Betty Martin

BETTY BOOP CHANGES A TIRE

It’s a costume party for the over-thirty crowd. In the western suburbs that could be a thing. I live in the city. I hate costume parties and I hate the suburbs, but I’m traveling there in a borrowed car dressed as Betty Boop because Betty Boop is a woman who knew what she wanted and used the expectations of the day to get it. I’m hoping to channel her confidence. Boop-Oop-a-Doop.

The unlit road is lined with trees, edged with scruffy grasses, and alive with portent. I drive for a while when there’s an ominous thump. The car shudders. The steering wheel jolts. It’s a blowout.

I pull over onto the scruffy grasses. Betty Boop takes charge. I pull the trigger, pop the trunk and shimmy around to the back. There’s the spare tire, there’s the jack, and there’s an animal wedged into the spare tire’s wheel well.

It could be a squirrel, or it could be a rabbit. Why it’s there, I don’t know. I find a twig and pass it over the animal. It doesn’t react. I can see now that it has lobed ears the size of a seed from a maple tree, the ones that spin like a helicopter until they land on the ground. It’s not a squirrel, it’s a rabbit, and it’s small. A dead baby rabbit curled up in the wheel well of the spare tire. If I were Amanda Stronza, the artist who memorializes tiny lives, I would take a picture of it.

My hand cups around the head and hindquarters, its fur, soft, its body a feather in my palm. I want it to weigh more, to add some kind of gravitas. On bended knee, I lay the body on the ground, going slow, buckling the grass, giving it the weight it lacks. I could film it in the style of Janie Geiser, who adds significance with light patterns and focused spots.

I make sure the parking brake is on, turn on the hazards. I lift out the spare, loosen the lugs on the flat, and set up the jack. I work quickly while contemplating the likelihood of a car crashing into me on this poorly illuminated road. “Car with Human and Bunny,” I’d call it.

Tire change over, I have decided what to do with the rabbit. Something artistic, with a commentary about the solemn finality of death. A shameful giddiness tugs at the edges of creative thought. To use this serendipity, this little life that once was for my own selfish ambition.

Silently, I apologize as I swaddle the rabbit with the oily rag I used to wipe my hands, place it back inside the trunk in a compartment meant for some long-disappeared tool. I drive on choosing giddiness over guilt.

I find myself in a group of women, a sexy devil, a sexy mad scientist, a sexy bride of Frankenstein, and a sexy alien. I know all these women. Diane is the sexy devil. Maxine is the sexy mad scientist. Allyson is the sexy alien. Lorraine is the sexy bride of Frankenstein. We are all dressed as something other than ourselves.

“What are you?”

“Betty Boop. You know, Max Fleischer?”

“Oh, yeah. Film class.”

We’d all been artists, but I was the only one still contemplating whether art imitates life or was it the other way around. Was I inspired to do something about the rabbit because of having seen those artists who used dead creatures in their art or was it because of nature itself? I return to the conversation. “Want to see what’s in the trunk of my car?”

“Why not?” says Allyson, the sexy alien, her breath replete with the syrupy smell of pink cosmos.

I unlatch the trunk and lift the rabbit out of its tomb. Its rag had moved up on the ride to cover one cheek. I slip the rag back down and fingers reach out. How precious, oh my, how precious those tiny ears! Diane says she had a stuffed rabbit who had looked like this. Lorraine mentions a classroom rabbit.

“Is it alive?” asks Maxine.

“No.”

The faces that had formed delighted expressions begin forming the opposite. It’s no longer precious, no longer sweet. It’s something weird to be traveling with a dead rabbit. It’s something to get rid of.

“I couldn’t just leave it there on the side of the road.”

“Of course, you couldn’t,” murmurs Lorraine. She touches my arm. Expressions I thought were the opposite of delight turn into the embodiment of pity.

We find a place off to the side of the yard beneath a tree with leafy plants. We take turns shoveling handfuls of the loose dirt between the plants. “Hostas,” says Diane. “I think they like eating them.” I lay the rabbit in the hole and shift the dirt back over its body. The talk turns to what it might be like for the rabbit afterward, you know, after its existence in this world. Maybe the rabbit is hopping around destroying suburban gardens. Or maybe it is hiding in a field of tall grasses, its heart beating wildly as the wind dandles the seedy tops. Or maybe it crouches under a city porch waiting for feral cats to clear out. After contributing our thoughts, we spend a moment of silence until Diane suggests a round of drinks and the sexy crew follows her, all but Lorraine, my best friend from art school.

“Do you remember Annette Messager?”

“The French artist whose installations have dead and dismembered objects?”

“I thought you were saving the rabbit for something like that. You were always an outlier. So different from all of us.”

“It’s just a rabbit. I couldn’t leave it on the side of the road.”

“So you said.”