A boy and his father arrive, promptly, at one o'clock. The boy is fair, freckled, and shy; his father is heavy, dark, but open-faced and smiling. I like them both immediately.  

"Time for Eddy here to have a car," the father says. "He's a senior this year, Boulder High."

I smile at them both and nod. Eddy must be a carbon copy of his mother.

They circle Thunder twice, not touching except for the man's two quick kicks to a back tire.

"Okay to drive it now?" he asks. He’s a laborer, I think, maintenance at the university – I think I might remember seeing him there in uniform. I know he wants the best for Eddy; I can feel it, see it in his deference and in his leadership. Eddy will finish up his last year of high school in good shape and go on to the university. Probably still live at home, drive his car – Thunder? Should I tell him the car has a name? – to campus and to his job at the movie theater or wherever it is he works in the evenings. Girls, I wonder about, and look at him again. Well sure, soon there will be girls in the car.

Eddy hasn't taken his hands out of his pockets, hasn't said a word. His hazel eyes blink at me in surprise and pleasure when I hand the keys to him. He loves him mom and dad: this is imprinted on his slightly flapping ears, his polite mouth, his freckles, but he longs to be somewhere else I think. He will be one day. I wish they’d let him live in the dorm next year.

Without a word, Eddy hands the keys to his father, goes to the passenger side and slips in. Thunder rocks, the springs singing, when his dad lands aggressively in the driver's seat.  

My front porch is deep and shady; I wave good-bye to them from here, as if I have known them forever and am seeing them off on a long-wished-for trip. The baby rolls as they drive away, and I settle into my ancient wicker rocker, happy to be out of the sun. A warm, thin breeze moves the August leaves, some already beginning to yellow at the edges. It is too much hot for birds today, so the only sounds on my quiet street are the bubbling of a neighbor’s lawn sprinkler and the creaking of my rocker and the boards under it. The baby and I rock and rock.

I awaken to footsteps, bringing my father from my dream, thinking it is he walking up the porch steps.

Eddy looks stricken, probably has never been so close to a napping pregnant woman he does not know. His father is smiling, standing so tall that his head grazes the gingerbread cornice of the overhang. "You get so tired at the end," he says, "especially when it's hot." I blink and nod. He looks nothing like my father but still I can't shake this feeling of familiarity. "Your first?"

Strangers will ask. They must, so that we may practice either our truth or a fiction on them. As I open my mouth, I have no idea which it will be.

"We, well, we lost our first as a, an infant, so..." The truth is not easier, does not roll smoothly from my tongue.  

"I'm so sorry." I know he is; his words come out clumsily, as if he isn't the one used to expressing his family's sympathy. But then he gestures towards my belly and says, "But so happy for you now!" Beside him, Eddy shifts noiselessly from one foot to the other.

I make to stand and Eddy’s father is there, his strong arm offered, his other behind my back for support. I have the sensation of being pulled by a rope tow. I understand from his strength that this is the way he is accustomed to giving his support.  

Eddy speaks then, his voice a surprise, low, even, a melody. "I like your car."  

No wait on those girls, I think, and he doesn't need to live in the dorm. I smile and want to tell him with that voice he should be on radio. A public radio station, way down low on the dial, early mornings, playing Bach and Vivaldi to my coffee.

"Ed," his father says, cautionary. Can he really think Eddy has given up a bargaining chip by telling me that? Isn't it obvious that I'll give Eddy the car and fill up the tank into the bargain? He turns to me and says, "We'd like to have a mechanic look it over."

I nod.  "Of course."

"We've never had a car that's from. . . that's not been made in America," the man says to me. He sounds apologetic.

"My dad would have nothing but American cars," I say. "Always Chevrolets or Buicks.” I point to Thunder. "This was the first foreigner in our family." His answering smile is broad. "I grew up in Saint Louis," I tell him. He sighs and looks relieved.  

My father sold insurance to families like his. I can see them, this man's parents, sitting in their living room drinking iced tea and listening to my dad tell them how important it is to provide for a family's future. He sold insurance of all kinds, life, health, car, calamity, and as a child I believed that having current, paid-up policies was what kept everyone in a family safe, guaranteed them a long and happy life. That was the point of insurance, I thought, and I believed that my father and the other men like him were the keepers of our neighborhoods and towns. People like Eddy’s grandparents provided my family's bread and butter and, in return, my father kept them safe.  

My father's heart attack had taken him by the time our little girl was born. No matter how I approach the fact of her death, I cannot dismiss the thought that had he not died, she would still be alive today, a chirpy three year old, safely straddling her grandpa's knee.

They promise to have the car back by five, and again I stand on the porch waving them good-bye and wonder that I didn't notice before how much white sock showed above the man's shoes. As the landline we still have rings inside the house, I see that his pant legs are way too short.

I get to the phone on the seventh ring.

"I was just going to hang up!" my mother says. No cell phones for her, she will only use a landline and usually hangs up after five rings; she must be allowing for the baby. "Were you outside?" She still lives in Webster Groves in the same house, surrounded now by people she hardly knows. But she often has her children and grandchildren around her and seems busy and happy.  

"Is it hot there?" I ask, though I know it is. For days the news has been full of the Mid-West's heat wave. I just want to hear her talk about the oven.

"Like an oven!" she says on cue. "We could bake bread in the garage!"

She's always said that.  

"I found a box in the attic." I can see her sitting on the cherry phone bench in the entry of the house where, even after all this time, the morning glories still climb the wallpaper there behind it. She's changed a lot in that house through the years, but not those flowers; they make her happy she says. "And this box's got your baby clothes in it!"

"Oh no, Mom, not mine." I am the eldest of her five. Anything that was purchased or given to me would have been worn threadbare by the time my youngest brother was born.  

"Yes, yours!" She sounds elated. "Don't ask me how, but this box has been shuffled around up there and passed over all these years. Now that I see it, I remember putting them in." She's laughing at herself. "I remember telling your father that these little things were so special because you were. I wanted to save them forever, and," again she laughs, "I guess I have!" I can imagine my father shaking his head over her sentimentality, yet obliging her all the same.

In my life there has been only one thing more difficult than packing up our hardly-used baby things, and that was finally giving her up to someone else, putting her still body into the hands of a stranger.  

"I'll bring them when I come," my mother says. "They're mostly white. Some yellow. You can use them for the baby. If you want to."

"Oh, yes," I say, doing everything I can to resist tears. I gave everything away back then, certain that there would be no more babies for us, certain that I could never again face the possibility of that kind of loss. Albert obliged me about the clothes, and now we've had to buy them all again. "Thank you, Mom." But it isn't the resupplying that has prompted my mother to part with her treasures, of course, nor me to accept them.  

"What're you doing today?" she asks, knowing we've talked enough about the clothes. I only hope to be half the mother she is.

"Selling Thunder."

"Your old car?" I hear the disbelief in her voice.

"It's time," I say. "A newer one with four doors will be easier. And safer."

"Well, yes, that's right," she says. Then she laughs a little. "I guess Daddy was wrong about that one, wasn't he?"

"What do you mean?" I want to know.

"He was against you buying that car! He said it wouldn't last or would end in no good, some thing or other." I see her sitting on the phone bench, her ankles crossed, smiling as she remembers. She has a photograph of him on the bookshelf nearby; it's situated so that he seems to be watching and listening to people as they talk on the phone.

"I didn't know that," I tell her and we go on chatting for a while, talking about nothing much. She'll be here with the box of my baby clothes in a few weeks.

I'm awake when they pull up this time, but in my rocker again. Eddy and his father come striding up the walk together.  

"My brother-in-law is a mechanic," he says, "and he took a look. Says the car's in good shape but should be repainted." He's standing in front of me, smiling his open smile. "We'll offer you four-fifty. Because of the rust and paint."  

Eddy, behind him, peeks around. I look into his lovely eyes and behind him I see Thunder parked at the curb. It occurs to me that I've had that old car since before he was born.

"Thank you," I say, looking from Eddy to his father and back to Eddy again, "but I've decided not to sell. I've been thinking I should hold onto it, have it restored.” I pat my belly. “For my own little one to drive. When he or she gets to be a senior in high school." This time, the truth is smooth in the telling. "I hope you understand."

Eddy looks quickly to his father.

"You bet we do!" The man lays a hand across his son's shoulders. "Sure. There's a car out there for Eddy!" he says to Eddy and me. "We'll find it!"

Eddy’s eyes have darkened. He gives me a polite but disappointed smile and shoves his hands into his pockets. Oh Eddy, I say to him silently, there are lots of disappointments ahead for you, but so many good things, too. And, look, you have insurance: you still have him.

I'll keep an eye open for Eddy in the months to come; I'm sure to see him soon, driving around town in a Volkswagen Bug or some old Subaru. I know it's time for some foreign blood in their family. I'll look for his father, too, when I push the stroller through campus. I'll wave but I doubt he’ll remember me.  

I'm glad I washed old Thunder, and maybe I'll get him waxed before the baby comes. Albert will give in and trade cars with me. We’ll get new tires.  

I'll drive this baby around in its own history after all.