by Larry Watson
Jennifer asks, “What are you talking about? I’m not going—”
“And bring your pillow. I already have your sleeping bag in the car.”
“Mom!”
“If there’s something you absolutely have to take and you don’t have room, let me know. Maybe I can fit it in my suitcase.”
“Mom, Mom—wait. Just wait.”
Edie sits down on the edge of Jennifer’s bed. “No, wait is just what we can’t do. We have to go. You pack and get dressed as quick as you can.”
Jennifer edges away from her mother. “I’m not going anywhere. What’s the matter with you?”
Edie stands and throws back the sheet covering her daughter. “Did you hear me? Get up, God damn it—right now!”
“Okay, okay,” Jennifer says. “What about Dad?”
“We have to be gone before he comes home for lunch.”
Jennifer is standing beside her bed now. “I don’t get it—Dad doesn’t know?”
Edie pulls the sheet back over the mattress and tries, using her injured arm as little as possible, to make her daughter’s bed.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Go take your shower,” Edie says.
“Did Dad do that?”
“And I’ll pack for you.”
“I can do it.” Jennifer jerks the bedspread from her mother’s hand. “And I can make the bed.”
“You can. But you won’t. Now go.”
JENNIFER HAS A full-length mirror in her room, the only one in the house, and Edie positions herself with her back to it. She takes off her skirt and hikes up her T-shirt. She twists her neck, trying to see her reflection in the mirror. Yes, there it is. The empurpled imprint of a knee at the base of her spine. There it is.
JENNIFER’S SUITCASE IS already packed in the Rabbit under a sleeping bag, pillows, and a cardboard box filled with photo albums and family documents. But Jennifer pulls out the suitcase and opens it.
“My God, Mom! My down jacket? And sweaters? What’s going on? How long do you think we’ll be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“And a dress? What do I need a dress for? And these jeans? I don’t even wear these.” She begins to pull garments out of the suitcase, but her mother stops her and stuffs the clothing back inside.
“That’s enough,” Edie says. “This will have to do.”
Jennifer backs away from the car and out of the garage. She’s halfway down the driveway before her mother stops her.
“Get in the car, Jennifer. Right now.”
“Not until you tell me where we’re going.”
“Gladstone. All right? Now get in.”
Her hair is still wet from her shower, and Jennifer shakes her head no so strenuously that it swings around her. “I’m not going,” she says. “You’re trying . . . you’re trying to take me away . . . from everything.”
Her tears begin to fall now, and her cheeks blotch through the tan that she has worked so hard for.
Edie approaches her daughter slowly, as if she is a half-wild creature that might bolt at any moment.
“I need you with me, honey. Please? Can’t you understand? I have to go but I have to have you with me too.” She puts her arms around her daughter, and together they move toward the car.
Jennifer stiffens and pulls back. “Mickey! I can’t leave Mickey!”
“Honey, we don’t have room,” Edie says. The car’s rear seat has been folded down, and the space is filled with suitcases, pillows, jackets, boxes—all arranged in an unbalanced fashion as befits packing done by someone with only one good arm.
“Please, Mom.”
“Mickey’ll be okay.”
“He won’t. He won’t. Dad doesn’t know how to take care of him. He’ll leave a door open and Mickey will run away.”
Edie sighs. “All right. Go get him. And his litter box.”
“And his bowls?”
“And his bowls. And the cat food. And his leash.”
“He hates that.”
“I don’t care. Bring it.”
Jennifer runs back into the house.
Edie lowers her injured arm onto the car roof and then rests her head against it. She doesn’t look like a woman about to begin a trip. She looks like someone who has already spent a long day staring at the highway.
THEY LEAVE GRANITE Valley, a small city nestled between two mountain ranges, on Highway 91. In the first mile or two out of town, the road is as straight as a chalk line and as flat as a griddle top. Just past the turnoff for the Prairie Meadow Mobile Home Park, the road begins to rise, and then it’s a gradual two-thousand-foot climb before reaching Dutchman’s Bend. There the highway will begin to wind its way through the Spindle Mountains. Just before reaching the bend, Jennifer turns around in her seat. She lifts Mickey—he’s been squatting on the floor at her feet—and tells the cat to look back on the city they’ve left behind.
The heat wave has broken, and in place of the endless blue that has hung over the valley for the past week is a sky mottled with high clouds sailing in on the strength of a northwest wind. As the clouds briefly block the sun, everything spread out across the valley floor—the houses and businesses, the streets, cars, parks, and treetops, the wide course of the Song River—blinks in and out of shadow, which means that for a moment any bright surface, glass and chrome, polished steel and rippling water, glitters as if it’s sending signals up to the heights. Dark pines climb the mountainside until they run out of warmth and moisture and oxygen—and then they give way to rock. Towering above the town across the valley stand the snow-streaked peaks of the Isabelle Mountains, nine thousand feet at their highest.
This view of Granite Valley is enough to elicit a gasp from any traveler, all the more so from someone who’s looking back on a town that’s been the only home she’s ever known. Jennifer swipes away her tears. “Say good-bye, Mickey,” she says.
FOR THE FIRST two hours of the trip, Edie has to keep two hands on the wheel as they negotiate the blind sharp curves, the engine-laboring steep grades, and the brakes-burning descents that finally, finally lead to easier traveling.
Just east of Missoula, Edie pulls into a gas station, as much to rest her throbbing right wrist as to refill the tank. She climbs out of the car and heads for the pump.
When Jennifer sees her mother cradling her injured arm, she climbs out of the Rabbit too. “Mom, are you sure it’s not broken?” she asks. “It looks really bad.”
“It’ll be all right.”
“Maybe we should find a hospital or a clinic, and you can have it x-rayed.”
“It already feels better than it did this morning. You don’t have to worry.”
“At least let me drive for a while,” says Jennifer.
“We’ll see. Maybe once we get past Bozeman.”
“Here,” Jennifer says, taking the nozzle from her mother’s left hand. “I’ll do that.”
Later, when Edie is in the restroom, and Jennifer is cleaning the Rabbit’s windshield, a young man comes out of the station to watch Jennifer squeegee the windows. He’s grease-stained up to his elbows and he’s not wearing a shirt, revealing his hard, stringy muscles. When Jennifer sees him she drops the squeegee in the bucket with its dirty gray water. She glares at him and then gives him the finger.
Edie exits the station in time to see her daughter and her gesture. “Get in the car, Jennifer. Right now.”
Jennifer obeys, and as they are speeding down the highway once again, Edie says, “Do you know how angry that makes men? Do you?”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll care if—just don’t do it.”
“You know what we call that, Mom? Excuse me, but that’s eye fucking.”
“I don’t care what you call it. Don’t do that.”
“We’re supposed to just let them stare?”
The highway is mostly empty ahead of and behind them, but Edie looks frequently in her side and rearview mirrors. Jennifer scoops up Mickey into her lap fro
m his perch at her feet.
Jennifer notices her mother’s vigilance. “Oh for God’s sake, Mom. Do you think he’d come after us just because I flipped him off?”
The landscape has changed. The distant mountains look less like eruptions of cold stone and more like great gray beasts lounging under the sun, their patches of black pine the coats they’re shedding from a previous season. The road is tamer too, and Edie is able to rest her swollen discolored wrist on her lap and drive with one hand on the wheel.
After miles of this silent, almost leisurely traveling, Jennifer suddenly laughs and says, “God, how stupid can I get! It’s not some gas station guy you’re worrying about—it’s Dad! It’s Dad you think will be coming after us!”
Edie says nothing.
“Did you even tell him where we’re going?”
“He’ll know,” replies Edie.
“So you didn’t tell him?”
“He’ll figure it out.”
Jennifer shakes her head in bewilderment. Then she says, “Well, you can stop looking for him. He’s got a game tonight. He’s not going to miss that.”
“Who are they playing?”
“Pioneer Bank. But it doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t miss a game no matter what.” Jennifer closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the front passenger seat. “You told me where we’re going. But you still haven’t told me why.”
“Gladstone is my hometown.”
“Yeah, Mom. I know. But why are we going there? You have to tell me.”
Edie sighs. “Someone I used to know is sick.”
Jennifer yawns. “You can just say, you know. You got me in the car. It’s not like I’m going to jump out or anything. Who is it, Mom? Come on.”
“My ex-husband.”
Jennifer’s eyes open and she jerks upright. “Holy shit! No wonder Dad’s pissed!”
“Okay, that’s enough. Watch your language.”
The cat slides from Jennifer’s lap to the floor, scratching the girl’s bare leg in the process. “Ouch! God damn it, Mickey!”
“I said that’s enough,” Edie admonishes her daughter.
“I’m going to meet him? The man from my mom’s other life? Wow!”
“It’s all one life, Jen. You need to know that.”
“Has Dad ever met him?”
“No.”
Jennifer reaches an open hand down toward Mickey to make amends. The cat sniffs the hand warily. Jennifer says, “But you love Dad . . . right?”
Edie points toward the cat. “Keep him over on your side. I can’t have him getting under my feet while I’m driving.”
“Mom?”
After a long moment Edie says, “Your father and I have been together longer than . . . longer than Dean and I were. And your father and I have you.”
“Dean? That’s his name? God, I didn’t even know his name. Dean what?”
“Linderman.”
“Maybe I knew that,” Jennifer says. “Edie Linderman. Yeah, I think I knew that. Mrs. Linderman.”
“Okay, Jen.”
The cat leaps back up onto Jennifer’s lap. “Is that who called last night?” Jennifer asks. “Dean Linderman?” As she says the name she taps out its rhythm on the dashboard. And because she must like not only the drum beat of the syllables but also the feel of the vowels and consonants in her mouth, she says it once again: “Dean Linderman.”
“His brother,” Edie says. “Dean would never ask me to come. Roy called. His twin brother.”
“Yeah? Are they identical?”
“They’re fraternal twins.”
“So you could tell them apart?” Jennifer asks.
“That’s what fraternal means.”
“You know the Sager twins, don’t you?”
“They’re in your class, aren’t they?”
“A year younger,” Jennifer says. “This guy I know has been going with Vicky Sager and one night—he was kind of drunk—he said, ‘I think it’s Vicky I’m in love with. But I’m not always sure. Because sometimes I can’t tell Vicky and Sandy apart.’ That’s not exactly how he said it. But that’s what he meant.”
“It sounds like he has a real dilemma.”
“But you could tell them apart, huh?”
“Always.”
Edie has the Rabbit doing eighty, fast enough that they come up quickly on an old pickup pulling a horse trailer, the horse’s blond tail hanging over the back gate and swaying with the wind and the motion of the truck and trailer. Edie pulls out to pass, and as they go by they can see that the driver is an old man clinging to the steering wheel as if it’s the only thing keeping him from collapse.
“This Dean,” Jennifer says. “He’s pretty sick?”
“Very sick, his brother says.”
“I don’t do that great around sick people.”
Edie says, “You were good with Grandma.”
“That was Grandma.”
They’re on a stretch of highway now that makes few demands of drivers other than that they stay awake. They’ve left the high country far behind and entered the treeless, scrubby prairie. Any low hill they climb affords a view so far into the distance it seems as though reaching any destination is now possible. Yet after an hour of unvarying miles, nothing seems closer. To drive this road is to feel that humans are meant to travel yet never arrive.
Jennifer turns and folds her body into the narrow passenger seat. Edie too is beginning to tire. She opens her window a couple inches. The fresh air isn’t particularly invigorating, but the whistle of wind immediately rouses the cat from his station at Jennifer’s feet. He leaps onto Edie’s lap, determined to get his nose into that two-inch gap in the open window where the scent of sage is blowing into the car.
“Get down, Mickey.” Edie tries to push him away, but he keeps stretching toward the window. “God damn it—”
Her curse startles Jennifer and she sits up. “What?”
Edie cranks her window back up, and it closes with a gasp and then silence. “Get your cat, Jen.”
“Can I drive now?”
“Can you stay awake?”
Edie slows and then pulls the Rabbit off the highway, two of its wheels sinking into the soft dirt off the pavement. “Don’t try to pass,” she tells her daughter, “unless you’re sure.”
The two of them climb out, careful to make sure that Mickey doesn’t escape, and walk around the car to exchange seats. The wind buffets them as if it’s trying to push intruders out of its territory.
“Jesus,” Edie says, once she’s back in the car and the door is closed behind her. “Hang onto the wheel.”
Jennifer pulls her fingers through her hair. She adjusts the seat to accommodate her longer legs. She turns the radio dial.
“You won’t find much out here,” says Edie, referring to the music options.
“Just so it isn’t more of that country shit.”
“I don’t really like to hear that, Jen. Not from you.”
Her daughter laughs. “Okay. We’ll look for more of that country shit.”
Edie gives up and closes her eyes.
The station Jennifer settles on is more static than music, and she turns the volume down until the announcer’s voice is barely audible.
“Why did you and Dean Linderman get divorced?”
“Oh, you know,” Edie says, her eyes still closed. “The usual reason. We just went in different directions.”
“Did he cheat on you?”
“Dean? No. No, he didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“If Patrick was sick,” Jennifer says, “I wouldn’t go visit him. If he was dying on our front lawn, I wouldn’t set foot outside.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Or like Helen said, ‘I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.’”
“Helen certainly has a way with words,” says Edie. “You never did tell me what happened with you and Patrick.”
The car speeds up, and Edie lean
s across to check the speedometer.
“Keep it under seventy, Jen.”
“We kind of have the highway to ourselves.”
“Just hold it down.”
“Remember when you made me go to that thing of Dad’s in Missoula?”
“Made you?” says Edie. “I thought you might like to be there when your father received his award.”
“There was a big party that night at Dave Holland’s. Patrick went, and he and Monica Lynch were making out in Dave’s parents’ bedroom. And that’s just what he’d admit to. Who knows what else they did.”
“I’m sorry, Jen. I wish you would have said something before.”
“Monica Lynch, Mom. She’s a total slut.”
“Are you sure you know all the facts?”
“He didn’t deny anything.”
“I just mean . . . Things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Jesus, Mom! Are you defending him?”
“No, no. Not at all. But Patrick always seemed—”
“‘So if that’s what you like,’ I said to him, ‘I hope the two of you are very happy together.’”
“And are they?” Edie asks tentatively. “Together?”
“He just wanted to see how much he could get, and when I wouldn’t put out he went somewhere else.”
A road sign, blinking with bullet and buckshot holes, tells them that Locklin, Montana, is twelve miles away. “Can we stop there,” Jennifer says, “and get something to eat? I’m starving.”
“I brought a few snacks,” Edie says and turns to the back seat and a grocery bag on the floor behind the driver’s seat. “I have crackers. Carrots. Apples. What would you like?”
“Did you bring any pop?”
“No.”
“So we don’t have anything to drink?”
“Fine,” Edie says. “But let’s try to find a drive-up so we’re not stopped long.”
Locklin is a mile from the highway. Its few streets are unpaved, and dust has not only settled over every building and vehicle but also swirls in the air, a scrim to view the town through. Not that there’s much to look at. A Conoco station. Two bars—Jerry’s and the Red Hat. A general store selling groceries and renting videos. A laundromat. A few trailers up on cement blocks and a few houses crouched under a stand of cottonwoods. No stop signs and no traffic lights. And no eatery, drive-up or otherwise.