Learning to Drive

By William Norwich

A member of New York City’s glitterati careens down memory lane in this debut novel by the gossip columnist and Vogue editor-at-large.
 
In 1980s New York City, Julian Orr has made himself into the ultimate insider—a journalist at a glossy fashion and gossip magazine and resident expert on contemporary urban living. But now, at the advanced age of thirty-seven, he’s about to embark on a totally new venture: learning to drive. His ultimate goal is to drive himself out of the city to visit his parents' graves and the small Connecticut town where he grew up.
 
But confronting his difficult childhood will be a breeze compared to the trials he faces at the hand of his not-quite-hinged driving instructor. What begins as an innocent act of personal liberation escalates soon escalates into a fiasco of front page proportions in this funny, poignant and personal debut novel.
 
The e-book edition published in 2019 includes a new preface by the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780802148001

William Norwich

William Norwich is a writer, editor, and video and television reporter. He is the author of the novels My Mrs. Brown and Learning to Drive as well as the children’s book Molly and the Magic Dress. Norwich also has written introductions and essays for many pictorial books. Currently the editor for fashion and interior design at Phaidon Press, he has also written and edited for The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, and New York magazine. Norwich is a graduate of the writing program at Columbia University (MFA), Hampshire College (BA), and the Pomfret School. He lives in New York City.

Book preview

ONE

•  •  •

Learn to drive, learn to drive, learn to drive . . . it wasn't for some sudden love of cars that it was due time, at age thirty-seven, that I learned to drive.

Did I ever mention that my father sold Pontiacs? That this obsession with learning to drive, or not learning to drive as the case may be, goes way back? I asked Ines Spring.

Ines sighed. She was my finely tuned employer, the editor in chief of the fashion magazine View, and a friend, too, I liked to think. We were seated together at a charity party in New York several so-called social seasons ago; the beneficiary of this evening's efforts was one of the local ballet companies. I also wrote a daily around-the-town column for the Tribune; I was there to cover the do for the tabloid. It was close to midnight, it had been a long evening – cocktails first, the performance of several new dances including an homage to shifting sexual identities that involved costumes of drag and some thirty dancers leaping to the scratched sounds of progressive, computerized disco, and then the dinner. The salad plates were just cleared by a fleet of handsome waiters who, in their black jackets and polished poses, were, as was customary in New York in the late 1980s, more attractive than the majority of the guests. The promise of things in cream and veal awaited us; a thousand black-tied people whirled and twirled on the dance floor – La Bamba, a punishingly bouncy south-of-the-border tune, had gotten the assembly of Manhattan's most noted movers and shakers to the dance floor. The pay-to-attend charity ball replaced disco in this decade; the ladies’ dresses were as bold as strobes – they shined expense.

Ines and I hardly overflowed with pep, let alone mirth. We protected each other from having to dance. We could not quite see the guests at the other side of the table, so tall were the jungled centerpieces.

Did I ever mention that? That my father was blue-eyed and gray-haired and had a future like the moon's?

What are you talking about, Julian – your father had a future like the moon's? Ines asked, fidgeting impatiently with the gold clasp on her evening bag.

When you cannot see the sky, you are promised the moon, I tried to explain.

Darling, why don't you have a drink, she said and almost cried at the sight of a fashion designer we knew dancing with a woman in a $25,000 couture, leather bondage dress. ‘'Tie a Yellow Ribbon around the old oak tree was the song the band played now; it always seemed to follow La Bamba" on society nights.

Anyway, my shrink is really after me to learn to drive. He says that if I do, I can drive to where my parents are buried and put my past to rest, I said, thinking of a session with my worthy doctor that afternoon.

I suppose, Ines responded, her British accent an economy of pear-shaped tones.

I haven't been to the cemetery since my mother was buried there nearly twenty years ago, I continued.

And where is it? Ines asked.

In southeastern Connecticut, I explained. Near Goldenrod, where I was born and raised, nearly a three-hour drive from here.

Why don't you just hire a car and driver? Ines suggested.

The shrink thinks that it would be too much of an eighties thing to do, too catered. The whole point of the exercise, he says, is for me to learn to drive and drive there myself, I said. It's as much a metaphor as it is practical.

I see that, Julian. Ines smiled and patted me on the arm.

Of course, I said.

The waiters sailed toward us with their plates of veal. The guests followed the fleet and returned to their seats at the dressed tables. Photographers dodged the waiters to take pictures of the guests. My husband has been after me to learn to drive, too, Ines said. We might as well; you and I have been talking about this for a while. Make the arrangements tomorrow with whatever is the best driving school; let's get this done before I go to the couture in July.

How old were you exactly when your parents died? asked the socialite with bumblebee-yellow hair seated at my other side. I hadn't realized she was listening to our conversation.

Ines studied the veal on her plate with the caterer's fork. I looked into the emeralds squeezed between the diamonds on the socialite's new necklace. Oh, let's not go there tonight, I suggested with all the charm I could muster.

Why ruin the party?

TWO

•  •  •

We heard a car crash once.

When I was growing up in Goldenrod, we heard a car crash. It was the summer of 1962; I think a Tuesday night. We received a delivery that afternoon from the biggest department store in Hartford, where we shopped – almost three hours away from the city, Goldenrod was not a suburb of New York, at least not yet – and the delivery was a black cashmere winter coat with a mink collar for my mother, Leah, whom my father loved, although he slept in their bed with me and my mother slept in another room.

My father and I were asleep, my mother was asleep in another room, and my grandparents, my father's parents, my zayde and my bubbie, who dispensed sour candies and kisses with her sharp, crusty lips, were asleep in their apartment upstairs. We lived in a Victorian house with a porch built all around it and mezuzahs blessing the doorway to each room. On the back lawn was a sundial and all my father's roses.

I did not recognize the sound of cars crashing. My father put on his robe, and I followed him to the front porch, where we saw two cars rolled practically into one.

To witness, the neighbors’ silhouettes flooded the shadows on their porches. My mother opened the front screen door and stood there for a minute before she joined us on the porch. There wasn't an evening wind; there were waves of neighborhood chatter instead of breeze. My mother ran a hand through her auburn-red hair; it fanned the nape of her neck like a veil. She closed her pink robe across her white silk negligee and studied my father with some surprise, as if she had forgotten him in her sleep.

Who are they? she asked.

My father walked to the sidewalk, near to the cars.

They're from out of town, he said when he returned to the porch. The street filled with police cars and ambulances.

From their porches, the neighbors withdrew, the men in pajama bottoms and day-old T-shirts, the women in cotton wrappers, unlike my mother. My grandmother, long, white hair down from its bun for sleeping, opened the screen door and watched the accident. Who are they? she asked in Yiddish.

My father answered he did not know.

Jewish? my grandfather wondered over my grandmother's shoulder.

No, Pa, I shouldn't think so, my father answered.

My grandfather shrugged and took my grandmother back to bed. My mother lighted a Pall Mall and studied my father. Her silk robe fell open; she flicked the cigarette ashes into her hand and went inside before the cigarette was out. I took my father's hand and walked along the porch to the back yard of the house. I wasn't wearing slippers, and I remember the grass was cold and wet like seaweed at low tide. Barefoot, I sunk into the lawn. The blades of grass seemed almost hip-length.

Have you ever seen my roses sleep, Jules?

No, sir.

He put his hand behind my neck. My nose went toward a tight cluster of my father's pink roses closed like fists against the windless night.

We walked back to the front of the house to look. The ambulances left the accident without sounding their sirens; years later I learned this meant the people were dead. I followed my father into our house. He locked the door, which he didn't always, and we went to bed. I apologized for the wet blades of grass on my feet; my father told me to sleep. He rolled me in his arms. His chest hairs were like thorns.

THREE

•  •  •

And, so, the very next morning after the charity ball I telephoned McCaulay's Driving School, located just a few blocks from my apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

McCaulay's advertised on matchbooks and in subways; one knew of people, even myopic, middle-aged people, who went to McCaulay's and somehow learned to drive. Quite a few adults in New York do not have licenses; I considered this tremendous consolation. No need for embarrassment that you cannot drive, offered the Jamaican-accented woman who answered the phone when I called the driving school.

It's just that when I was a teenager the circumstances weren't quite right for me to learn to drive, and then, well, I moved to Manhattan, and you really don't need to drive here so, well . . .

It's okay, we'll be happy to teach you, she said kindly.

"And I really don't consider myself a good candidate for driving; I can't imagine I will be any good at it. I can't see terribly well, although I do wear corrective contact lenses. And I think I'm much too, well, spacey, distracted, I mean, to be allowed on a highway for more than a few minutes. I mean, I'll never be able to play the radio and drive at the same time if I am to maintain my focus on the road . .