Honey, Baby, Sweetheart (28 page)

We decided to drive only so far as Eureka, California, in the northern part of the state, mostly because Miz June
found the name on the map and liked
the lovely sound of exclamation,
and because my mother was worried about taxing the old people, and because Harold had actually been there once and liked it. Lillian would have to wait that much longer to see Charles Whitney, but she didn’t seem to mind. She seemed to be enjoying the adventure more than anyone, tapping her foot to the radio and clicking the glass with her fingernail to show us something she wanted us to see out her window—a dog staring our way out from the passenger’s seat of another car, a truck with a herd of cows painted on the side. She was in that time before a big event where anticipation and all the enticing possibilities of the future are almost better than the real thing. Later I would remember the way her thin skin seemed to glow translucent, radiating happiness. It made me think of a pearl held in a gentle hand. And later, too, I would wonder. Were we wrong to have taken our time? If we’d have known, would we have slept in the car and taken turns driving and gone over the speed limit? Would we have robbed her of lingering with the deliciousness of expectation?

There was nothing fast at all about traveling with old people, except for the times Miz June’s foot would suddenly become possessed by some accelerator-pushing maniac and we would make a lurch and a speed increase so sudden that you pictured all the jowls and wrinkles in the car flattened and pushed backward with breaking-the-sound-barrier force. Talk about a heart attack. Traveling with old people also meant extremes
in temperature. Miz June had the air conditioning blasting. Chip Jr.’s lips were turning blue, and I had to shove my fingers in my armpits to keep them warm. When we got outside, we’d be greeted with flattening heat. Neither of these things seemed to faze the Queens—except for Harold, they all wore long pants and sweaters, shoes with socks. Just looking at those socks made my feet crawl with heat. I had never been for so many hours at such close proximity to scratchy fabrics—polyester pants squashed up against my shorts-clad legs, lamb’s wool sweaters against my bare arms.

We crossed the Oregon state line. Chip Jr. sat up on his knees and looked out the back window and I looked too, imagining a snaky line firm and dark as those on the map. We drove through the curves and ramps of Portland, being very quiet so that Miz June could concentrate, while Mom asked politely over and again if Miz June was sure she didn’t want her to drive, and I prayed silently that Miz June would let her. God ignored me, and Miz June’s nose and the windshield were really getting to know one another. Chip Jr. was studying his watch as if time were the only thing that might save him, which I guess was the truth.

Back on the freeway again, Miz June relaxed and turned on the radio. I knew that very soon, off to the right of the freeway, we would see the sea serpentlike humps of the roller coasters of the Gold Nugget Amusement Park. I saw the signs indicating that the attraction was up ahead, but my body knew too, with that
inside-body knowledge that knows when you’re nearly home even when you’ve been sleeping in the car, and wakes you just before the alarm clock goes off. I watched my mother’s face for any indication that she was feeling it too, that hum of anticipation and dread, but she wore the same blank expression that she’d had since we’d made it safely out of Portland. She looked out the window as if she were absorbed in every mattress store sign and storage facility we passed.

“There it is,” Chip Jr. said. So he’d been looking for it too, and he was right—the swirls and loops rose up in the air over a bank of trees and the roofs of off-ramp gas stations.

“There what is?” Harold said.

“The Gold Nugget Amusement Park,” Chip Jr. said. His voice was hushed, awed, as if we’d just passed a historic landmark, the marker of an important but brutal battle, and maybe that’s exactly what we had passed. It seemed to call for a moment of silence.

But it wasn’t silence that we got. Instead a strange thing happened. If I believed in signs and stuff like that, like my father, I would have thought it was one. Because right then there was the deafening sound of a motorcycle gunning its engine, and within a moment, it veered into the lane beside us, sped forward, then swerved in front of us into our lane.

“God in heaven!” Miz June exclaimed.

“Asshole,” Peach said.

I watched it pass. In spite of myself, against all logic,
I looked to see that it wasn’t Travis Becker. As far as signs went, this one was a bit shaky. After all, the motorcycle was one of those Harleys with studded leather that you see outside of taverns, and a hefty couple in matching black outfits was riding it. Passing us would not be an odd or unusual act, either—Miz June was driving substantially under the speed limit. Still, my mother must have been making the same connections I was. The Gold Nugget. A motorcycle. Right at that moment. She turned around and gave me a long look, then turned and faced front again.

“I’ve got a crazy idea,” she said.

“Overtake that motorcycle and make a citizen’s arrest?” Miz June said. She was one step away from road rage, if you ask me.

“The amusement park,” Mom said. “We could go. I think we should go.”

Chip Jr. looked at me, and I looked at him. Her desire to go, I knew, came partly because she wanted to demonstrate something important to me—the ability to overcome. But I’d been the paramedic at the accident site of her wrecked heart for too long, and I wasn’t sure this was such a good idea. My brother obviously felt the same way.

“I love amusement parks!” Harold said. “They’re the only place you can get a really good corn dog.” The more I got to know Harold, the more miraculous I found it that he didn’t weigh three hundred pounds.

“It sounds like a lovely idea,” Miz June said. Lillian clapped.

“We won’t make it to Eureka until late,” my mother reminded.

“No reason we can’t have some fun along the way,” Harold said.

“More fun, anyway, than seeing you in your snowflake pajamas!” Peach said. The giddiness factor in the car was rising. Pretty soon they’d be hopping up and down in their seats.

“And I must warn you, this place isn’t exactly cheap,” my mother said.

“Senior discount!” Harold said. The idea of corn dogs had made him bubbly as a pot of boiling water.

“Shit,” Chip Jr. whispered.

“Shit, shit,” I said.

“Shit-shit. A small, fluffy dog breed,” he said.

“Shit-shit with rice. Number twelve on the Japanese menu.”

“We’ve done that one already,” he said.

“Well, pardon me for not being at the top of my game,” I said

“Would you two quit whispering?” Mom said. “If you’re worrying, don’t. Your dad’s not even here today. Thursday is his day off.”

Miz June slowed down and flicked on her turn signal, this time, I swear, a full mile before the next exit. We had a line of cars behind us that would make the dead body in a funeral procession envious. “All in favor,” Miz June said. There was a manic chorus of agreement.

I’m surprised no one got hurt getting out of the car.
They shoved and jostled to get out, showing the crazed enthusiasm of shoppers at the half-off table of a Nordstrom sale. We waited in line at the ticket place, built to resemble a small log cabin.

“Stop that, you little beast,” Peach said to a little kid in front of us who was chasing pigeons. Luckily his parents didn’t hear.

We wandered through the gates decorated with fake signs.
WARNING! KEEP OUT! EXPLOSIVES!
Peach pushed Lillian’s wheelchair. The crowd of people was a mix of visitors in their printed T-shirts and baseball caps, a few teenagers holding hands in a way that reminded me of businessmen hauling around their briefcases, and the park workers in their long period dresses and black jeans and vests, looking rushed and hot, heading off to a break or to their posts. I watched each of the workers pass, thinking for sure that this would be the one Thursday that my father actually would be there. Peach caught my eye and winked at me.
Stop worrying,
that wink said.
Let it go.
And she was right, I guess. If you’ve ever had those times where you’ve clutched a pen or something else in your hand for a long time, only to look down and be surprised that you are still holding it long after your need for it has passed, you’ll understand. Sometimes our minds just make us go on clutching something. Sometimes we get so used to holding that we forget to let go.

We separated, the old ladies to find some shade and some ice cream, and Harold and us to try out the rides. Chip Jr. left his camera with the old people for safety.
Harold talked Mom, Chip Jr., and me into riding the roller coaster. The rickety all-wood one, the Mine of Terror that clambered and shuddered up high hills and zipped you down with stomach-lurching intensity, only to rocket you back up and onto a side-riding curve. My mother screamed her head off, and so did Chip Jr. and I; my throat was raw with fear and exhilaration when we got off. When I was back on the ground again, my legs shook like Miz June’s hands, and Harold’s hair looked like an electrified porcupine, standing on end and betraying the fear he wouldn’t admit to when we were done.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said, but I hadn’t forgotten his voice screaming right along with Chip Jr.’s in the car behind Mom’s and mine, and he looked a little green. They take your picture as you drop down into the mine, and they post the photos on the wall of the General Store after they’re developed, so we went along afterward to see. Mom bought it, and we went to find the ladies to show them. In the photo, Chip Jr.’s eyes are squinched tight, and Mom and I have open mouths, but Harold looks truly petrified. Later Mom would put it up on the bookcase in the living room, where it still is to this day.

Miz June examined the photo. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said to Harold. The three ladies sat in the shade under a tree, Lillian in her wheelchair and Peach and Miz June on a bench. They all had ice cream cones, a napkin wrapped around each cone, and someone had bought a Mylar frog balloon and tied it to the handle
of Lillian’s wheelchair. Chip Jr. got his camera back and took a picture of it.

“My life flashed before my eyes,” Mom said. She was flushed, but looked happy.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Harold said again. His color was returning to normal. “Now for Destruction Junction.”

“Let’s go,” Chip Jr. said. He had picked up Harold’s hand and held it.

“I’m sitting this one out,” Mom said.

“Chicken,” Harold said.

“Bawk, bawk,” Peach said. She put her hands under her armpits and flapped.

“Oh, all right,” my mother said. Boy, those Casserole Queens could push her around. We needed them at home.

We rode the Gold Rush and then Destruction Junction. We tried out the bumper boats, and Harold’s slacks got soaked. We rode the White-Water Rapids, getting in a big round boat with a few other people. Sadistic passersby could push a button outside the ride and send a geyser of water up in the air to shoot the folks zipping past in the boat. We all agreed that we were glad Peach hadn’t known of this possibility.

We met back up with the ladies, who were now eating sno-cones.

“We’ve observed something as we’ve been sitting here,” Peach said. “America is the land of the big butts.” Hers wasn’t exactly petite, and she did say this as she slurped the last bit of cherry liquid from her soggy paper triangle.

“I’m glad you have been doing some sociological research while you were here, instead of just feeding your faces,” my mother said. Lillian had a red ring around her mouth.

“I think I’ve earned my corn dogs,” Harold said.

“We’ve decided we’d like to ride the train,” Miz June said.

Harold went for food, and the train conductor lifted Lillian and put her in the handicapped spot near the front. It was an open-air coal train that drove as slow as Miz June on the off-ramp. It traveled through a swampy area and then a wide meadow, and the Mylar frog cruised along with permanent cheer. The train platform was right outside the Palace Saloon, where my father usually performed. When we got off the train, you could hear a voice, not my father’s, bound energetically from the open door of the theater, along with the overly enthusiastic strums of a guitar. Harold waited for us on the platform, drinking something from a paper cup with a straw.

“How were the corn dogs?” Chip Jr. said.

“Three,” was all he could say. Jeez, he’d even loosened his belt. You could see the little white line where the buckle usually lay across the leather. “Look what I got you guys at the General Store.” Harold held out a hand to Chip Jr. and me. In each palm was a rock embedded with the fossil of a fern frond. He pulled another one out of his pocket. “I got one for me too. Five hundred and fifty million years old,” he said.

“Well, you share a birthday, then,” Peach said.

We thanked Harold. Chip Jr. studied his. For a moment he was lost in fifty-five-million-year-old thoughts.

“A cool drink looks nice,” Miz June said. She was eyeing the saloon.

“That’s where Dad performs,” Chip Jr. said, stating the obvious.