Interstate (41 page)

Raining when they get outside, not much, sprinkles, and he says “Hey, let's make a dash for the car,” and Margo says “Why, it's not raining so much,” and he says “Hey, man, whataya talking about, it's a good excuse to run and we need it after being cooped up in the car and your stuffing yourself here, for I don't see no popcorn left, is that what I don't see, man, hey, hey?” and she says “We ate it. And why are you talking like that with all the mans and stuff?” and he says “Just pretending, and I didn't want any corn anyway, but let's run,” and runs and looks back after about twenty feet and they're walking and talking and he yells “Hey, last one to the car's a rotten you-know-what,” and they run and he stays there till they're even and then lags behind them so they can beat him. “You cheated,” Margo says and Julie says “Daddy's a cheater,” and he says “Yeah, man, that's me,” and Margo says “Stop that, you sound mean,” and he says “Sorry, man, sorry, man—oops, okay, stop.”

They're on the road a few minutes when it starts pouring, then comes down so hard that most of the cars have slowed down and turned on their lights. He can't see well even with the wipers on high speed and says “Look, Margo, we can never make the party now—we're down to half the speed we were going and if it doesn't let up, this is it the rest of the way,” and she says “I understand,” and he goes into the slow lane, down to thirty-five an hour, at times twenty-five, twenty, sticking his face a few inches from the windshield to see out, rubbing his side window because it's clouded up. “Wish one of you was up here to wipe the front window for me, though that's not an invite and we'll be fine. Oh, by the way, guess who—no, you couldn't, but you won't believe who I bumped into at the Roy Rogers when you were getting popcorn,” and they say nothing and he says “Hello, anyone hear me?” and Margo says yes and he says “In fact, one of them told me to particularly tell you girls how sorry he was if he scared you on the road before—now you know who they are?” and Margo says no and he says “I don't really know if I should believe him. He seemed sincere when he was saying it—he's my ‘hey, man' man—but then something doesn't quite jive with his attitude on the road when he did sort of scare us, or at least me—know who I'm talking about now?” and Julie says “Stop teasing, who?” and he says “Those two guys from maybe an hour and a half ago or two hours, on the Interstate before the big bridge…they almost ran us off—you know, cut into our lane without warning me, not the old dude before but two much younger men from way way before,” and Margo says “I don't recall,” and Julie says “Did one wave a doll at me?” and he says “I don't think so,” and she says “That must've been someone else, a Raggedy-Ann, or Andy,” and he says “On this trip?” and Margo says “She's making it up, can't you tell?” and he says “Anyway, right after—” and Margo says “Daddy, she slapped me,” and he says “Julie, stop it—anyway, right after they scared us they smiled, the passenger in the front seat did, and wiggled his fingers at you both,” and Margo says “No,
ma père
, I don't recall,” and Julie says “If it isn't the doll man—he was nice—I don't too,” and he says “Okay, recountal closed.”

Few minutes later he thinks if there's another rest area soon he'll pull in and stay in the car till the rain abates and if it doesn't in around fifteen minutes, pull up at the entrance and race inside with the kids, holding some protection over them—sweater, jacket, he doesn't care if he gets wet—and then park and run in and dry off and take another piss and tell the kids to use the ladies' room again and he'll have coffee—or tell the kids to use the ladies' room while he's parking—and let them get anything they want this time, sugared artificially flavored and colored soda, Pepsi or Coke, even, lollipop apiece and for each of them one of those Pez, is it? just the refill or with the dispenser, even if they have several empty dispensers at home in the shapes of various cartoon characters, junky cupcakes, any kind of cake, just so they—but no more popcorn, that'll only give them a tummyache—won't be bored and sort of as compensation for the long trip and also as a reward for being so patient and cooperative during it, that's how we'll word it, “gifts for being such nifty kids on this trip.”

Rain never abates, sees a rest area half hour after he thought he'd stop at the next but even at thirty-five miles an hour they're at the most forty minutes from home, so passes it. Parks in front of the house; downpour, as they're preparing to get out of the car, turns into a drizzle. “We're saved,” he says, “saved,” and Julie asks “What's that?” and he says “Means miracle; rain's down to a trickle when I thought it'd be a twenty-year torrent.” Gets everything inside in several trips, empty trash cans on the grass and in the street to the side of the house, mail out of the box, newspapers off porch and walkway. Turns the heat up, oven on, peels carrots and washes and slices celery sticks and puts a plate of them with some cherry tomatoes on the dining room table so the kids can snack, unpacks, puts things away fast as he can, soiled clothes into the washing machine in the basement and pours soap powder in without measuring first and turns it on, straightens up the downstairs, couch pillows plumped up and put in place, that more than anything for the amount of work put in makes a room seem neater, all the old newspapers, magazines, catalogs, drawing and construction paper and children's books lying around the living room stacked into one pile, something about a room with lots of things open and mislaid disorients him, makes a salad, slices bread brought from New York and butters it, asks the girls when they're taking from the veggie plate to set the rest of the table, asks them a few times, yells upstairs “Girls, please come down and set the table,” finally says when he sees them reading in the living room and eating the buttered bread “What am I supposed to do, everything?—come on, get with it, set the goddamn table, and that bread was supposed to be for dinner,” and they jump up and run into the kitchen for tableware, “That's better,” he says and Julie says “You didn't have to curse,” and he says “You're right, forget the ‘goddamn,' but did you get the cloth napkins out of the linen drawer?” and Margo says “Nor shout either—ordering, you're always ordering,” and he says “I'm not always, and I guess I'm hurrying too fast and being kind of a pain in the ass to get everything done so I can rest a second, excuse me,” tells them to get juice for themselves, please? puts a pot of water on to boil, why didn't he do it sooner and why's he have the oven on? and shuts it off—spaghetti, salad, bread, veggie plate (while he's dribbling olive oil and rice vinegar into the salad bowl), fruit, that should be enough, maybe broccoli if it's still good, opens a can of apricots and spoons some into two cereal bowls and places them next to the kids' settings, smells the broccoli in the plastic bag from the refrigerator, mush, stinks, dumps it into the garbage, smells and tastes the tomato sauce from the jar in the refrigerator, still okay and dumps it into a saucepan and puts a very low flame under it, then thinks You know yourself, you'll forget it and pot will burn and it's all the sauce you have, and shuts it off, water's boiling, sticks the spaghetti in, empties the remaining apricots into a container and puts it into the refrigerator, sits for a few minutes with a scotch and water and reads the mail and the part of today's paper that wasn't soaked, calls the girls to dinner, same old mail and front-page news, dumps all the catalogs but one so his wife won't get suspicious that not even one came when she was away, for he doesn't want her getting her hands on the rest and buying what he thinks are a lot of unnecessary things and increasing the number of catalogs they already get, how do the catalogers or whatever the word for them is get her name? every time she orders, or as much as he can, he tells her to insist the cataloger not sell her name to any other company's mailing list or she'll never buy from it again, calls the girls to dinner, catalog he kept is one he's almost sure she won't buy anything from: maternity bras and baby clothes from a time she bought them years ago and catalog's come ever since, calls the girls to dinner, Julie sits and says “I have nothing to drink,” and he says “Did you wash your hands?—I should've told you that before you sat,” and both girls wash their hands and he washes his in the kitchen sink and heats the tomato sauce and drains and butters the spaghetti and gets everything on the table along with a glass of wine for him, Parmesan cheese! and runs in and gets it, butter and bread knife and more bread, shakes the pepper mill and refills it and sits and Julie says “I still have nothing to drink,” and he says “Excuse me, but I think I told you before to get something. Not milk, that's no good with dinner, Mommy says. But one of the flavored seltzers with ice, orange juice in it to make Orangina if it's plain seltzer, or a flavored seltzer with juice, what's the difference really? or just straight orange juice with or without ice and which is on the side shelf of the refrigerator,” and Julie gets juice for Margo and her and they eat, he says ‘Food okay, there's enough?” and Margo says “I'm not that hungry—it could be the popcorn, to be honest; I'm sorry,” and he says “So what did you think about the day today—good day, bad, so-so mediocre day; how does it rate on your average everyday day gauge?” and Margo says “Who?” and he says “Both of you,” and Julie says “I don't get the question,” and Margo says “An awful boring horrible day, useless and one of the worst. Too much car and stop, car and stop; I wish we could take the train once,” and he says “I promise you—once, we will. But the rest of the day today forgotten—the bad, the so-so mediocre, the good?” and Julie says “Still, what do you mean?” and he says “I don't know—those cowboys; that's what my dad liked to call wild and dangerous drivers, and their cars broncos, which is funny, for that's the name of a fashionable expensive car today, isn't it?” and Margo says “You think they got the idea from your father?” and he says “If they did I bet right now he's thinking of suing them from heaven,” and she says “That's impossible, but do you believe people go there after they die if they've been good?” and he says “Death, please, not a subject fit for the dinner table, even over spaghetti and cheap wine,” and she says “Would you be sad if Julie or me died?” and he says “Where'd you get that thought?” and she says “Would you though?” and he says “Very very very very, a thought so sad that I'm now sad just thinking about it, but it ain't gonna happen so let's not talk about it,” and Julie says “But everyone dies, right?” and he says “Yes, or maybe, but it's a hundred years away for you kids at least, so far away and the way science is progressing today that it may never happen to you,” and Margo says “But you'll die earlier than us unless Julie or me dies before you,” and he says “But I said you won't, you won't, and I asked you to drop the subject,” and she says “Why, as long as we're willing to talk about it and are interested, isn't that so, Julie?” and Julie says “I sort of am,” and he says “You see, she's not,” and Julie says “No, I am,” and he says “But I'm not. Neither of my kids will die, not in my lifetime or maybe anybody's, and I'm going to stay so healthy that I'll outlive the oldest man who ever lived—Methuselah, even,” and Margo says “I never heard of him,” and he says “Ah, he was probably before your time. But during that long long life of mine I'm going to make sure you kids also acquire the means to live that long and even longer, so from now on you don't have anything to worry about when it comes to living—nothing, forget it,” and Margo says “And Mommy?” and he says “Mommy too, an exceptionally long life—Methuselah's wife and then some, I'll see to it,” and Julie says “And Mommy's parents?” and he says “Now enough, we've discussed it way past the point of interest and amusement and information and spaghetti conversation and really, all I was getting at before with those guys on the road and the endless rainstorm and your not ice-skating and so forth was, well, that it's all been forgotten or put away by you till I just brought it up, and it's not upsetting you and you both can sleep peacefully and get up tomorrow feeling good, can't you?” and Margo says “It was not seeing my friends at the party I minded, not the ice-skating, but it's okay,” and he says “Good, great. Now, continuing my duty as reprehensible single parent—only kidding; responsible father and not morbid-mood bringer and chief family scarer, I have to ask if either of you has homework to do,” and they say they've done it, but their teachers went over it in class while they were away, and he asks them to and they clear the table for him, he has another glass of wine and salad while they have dessert, he washes the dishes and puts things away and wants to listen to music while doing this but the classical music station has devoted the hour to marches and waltzes and the other public station which often plays serious music has a call-in on AIDS, yells from the kitchen “Someone want to help Daddy some more and sweep the dining room and kitchen? When I was a kid my folks made me do it every night, even when I was Julie's age and no matter how badly I did it,” no answer, looks and they're not around so must be in their rooms upstairs or in one of them with the door closed, he sweeps the floors, puts the washed laundry into the dryer, Julie yells down to the basement “Can we watch TV?” and he says “Is that what you and Margo have been doing since dessert—in my room and you're only now feeling you're being deceptive because you know I wouldn't have permitted it?” and she says “What do you mean?” and he says “The answer's no; the mind, let's do something for the mind. Shut the TV off and both of you come downstairs, I'll meet you halfway,” and goes upstairs and in the dining room they say “So?…yes?” and he suggests Battleship and they say they hate it and he says “It's something I loved as a kid and your grandma's taught you and given you plenty of graph paper for and you've played it with her, but all right…how about Scrabble?” and Margo says “If we have to do something like that, since you're forcing us, okay,” and he says “I'm not forcing, but let's do it,” and has another glass of wine while he plays and in about half an hour says “So, what d'ya know, the old brain's lost again. Almost bedtime, kids, anyone want to call Mommy?—number's on the fridge door. You call and I'll put away the game, for it'll take too long for you two to duel it out to the end,” and Julie calls, speaks to Lee and then Margo gets on and both tell her how boring, dull, long and monotonous the day's been and how Daddy's so unfair not letting them watch TV after such a terrible day and Margo must have mentioned Scrabble and Lee must have said she thought it a good idea to play it because now Margo says “It was his, we didn't want to. He said we should learn new words and use our minds more and I already get thirty vocabulary words a week at school and all the ones we used on the board weren't new to Julie or me, though he explained them like they were. And I use my mind all the time in reading and making things and thinking and I'm sure he let us win because he saw how bored we were playing it with him,” and then “I know, ‘he' is ‘Daddy,' but what of it? Our teacher says we're supposed to use the pronoun more in writing and speech,” and then “Mommy wants to speak to you,” and he gets on and Lee says “So how'd it go?” and he says “Home, fine; despite what the kids say, I think we've had fun and I got a good dinner without milk in them and I'll probably get them in bed on time. But oh boy, the trip. Listen, I'll be honest, we nearly got hit twice on the road. Once wasn't my fault—two bozos who in fact I later saw at a Roy Rogers at a rest stop, and they seemed awful on the road—angry, dumb, potentially homicidal, even. But at the restaurant they acted like they were my pals, so what do I make of it?” and she says “Perhaps you misconstrued or exaggerated what you saw in them on the road—they weren't just jokers?” and he says “Didn't seem so, on the road. You know, I can read people's faces pretty well and just as often misread them too, but I swear I thought they'd pull out a gun and aim it out the window at me and the kids. I mean, if half the people in this country have a gun and maybe a quarter of those carry it in their cars, we'll say, then these two guys would have to have had one between them—the figures and what I saw in their faces tell me this—if not a semiautomatic something or another and a grenade,” and she says “Certainly you're exaggerating here,” and he says “Yeah, a little about the weapons, maybe,” and she says “But also the aiming the gun and possibly shooting all of you. That's a horrible thought and I'm sure inaccurate and I hope you didn't pass it on to the kids,” and he says “Only minimally, inappreciably, fleetingly and undoubtedly mistakenly, but they've indicated since they've forgotten the whole incident. But in the Roy Rogers, I'm telling you, if they sold beer there I bet these guys would have slapped my back and cuffed my chin and said ‘Hiya, palsy,' and stood me to a couple of rounds, not that I'd drink when I had to drive, naturally,” and she says “I'll remember that for you when we go to our next party,” and he says “I meant over long trips.” “But what else happened?—you said ‘two near accidents,'” and he
says “Other one was partly my fault, going into the center lane—middle lane—which do you use?” and she says “What of it?” and he says “Funny, but that's what Margo said before, though about what I forget—she must've got the expression from you; I was wondering where,” and she says “Really, what of it? This is long distance, sweetie, and I don't mind the extended call and the expense if it's about something,” and he says “So? So? Money, big deal, for you could have what you have when crash, you're gone or forever out of it and what's the dough good for then, except to help take care of you? If anything, that's something you think about when you almost get into a serious collision, but of course mostly what if the kids were hurt or you were—me—and they survived. Hurt and worse. But it was partly my fault, is what I'm saying, darting into the middle lane, I'll settle on, same time this old guy in front of me does from the passing lane—fast lane?…sorry. In other words, we're both in the fast lane—one syllable, so in the end that's what decides it for me, but he wasn't budging from it, when he suddenly darts into the middle lane the second after I did—close but not a close call, I don't think, but close enough, at seventy miles an hour, to send scare shivers through me and get me flashing about death and the kids and so on. So he was partly at fault too, since he didn't signal or look. Or just didn't signal, I'm not sure if he didn't look, but if he did he wouldn't have made that sudden reckless move, right? But maybe it was all too fast, my sudden reckless move and his, that he didn't have time, so it's a draw,” and she says “Time to what?” and he says “About him? I forget—what was I saying? But that was close call number two, and then, to top it off hour and a half or so from home, the rain,” and she says “You had rain? It was gorgeous here all day. Sunny, golden, clear, a light wind that felt like balmy sea breezes—the most heaven-sent weather on the most rhapsodizical of spring days,” and he says “Not a drop? No wonder—we got it all. It came down in buckets, barrels, big street Dumpsters, I never experienced rain like it and it didn't stop being this way till we parked in front of the house, where it just sort of decompressed, though it still might have been coming down torrentially everywhere else around us; in other words, with a little bit of stretching, I think we were blessed. I would have stopped at a rest area—rest stop?—service area?—those places with the Roy Rockefellers and Bob's Pig Boys and Taco Bellies, if I could have seen a sign for one through the rain. Okay, I saw the signs but on that neck of the Interstate all the exits to those service areas are from the left side and I was in no way going to drive in the fast lane to enter one and it seemed too chancy to get over,” and she says “So what did you do?” and he says “Thought of you. No. Rest of the way drove slowly in the slow lane, of course—twenty-five, twenty, though still with limited visibility. But we're here, trip's over with, so as you and Margo say, what of it, right?” “Good. I'm glad you're all home and safe. Anything else?” and he says “To tell you? Wait, all I've been doing is going on about me—what about you? Besides the beautiful day, anything interesting or exciting or new happen to you?” and she says “It's been nice being with my folks, that's all, and I did a bit of book buying and store browsing and got my hair trimmed and—” and he says “There is something. Before I left, when we were in the hallway outside your parents' apartment—I was holding you, I think—we were holding each other—and I said I was psychic, you remember?” and she says no and he says “Or maybe I only thought it, but I could almost swear I told you it, and just about something specific, not psychic in general. But I was in this rush to get on the road to get caught in that rain and nearly clipped by two cars so I said I'd tell you about it tonight, but you don't remember,” and she says “It's beginning to sound familiar but that may be only because you're talking about it now and it's tricking me into thinking I heard it before,” and he says “Too bad; I was hoping you'd remember and tell me what I was referring to in my being psychic,” and she says “Nope, I'm sorry, the bell's not hinging,” and he says “Let me think, for I don't know why but I don't want to lose it—I mean how many times in his life is a man psychic, or this one?” and she says “Better you tell me tomorrow after you remember. Write it down if it comes back,” and he says “I suppose. Oh—this is it, flash from the front—that you already regretted we were gone, or that I was, or it had to be ‘we,' and I had just been thinking, moment before you said it, that you were thinking this,” and she says “Come again?” and he says “Step one, I felt by your look but really more by something that jumped into my head that you were regretting that we or I was gone—were? was?…I should stop that; I'm so inconsolable—