Why Alice Can’t Get Ahead

It wasn’t much as far as cars went. I have forgotten exactly what make and model it was. Not new enough that it ran reliably, but not old enough to be a beloved restoration classic. I later found out that Alice had called the station a couple of times and even after the car was listed as stolen she still insisted on speaking to me.

She could only afford to keep it fuelled and repaired. Her father, some other relatives and even she herself used to fix the car when it broke down, as it often did, with parts that were begged, borrowed or scavenged. It wasn’t much and wasn’t insured but it was hers. She needed that car. It was one of the fingers that kept the tenuous grasp she had on the bottom rung of the ladder of aspiration.

This memoir appears in October’s Quadrant.
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That grasp was mainly for her kids, who Alice wanted to get educated so they could have some sort of future and some sort of job, even if menial. She had a boy with a learning disability…