On the back road in Northern Montana, the speed limit was eighty-five. Up to that point, the fastest I’d driven was fifty. We’d rented the car, a crimson Toyota Corolla, in Spokane, Washington, after flying from Oregon that morning. The car we owned was a Corolla, old and silver, with several black bruises on the bumper where paint had scraped off. My husband Richard had ferried us from Spokane into Montana, through the old mining area of Northern Idaho. My turn to drive had come.
We were heading to a vacation cabin a few miles east of Glacier National Park. Since we were out of the city on the open road, I couldn’t dig up an excuse not to drive.
I was in my early fifties and had yet to own a car. For several reasons, I didn’t consider myself capable. I had never operated a car, even once, without an experienced driver in the passenger seat keeping watch. More important, I had been a non-driver for so long, it was impossible to believe I could drive myself alone to the grocery store or a meeting, palming my keys as women I envied did, while walking to the parking lot.
This stretch of practice sessions behind the wheel was the longest I’d ever done. Yes, I had tried before. I had taken driver’s ed my senior year of high school. In my late twenties, I hired a driving instructor, who took me out practicing the stick shift on San Francisco’s nearly ninety-degree slanted streets. Friends also helped, riding next to me as I made left and right turns, backed up, and did my best imitation of parallel parking.
Unfortunately, nothing stuck. Or rather, up to the point when I pressed the rental car up to eighty-five on a nearly empty two-lane Montana road, I hadn’t overcome the obstacle blocking me from becoming a frequent and comfortable driver. That obstacle was a phobia about driving, the fear I would crash the car into an oncoming semi and end my life.
More than fear standing like a playground bully in my way, I couldn’t picture myself as a driver. For decades in place of that awesome role, I remained a woman desperately needing a ride. People who learned to drive after celebrating their sixteenth birthdays, practicing with patient Dad, couldn’t grasp the pain and humiliation of a woman forced to beg for a ride at a meeting running late, because it felt dangerous to walk to and from the bus stop. They wouldn’t understand the unpleasant choices before the wonderful invention of the ride-share. This woman could either opt for the scary walk, praying she wasn’t attacked when no one was on the street to help, or stay home.
I did not have a patient father to take me out driving. The father I had was a career military man, away from his family much of the time. The year I turned sixteen my father was commanding a medical evacuation squadron in Vietnam. Even when home, he took no interest in me. It’s impossible to imagine us going out in his car, and him teaching me to drive.
When it came to helping me learn how to drive, my mother was useless. She was a reluctant driver herself. If she had to take me somewhere outside our small New Jersey town, she would strangle the steering wheel of our royal blue Dodge the entire ride, as if squeezing the life out of it would save us.
Once I was old enough to get my learner’s permit, my mother announced that she would not take me out driving. Since she was my first and last hope, I let the learner’s permit expire, without attempting to take the driving test and get my license.
I came closest to becoming a driver in my late twenties, the year I practiced with the instructor. Surprising to me, I grew adept at shifting after being stopped on San Francisco’s infamously steep streets, using the emergency brake to keep from rolling back into the car behind me. Work colleagues took me out driving in various cars. My favorite was a tiny yellow Honda Civic, owned by my boss, Frances Moore Lappé, author of the vegetarian classic, Diet for a Small Planet.
Since I was doing well, I took the plunge and made an appointment at the DMV. I passed the driving test on my first try. Now I possessed an official ID, with my picture at the top.
For months, I hopefully deposited part of my low nonprofit organization salary into a savings account, dedicated to the purchase of my first car. I hadn’t reached a point of confidence yet, when I would fantasize the make and model or color, but I was getting close.
At that treacherous point, teetering on the brink of becoming a full-fledged driver, and therefore an adult, I reluctantly agreed to move to Seattle. The reason for this sudden move was to live with a boyfriend only a few weeks before I had decided to drop.
What followed shouldn’t have been a surprise. The problems in the relationship that disappeared long enough to convince me to quit the job I enjoyed and leave San Francisco, a city I adored, boomeranged back. A few months after arriving in Seattle, I moved out of our shared apartment, with its lovely view of the Space Needle.
In making the sudden move to Seattle, I gave up more than the city and job I loved. The positive energy pushing me forward to becoming a confident driver, who owned a car, crashed into a brick wall. My hope of getting over my driving phobia was shoved onto the shelf in a dark corner, as if I’d never brought it out into the light.
Over twenty years later, a different shock jolted me back onto the path of learning to drive. I was married by then to Richard, a much nicer man, who was suddenly hospitalized. Thankfully, his recovery was short. But from the moment he entered the hospital, I became keenly aware of the burden I carried, not being able to drive. He was scheduled for an early morning surgery, in a hospital outside the city of Portland, Oregon, where we lived. To get there, I needed to take one bus to downtown Portland, then wait a good twenty minutes for a second bus to arrive that would eventually let me off in front of the hospital. Each of the five days he was there, I had to arrange for a ride home, since I didn’t leave his room until after ten o’clock at night.
During his first weeks of recovery, my husband wasn’t allowed to drive. I finagled rides from several friends to the grocery store and to pick up his pain medications at the pharmacy across town. Every morning, I silently vowed that I would learn to drive.
Six months later, we started my driving lessons on the historic Columbia Gorge Highway, the only road that ran through the Gorge on the Oregon side of the Columbia River before wide, busy Interstate 84 was built. I loved the old road, which Richard and I had biked, as it wound around deep curves, passing bucolic farms.
Sitting behind the wheel on those initial drives, I felt the little silver Corolla was in control, driving us, instead of me being in charge. Few other cars appeared on the two-lane road, but even one heading westbound as I drove east caused me to strangle the steering wheel harder and sweat more.
After a while, I started to enjoy the drives. Before long, we ventured out to other country roads and through a few small towns. I drove two-lane Highway One on the Long Beach Peninsula in Southwest Washington, passing through the villages of Ilwaco, Long Beach and Ocean Park, snatching glimpses of Victorian houses along the way. I even grew adept at maneuvering unpaved gravel roads leading to trailheads, where we hiked alongside streams or to lakes and waterfalls in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. And then on that visit to Montana, I pushed the car up to eighty-five, the Corolla practically lifting into the air as the speedometer edged higher.
One morning I drove in Glacier National Park, following slow traffic, including the historic Red Jammer buses, up and over glorious Going to the Sun Road. Before long, though, I ran smack into a problem. We wanted to stop and see the sights, parking where other cars had pulled off the road. Unfortunately, I couldn’t join them because something was missing from my driving toolkit. I didn’t know how to back up.
That day, I surrendered the driver’s seat to Richard. He promised that when we got back to Portland, I would leave those meandering country roads, stay in the city, and learn to make left and right turns, back up and park.
Years before, I had practiced these maneuvers with my kind driving instructor. Contrary to the assumption that a skill once mastered never leaves you, I was baffled by the process of turning the wheel one way as I backed up, to move the car in a certain direction. We practiced over and over again, in an empty parking lot, on a historic military base in Vancouver, Washington. I felt convinced I would never get it right. Making left turns made my throat scratchy and dry, as I waited for oncoming cars to pass, praying I’d have time to turn before the green light changed and I got stuck in the intersection.
Bit by bit, what was incomprehensible moved closer to being second nature. It reminded me of when I learned to lift weights at a local gym, working with a cute buff trainer, seeing he was right that the body eventually incorporates the movements, and they start happening without much thought.
As I drove more, eventually buying my first car, a pudgy blue Toyota Echo, and later, a dark metallic blue Honda Fit, the shame I’d felt for decades as a non-driver began to lessen. I still felt anxious driving, especially to a place I’d never gone before, but now at least I could.
For decades, only a few close friends were aware I couldn’t drive. To others, I pretended to simply not have a car. Most people, I would later learn, assumed I didn’t drive. No one, it turns out, thought less of me. I was the only person who saw myself as damaged because I felt too afraid to do what the majority of Americans take for granted.
The afternoon Richard and I bought my first car was sunny and warm, surprising for April in Portland, when a chilly rain would normally be falling. The light blue car we’d seen advertised was perched atop a lift, high above the collection of used cars in the suburban lot. For what felt like days, Richard haggled over the price with the salesman sitting on the opposite side of the scratched wooden desk. I barely listened, as an argument was taking place in my mind, one side wanting the car, while the other was terrified of driving it home.
I had never, not once, driven alone, without another adult in the passenger seat, prepared to take over. If that wasn’t reason enough to quit negotiating and get up and walk out the door, letting Richard drive us home in our old familiar car, I had never driven the busy road I would have to take to get back to our neighborhood. Each of the several times the salesman, Todd, got up and walked to a back office, ostensibly to consult his manager about my husband’s latest offer, I whispered in Richard’s ear, “I’m afraid to drive the car home.” He repeatedly assured me I would be all right.
Todd warned us not to try and make a left turn, heading out of the dealership.
“In this rush-hour traffic, it’ll be too hard,” he explained, making my stomach ache and my already dry throat feel like sandpaper.
“Turn right and go around the block,” he advised.
Richard vowed he would be right behind me. With that, I slid behind the wheel of what had amazingly become my car, moved the seat closer to the front, straightened the rearview mirror, and announced, “I guess I’m ready to go.”
Moments after leaving the dealership, I located a gas station and pulled into the exit lane in time. I got back on the highway fine, avoiding the exit-only lane when the road narrowed. I easily maneuvered through heavy rush-hour traffic back in Portland, with cars darting in and out of lanes, and made the right turn onto Belmont Street, which would take me home. Blocks later, I made a second right turn, then a left, onto our street, Yamhill. We didn’t have a driveway or garage, but I expertly pulled the car into a large empty space in front of our house, leaving room for Richard to park behind.
After sliding my credit card in and out to cover the groceries I’ve just bought, I cradle my keys in my palm, including the large one for the car. For years, I have envied other women clutching their keys across a parking lot, as I toted a heavy bag of groceries, preparing to shuffle home. While I knew my life was hemmed in by fear, it wasn’t until after I made that drive home from the dealership in my own car that I recognized the prison in which I’d locked myself by not driving.
Years later, I never take driving for granted. Sometimes I marvel at how much easier my life has become. In place of a two-bus trip that eats up an hour each way, I breeze to a doctor’s appointment in fifteen minutes. After I drive to and from a new place, I joyously recount the ride in my mind, commending myself for what I’ve accomplished. Frequently, I look at the woman I’ve become, a driver, feeling pity for the person who was once too frightened to try.
Annie and I have been friends going back to the nineteen-eighties. We live in different states now and only see each other every few years.
When she comes to visit, I take her for short rides. She doesn’t say a word about my driving. Instead, we talk about other things, filling each other in on recent developments in our lives.
Though I did my best for years to hide the truth that I was too afraid to drive, Annie made the obvious assumption. At one point, she made the simple comment, “Oh, you’ve finally learned to drive.”
There was no judgement in her words, just a statement of fact. To Annie, I was someone who didn’t drive, not a lesser being, not a woman who should be ashamed.
I still have a repeated bad dream, even after these years of driving. In the dream, I am in a strange city, oftentimes New York. I have spent the evening in a restaurant or club. It is late when I finally leave, heading for home.
I am alone, without a car, of course. In some dreams, I get on a bus. There is always a point in every dream, though, when I am forced to walk.
The streets are poorly lit. Most nights, I don’t know where I’m going. Occasionally, I’m walking in an area I’ve been before and know is dangerous. If I can just make it through these scary blocks, then I should be safe, and I will make it home unharmed.
I nearly always wake up before arriving home. When I do, the fear stays with me for a time.
But then I walk outside and get in my car. I turn the music up, so I can hear over the hum of the heater. And without anyone else in the car, I happily take myself for a ride.
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Patty Somlo’s most recent book, Hairway to Heaven Stories (Cherry Castle Publishing) was a Finalist in the American Fiction Awards and Best Book Awards. Previous books, The First to Disappear (Spuyten Duyvil) and Even When Trapped Behind Clouds: A Memoir of Quiet Grace (WiDo Publishing), were Finalists in several contests. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Delmarva Review, Under the Sun, the Los Angeles Review, and over 40 anthologies. She received Honorable Mention for Fiction in the Women’s National Book Association Contest, was a Finalist in the J.F. Powers Short Fiction Contest, had an essay selected as Notable for Best American Essays, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net multiple times.
© 2024, Patty Somlo
Halfway Down the Stairs 