In His Car, on His Terms

I have one memory of my Pop-Pop.

It was the late summer of 1989. I was five years old, sitting behind him on the leather, button-tufted seat of his Cadillac sedan as he drove down Fairfield Beach Road toward the short-term rental he had leased for the end of that summer and the beginning of fall, choking on the smoke from his Cuban cigar, which coiled around me like a snake constricting its prey.

Pop-Pop’s window was open a crack, but the smoke kept slithering toward me, settling on my eyelashes and creeping up my nose.

Desperate for air, I pressed the switch to lower my window, but before I could breathe, the window rolled back up.

Click! I kept trying. Click! Click! But the window didn’t budge.

Without a word or a turn of his head, Pop-Pop had pressed the window lock.

I’m trapped! I can’t breathe! He’s trying to kill me!

I clenched my fists and held my breath; my three-and-a-third-foot body brimming with a resentment that I carried long after his death, which came just three days before that autumn lease ended.