Lesson Twelve

Jordan says "nice" a lot. Nice merge. Nice check. Nice, buddy. It's how he keeps me calm, I think, and it works better than I'd like to admit, being told "nice" by someone who was born the year I graduated. I didn't learn at sixteen. Toronto, downtown, didn't need to. Then Ottawa, still didn't. Then twenty years of Leah driving and me doing the maps and the podcast and the snacks, and it was fine, it was our thing, right up until it wasn't. Her eyes, this spring. Nothing dramatic. Just a doctor with a kind voice saying "I wouldn't, at night, and honestly not in winter," and Leah in the car park afterwards saying, "Well. Your turn." Twelve lessons in. Today we're doing the highway. "You're gripping," Jordan says. "I'm aware I'm gripping." "Loosen up. Hands at nine and three. Nice. You're doing fine." I am not doing fine, in my head. In my head I'm doing arithmetic about closing speeds. But the car is in the lane and the lane is where it should be, and there's a truck ahead of me doing exactly the speed limit and I've decided that truck is my friend now. "Signal," Jordan says. "Now?" "Well, before you move, yeah. That's the whole idea of it." "Right." The thing nobody tells you about learning something at forty-five is that you're not just learning the thing. You're unlearning the story you've told for thirty years about why you didn't. I've said "I'm just not a driver" at dinner parties. I've said it like a personality trait. Like being left-handed. And every lesson with Jordan is a small argument with that guy, the one at the dinner party, who was maybe just scared. "Exit's coming up," Jordan says. "Two K. Start thinking about the right lane." I start thinking about the right lane. I check the mirror. I check the shoulder. I signal, early, and there's a gap, and I take it. "Nice," Jordan says. "Really nice, actually. You didn't wait for me." "Was I waiting for you before?" "Every time. You'd check, and then you'd look at me. Like, permission." He shrugs. "Not this time."

We come off the highway. Regular road, forty, houses. My hands are killing me from the gripping. "Test's in three weeks," he says. "You want my honest opinion?" "Not really." "You'll pass. You drive like someone who's scared of hurting people, which is the right way to drive, honestly. Most of my sixteen-year-olds drive like nothing can hurt them. That's worse." I don't say anything to that. I turn onto our street. Leah's at the window, because she's been at the window for every one of the twelve, and I pull in next to the curb, slightly too far from it, and Jordan says, "Bit far, but nice," and I turn the engine off. "Same time Thursday, buddy." "Same time." Inside, Leah says, "How was the highway?" "There was a truck. I made friends with it." She laughs. She hands me the keys to her car, which is now our car, which will be my car, and says she's tired and could I go get the milk, and I stand in the hallway holding them for a second before I realise she means now, on my own, and that this is the first time. I get the milk. I'm too far from the curb again. Nobody says nice. It's fine.