The Mother Road (3 page)

“What up, Tace?” I nod at the pile of junk and then turn back to the two most important men in my life. “So, why are you two here, and please don’t tell me you drove out here in that.” I point at Tacy and take in her bumper that’s hanging on by a screw, strike that, hanging on by duct tape, my dad’s cure for everything.

“Of course we did.” Paul wraps his hand around my shoulder and we all turn to face the Signature TravelMaster. “Marley, it’s time to finally conquer The Mother Road.”

“What?” I pull away. “But, I thought we weren’t doing road trips anymore.”

Before my mom got sick, Dad would sign up a couple of friends to take care of the farm for a two week stint and we would go on a family road trip during the summer. We spent countless hours in Tacy, mindless miles on the road, and unforgettable memories making each other laugh so boredom never got the best of us. But those days were brought to a halt the moment my mom received a devastating call from the doctor.

The day my mom got cancer was the day we hung up Tacy’s keys. I was in middle school, Paul was a junior in high school, and my dad was just scraping by on the farm, trying to pay off Mom’s medical bills. The cancer was quick and it took us all by surprise. Life was never the same after that.

Instantaneously, I became the lady of the household, a responsibility I wasn’t ready to carry. I was forced to grow up quickly, learn how to cook, clean, and take care of my dad and brother. We traded in our family traditions for survival tactics, spending our time on the farm and making sure we didn’t lose our home as well.

Our once goal of eating a hot dog in every state together and taking Polaroids at odd landmarks became a distant memory, and in its place, we pushed through the loss of our beloved mother and worked night and day until our hands were raw.

Dad downsized the farm once Paul went to the Army, and when I left for school, he sold even more land, giving him a solid savings he could put toward retirement.

We all went our separate ways, forgetting about the childish goals we strived for, so we could obtain new ones that focused more on our future. Since Mom’s death, I haven’t thought about our final road trip we’d been planning to take before she got sick.

“Marley, I’m getting married in a week and a half. My life will be changing soon. I’m going to be responsible for a wife, for a family, and I have some unfinished business.” Paul pulls a folded up piece of paper from the back of his pocket and hands it to me. “Mom planned this trip for us. It’s about time we take it. Let’s finish what we started.”

Tears well in my eyes as I look down at the map Mom drew years ago. The map has yellowed with age, but her pen markings are still clear to this day. Starting from Santa Monica, California, she mapped our trip across Route 66, traveling through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and then Illinois, where she circled in red the city of Chicago.

“The mother of all hot dogs,” I say softly, remembering my mom’s dream to eat a Chicago dog along Lake Michigan. I run my hand over the map, wishing she was still with us.

We were the perfect little family of four, with Paul looking like our mom and me looking like my dad. We wore matching sweaters at Christmas and posed for my mom’s incessant Polaroid taking. The memories rock me harder than I expect as a tear falls down my cheek.

My dad pulls me into his brawny chest and kisses my head once again. “It’s time, Buttons. Let’s finish your mom’s dreams.” My dad pulls out a picture from his shirt pocket and hands it to me. “We’re bringing her with us, one more final trip as a family of four. What do ya say, kiddo?”

Uncertainty washes over me. “I don’t know,” I shake my head. “I have my blog and products I have to test.”

“You can do that on the road,” Paul encourages me. “Come on, sis. If anything, do it for Mom and do it for Tacy. The old girl has one more trip in her.”

I laugh-snort, snot bubbling out of my nose. I wipe it away and grab my boys by their waists. “I guess we’re going to Chicago.”

**MARLEY**

Come to find out, Tacy is much smaller than I remembered. You know that whole saying about how things look different in a kid’s eyes? I’ve come to realize this is true. In my mind, Tacy was the size of a semi-tractor with enough space to fit two elephants humping their lives away and a gaggle of creeping zebras looking to watch them.

As I step into Tacy with my suitcase, I realize rather quickly that the next week in this motor home will be like living in a poorly upholstered clam shell.

Despite the close quarters, Tacy is how I remember her, particle board wood paneling on the walls, mauve and cream colored cushions, a kitchen only a Smurf could really cook in, and fully upgraded with a dining table that turns into a bed.

The bitch bed.

Paul clasps my shoulder as he walks in behind me, the door slamming after him. “You got the bitch bed, sis.” Climbing up on the overhang of the RV, Paul claims the comfortable bed once again.

Mom and Dad always declared the bed in the back of the RV, for obvious reasons, leaving Paul and me having to fight over who was going to sleep in the overhang bed and who was stuck with the bitch bed; guess who always lost? Thumb wrestling for beds was never a winning sport for me. I’m a petite girl and Paul has Shaquille O’Neil man hands. His thumb alone is the size of my arm. Humoring me, he would always act like I had a chance, but then annihilate me with his Thor thumb. My consolation prize: The bitch bed.

“We didn’t even thumb wrestle for it,” I complain, eying the uncomfortable wafer thin table.

Paul gives me a “get real” look. “Marley, do you even want to go there?”

“No,” I huff, tossing my bag into the hidden compartment of the dining area bench seat. It’s always been my closet; I’m used to it. I sniff around and say, “You could have at least put an air freshener in here. What is that smell?”

With his nose in the air, Paul sniffs around. “Oh, you know what? We found an old bag of hot dogs in the fridge before we left. We’ve been trying to air it out since. We drove through the day and night trying to get here. We haven’t had much time to clean.”

“Pleasant,” I say sarcastically.

Dad pops in the front driver’s seat and turns around to face us. “Did you give it to her?”

“I was waiting for you, Dad.”

“Give me what?” I ask, looking between their two shit-eating grins.

Paul hops down off of the attic and reaches into the passenger seat. He tosses me a plastic grocery bag full of contents. “Sorry, we didn’t have time to wrap it.”

Since it’s a plastic grocery bag, I can decipher the contents inside and I can already tell my eyes are offended. Reaching in, I pull out a neon yellow shirt and trucker’s hat—the same one Paul was wearing in the picture he sent me. On the front of both articles of clothing it says, “McMann Clan.” Just like the old days.

“Sweet Jesus,” I mutter.

“We got matching ones.” The boys hold up their shirts and put on their hats.

I nod with my lips pressed close together. When I was in middle school, I would have been ecstatic to match my older brother; it was like a little girl’s dream come true. To say you were twinsies with your brother who was four years older than you was a magical moment for any little sister. But now that I’m twenty-two and a walking fashion ad for my blog, the last thing I need is to be caught dead in a neon ensemble stating what “clan” I belong to.

“Go ahead, Buttons, put it on. Paul spent a long time ironing on these letters for us. Didn’t he do a great job?”

The letters are no more than an inch high, making the shirt to letter ratio way off. Ever see that Friends episode when Ross makes a flyer for his band, “Way, No Way?” He uses Helvetica Bold twenty-four point to really make the name stand out, but in actuality, you have to squint to see it; that’s what the shirts look like, Ross’s crappy band flyer.

“Put it on,” Paul nods at the shirt just as he pulls his shirt off and dons the yellow atrocity. He tops the outfit off with his hat and a smirk.

“I hate you,” I mouth at Paul, who chuckles to himself.

There isn’t much room in Tacy, so I step into the bathroom, which could be compared to the size of an airplane bathroom, and I put the shirt on. Because Paul is trying to ruin my life, he bought me a shirt three sizes too big, so I make the most of it. I’m wearing a pair of capri yoga pants, so I go for the sporty look. I tie the shirt off to the side, eighties style, and roll the sleeves under, so the shirt is now sleeveless, and put my hat on backwards, braiding my long brown hair to the side.

I glance up at the mirror and confirm my prediction; I look like I belong in a music video for the Spice Girls. It could be worse. We could be wearing matching pants. Believe me when I say, it’s happened before. Think nineties fashion in its Aztec heyday, when fanny packs were all the rage and scrunchies could never be too big. If I could, I would burn those photos.

Accepting this as my life for the next week, I step out of the bathroom to see my dad and brother wearing the same outfit, minus the alterations.

My dad scowls at my midriff showing and points at my exposed skin. “I don’t believe your shirt is really that short.”

“Yeah, thanks to Paul, it goes past my knees. If you want me wearing the shirt, you have to deal with how I wear it.”

My dad makes a “humpf” sound and then says, “Picture time.”

Just like every other road trip, we start it with a before picture, all smiles and happy, and then as a joke, we take a picture at the end of our trip of us grabbing each other’s necks in frustration. We have countless Polaroids of our trips, framing these moments.

“Should I grab my phone?” I offer, knowing full well Mom’s Polaroid is out of commission.

“That would be breaking tradition,” my dad states, pulling a new blue Polaroid from his side. “Here, Buttons. Do you think you can document our trip this go around?”

Taking pictures was always my mom’s job; she was obsessed with capturing her family from behind the lens and then cherishing the moments later in her scrapbook. The sentiment cuts me in the heart once again. If I didn’t know any better, I would think my dad and my brother were trying to turn me into a bawling mess.

“I would be honored,” I smile, loving the brand new Polaroid. It’s cute!

We huddle together, as closely as possible, and plaster giant smiles on our faces. My dad holds the picture of my mom up to his chest, making sure she’s included.

“Say cheese,” my dad says, just like old times.

The flash goes off, and just like that, our first memory is in the books.

****

The rumble of Tacy is beneath us as we finally make it out of the Santa Monica area, but not before taking a picture in front of the Route 66 sign. Back when the road was a popular travel destination, it was set up so you started in Chicago and drove to California. So the sign we took a picture in front of—yes, in our neon yellow shirts—was actually the end. But, thanks to Paul’s craftiness and height, he temporarily taped over the word “End” and put a sign that said “Start” over it. Our mom would have done the same thing.

“Hey, Marley, check it out, all of our old cassette tapes,” Paul pulls out a shoe box from under his seat. “I didn’t play them on the way here so we could listen to them together.”

I’m sitting at the dining table, updating a blog post about my new adventure when I scan the box Paul has in his hands.

Moving to the bucket seat next to the cab of the RV, I sit down next to Paul. “No way, we kept these?”

I thumb through our travel cassettes.

You see, back in the day, before MP3 players and even CDs, there was a little contraption called the cassette tape. It could fit in the palm of your hand and be wound up by a pencil eraser if ever the tape was pulled out. If you were lucky, your family owned a double cassette player, meaning you could make your own mixed cassette tapes by playing and recording a second one at the same time. There was a certain magic to making a mixed tape; it made you feel unstoppable, like you were the titan of the music world. Paul and I used to spend hours coming up with the perfect playlists, and thanks to my parents’ wide collection of tapes, we were able to deliver some epic mixes DJ Jazzy Jeff would be jealous of.

A laugh escapes me as I read one of the marked tapes. “Rad Rock for Rad Rockers. Please, can we play this one?”

Paul nods in approval. “It’s just the one I was looking for.” He directs a conspiratorial glance at my father, who winks at him. I’m far too excited about the mixed tape to even think about their exchange.

I sit cross legged on the chair and wait for the first song to come through the speakers. Within a few seconds, Paul’s middle school voice booms through Tacy, rumbling off the wood paneling. “This is for all of you Rad Rockers out there. May your life be filled with guitar riffs and bad boy drumming. Rock on.”

Oh, and when you’re making a mixed tape, you can record yourself too, as if you’re running your own radio station. We took advantage of that feature…often.

I bend over at the waist, gripping my stomach as I laugh hysterically at Paul’s little boy voice.

“Squeak much?” I ask, still laughing. “Sounded like you were doing a horrible impression of Victor Victoria.”

“That was pretty bad,” my dad chimes in, a giant smile on his face.

Paul shrugs his shoulders and turns up the volume.

The quality is scratchy, probably from both the old speakers and the cassette tape, but once the first lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen blare through the speakers, we don’t even care. In unison, we all try to match the soprano voice of Freddie Mercury, but it just comes out as ear piercing garble.

My dad and Paul rock out, Wayne’s World style, while I sit in the back, laughing and dancing like I’m in a club. It might be rock, but it still has a beat, plus I’m not much into the head slamming unless it’s against a head board.

I sigh as I try to recollect the last time my head slammed against a headboard. There was the one guy with the gross goatee that kept tickling my chin, but we never went past a little fondling because I kept laughing from envisioning his goatee as a feather he kept trying to stroke me with. He was out of my door pretty quickly.