fenders (a serious Toyota design flaw), but lo and behold, my shiny new Rav4 was delivered to my office about ten days ago, and we have been getting to know each other better ever since.

Of course we’ve had our adjustment problems. My new crush refuses to reveal the interior temperature and has more icons on his screen than one human being can possibly master in a lifetime (thereby proving that he is much smarter than I). But I have almost figured out the music system and can pull up symphony hall or doo-wop at will. On the second day of our union, I discovered what looked like a long hairline crack on the hood, but it turned out to be the edge of a protective plastic sealer and proved harder to rip off than a condom from an elephant’s package (don’t ask me how I know this).

Those difficulties are behind us now, and I think we are at the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I love the way he holds me, so securely and snugly, and most of all I love the way he smells. If they could bottle this scent as an aftershave, women (and maybe men too) would line up around the block and dab it behind their ears. Meanwhile, I think I will try massaging my Rav4 Romance with some of this. Perhaps then he will tell me how to find the odometer.

White Bean and Tuna Salad

I haven’t been doing too much cooking of late, nor experimenting with new recipes, but allow me to share my all-time favorite recipe for a quick lunch. I generally eat this as is, but it could be heaped on an English muffin or served on whole-grain bread.

Ingredients

1 15-oz. can white beans (cannellini or great Northern), rinsed and drained

1 5-oz can of your favorite tuna, drained (I like Wild Planet albacore)

3 spring onions finely sliced (white and light-green parts) or ½ small red onion, finely sliced

2 tbs. capers, drained

Generous handful of finely chopped parsley

Juice from ½ lemon

1 tbs. good-quality olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

Combine all ingredients and mix gently. You can of course tinker with this, adding Tabasco, substituting mayonnaise for the olive oil, usually arugula or mint instead of parsley. This recipes serves two generously.

To those of you who have inquired after my health, I’ve just started taking Prozac, which may help with the long Covid (now lingering for nearly a year). And I have another surgery on my right eye scheduled for late April. The car runs great, but the warranty on my body plainly expired about two years ago. Nonetheless, we carry on with minimal whingeing.