Rules of the Road (10 page)

Mrs. Gladstone studied my face. “You have learned a great deal in your sixteen years.”

“Not really.”

There was a knock on the door.

She folded her arms tight. “I don’t want to see a doctor.”

I walked to the door. “I know you don’t. But you’ve got to.”

“And what gives you the right to order me around?”

I took a deep breath, fished around in my pocket. “I have the car keys, ma’am.” I held them up. “No disrespect intended.”

Mrs. Gladstone grunted.

I looked through the peephole at the doctor standing in the hall, opened the door, and let her in.

Dr. MacMillan wasn’t taking any of Mrs. Gladstone’s guff, which I was glad to see. It gets lonely being the only reasonable
person in the room. She told Mrs. Gladstone her hip was in bad shape and got to hear her speech about how that leg was going to make it to Texas. Dr. MacMillan said she needed to get X-rays, which made her split an atom, especially when the two ambulance men came to carry her off to the hospital, and she declared she wasn’t going to be “hoisted from bed by strangers” and rapped one of the attendants on the shoulder with her cane.

“
Jenna
will help me,” she declared.

“Is she always like this?” the attendant asked, rubbing his shoulder.

“Pretty much.”

I leaned over the bed so Mrs. Gladstone could put her arms around my neck and I could lift her up. This seemed dumb with two strong men in the room who did these things regularly. Of course, I was taller than both of them.

Pain flashed across her face, but I got her up. And eventually, after a few false starts, into the ambulance where she would not lie down on the cot. She sat there staring straight ahead, bony arms crossed tightly against her chest, informing the attendant she did not need her blood pressure checked, the problem was her
hip.

I said, “They’re going to take it eventually, Mrs. Gladstone. Here or at the hospital. My mom’s a nurse and you can’t come in with a hang nail and get out without someone checking your blood pressure.”

I looked at her face, how hard and determined it was. I thought about what she and her husband had to do to build
their company from the ground floor up, store by store, all 176 of them, for all those years. Women weren’t in business much back then. I bet she knocked their socks off.

I took a real chance with my future, leaned close to her ear and said, “Save it, Mrs. Gladstone, for the real fight. You know?”

She sniffed hard. Then gradually her face relaxed. She nodded slightly.

“Well, for mercy’s sweet sake,” she barked at the attendant. “Are you going to take my blood pressure or not?”

Dr. MacMillan had Mrs. Gladstone stay overnight in the hospital for observation and told her what she already knew. She needed a new hip.

“Sooner rather than later,” the doctor said.

“I am scheduled for an operation in September.”

“I wouldn’t recommend waiting that long,” said the doctor, writing out a prescription and suggesting she not take stairs.

Then she said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a wheelchair in the car just in case, and Mrs. Gladstone said a wheelchair was out of the question. The doctor handed me a pad with scrawled instructions that looked like hieroglyphics on what kind of wheelchair to buy. “Just in case I’m right,” she whispered.

I packed up our suitcases, checked us out of the hotel, got the car, and asked Mrs. Gladstone if we should take a run over to the medical supply store to look at wheelchairs. This went over like a pop chemistry quiz the day before spring vacation
when you had to wonder for a whole week if you’d destroyed your grade point average.

“
You are to keep those infernal things away from me, do you hear?
”

“Just trying to cover all the bases, Mrs. Gladstone. I know it’s the last thing you want. I’m worried about you is all and—”

“Don’t be.”

This whole trip was beginning to be a whole lot more than I’d bargained for.

“Mrs. Gladstone, I’m not a nurse and if anything happened that I couldn’t handle—”

“If I need a nurse, I’ll hire one. Now I suggest, young woman, that you do what I’ve hired you to do.”

I gave the Cadillac extra gas to let her know I was mad.

We were heading to 55 South which would take us to St. Louis, the Gateway to the West. From school, I remembered that the explorers Lewis and Clark started their expedition in St. Louis. From Dad, I knew about the city’s number-one product, Budweiser beer.

Mrs. Gladstone had me turn on a radio station that played the big band music of World War II, which, trust me, you either like or you don’t. My grandmother would have liked it, but for a sophisticated teenager it was like Chinese water torture. I focused on something else to avoid screaming—eavesdropped, actually, as Mrs. Gladstone talked to Harry Bender on the phone again, saying that she didn’t see what could be done and wasn’t it too late to win back the company? An old school bus painted baby blue from the Anointed Saints of the Evangelical Free Gospel Church of Jesus Christ, Vernon, Illinois,
screeched in front of me. I rammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the back of the bus with the sign that said
HEAVEN IS OUR REAL HOME.

“Mercy,” said Mrs. Gladstone, jolting forward.

“I’m sorry.”

I slowed down, keeping two bus lengths between me and heaven, and pulled onto 55 South. I focused on the road; I had to be sharp. This always energized me. I didn’t think too much, just clicked into the driving rhythm as the rows of highway lights curved over the pavement. I drove slowly around a blinking warning sign set up around a construction site; checked my mirrors for approaching cars when I saw a merge arrow; moved to the right lane when the driver behind me flashed his headlights. It seemed to me that the people who made the rules of the road had figured out everything that would help a person drive safely right down to having a sign that tells you you’re passing through a place where deer cross. Somebody should stick up some signs on the highway of life.

CAUTION: JERKS CROSSING.

Blinking yellow lights when you’re about to do something stupid.

Stop signs in front of people who could hurt you.

Green lights shining when you’re doing the right thing.

It would make the whole experience easier.

Life was too hard sometimes. I let out a lonely sigh and realized how much I missed my mother.

I missed Chicago, too. And Opal.

I even missed Faith.

I missed being with people under seventy years of age.

I missed selling shoes and listening to real music.

I missed tacos and refried beans and all-night Chinese take-out places and buses and teenage conversation.

I missed my grandmother and the fun we used to have. The loss of that was like a giant crater in my heart.

I wondered how she was getting along; wondered if she remembered enough to miss me.

What if Grandma slipped too far away while I was gone?

What if Murray hired someone who could sell shoes even better than me?

What if Dad bothered Faith?

What if he never came back?

I started crying—never appropriate for a professional driver. I looked for the next place to pull off because the pain of my grandmother and my father and my homesickness and my worry were bursting out at the same time.

Tears rolled down my cheeks. I hoped Mrs. Gladstone was looking out the window because I didn’t think she’d appreciate this behavior. I steered off the exit ramp, not asking permission. Mrs. Gladstone didn’t say anything, she just let me pull into the parking lot of Pru’s Pie Palace, and run inside.

I stood by the sink in the bathroom and washed my face with cold water to get the red splotches off from all the crying and despair. No paper towels. I stuck my face under the hand blower which made my eyes tear, praying no one would walk in. If Opal was here she would have told me that tears
weren’t anything to be ashamed of, that crying in front of people just makes you closer. That’s how Opal and I met. She was crying at the bus stop after school. Her new wallet had been stolen and she didn’t have enough money to get home. I paid her fare and we rode home together. By the time we’d passed North Avenue, I’d told her my dad was an alcoholic, she’d told me her aunt believed in alien abduction, and we’d become best friends right there on the 22 North. Like my grandma always said, you never know the blessings that can come from suffering.

I dried my eyes on my sleeve and walked out to where Mrs. Gladstone was sipping coffee. There were two pieces of coconut cream pie on the table, my absolute favorite dessert. I sat down reverently in front of all those calories.

She leaned forward, studying me. “You want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. I figured she’d make me spill my guts, but she didn’t.

“Some things go too deep for words,” is all she said.

And we sat there eating our pie.

We made it to St. Louis by nightfall—drove past the Gateway Arch on the Mississippi riverfront with all those city lights gleaming like stars. The arch represented the gateway to the west where the pioneers began their journey to the new land. Mrs. Gladstone said it was 630 feet high. Seeing it made me feel like I’d just done something important. I thought of all those pioneer teenagers pushing westward in the covered wagons—hot, sweaty, wondering what the new land would bring, trying to convince their parents to let them drive.

I was getting very good at finding hotels. I came to a perfect stop with no lurching in front of the St. Louis Beauregard and really impressed the doorman, who was dressed like the Nutcracker from the ballet, except he wasn’t wearing tights. He helped Mrs. Gladstone out as a teenage boy drove by; his father was screaming instructions at him from the passenger seat:
Slow down! Watch the light! Brake!
I smiled maturely. Those days were over for me.

Mrs. Gladstone and I checked in (separate rooms) and headed upstairs. She was limping bad and said she was going to have dinner in her room and that I should do the same.

Room service.

Freedom.

I went to my room—it had a huge TV and a queen-size bed with a painting over it that looked like the artist put ink in his mouth and spat it back on the canvas. I flopped on the bed and felt at least nineteen. It would have been great to have Opal here. She’s the first friend I’ve ever had who I could tell everything to. With the others, I always held back about Dad and our problems, afraid that if people knew how weird things were, they wouldn’t like me. With Opal, the more I tell her, the closer we get.

I looked at the room service menu: steak, lamb chops, pork medallions, turkey club, chocolate mousse cake. My stomach growled. Opal and I could make fast work of that menu. We once ate two large double cheese pizzas in one night with a six-pack of Mountain Dew and two quarts of toffee almond ice cream.

Bingeing alone is not as meaningful.

The phone rang. I waited three rings, picked it up.

“
Young woman!
”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I need your help after all.”