The Right Amount of Car

I spent part of Tuesday afternoon measuring the driveway.

This is not normally how I spend a Tuesday.

Normally I sit on my upside-down beer crate with a cup of coffee and watch other people do things that seem unnecessary. It is one of the small pleasures of getting older.

But our car is fifteen years old.

Fifteen is not particularly old for a person, but apparently it is quite old for a car. At least that is what the young man at the garage told me while looking underneath it with the expression doctors use when they are trying not to alarm you.

Our car still starts.

Mostly.

It has a heater that works when it feels the weather genuinely deserves heating, one window that moves slightly faster than the other three, and a dashboard light that has been on for so long I now consider it part of the interior design.

It is what Americans call a small car.

People from other countries might call it a medium-sized car.

Or possibly a boat.

Either way, my wife and I agreed that perhaps the time had come.

So I measured the driveway.

Because I had been looking at pickup trucks.

Not just pickups.

Proper pickups.

The kind with four doors, enormous mirrors and a front end roughly the size of our first apartment.

There is something very reassuring about a large pickup truck. You look at one and immediately feel that, should somebody unexpectedly give you half a barn, you could get it home.

I mentioned this to my wife.

She asked why anybody would give us half a barn.

I said that wasn’t really the point.

From my crate that afternoon, I studied our driveway with a tape measure and a small notebook.

Across the street, Captain Leafblower had stopped blowing leaves and was watching me.

This happens in Silverdale.

The moment a man over sixty appears outdoors with a tape measure, every other man over sixty within visual range becomes professionally interested.

“What are you putting in?” he called.

“Nothing.”

He nodded.

He continued watching.

I measured again.

A large pickup would fit.

Technically.

We might have to move the garbage cans. And possibly enter the house through the backyard. But these seemed like details.

My wife came outside.

She looked at the tape measure.

Then at the driveway.

Then at me.

“What are you doing?”

“Just checking something.”

She looked toward the street.

Captain Leafblower suddenly became very interested in his leaves.

I showed her a picture of the truck on my phone.

It was beautiful.

Dark blue.

Four-wheel drive.

Enough cup holders for a minor league baseball team.

I explained that it was practical.

This is an important word when discussing expensive things with your wife.

Practical.

You should introduce it early.

“Think about groceries,” I said.

She looked at me.

“There’s a huge bed in the back. We could put everything in there.”

“How many groceries are you planning to buy?”

“That’s not the point.”

It was becoming clear that she and I had different understandings of what the point was.

I explained lumber.

Garden supplies.

Furniture.

Trips to the hardware store.

Large bags of soil.

Possibly a new barbecue one day.

I even mentioned helping neighbours move things, which was dangerous because I have spent much of my adult life carefully avoiding being identified as someone who owns useful moving equipment.

My wife listened.

She has a particular way of listening when I am constructing an argument that she already knows will collapse by itself.

I kept going anyway.

“Towing capacity,” I said.

We own nothing that requires towing.

She knew this.

I knew she knew this.

Still, it seemed worth mentioning.

She handed my phone back.

“Well, Marcel…”

There it was.

“You and I buy one bag of groceries on Thursdays. We could probably manage that with a Radio Flyer wagon.”

I looked at the driveway.

Captain Leafblower coughed across the street.

I suspect he had heard everything.

For the next two weeks, we looked at cars.

Car shopping has changed since the last time we did it.

Fifteen years ago, a car had buttons.

Now it has opinions.

The first one welcomed me by name, although I had never met it.

Another had a screen large enough to show a movie.

One salesman explained that the car could remember the position of my seat, mirrors, steering wheel and preferred temperature.

My wife said she could remember all those things too.

The salesman didn’t quite know what to do with that information.

I still looked at the pickups.

Of course I did.

Whenever we passed one, I slowed down.

I sat in two.

Possibly three.

In the largest one, I looked across the hood and could just about see Tuesday.

My wife climbed into the passenger side using a handle provided specifically for the purpose.

She sat there for a moment.

“This is ridiculous.”

“It’s comfortable.”

“We’re six feet in the air.”

“Good visibility.”

“We live three miles from the grocery store.”

I put my hands on the steering wheel.

There are moments in a marriage when a man knows he has lost an argument but would still like another minute with the steering wheel.

She gave me that minute.

We eventually bought a Japanese car.

A small one.

Small by American standards, anyway.

It has four doors, a sensible little engine and a trunk that will comfortably hold our Thursday bag of groceries with enough room left over for an unreasonable amount of butter.

It fits in the driveway without moving the garbage cans.

I can see over the hood.

My wife can get into it without mountaineering equipment.

And, annoyingly, I like it.

The first Thursday after we bought it, we drove to the grocery store.

We came home with two bags.

Two.

I carried both inside in one trip.

My wife carried nothing.

I noticed she was smiling.

“Don’t say it,” I told her.

“I wasn’t going to.”

She walked into the house.

I stood beside our new little car for a moment.

Across the street, Captain Leafblower looked over.

“No truck?”

“No truck.”

He nodded slowly, the way men do when another man has returned from a battle they both understand.

Then he looked at our little Japanese car.

“Probably all you need.”

“Probably.”

That afternoon I put the tape measure back in the garage.

It went into the drawer with the spare batteries, three mystery keys and several cables belonging to things we no longer own.

Then I sat on my crate with my coffee.

The new car was on the driveway in front of me.

There was plenty of space behind it.

More than there had been in fifteen years.

I had spent two weeks thinking about all the things we might someday need to carry.

My wife, as usual, had been thinking about the life we actually have.

From where I was sitting, it seemed to fit us just fine.