As a child, I got along with my dad best in the family BMW. He drove, and I sat in the back without a seatbelt, leaning against the passenger seat. His good luck charm, an ugly tiger�s face made from yellow satin and sequins for eyes, dangled from the rearview mirror. The radio did most of the talking. Since there wasn�t much I could do in the car, I avoided getting into trouble with my dad.

Outside of the car and especially at home, I was constantly in trouble. I spoke English to my grandparents instead of Mandarin. I tried on my mom�s lipstick. When my dad yelled in the house, it was usually at me. He considered sending me to Catholic school instead of the public elementary school my brother Greg attended because he thought nuns would discipline me better. My mom managed to change his mind.

The silence in the BMW with my dad driving meant I hadn�t done anything wrong--yet. His face hadn�t become red, then purple, in anger. The disciplinarian in him softened sometimes in the car. When I was hungry, he reached over into the glove compartment and gave me dried salty plums. Whenever I got carsick on family vacations, he rolled down the window and let me stick my head out a little, even though he didn�t allow me to stick anything out the windows otherwise.

Both my parents used the car, but I still thought of the car as my dad�s. The keychain the car keys hung on was his choosing--a piece of dark brown leather etched with a bird flying over water. He promised Greg the BMW when my brother was older. He, Greg and I washed the car together on Saturday spring and summer afternoons out on the curb, while my mom stayed indoors. My dad drove it whenever we went somewhere �special,� like the trip to the garden center for plants every spring, or vacations, like the week in Washington DC that my parents surprised Greg and me with one year.

My dad quit his job as a computer consultant for a Manhattan company when I was nine. He promptly took a similar job working for the Beijing division of IBM. I didn�t understand why he chose to go so far away. My mom, Greg and I remained in New York, and we planned on his coming back for Christmases, and our going to China during summer. My mom driving the BMW all the time now was unexciting. She drove to ordinary places, like the dry cleaner�s and to Chinese school every Saturday morning.

Things went as planned for the first two years. My dad came home for two Christmases. He drove me and picked me up from school every day in the BMW the few weeks he was home. I usually walked. My mom, Greg and I visited him in Beijing one summer. We saw temples and ate authentic Peking duck. He said we�d rent bikes the next summer.

There was no next summer. The November I was eleven, I was walking home from school when a car I didn�t recognize pulled over. My dad was driving. Christmas hadn�t come yet, but he was home. Why wasn�t he driving the BMW? I got in.

�I almost didn�t recognize you from behind,� he said.

He didn�t say anything else in the five-minute car ride. I stared at the box of Andes mints on the dashboard. I never knew he liked Andes mints. I wondered if I could have some. I wondered if he had lost his job.

We drove home. My mom came home early from work. While my dad remained downstairs in the living room, she told me she and my dad were getting a divorce. As bad as I imagined things would be if my dad had lost his job, this was worse. �We� didn�t include my dad anymore. I didn�t know how to say goodbye to my dad when he left that afternoon, so I didn�t. I couldn�t watch him drive off in that other car back to the airport, then back to Beijing.

In the divorce settlement a year later, my mom got sole custody of me and Greg, and ownership of the house and car. I still thought of the car as my dad�s. My mom never changed the keychain or removed the tiger�s face from the rearview mirror.

I still felt his presence in the car. My mom drove my first boyfriend Danny and me to the middle school prom in the BMW. Danny and I sat in the back, as far away from each other as possible, both of us gazing out the windows on our side, not speaking. We had just become boyfriend and girlfriend at that point, and were unsure of how to act in the new relationship. I wondered if my dad would let me date at the age of thirteen. When Danny and I became comfortable enough to hold hands on the car rides to school, I still thought of my dad. I wondered if he would have liked Danny.

The car began showing its age soon after middle school. It started stalling when making left turns. I was fifteen, and the car, at sixteen, was a year older than me. Its interior gray upholstery had collected soda stains over the years, and its exterior paint had faded from its original gold color to silver. The mechanic couldn�t find anything wrong with the BMW in the six times my mom brought it to him. Going to school every morning in the car with my mom behind the wheel was a source of anxiety, because the three left turns on the route were three potential times the BMW might fail us. My mom sold it.

The BMW was the last of my dad�s things to go. My mom bought a Honda as a replacement. We couldn�t afford another BMW. She threw away the old keychain and the tiger�s face. When she apologized to Greg for selling his inheritance, he shrugged and said it didn�t matter. Sixteen years was a big chunk out of all our lives, but my mom and Greg seemed to let those years go easily.

I used to see my dad once or twice a year when he visited New York. He picked Greg and me up in a rental car, took us out to dinner, and talked about Greg�s Little League days which ended when Greg was twelve, and about how I got the scar on my left eyebrow at the age of three. I cried when Greg and I returned from those dinners, after my dad drove away in a strange car. My dad was stuck in the past, incapable of creating new memories with us.

My dad hasn�t returned to visit since I was sixteen. I imagine him creating memories with the stepmother I�ve only met once and the half-sister I�ve never seen.

�I miss the old BMW sometimes,� my mom once said while driving the Honda. �The steering wheel was tighter, and it ran much more quietly.�

But the Honda runs without stalling and is now gathering memories of its own.

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