Why We Took the Car Read Online Free Page A

farm.”
    And then somebody at the table who didn’t know the phrase yet always, always, always, threw out the unbelievably clever quip, “You certainly don’t need any help in that department, Frau Klingenberg.”
    Then my mother would knock back the rest of her Brandy Alexander and say, “That was only a joke, Herr Schuback. It’s actually a rehab facility.”
    Then we would walk home hand in hand because my mother was no longer capable of driving. I carried her heavy racquet bag and she said to me, “You can’t learn much from your mother. But two things you can learn: First, you can talk about anything. Second, what people think doesn’t mean shit.” That was enlightening. Talk openly. Screw what other people think.
    My doubts crept in only later. Not doubts about the ideas in principle. But doubts about whether my mother really didn’t care what other people thought.
    Anyway, the beauty farm. I don’t know exactly what went on there. Because I was never allowed to visit my mother. She didn’t want me to. But whenever she came home from the place she told the craziest stories. The therapy apparently consisted of talking a lot and not drinking. And sometimes exercise as well. But most of them couldn’t really do much exercise. For the most part they talked while tossing a ball of yarn around in a circle. The person allowed to speak was the person with the ball of yarn. I had to ask about the ball of yarn five times because I wasn’t sure whether I’d heard it right or whether maybe it was a joke. But it was no joke. My mother didn’t think this detail was so funny or fascinating, but to be honest I found it incredibly fascinating. Just try to imagine it: ten adults sitting in a circle and throwing a ball of yarn around. Afterward, the entire room was full of yarn, but that wasn’t the point of the whole thing, even if it’s fair to think so at first. The point was to create a web of communication . Which tells you that my mother wasn’t the craziest person in the place. There must have been considerably crazier ones too.
    But anyone who thinks the ball of yarn must be the strangest thing at the clinic hasn’t heard about the cardboard boxes. Every patient had a cardboard box. It hung from the ceiling in each room, with the open side facing up. You had to throw notes into the box, basketball style. Notes where you wrote your aspirations, wishes, resolutions, prayers, or whatever. Whenever my mother wished for something, made a resolution, or scolded herself, she wrote it down on a piece of paper, folded it up, and then basically did a Dirk Nowitzki and slam-dunked it in the cardboard box. And the insane thing about it was that nobody ever read them. That wasn’t the point. The point was just writing it down so it was there and you could see it — my desires and wishes and all that crap are hanging right there in that box . And because the cardboard boxes were so important, you had to give them names. The name was written on the box with a felt-tip marker, so basically every drunkard had a box named “God” hanging from the ceiling with all his or her aspirations inside it. Because most people just called their box God. That’s what the therapists suggested — just call it God. But you were allowed to call it whatever you wanted. Some old lady called hers “Osiris” and somebody else “Great Spirit.”
    My mother named her box “Karl-Heinz,” and as a result a therapist came and peppered her with questions. The first thing he wanted to know was whether it was her father. “Who?” she asked, and the therapist pointed at the box hanging from the ceiling. My mother shook her head. Then the therapist asked just who he was, this Karl-Heinz. And my mother said, “That cardboard box.” So then the therapist asked what the name of her father was. “Gottlieb,” she said, to