The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (21 page)

Th
en, very slowly, very decisively, Dot looks from empty table to empty table, then looks back at Old Willard and hoists an eyebrow at him. “Looks like you could use the business,” she says.

I can see the air go right out of the old guy. He turns, he slumps, he mutters. And ten minutes later, he returns with waffles.

“See, Gramps?” she says. “
Th
at wasn't so bad now, was it?”

terrible things to say

I
planned that summer vacation in '05 a year in advance. I was dead set on taking the family road trip that my family never took.
Th
e one where everyone piles into the station wagon. Route 66.
Th
e Grand Canyon.
Th
e stuff of American myth. Never mind the 150 miles of scorched earth between Barstow and Needles. Never mind the hundred-degree heat. Never mind that Janet was seven months pregnant with Jodi.

Unlike the vacation, Jodi was not planned.

“Do you think I wanted to get pregnant, Ben—
now
? Right when things are coming together for me? For us?”

We're in a dirt parking lot outside Kingman, Arizona, in the paltry shade of a lone pine off the interstate. We've just gassed up. Janet and I are stretching our legs. Piper sleeps in the backseat, her hair pasted in strands to her forehead, the skin of her arm stuck to the vinyl. It's been a long stretch between Needles and Kingman. Not the stuff of American Myth. Janet is blotchy. She has sweat rings at the armpits.

“What about me?” I say, kicking up a cloud of dust. “Do you think I wanted you to get pregnant? I finally get a chance to have a life again, and now I'll be back to square one—stuck at home, drowning in shit-smeared onesies, tiptoeing around the house at all hours. I swear if I'm forced to watch
Clifford the Big Red Dog
once more, I'll hang myself
.
Do you have any idea what this means for me? You get to see people every day, Janet—adults. You get to eat lunch wherever you want. I eat french toast, shrimp cocktail, and Orange Julius. Do you think this is what I had planned for myself—this is what I wanted to do when I grew up?”

She mops her sweaty forehead with the sleeve of her blouse. “What
did
you want, Ben?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Did you want to be a parade float painter? A poet?
Th
at's lucrative! Or did you want to keep selling scones your whole life? It's never too late to get your real-estate license, you know.”

“We can't all play
animal proctologist to the rich,
Janet.”

“Well, good thing some of us can, because the last time I checked you couldn't raise a family on free verse and scones—you can't even pay for child care with that.”

“Got
one
of us through grad school, though, didn't it? I don't remember your student loans paying for that apartment on Roosevelt. Or all those free cups of coffee.”

“Well, I'd say that I've more than evened the score on that count, though I'd like to point out that we've moved up in the world somewhat from that studio with the leaky ceiling and the rusty bathtub ring.”

I'm out of comebacks. Moreover, I'm out of fight. She's right, anyway—what have I ever done with my life? Without Janet, I'd probably still be living in that leaky studio, stacking scones, writing self-conscious poetry.

Janet sees me pouting. Suddenly she laughs, and it's not bitter or pointed. “Remember the guy upstairs?” she says.

“What, the drummer?”

“No. Him, too. But the crazy guy.
Th
e guy who always accused you of ‘zapping' him with your ‘faggot secret.' ”

“Felix.”

“Yes! He was convinced everybody was gay.”

“Everybody but him. Poor Felix. Remember the Vietnamese place downstairs? I think it was Vietnamese.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember the name of it?”

“It was something funny. You used to always joke about it.”

“It was called Don Pae.”

She smiles. “Right. You used to say it was an invitation to dine and ditch.” She looks off at the dusty horizon, until her smile fades, then she turns back to me. “I'm sorry, Ben.”

Suddenly I feel like a heel. I've driven her to the edge of despair with this trip. How could I not know better? She's been a trouper through it all—fun, adventurous, patient. Despite an aching back and swollen ankles. Here she is, seven months pregnant. It's ninety-eight degrees, in a dirt parking lot in Arizona. We've just driven two hundred miles. Of course she's distraught.

“No, I'm sorry,” I say. “I should've called off this trip.”

“I'm glad we didn't,” she says. And she steps toward me and hugs me, and I can feel her sweat-glistening forehead against my cheek.

the story with dot

Y
eah, he's okay,” Dot says. “Kind of a dork but stable, you know? Even after my mom died—especially then, I guess.”

Dot blows into her coffee, and a little steam curls up around her pierced nose and past her pierced eyebrow. “He pretends like it didn't really affect him. But it's all an act. He's just trying to make me feel safe or whatever. He talks to me different now—like I'm all fragile, or superdepressed, or I'm gonna swallow a bottle of pills the first time he turns his head.” She sets her coffee down, but immediately her hands seek occupation. She picks up her fork and draws syrup squiggles on her plate.

“Yeah, I know it's a big deal. She was my mom. Hello, I get it. And it seems unfair. But it happened, you know? Now I wish everybody would just leave me alone about it. Especially Ron. It's not like the whole freaking world telling me how sorry they are is helping. It's not like all of a sudden I'm some little lost lamb or whatever. Like I can't take care of myself or like make my own decisions. It doesn't mean Ron's gotta like try to be my mom
and
my dad.”

Looking at her with her waiflike attire, her dirty backpack, and her pale delicate finger tracing circles around her empty coffee cup, her innocent little face molded into something worldly, it's hard to blame Ron or anyone else for trying to protect her.

“It's like the whole thing with Kirk,” she says. “Kirk was like the only person who understood me. He was the only person who didn't keep saying he was sorry or like try to get me to talk about it or cry on his shoulder. He treated me like a person, not some helpless baby. When my mom was alive, Ron wouldn't have said anything about Kirk. He might have thought stuff, but he wouldn't have done anything about it—like refuse to let me hang out with him or whatever, just because he's older and he's got a little ink and he likes to hang out downtown. It's like all of a sudden Ron was trying to protect me from Kirk, and Kirk was like the only good thing about Denver. Everyone just thinks because Kirk looked the way he did, he was like some sort of bad influence. Kirk had his shit together more than anyone wanted to give him credit for. It's not his fault the whole freaking world was like . . .
against
him.”

“Where is he?”

“Jail—but he didn't actually do anything. His stupid roommates were dealing. He didn't even know about it.”

Poor Dot. So young, so loyal, so misguided. And what about Kirk? Does Kirk, in the fog of his adolescent self-absorption, realize the value of a lover willing to forgive him anything? I doubt it. And Dot can see me doubting.

“See what I mean? You're just like Ron and the rest of them. You just jump to conclusions, make up your mind about stuff before you even know about it. But whatever, I guess I can't blame you, you're just male.”

She lays her fork aside and picks up her coffee cup again, then sets it down and begins fiddling with the saltshaker.

“Anyway, after Kirk's whole deal, it didn't make sense to hang around Denver for another summer. So I left.”

“To live with your real dad?”

“Hmph,” she says. “Real dad. Yeah, I guess you'd call him that. Except that he thinks he's like fifteen years old or whatever—even though he's like forty. I always thought he was cool when I was younger, even though he didn't hang around and my mom always called him a deadbeat. He'd send me cool presents from
Th
ailand and Australia and places. Like one time he sent me one of those didgeridoos. And once he sent me a really rad turquoise bracelet, which I still have.” She reaches down and fishes around in the front pocket of her ragged backpack, until she finds the bracelet. She spins it around in her hand, so we can see it from all angles. It's a chunky silver thing, inlaid willy-nilly with dozens of tiny turquoise chips.

“
Th
at's totally rad,” says Trev.

“Yeah, I know, huh?”

Instead of returning the bracelet to her pack, she slides it over her thin wrist just above her fingerless glove and spins it around absently a few times as she looks out the window.

“I always thought my mom was jealous of my dad,” she says. “For leaving, I mean. Because she was like stuck in Denver. And even though he left, I always kinda thought it was her choice not to be with him, and she was dumb not to. Now that I'm older it's like, I don't know, he just seems immature. It's kinda hard to believe he's my dad. Or anyone's dad.”

“Are you mad that he left?” says Trev.

She spins her bracelet some more, inspects it vaguely. “Nah. Denver sucks. I just think he needs to grow up. For a while, he was acting like an adult, sort of. He was wearing Dockers, working for some company that distributed investment videos or something like that. But then he quit, and then his car got repossessed and he never really got another job. Now he drives around in a total bomb, and he built like a skateboard ramp in the driveway. Can you believe that? A skateboard ramp? At his age? He wears baggy shorts and Mossimo
shirts and says ‘bro' all the time. He wants to act like we're friends or whatever instead of being my dad.”

Dot shakes her head, and waves it off, as though she's weary of the whole subject. She looks out the window again, where a thin layer of dust covers the pavement. “I don't know,” she says. “It's weird. My dad's weird. Tacoma sucked, anyway.”

Shortly before noon, the rain, like the dust before it, blows in suddenly and furiously from the west. No warning from the Weather Channel. I think it's the weather that has inspired Dot to forsake her thumb and cast her lot with us, at least as far as Butte.
Th
e three of us loaf in the darkened motel room through the remainder of the morning, with the TV on mute. By two, the wind has died down somewhat, but the rain continues in fat droplets, battering the ceiling and running down the window in sheets. Come late afternoon, I order Domino's, wondering why I didn't think of it before.

When the delivery kid raps, I open the door to find that he's not a kid at all but a skinny guy about my age, whose Domino's hat looks new compared the the rest of his wardrobe. He's got a tattoo peeking out from beneath his shirt collar—something faded with talons. He wears the brim of his cap low and avoids eye contact throughout the transaction. I tip him, he nods once, hops back in his idling Festiva, spins a semicircle, and speeds off.

I linger in the open doorway listening to the hiss of the rain, which seems to go on forever.
Th
e sky is oppressive: slate gray and inching eastward. Not a sky for dreamers. A sky for people just trying to get by. It could be dawn, or dusk, or three in the afternoon.
Th
is could be Medford or Wenatchee or Bismarck. I can still smell the cool dust rising off the pavement, even through the pungent warmth of the steaming pizzas. Across the courtyard, the motel office is darkened, the red neon vacancy sign reads
ANCY
.
Th
e little restaurant is deserted but for Old Willard standing at the window like an apparition. A lake has formed in the center of the court, barren except for the van.
Th
en I see it, and my scalp tightens, and that welcome sense of anonymity drains right out of me. Across the way, gassing up at the Chevron, is the brown Skylark.

“Fuck me,” I say, scurrying for cover. I close the door behind me, plop the pizzas down, and draw the heavy curtains closed. Immediately, I peer through the crack, and out the blurry window.

“What's the deal?” says Trev.

“I think Janet is having me followed.”

“For real?”

“Who's Janet?” says Dot, leaning up in the far bed.

“His ex-wife.”

“Wife,” I say.

“Did you do something wrong?”

“It's a long story.”

I can't quite make out the guy at the pump—his back is to me—but it's a guy, that much is clear from the broad shoulders and the baseball cap.

“Dude's been on our ass for two hundred miles.”

“For real? So what do we do?” says Trev. “It's not like we can leave.”

“I don't know, I don't really get it. If he was gonna serve me, he would've done it before we ever left the state, right?”

“You mean that brown car?” says Dot.

“You saw it?”

“You're just paranoid,” she says.

I probably am just paranoid, I tell myself.
Th
e fact is, Janet couldn't possibly have gotten somebody on me that quick. We picked this guy up around Moses Lake. Janet didn't even know I was on the road until George, and I didn't tell her exactly where I was.
Th
is is a coincidence. It's the interstate—there are only so many exits.
Th
e guy's probably selling dog brushes out of his trunk, probably living on jojos and pizzas and motel beds like us, stopping at the same mini-marts as us.

“Let's eat some pizza,” I say, and begin rolling out Trev's tray table.

Halfway through my second slice, I can't stand it anymore. Peering through the crack again, I scope the vicinity from the southern horizon to the Chevron station. A red pickup swishes past on the main drag. A police cruiser pulls into the Chevron and parks in front. Panning back in the other direction, I catch Old Willard out of the corner of my eye, still standing at the window scanning the area for Nazis.

After three hours of incessant window checking and no further sign of the Skylark, I finally relax as evening falls, assuring myself that if our pursuer should reappear (though he won't, because he's not really pursuing us), I will take the offensive. I will not be hunted. Fishing my Bob Frost out of my backpack, I sink into my creaky roll-away in the corner near the bathroom, beneath the dangling coat hangers. I prop myself up on a folded pillow, and futilely scan the pages for a few minutes, half listening to Trev and Dot converse in the glow of the muted television.

“So why'd you change your mind about visiting your dad?” she asks.

“I'm just excited to see him in a wheelchair.”

“
Th
at's sick.”

“
Th
anks,” he says.

Dot is flipping through the road atlas. I hear the pages turning. “Hey, so what about the Germs?” she says.

“Never heard of them.”

She stops flipping pages. “You've never heard of the Germs?”

Th
ey go on and on like this, talking about punk bands and movies I've never heard of and things that get on their nerves and the various indignities of youth. All the while, the fat heavy rain drones on, washing away the dust. A dull, delicious ache sinks into my bones.

When I awaken, I find Dot asleep on her bed atop the covers, her bare legs pulled up under one of Trev's sweatshirts. Trev is still awake, leaning back slightly in his wheelchair, clutching the remote weakly in his lap.

“How you doin'?” I whisper, approaching him in the half-light.

“Not bad,” he says.
Th
en he smiles a thousand-watter, nods his head, and smiles some more. I couldn't be more giddy if it were my own smile.