Of Cars and Fences

His daughter locks her keys in her car.

She ponders this for a moment, coat hanger in hand, entirely unsure how to proceed. Who knew cars are so hard to break into? She can see the damn keys in the ignition, like a shining beacon screaming, “Steal me! You work in the worst area in Edmonton!” At least it’s summer; she’s not cold. Biting her lip, she tries to wiggle the coat hanger inside the window. Then she sighs and pulls out her cell phone.

“Dad,” she says when he answers, “I need help.”

**

The first thing she remembers about her dad is hiding inside of a big tire at the playground near their house. It’s cold outside, but she’s got a good hiding place. She’s a little pig and her dad is the big bad wolf and when he says, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow the house down!”, it makes her giggle.

**

“I hate your cat,” says her father. “That little shit destroys everything.”

When she comes home to visit, he’s waiting outside in the driveway beside a homemade cat tree, complete with a box on top for her cat to sleep in. It’s about to be the nicest thing her cat has ever owned.

Later on, she walks by the computer room. Her dad is sitting on a kitchen chair; her cat, with her for their visit, is curled up on his brand new office chair.

“He was comfortable,” shrugs her dad.

**

When her family moves, her dad takes her to the house before they buy it. He gives her a second, watching her.

“Does the house feel good?” he asks.

She knows what he’s talking about. Probably it’s just ridiculous superstition, but they both believe in it. She pays attention for a minute, and then smiles.

“Feels great!” she says.

**

They build a fence together. It’s fun, and not the kind of fun she’s used to having. This might be what it would be like, she thinks, to be a son. She helps to hold things steady as her dad nails them. He pretends to shoot her with the nail gun, and they talk about everything.

**

His daughter’s car breaks down. Frustrated, she turns the key a few times.

“It’s going like this,” she says, before making the noise. After a moment, she braves a guess and adds, “I think it’s the starter.”

“Give me twenty minutes,” sighs her dad.

**

Her dad’s internet goes down. She has “a good phone voice” so she stays on hold for an hour and tries to explain the problem. When the satellite doesn’t work, she does the same thing. Sometimes when she visits, he greets her with technology problems. She doesn’t know anything about any of it, but she tries. At the very least, she Googles like a mad woman.

**

His daughter is having the time of her life, although that’s too bizarre to mention. She’s been sitting on the floor outside the bathroom for a few hours and her back is killing her; crawling around on her hands and knees scraping glue off the floor with a knife was harder work than she thought it would be, even though her dad gave her kneepads and the better knife.

“An eighth of an inch,” says her dad, passing her the tile.

“An eighth of an inch,” she parrots, because this is her new job, remembering measurements.

He lets her cut the tile. She has to brace her feet against the door and use her whole body to pull the blade. She’s supposed to go on a date tonight, but this is more fun. She only has a lukewarm feeling about this date, and lukewarm is an exaggeration. Now that she’s started helping with the bathroom, the urge to see the finished product is overruling everything.

After she reschedules her date, they put the grout down. Watch “24” and forget about it until it is too hard to remove easily. It takes over an hour to get the grout off, but she’s proud when she’s done. They exchange a smile, she and her dad.

**

Boys come and boys go.

“What’s this one’s name?” asks her dad.

She tells him and he makes a noncommittal noise, a grunt that suggests that’s-the-stupidest-name-ever. Soon he'll think of something that rhymes with it, and then he'll never use the boy's proper name when he's talking to her again. It reminds her of when she was younger, when her dad used to sing teasing songs at the kitchen table and snicker.

“What’s he do?”

She tells him and he makes that same noise. His daughter rolls her eyes, but she smiles on the inside.

**

His daughter’s car breaks down. She’s beside herself with frustration, and it’s hard not to cry on the phone.

“If it wasn’t for bad luck,” says her dad, “you’d have no luck at all.”

He’s on his way before she’s off the phone.

**

The next thing she remembers about her dad is sitting in his truck, going to the mall. They play his cassette of Newfie songs. Even when she’s twenty-seven, “Fishing in the Dorie” is one of her favourites. She knows all the words to “I’se the B’ye” and all the words to “The Rubber Boot Song”. She’s never been to Newfoundland, but she can sing as if she has, at least when she’s alone… Lord thundering Jesus. She loves “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary's” and “Sweet Forget-Me-Nots”.

Even when she’s twenty-seven, she might as well be four. In her mind, she’s back in the truck and the cassette is playing.

**

His daughter’s car doesn’t break down, not for months.

“Knock on wood!” pleads her dad. “Knock on so much wood!”

**

His daughter has to move home. She feels bad about it, about how everything has worked out.

“It’s okay,” says her dad. “You’ll always have a home here.”

A moment passes. Then, “Oh God, that cat.”

**

Her favourite thing to do is work on her car. Sometimes, it’s beyond her, but she sits outside for as long as it takes, trying to read directions printed from the internet while her dad does whatever he’s doing under her hood. She knows how to change spark plugs, she’s pretty sure she could change her own tire, she can tell when lug nuts are loose, she knows sometimes you just have to hit things with a hammer, and she can hazard a pretty good guess by now what noises mean.

A brand new driven-by-no-one-but-her car would be nice, but she’d miss this. It doesn’t matter how old she is; she’ll always miss afternoons outside gossiping with her dad.