The Allard

Aiden rounded the last turn to his grandfather’s acreage. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

He took another look at the photo sitting on the passenger seat of his red Kia Forte. Aiden had been at his parent’s house looking for his father’s baseball glove and had ventured onto a cardboard box full of photos. This one in particular had been the most, let’s say, interesting. Aiden had taken it to his own father who had looked at it briefly and then said “You need to ask Granddad about that one.” That was all he said.

So here he was, only a few feet from Granddad’s sprawling country house. School was finished for the summer so he had time for a road trip to see his favorite relative. Aiden parked his rattle-trap car up the gravel driveway as close as he could get to the house, given the mud. Not that he was worried about preserving his car, but some of those potholes in Granddad’s driveway had eaten larger vehicles than his own.

Granddad waved from the porch. Granddad had lost Gram only two years ago but seemed to be in a good frame of mind lately. He had been fixing up the old homestead piece by piece. A coat of paint here. A new deck board there. Granddad was old enough to have to take breaks often, but not too old to get the job done.

Aiden waved back and picked up his pace, avoiding the puddles. Granddad pushed himself up from the porch swing and bounded down the stairs to meet his grandson. They embraced, not having seen one another since Easter.

“Aiden, wonderful to see you,” Granddad said.

“Good to see you too, Granddad.”

“How’s your pa?”

“He’s good. He says hi,” Aiden said brightly.

“Very good, son. How’s that car working?”

“It’s seen better days, y’know?”

“Yeah, it looks a bit of a wreck,” Granddad said smiling. “Can I get you a lemonade?”

The thought of lemonade took Aiden right back to his younger days, before high school, when his parents brought him to see his grandparents each holiday and even more often in the summer, when it was easier to travel.

“Lemonade sounds great, Granddad.” Aiden waited on the porch as his grandfather went into the house briefly and came back out with two tall glasses embossed with the Ferrari logo. Aiden had always loved these glasses as a kid. He liked pretending that he was at a Formula One race drinking lemonade.

The sun was beating down now, evaporating the water on the ground into that welcome humidity. “So, what’s on your mind, Aiden?” Granddad asked as they settled onto the chairs on the porch. The cicadas had started their whistling and croaking in the direction of the slough.

Aiden froze. He had come all this way for this exact question and now he was hesitant to ask it. Perhaps it was better to skip to another topic and then go home.

“What’s going on?” Granddad’s eyes were clear and quizzical.

“Granddad...” Aiden began as he fished the photo out of his pocket. Rather than fishing for more words, he just gave the photo to the older man.

Granddad flipped his glasses down from his forehead and studied the photo for a long time. A tear started to trickle down his face.

“Granddad!” Aiden was distressed but Granddad put his big, calloused hand on Aiden’s knee.

“It’s good, it’s good,” was all Granddad could say at first. His face wrinkled in a way Aiden hadn’t seen before.

“Amby,” he finally said softly.

“Amby?” Aiden asked.

“Amby, yes. I loved her dearly.”

Aiden didn’t know what to feel. He had flipped through all the possible responses he expected from this photo as he drove the three hours to get here, but that wasn’t one of them.

Granddad was fully bawling now. Aiden wasn’t equipped to handle this. He awkwardly nestled closer to his grandfather on the porch swing and held him as close as he could.

When the crying subsided, Granddad was finally able to look Aiden in the eye.

“This is a photo of me when I was about your age, a little older.” Aiden knew this much. “The other person was someone I called Amby. But that wasn’t her real stage name.”

Real stage name? What did that even mean?

“Her stage name was Ammonia Begonia. I called her Amby for short.”

Aiden lost the ability to speak for a moment.

“Ammonia Begonia. She was a famous drag queen back in the 1980s. For a grown man to wear women’s clothes wasn’t very accepted in the 80s.”

“It isn’t really accepted by a lot of people today either,” Aiden offered.

“True, but it’s a little better. There was no Drag Queen Story Hour in 1982.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true. So tell me about her.”

“She was beautiful. She was all I could think of for a month or two.”

“Were you and her...together?”

“Yes, you could say that, Aiden. My life before this family was a little different than it is now.” Granddad gave Aiden a conspiratorial smile.

“I see that. So you used to be gay?” Aiden asked. “I’m not judging,” he hastily added.

“I didn’t think of myself that way. Bisexual, I guess. I don’t know. I was never with another person like Amby before or after. But some people are just special. And I absolutely thought of her as a woman, in many ways, even though she was a business executive named David when she wasn’t in drag. Even drag queens needed day jobs.”

Aiden sat for a minute, trying to take it all in.

“How did you meet her?” Aiden finally asked.

“I went to her drag show when it came to Columbus. I was intrigued by the idea and thought of it as a joke. I was expecting to laugh the whole thing off.”

“There were drag shows back then?”

“Yes, every now and then. Not promoted in the media, of course, but they existed. There have always been men who wanted to dress as women and vice versa, I suppose.”

“Did you ever dress that way?”

“No, I didn’t. I thought about what it meant for Amby to do that, how it made her feel so wonderful, but it didn’t appeal to me personally.”

“That’s cool, Granddad. I’d love you either way, y’know?”

“Yes, I know you would, son.”

“Amby was so stylish. I think that was what attracted me to her. She wore amazing ball gowns and even jeweled headdresses sometimes. She had curves that were unbelievable. Your Gram was jealous.”

“Gram knew?” Aiden steadied himself on the swing.

“Yes, I guess there’s another piece of the story you weren’t privy to. Your Gran and I were swingers for a short time.”

“What do you mean by swingers?” Aiden asked tentatively.

“We fucked around, obviously, with each other’s permission,” Granddad said matter-of-factly.

“Oh my god,” Aiden breathed.

“It’s alright, Aiden. We did that for a year or two and then decided to stop. But what a time! Your Gran enjoyed it as much as I did. And I really enjoyed it. I met Amby during that time. Your grandmother was the love of my life, please don’t doubt that, Aiden. But Amby made my heart explode for a while.”

“Did you and Gran ever…” Aiden couldn’t finish the thought for fear that his head would explode.

“No, my time with Amby was separate and Elaine respected that. Amby was a star. Maybe like you and that Dua Lipa character. If Dua Lipa approached you one day your girlfriend would probably give you a pass, wouldn’t she?”

“So Amby approached you?”

“No, I can’t say that. I went to meet her after the show. To compliment her, you see, but then she suggested going for coffee.”

“Okay.”

“This is a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Granddad gave an apologetic smile. Aiden fiddled with his lemonade glass.

“And, I have to tell you, Amby had a present for you.”

“For me? Why did a drag queen that you met once leave a present for your grandson who wasn’t even born yet?”

“First, I didn’t meet her just once. She was touring in Ohio for a week and we spent most of that time together. I lived in my own apartment and your Gram still lived with her parents. After the week, Amby had to move on to Indiana for some shows there and she wanted to give me something. She gave it to me but said that, I should use it myself and then give it to one of my heirs who really deserved it. And that’s you!”

“Well, what is it? What is it, Granddad?”

“Let’s go for a drive,” Granddad said as he gathered up his wallet and keys.

They drove Granddad’s old black pickup, which had also seen better days but was well-maintained and clean. They traveled down the gravel road to a storage facility nestled between two soybean fields. Granddad fussed with his keys until he found the right one and they walked through the gate and towards the storage units. Aiden could feel the excitement building up inside him. What kind of forty-year old present needs a storage unit?

Granddad noted the numbers on the units until they arrived at Unit 4406.

“This is the one. I’ll be happy once I don’t have to pay rent on this anymore. You might want to livestream.” Granddad knew his grandson well enough to know that he’d want to keep this memory.

Aiden shook off the shock of the moment long enough to agree. He took out his phone and starting filming.

“We’re live,” Aiden said.

“Good. So, Aiden,” Granddad said in an announcer voice. “This item that you’re about to see will be yours.”

“When?” Aiden asked.

“Well, it was supposed to wait until your twenty-first birthday but I’m going to give it to you today. Does that sound alright?”

“Sure, I guess it depends what it is?”

“Here we go!” Granddad unlocked the door and Aiden helped him push it up to the top of the unit.

It was some type of car, but it was covered with a heavy tarp that concealed its shape.

“She gave you a car?”

“She did. It was her baby, she told me. But she had several of these older cars and she felt perfectly comfortable giving this one to me after our short fling.”

“What kind of car? Lincoln? Ferrari?”

“It’s an Allard, son.”

“Hmm. Never heard of it. Let’s see it!”

Aiden and Granddad carefully removed the tarp to reveal the Allard. The dust flew up into the confined space and made Aiden sneeze.

It was unlike any car Aiden had ever seen. The paint job was forest green and had no visible scratches. The shape of the car was entirely unique. The front had a gleaming silver grille that ran half way up the hood. Each circular headlamp sat beside the grille inside its own side-car style molding. The Allard was a convertible with a tiny windshield rimmed with silver. There was enough room for exactly two people in the black leather seats, no more. Whitewall tires adorned the silver wheels.

“A 1947 Allard K1 Roadster!” Granddad said with a flourish.

“Granddad, it’s amazing. I’ve never seen anything like this!” Aiden was shaking and had tears streaming down his face, however, he had the presence of mind to continue filming with his phone, as eighteen-year-olds do.

“Can I sit?”

“It’s your car, you can do what you want,” Granddad smiled.

Aiden tentatively touched the little door and it swished open. He saw that the steering wheel was on the wrong side.

“British car, originally,” Granddad said, reading Aiden’s confusion.

“Street legal, you think?” Aiden asked.

“I think so. You’d need license plates for it.”

“How many times have you taken it out, Granddad?”

“Never.”

“What??”

“I always considered this to be your car. I was planning it ever since you were born. I wanted to take it out for a spin now and then, of course, but I never did. I did what was needed to keep it clean and started it up twice a year to make sure it still worked. There have been a few repairs necessary over the years but not too much.”

“How’d you get Allard parts?”

“It’s actually a Ford engine so parts weren’t a problem. Luckily, none of the body moldings had rust problems and the interior was all in good shape. I put on new tires shortly after she gave it to me. It has a Mercury 4400cc V8 in it, a live rear axle and a Ballemy split axle in the front. It’s a race car.”

“Granddad, I can’t even tell you what this means to me,” Aiden said, holding the older man’s hands to his own chest.

Now Granddad was crying too.

“You’ve been a good son to your parents and a really wonderful grandson. I knew you’d be the one to get this car.”

“Plus I’m your only grandchild,” Aiden said with a grin.

“True too.” Granddad said wistfully. “So, what’re you going to do with it?”

“Wait, I have one more question. Well, two. Was this car owned by bad people or something? Like Stalin or Hitler?”

“No, the records on cars like this are pretty detailed. I’ve got a binder with the chain of custody. Amby got it from a collector who said the sole owner was an heir to the Kellogg’s empire.”

“So maybe I’ll find some Special K under the seats here and there, then?”

Granddad laughed. “I doubt it. That was a long time ago.”

“I know.”

“What’s your second question, Aiden?”

“Do you want to go for a ride?” Aiden smiled at his grandfather.

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that question for more than forty years, son.”