A. C. Rosenfeld

 Andrea used to pick me up after school in her 2011 Mini Cooper. It was the perfect car: grey, with black racing stripes. A four seater, but often just sported her and her beagle mix, Milo.

She was coaching middle school girls’ soccer at the same school I went to, and we’d spend the twenty-minute drive back home mostly in silence. We would ask each other about our days, spend a bit of time mulling over what I was currently learning in my classes, and silence would fall over the satisfying hum of the little engine. 

Our house sat in a development off of Pleasant Hill Road. Years before, the road had been littered with frost heaves which forced careful driving. The frost heaves were fixed a while ago, giving Andrea the go-ahead to speed upwards of ten miles over the speed limit on our way home.

A winding road, a twitch of the wheel to the left or the right, my hands gripping the door until my knuckles resembled carved marble. She’d twist the car into our long driveway and pull to (what seemed like) a screeching stop. We’d walk into the house and ask each other, “What do you think mom’s cooking for dinner tonight?”

~

Andrea only coached soccer for that season in 2014 and moved into an apartment in Portland, twenty-five minutes to the south, a bit later. Eventually, she sold her Mini and moved to Boston. 

Before there was Milo leaving copious amount of fur in Andrea’s Mini, Fraser was sprawled, shedding, in the back of my dad’s. My dad bought the dark chocolate Mini Cooper Clubman (a three-door manual) as a commemoration of our move to Washington State in 2008. He arrived in Washington first, picking us up at the airport in the first Mini that came into our lives. 

I did not want to move to Washington. I was nine, and Maine was a fairytale paradise filled with fireflies and meadows and rocky shores with tide pools. It snowed in the winter, stormed in the summer, and bloomed with color in the spring and fall. 

In Washington, it rained all year. 

But my first introduction to Washington wasn’t rain, it was a Mini. Something new, like the state itself, but fun. There was the speedometer, the mood lighting, the stylized interior. In the coming months and years, we would fit all kinds of creatures in the back of this car. Clubmans were slightly longer than regular Coopers, and we used every inch. 

Fraser was a Scottish Deerhound. A shaggy and grey version of a greyhound, with long, loping legs and a scraggly beard. By the time we moved to Washington, he was four – a young adult with enough energy to scramble up and down the ravine in the backyard of our house. If my dad placed the dog’s front paws on his shoulders, Fraser would stand at an incredible six feet tall, only a few inches shorter than the human he rested on. 

Fraser also, amazingly, fit into the back of my dad’s Mini. It was like a clown show, watching my 6’4” dad and the lanky Fraser get in and out of a car that could fit into the cargo bed of a Toyota Tacoma. 

Fraser passed away less than a year after we arrived back in Maine. Sometimes, when I sit in the backseat of my dad’s car, I think I find bits of his fur, stuck to the fuzzy interior. 

Along with 2009 Mini Cooper Clubman, my parents bought a 2014 Mini Countryman a few months before I went to college in 2017. It replaced our old Audi A4, one that was bought brand-new in 1998 (a few months before I was born) and lasted until that year. 

Now only Minis remained.

I spent most of undergrad without a car. My friends had cars that I could use our senior year, which was the only year I felt like leaving campus. 

We graduated, moved back home, and the independence disappeared. 

I wanted to follow my sister’s footsteps and move to Portland, but there was no way for me to visit my parent’s house without orchestrating a pick-up in their cars which felt exceedingly juvenile. There was a public transit bus that ferried people between Portland and Freeport (with stops in Yarmouth and Falmouth), but the schedule was too complicated to decipher, and would still require my parents to pick me up in town.

I resolved to get a car.

~

Imported Motor Cars is a used car dealership off of Route One in Brunswick, Maine. It’s a small dealership, characterized by the multitude of Minis that stare, unblinking, at the passing cars. Right now, on CarGurus.com, there are three Minis listed: A 2013 Mini Cooper, a 2016 Mini Cooper S, and a 2016 Mini Cooper Clubman S. 

It’s hard to explain a Mini to someone who’s never seen one, and to those who have, they can be divisive. I had an ex-boyfriend tell me that he thought they were ugly. Ugly. I’d like to make it clear that he said this after I said how much I love them. That’s crazy, right? He’s crazy? 

Most people know that Minis are sweet-looking cars. Others have tried to replicate their lovely boxed shape and large, wide eyes, their stylized interior with the speedometer the size of a grapefruit sitting squarely in the middle of the dashboard. Nothing comes close. They’re one of a kind. 

Imported Motor Cars’ website, which no longer exists, listed a 2013 Mini Cooper S in Lightning Blue. I’d spent the past month scouring Facebook Marketplace for an old Subaru or Volkswagen, something old and cheap but reliable. No dice. This was December, 2021, and the used car market was in shambles. You either bought an overpriced car, or you bought parts. 

So I moved tactics to a used car dealership I knew. And Lightning Blue was perfect.

She had no racing stripes, but she was a zippy Cooper S with faux leather interior and heated seats. The red, italicized “S” next to “Cooper” on the back of the car meant that it was the Sport version of a Cooper. It accelerated slightly faster and felt smooth at high speeds. The speed would be wasted on me, I thought, but I wanted her so badly. 

I set up a time with Peter, the owner of Imported Motor Cars, and went with my parents to take a good look at her. She was sitting there next to much more spiffy Minis and she still shone with a light only she could generate. Maybe they really had captured a bit of electricity into her lightning blue.

The first time I saw Lightning Blue in person, My dad and I test drove her down Route One and into the parking lot of a physical therapist that I had been going to. It was a funny familiarity in a car where every jerk and shudder was new. 

“Are you hearing that bump?” My dad asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

I slowed her down and listening. Thunk. I parked Lightning Blue around the corner from the PTs office and we got out, checking every nook and cranny for the source of the noise. We didn’t find anything.

My dad did some other dad things, maybe looking at the tires and the windshield, taking stock of something I didn’t understand. When we were satisfied, I offered him the wheel. His eyes glinted with the possibility the sporty little car could afford him, and I was happy to give up control for a while (I also didn’t want to make a left turn through Brunswick’s rush hour traffic, but he didn’t need to know that). 

The final preparations were made in Peter’s office. He had a few replicas of Minis in a glass case and I stared at them as Peter and my dad talked to each other. 

I drove away in my new car, my fingers brushing across the spotless dashboard. I already had a destination: I was meeting my high school best friend, Grace, at a theater in Falmouth to watch the new Spiderman movie. I was late, and the Sports Mode button glinted at me next to the gear shift.

I ignored it and arrived just after the movie started.

~

The car was perfect for me. She navigated the streets of Portland with ease, her little frame fitting perfectly into parking spots overlooked by other vehicles. I exercised her on the highway, in trips to-and-from my parents’ house in Freeport, and outfitted her with snow tires so that she could scramble over the snow drifts piled up in front of my apartment’s parking lot. 

But I was feeling stifled in the city. I booked an Airbnb in a small town about a twenty-minute drive west of the rocky shores of Maine’s Midcoast. I set out on that Friday, throwing my duffle with a few nights’ worth of clothes into the back (the two back seats were always laid flat), and clambered into my hot car.

May in Maine isn’t supposed to be hot. It can be warm, around mid-sixties to mid-seventies on a good day. Or cool, especially at nights, dipping below fifty. But it was never hot. And the weekend I was going to Union was hot. 

I wasn’t worried. The drive to Union was a little over an hour, but I had music and podcasts and air conditioning. 

I thought. 

The first part of the drive was to my parents’ house, where I stopped and had a bite to eat and cradled my dogs in my lap. The air conditioning hadn’t switched on yet, but I’d only been driving for twenty minutes. It was just the beginning of the trip, and maybe I haven’t given her enough time.

I let the problem slip to my mom, who followed me out to Lightning Blue and pressed the AC button. Warm air pulsed from the vents.

“It’s technically working,” my mom confirmed. “But I’m guessing it doesn’t have any air conditioning fluid.”

“And that’s something I can replace on my own?”

She shook her head. “No, you’ll have to go to Dr. Coffin’s. You can ask them to take off your snow tires, too.”

Dr. Coffin’s was the only place within a forty-mile radius that serviced Minis. It was also impossible to get an appointment within a couple week of calling. I would be without air conditioning in my car for at least another month.

Here is where I come to my first caveat: I bought Lightning Blue at the beginning of a Maine winter. There was no chance for me to use the air conditioning until that weekend, when the temperatures climbed to ninety. On my hour-and-a-quarter drive to Union, I cursed the name of Peter from Imported Motor Cars as a sweat stain bloomed across the back of my Anthropologie peasant dress, sticking to the faux leather of Lightning Blue’s driver seat. 

But it was still a lovely, solitary weekend. I watched Poldark while sipping copious amounts of red wine. I walked the streets of Camden and ate sushi at a restaurant in Rockport. I met a handsome baker who made delicious sourdough at the Belfast Farmers Market, and a kindly bookstore owner named Kim who listened to me talk about my dreams as a writer for far too long. 

The lack of air conditioning forced me to keep my windows down for any trip outside of the rental. The breeze held moments of summer; spiced smoke and sunbaked mud, warm sand and fried clams. Waze took me on detours through rural neighborhoods, houses separated by the half-mile, with lime-green trees canopied overhead. Most things weren’t blooming yet, but what had bloomed was bright with the novelty of spring. 

I went home on Monday, stopping again at my parents’ house for free food. My mom reminded me to call Dr. Coffin’s and I waved her off, saying I would do it sometime this week. 

The lack of air conditioning wasn’t Lightning Blue’s fault, it was the fault of the place who had serviced her before she became mine. In all of my caveats for Lightning Blue, this turned out to be the case.

~

Sometimes I would wonder how I ended up in New Zealand. 

There is a timeline that led me there, but for much of that timeline there was a small voice in my head that said, I mean, this is all a dream, right? You’re not actually leaving everyone behind?

It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. A therapy session on Monday in early June where the idea’s discussed, then an email to a faculty member on Friday. 

Suddenly, I was going to New Zealand to study writing.

Lightning Blue was on my mind. I was intending to return to Maine, so I wanted her to be there when I did. But I no longer had a job, and paying someone to keep my car in a humidity-controlled storage space for eighteen months as well as paying for my loan was above what I could stomach to shell out a month.

Next door to my parents’ house lived Andrea, Katie, and Silvan. Andrea had moved back to Maine with her wife, Katie, and built a house in the plot next door to my parents. Silvan was their son.

~

An aunt’s necessary interlude:

Silvan is my nephew – a cherubic toddler with fluffy, dark-blonde hair and a toothy smile – and he loved Lightning Blue. We all had Silvan-appropriate names, and mine was Zia Wia (Zia being the Italian for “Aunt” and “Wia” finishing the rhyming couplet). 

When Silvan would see Lightning Blue, he would shout, “Zia Wia!”. He loved to sit in my lap and honk on her horn. When he came to my parents’ house, where I was living to save money for my move, he would look at me, point outside, and insist, “VROOM?”

When Lightning Blue was towed, Katie took a video of it and played it on the TV for him. Two of his favorite things: Lightning Blue, and a truck.

~

Katie’s sister, Caroline, was in need of a new car. She wasn’t ready to buy one yet, so the idea was proposed that she would use my car and pay off the loan as if she was renting it. 

These things are often easier spoken aloud than actually executed.

My title was needed so that she could be added to it (she needed to be added to the title to have insurance for the car) – but my title was with USAA, my bank, in Houston, Texas. I applied for the title to be sent to my parents’ house. A few days later, I changed my address on their website from Freeport, Maine, to Christchurch, New Zealand.

A few weeks after I moved, the title arrived in New Zealand. They had sent it a few days after I changed my address, and now the title was 9,000 miles away from where it was needed. I sent it back for a little over four bucks NZD. 

After a little more bureaucracy, the car was Line’s. But before she could take her, something went wrong. 

Lightning Blue wouldn’t turn on. My mom had taken her to pick up pizza in town, and she was stuck in the parking lot. The tow truck came and went and Lightning Blue was sent to Dr. Coffin’s to be fixed.

Line took the car a bit later, after everything had been fixed up. Nothing life threatening, but I was out a bit of pocket change to pay for the fix. Everything was fine and Lightning Blue was with her foster family. 

And then she died.

For real, this time. Lightning Blue faded away as Line steered her to the shoulder of the highway. I can try to picture it: Line driving her around the speed limit (65-70 mph) and something starts to blink at her from the dashboard behind the steering wheel. Her eyes flicker down to catch a glimpse at the unfamiliar symbol that bounces at her. Whatever it is, it can wait until she gets home. 

But then the engine splutters, and the car begins to slow down. She presses on the gas pedal, heart racing like the cars that zip by her window, but there’s no acceleration. She twists the wheel and pulls onto the left shoulder until the left half of the car is in the grass. There’s a moment of silence. Then the world comes back to focus, and Lightning Blue is dead.

The BMW mechanic in New Hampshire thinks something went wrong with a belt. Some kind of belt. Oil stopped going to the engine and Lightning Blue passed away. If oil is water to Lightning Blue, does that mean she died of dehydration? 

Nine thousand miles away, I mourned. 

I was surprised when I felt tears gather behind my eyes as I was told the news. I blinked them away because I was on FaceTime and I didn’t want my parents to see me cry.

I thought of the times I mirrored Andrea as I zipped along Pleasant Hill Road, the world around me a charming blur. Moments when Lightning Blue saved my life on that road, her brakes’ reaction time kicking in to save me from a deer, frozen in the middle of the road. I thought of my friends smushed in the back seat, their long legs origami-d over the cup holders and stretched into the other seat well. 

I knew I cried in her. I don’t remember when, or why, but I cried. And sang. The only time I felt alone, when I knew no one else could hear me, was in her, barreling down the highway screaming my lungs out to Lake Street Dive. 

I’d like to feel that again, someday.