The Detour, by Nick Friedman

Conor was a Catholic kid with a severe crew cut back in the day when hair that short sent a message to the world about your parents’ values. He lived about a mile up the road from me. His stern alcoholic father had walked out on him and his mother and his four brothers a few months back, or a few years back — I can’t recall exactly. What I do recall five decades later is that his father left behind a key.

That key fit the front door of a house across the road belonging to an old lady who had hired Conor’s father as caretaker when she was away in her New York City apartment, an hour’s drive from our rural northern suburb.

On a frosty cold night, Conor and I crept out of his house with flashlight in hand and unlocked the front door. We were two wired 13-year-olds looking for a little action. Maybe a little liquor.

In the kitchen, the flashlight’s beam caught the sparkle of another key — this one hanging from a hook next to the entrance to the attached garage. We didn’t need to say a word. We snatched it up and stepped into the garage. While Conor eased the garage door up, I slipped in behind the wheel of a four-door, brown and white, 1970 Plymouth Valiant.

I scooted the seat all the way forward so my feet would reach the pedals, inserted the key into the ignition, and started up the engine. I shifted the stick on the column from park to drive and maneuvered the car out onto the driveway with lights off. Conor zipped the garage door down behind us and popped into the shotgun seat.

At the end of the driveway, I turned right onto the unlit road in front of Conor’s house. Another right, headlights on now, and we were hurtling down a steep hill toward the deserted, woodsy roads that wind around the Croton reservoir.

In an instant I was Steve McQueen in Bullitt, screeching around the curves, punching the gas on the crest of the hills, banging down on the far side with a jolt. I tapped my right foot from gas to brake, gas to brake, searching for the sweet spot of constant speed to control the ton of metal in my hands.

I side-glanced Conor. He was gripping the dashboard and grinning and panting like a mad dog straining at the end of a taut chain. Dark houses rushed by in the window beyond his wild-eyed profile.

Soon enough, the choreography between the pedals came to me and the ride smoothed out. I found the art of control by touching the brake lightly before the curves and accelerating through them to hold the road.

I rolled down my window to catch the bracing night air on my face and stomped down on the gas. The speedometer’s red needle inched past 50 then 60 until finally settling with an antsy vibrato at 70.

When my own house rushed by, I was suddenly, morally sobered. Behind the darkened windows were my two brothers, my mother and father.

Unlike Conor’s family, we lived under the same roof. Our parents were two smart, sophisticated people who loved us and we loved them back. They provided. But in the light of day the picture of perfection was an illusion. Hairline cracks early in the marriage had ruptured into full-on fractures, and the tension was like living on an emotional faultline. When the opposing forces collided, as they inevitably did, it was every son for himself.

I let up on the gas and turned back for Conor’s house. That was enough for one night.

We nestled the Valiant back in the garage, careful to leave it just as we found it. We hung up the ignition key and scuttled home, snickering the whole way, our breath vaporizing in the raw air. We knew we’d be back.

Our bootleg driver’s ed continued over the next month with two more joy rides, taking turns behind the wheel. But then, trouble: Before our next planned trip, Conor could not find the front door key. So, we did what we had to do: We kicked in a small windowpane in the living room, reached in and unlocked the window, climbed inside, and tiptoed to the kitchen. An hour later we had the Valiant home again.

A week later I spotted a one-line item in the police blotter of our local newspaper: Woman reports window broken in home and gas drained from car.

I called Conor. He had seen it, too. Neither of us said it but we both knew it: Providence had intervened. We had flown close to the sun and survived. It was time to quit.

Conor and I drifted apart after the car escapades. A quick Google search tells me his name, as common as autumn leaves, is scattered across more addresses than I care to click through.

I hope he survived the wake of family turmoil. Maybe he found a therapist, like I did. Carved out a career. Like I did. Found a partner, had a kid or two, a house of his own, a car.

Most of all, I wonder if he takes perverse pride in pushing his luck to the breaking point those frosty nights long ago and getting away with it. Like I do.

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Nick Friedman is a castaway from the glory days of magazine publishing, having edited numerous nonfiction articles during a career spent climbing up mastheads. His own byline has appeared in The New York Times, Psychology Today, and other publications. In 2023, his first work of fiction, “Everything Must Go,” appeared in Shift, a self-proclaimed “journal of literary oddities.”

© 2024, Nick Friedman