I ASKED WHY SHE WOULDN’T SELL HER MOTHER’S CAR AND HER ANSWER HAUNTS ME
It was just a regular Saturday at the flea market, browsing tables with my coffee going cold in my hand. That’s when I noticed her – an older woman with silver hair pulled back tight, standing behind a folding table covered in old things. Next to her table sat a beat-up station wagon with a cracked bumper, a for-sale sign in the window with the price crossed out twice. A younger woman stood nearby scrolling her phone.
At first I thought nothing of it. But then I slowed down.
The car was rough. Rust along the wheel wells, a side mirror held on with tape, seats faded to almost nothing. And without really thinking, I said,
“Why not just junk it? I mean… it can’t be worth much.”
The woman looked up slowly. Her eyes were tired, but calm.
“It’s not about worth,” she said. “It’s just old. Same as me.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
She looked over at the car and put her hand flat against the door. “She drove me to the hospital in that thing,” she said. “Three times.”
The Price That Kept Getting Crossed Out
I stood there holding my coffee like an idiot.
The sign in the window had a number on it, then a line through it. Another number below that, also crossed out. The third number was written smaller, like it hurt to write it at all.
I asked her about that. The crossed-out prices. She laughed a little, not a happy laugh, more like something that just escaped.
“First time I put it up for sale, I couldn’t do it,” she said. “Took it back home. Second time I got as far as someone opening the door and looking inside. Told them it was sold.”
The younger woman nearby glanced up from her phone just long enough to make a face. She’d heard this before. She went back to scrolling.
The older woman’s name was Dolores. She told me that a few minutes later, when I hadn’t walked away. She didn’t offer it like an introduction, more like she was reminding herself. Dolores. Seventy-three years old, she said, though she looked older in the way that people who’ve been tired for a long time look older.
Her mother’s name had been Ruth. Ruth had died fourteen months ago, a Tuesday in November, early morning, the kind of death that’s not a surprise but still finds a way to be one.
The station wagon was a 1994 Buick Roadmaster. Brown, or it used to be. Hard to tell now.
What Ruth Used the Car For
Dolores didn’t say much at first. I think she was testing whether I was actually listening or just being polite before moving on to the next table.
I stayed.
So she talked.
Ruth had bought the Roadmaster in 1996, used, off a lot in Akron. Paid cash, which was a thing Ruth did. Didn’t trust financing. Didn’t trust banks much either. She kept the title in a Ziploc bag in the glovebox along with her insurance card, a rosary, and a folded-up list of phone numbers written in pencil on the back of an envelope.
“She never updated it to a phone,” Dolores said. “The list. She just kept adding numbers in the margins.”
Ruth drove that car for twenty-seven years. She drove Dolores to chemo three times over two separate rounds of treatment, once in 2009 and once in 2017. She drove her home both times too. Sat in the parking garage and waited, sometimes for four hours, reading paperback Westerns she bought at library sales.
“She never complained about the waiting,” Dolores said. “Not once. I’d come out and she’d have a book face-down on her lap and she’d just say, ‘You ready, baby?'”
She said that last part quietly. You ready, baby.
The younger woman with the phone had drifted a few feet further away.
The Thing About the Glovebox
I asked Dolores if the car still ran.
She said yes, barely. She’d driven it to the flea market that morning, thirty-five miles. It overheated twice on the way and she’d had to pull over and let it cool down.
“Why not drive your own car?” I asked.
She looked at me like I’d said something funny. “I did,” she said. “This is my car now. Has been since November.”
She’d kept it registered, kept it insured. Paid more in insurance than the car was worth, she knew that. Her son had told her so, more than once, in the tone sons use when they think they’re being practical and can’t figure out why you’re not grateful for it.
The Ziploc bag was still in the glovebox. She’d checked when she got to the market that morning, she said. Habit.
The rosary was still there. The insurance card was outdated. The list of phone numbers was still there too, pencil faded to almost nothing in some places, Ruth’s handwriting small and slanted and very certain of itself.
Dolores had added one number to the list. Her own cell phone.
“In case,” she said, and didn’t finish the sentence.
I didn’t ask in case of what.
Why the Price Kept Going Down
Here’s the part I keep thinking about.
The third number on that sign, the small one, the one that looked like it hurt to write. It was forty dollars.
Not four hundred. Forty.
I asked her why so low. She shrugged, but it wasn’t a real shrug.
“I don’t want money for it,” she said. “I want it to go somewhere that makes sense. Forty dollars means someone needs a car. Forty dollars means they’re not buying it to flip it or strip it. Forty dollars means they’ll drive it.”
She’d had two people look at it that morning. One had offered her twenty-five, which she’d turned down, not because of the money but because he’d kicked the rear tire and called it a beater. The other had been a kid, maybe nineteen, who’d sat in the driver’s seat for a long minute without saying anything, then gotten out and said he needed to think about it.
“I hope he comes back,” Dolores said. “He sat in it right.”
I didn’t ask what sitting in it right meant. I think I knew.
The younger woman, I found out later, was Dolores’s daughter-in-law, Karen. She’d driven Dolores to the market because Dolores’s son didn’t want her making the trip alone in the Roadmaster. Karen was there to make sure Dolores actually sold it this time. That was the deal.
Karen had not said a word the entire time I’d been standing there.
What She Said When I Asked If She Was Ready
At some point I asked the wrong question.
I said, “Are you ready to let it go?”
Dolores looked at me for a second. Then she looked at the car. Then back at me.
“No,” she said. “But I’m here.”
That was it. That was the whole answer.
She wasn’t performing grief. She wasn’t asking for anything. She’d just driven a dying car thirty-five miles to a flea market parking lot because she’d made a decision and she was going to hold herself to it, even if it took all morning and three tries and a daughter-in-law staring at her phone to make sure she went through with it.
I bought a set of old canning jars from her table. Paid five dollars. She wrapped them in newspaper without being asked.
As I was walking away she said, “You have a good mother?”
I stopped. Turned around.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
She nodded. “Good. Tell her something today.”
I didn’t ask what to tell her. Dolores had already turned back to her table, straightening things that didn’t need straightening.
The Parking Lot at 2pm
I went back an hour later. I’m not sure why.
The Roadmaster was still there. The sign was still in the window. Dolores was sitting in a folding chair now, eating half a sandwich, the other half wrapped in wax paper on the table next to her.
The kid, the nineteen-year-old, was back.
He was standing next to the car with his hands in his pockets, not touching it, just looking at it. Dolores was watching him from the chair. Karen had moved closer, phone down for once.
The kid said something I couldn’t hear. Dolores said something back. He nodded.
He went to his own car, an old Civic held together with optimism, and came back with two folded twenties. He held them out. Dolores looked at the money for a moment. She stood up.
She took the money. Then she did something I didn’t expect.
She went to the Roadmaster, opened the glovebox, and took out the Ziploc bag. She unfolded the list of phone numbers and looked at it for a few seconds. She folded it back up, put it in her pocket, and handed the kid the bag with the rosary and the title still inside.
“The registration’s in the visor,” she said. “She kept it in the visor.”
The kid said thank you. He meant it, you could hear it.
Dolores walked back to her chair and sat down. She picked up the other half of her sandwich. She didn’t watch him drive away, but I did.
The Roadmaster made it to the exit of the parking lot before the brake lights came on. He sat there for a second, then turned left, and was gone.
Karen put her hand on Dolores’s shoulder. Dolores patted it twice, the way you do when you want someone to know you’re okay without having to say it out loud.
I drove home and called my mother.
—
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For more emotional tales, check out what happened when He Walked Into a Military Funeral Uninvited or the shocking discovery when My Name Tag at My Grandson’s Wedding Said Something I Was Never Supposed to See. You might also be interested in the drama that unfolded when My Son Laughed When His Daughter Called Me a Burden.
