by Larry Watson
“But you’re okay?” asks Edie.
“Plus the whole vibe there. Garth and Marilyn were just this weird couple. He was always like cooking muffins and talking about how we all have to work together. But I never saw him do anything but those muffins. And Marilyn, she wanted me to help with her kids. But I just don’t get kids. At all.”
“But you’re all right? That’s the important thing.”
Lauren frowns at her grandmother. “Yeah. I told you.”
Roy Linderman is walking across the parking lot, pulling his suitcase. After rearranging the suitcases, he climbs in behind the wheel and asks, “Ready to hit the road?”
Lauren leans forward from the back seat. “Could we maybe have lunch first?”
Edie and Roy exchange the look common among tired, indulgent grandparents. Then Roy says, “Is Perkins all right?”
EDIE, ROY, AND Lauren are seated in the same booth where Edie and Roy sat upon arriving in Bismarck. This time however Roy and Edie sit side by side. The only other customer in the restaurant at this hour is an obese young man in overalls sitting at the counter and eating a slice of French silk pie.
Lauren orders a vegetable omelet, French fries, and a Diet Coke, Edie a Cobb salad and iced tea, and Roy asks for coffee and a slice of apple pie. Once the food arrives, Lauren is the only one who displays any enthusiasm for the meal.
She has almost finished her food when she says, “They’ll come after me, you know. Billy will. So Jesse will too.”
“You’re sure about that, are you?” asks Roy.
“Oh yeah. I’m sure.”
“Most men,” he says, pausing to sip his coffee, “you walk out on them, that’s the end of it.”
“That’s not Billy,” Lauren says.
“Okay,” says Roy. “Let him come.” He turns around, looking for the waitress and the bill.
“I have to go potty,” Lauren says and slides out of the booth.
Once she’s gone, Roy says, “Potty. Jesus. She swears like a fucking sailor but now she has to go potty.”
Edie puts her hand on Roy’s arm. “I tried to ask Lauren what happened back there, and I wasn’t sure how much she’d say in front of you. As it turned out, she didn’t say much to me either. Just that Jesse touched her.”
Roy doesn’t move his arm. “Touched her how?”
“She was pretty vague on that subject. But you met Jesse. What do you think?”
Roy looks off in the direction of the restrooms. “Whatever happened she seems to have recovered.”
“Do you remember Donnie Vaughn? That’s who he reminds me of.”
“Donnie?” Roy laughs. “Yeah, that works. The famous Don Vaughn. I hope he never trapped you in that big old DeSoto of his.”
“I got out in time,” Edie says.
“Jesus, Edie. Do you have any idea what you’re in for? Taking her into your home?”
“That’s exactly what Rita said,” Edie says. “It’ll work or it won’t.”
Roy raises his eyebrows. “But a teenager? You’re not out of practice?”
Edie laughs. “It’s like riding a bicycle, Roy. Once you’ve fucked up as a parent you never forget how to fuck up again.”
“Come on. Go easy on yourself.”
“I’ll see to it she gets a job. Maybe sign her up for classes at the college.”
“She’ll be the fucking terror of Gladstone.”
The waitress sets the bill down on the table, and Roy picks it up and gets out of the booth. “I’ll meet you outside,” he says. “But first”—he leans down and whispers—“I’m going potty.”
When Lauren returns she asks, “Where’s Roy?”
“Mr. Linderman went out to have a cigarette.”
Lauren makes a face. “His car smells like an ashtray.”
“Well, it’s his car. Listen, have you called your mother?”
Lauren shakes her head no.
“Don’t you think you should?”
“And tell her what? That I’m not where she never knew I was in the first place? Because she didn’t give a shit anyway?”
“Do you want me to call her?”
“Hey, it’s a free country. But believe me. She does. Not. Give a shit.”
“Okay,” Edie says. “We’ll wait until we get to Gladstone.”
“How far is it anyway? Is it like a couple days from here?”
“It’s only a few hours, honey. We’ll be there before dark.”
“Oh, okay.” Lauren sighs with relief. “I wasn’t sure. We didn’t come like directly here. First we drove up to Minot. Or some small-ass town around there. That was where like all their family—” Lauren makes air quotes around this word—“was supposed to be. Then they treated us like we had AIDS or something. So right in the middle of the night Jesse said, ‘Fuck it. Let’s go.’ Then we tracked down this friend of Jesse’s. Matt. He was like so weird. Taking too many of his own drugs or something. And then a few days later we went to Garth’s.”
“And that’s where it happened?”
“Where what happened?”
“Jesse? You said he—”
“God, Grandma! Can’t you give that a rest? I told you. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
“Okay, Lauren.” Edie can’t keep the exasperation out of her voice. “But let’s not forget. You called me.”
Edie slides across the booth, but before she can stand up, Lauren reaches out toward her grandmother. “I’m sorry, Grandma. It was just, I don’t know. It just wasn’t like it was supposed to be.”
Suddenly Lauren blinks and her pretty features bunch up and then crumble. “I thought I’d be important to Billy or . . . or somebody. Not just a fucking toy.”
Edie covers Lauren’s hands with hers, and looks into her granddaughter’s tearing eyes.
“I thought I’d count. For something.”
Edie’s own eyes begin to glisten. “You matter to me, honey.”
But this must not be what Lauren wants to hear. She grabs a napkin and wipes her eyes and nose. “We better go,” she says.
LAUREN LEANS INTO the space between the front seats. “Hey, are there any songs about that river? Jesse says there’s more songs about rivers than any other water. More than like oceans or lakes or anything.”
They are speeding along on Interstate 94, that section of highway that rises into the tawny hills west of Bismarck and Mandan, twin communities built on the eastern and western banks of the Missouri.
Edie begins to sing, “‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean / my Bonnie lies over the sea . . .’”
When she stops, Roy begins to sing, in a deep, surprisingly tuneful voice, “‘Away, I’m bound away / Across the wide Missouri . . .’”
Edie looks at him admiringly and says, “Mr. Linderman. My goodness. I had no idea.”
“Two years of choir,” Roy says. “Miss Egan brought out the best in me.”
“I bet she did.”
But Lauren has become bored with her own question. She tugs on the shoulder strap of her grandmother’s sundress. “That dress is really cute, Grandma. Did they have it in other colors?”
“I think so. But I don’t know if they’d have it in your size, honey.”
“That’s okay. I was just going to say it’s like not a really great color for you. Blue? Did they have it in blue?”
“I’m not sure,” Edie says, and she and Roy exchange a look.
“We’ll check,” Lauren says. “From now on I’m going to be your personal wardrobe consultant.”
“I’m not that much of a shopper, honey.”
“You will be!”
Edie turns to Roy. “How’s the shopping in Billings?”
“Better than in Gladstone.”
Lauren however is finished with this topic too. She lies down on the backseat. “Wake me when we get there,” she says.
A few minutes later Edie turns around and looks at her granddaughter. “I wish I could sleep like that,” she says to Roy.
“When I was her age,�
�� he says, “I could damn near fall asleep at will. Now I can’t go more than a couple hours before I have to get up and move around.”
“My mother used to say if your conscience is clear, you won’t have any trouble sleeping. Of course she said that knowing I had insomnia.”
“Your mother was something else. Scared the hell out of me. Did I ever tell you what she said to me at your wedding? She looked me up and down and then asked, ‘Well, did she get the right one?’ ‘Hell yes,’ I said.”
“She might have loved Dean,” Edie says, “as much as she was capable of loving anyone.”
“Mothers and grandmothers loved him.”
They have landed on a subject they are both wary of, and as a consequence they fall silent for a few miles. In the absence of conversation, Roy turns up the volume on the radio. It’s tuned to a public radio station and its classical music, and as they travel through this bone-dry landscape, the sounds of Handel’s Water Music fill the car.
Edie turns again in her seat to look at Lauren. Then she says quietly, “I had the radio on this morning, and there was an interview with a psychologist, a woman, who was talking about young girls. Apparently their self-esteem really seems to drop about the time they’re in middle school. That really struck me. Because that’s about the time boys are really discovering girls. I mean, really giving them a look, right? Wasn’t that about the time some of us started dating? So why, if girls are getting all that attention from boys, why wouldn’t it raise their self-esteem?”
Roy remains silent.
“Come on, Roy. You must have a theory.”
He takes a deep breath. “It must be something about the way we look at you.”
Edie nods and turns to look out the window. “At last,” she says.
The hum and thump of tires on pavement. The occasional whoosh of a passing car. The regular chuffing breaths coming from a young woman fast asleep. After ten minutes of these disparate sounds of traveling, Roy asks Edie, “What kind of vehicle were those boys driving? A Blazer, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not sure. It was black. Why?”
“Because a black Explorer has been dogging us for a while. And I don’t think it has Montana or North Dakota plates.”
Edie turns in her seat to look.
“It’s a ways back,” Roy says. “But sort of holding its distance. No matter what my speed.”
“It was an SUV,” Edie says. “I know that.” She looks out the side-view mirror. “But aren’t you the one who’s supposed to know cars?”
“I do,” Roy says. “It’s my memory of cars that’s the problem. Wake her up. Ask her.”
“Oh, let’s let her sleep.”
“Fine,” Roy says. But only a minute later he pulls onto the shoulder of the road. “Hell, I can’t take the suspense.”
And once the Highlander’s highway hum changes pitch and rolls to a stop, Lauren opens her eyes. “Why are we stopping? Where are we?”
“Nowhere,” says Roy.
Only a moment later the black Explorer passes, and once it does Lauren asks, “Did you think that was Billy and Jesse?”
“It crossed my mind,” Roy replies.
“I told you.”
“That you did.” Then Roy puts the Highlander in gear and pulls back onto the highway.
WHERE ROY PARKS, in front of the cinder-block rest stop, his car is only one in a line of vehicles, their license plates mostly from North Dakota and Montana but also from Wyoming, Idaho, Arkansas, and South Dakota. Right next to them is a Subaru Forester packed tight and with suitcases lashed to the roof as well. Its license plate is from Alaska.
“Where are all these people going?” asks Edie.
“It’s America,” says Roy. “We’re a country on the move. And we all have to take a leak. Anyone else?”
“I’m good for now,” Edie says.
“I’ll go,” Lauren says. She unbuckles, and when she opens the door a gust of wind almost blows it shut again.
Before Roy exits the car, he says to Edie, “At least she didn’t say potty.”
Edie watches them walk toward the gray squat building, its shape and material suited to withstand the wind that howls and swirls around this hilltop.
Roy comes back out of the building before Lauren, and he lights a cigarette.
When Lauren comes out she sees Roy and walks over to join him. She spreads her arms wide as though she wants to make a sail of her body. “God,” she says, almost shouting. “Is this like a fucking tornado or something?”
“You know,” Roy says, “your grandmother won’t say anything, but your language bothers her.”
“You think? She said it doesn’t.”
“It does.”
“Well, I guess you know her better than me.”
“I guess.”
Then Lauren asks Roy, “Hey, did you know my mom?”
“Not really. I met her. That was all. When she was about your age.”
“Was she pretty? She’s always telling me how great looking she used to be.”
“I don’t remember her all that well. But sure. I guess. Pretty girl.”
“How about my grandpa?”
“Again,” Roy says, “I met him once. Can’t really say I knew him.”
“But him and grandma were still married?”
“That they were.”
Lauren smiles coyly at Roy. “That must have been tough for you, huh?”
“You know, you’re about one half as smart as you think you are.” Roy glances over at the car where Edie sits waiting. “Did your grandmother say anything to you on this subject?”
Lauren smiles and shrugs. “I can usually tell what’s what.”
“Must be a wonderful talent to have.”
“Sometimes it’s more like a burden.”
“You’re bearing up well.” Roy inhales deeply, holds the smoke, and then exhales toward the sky. “You keep looking down the highway,” he says. “You still think your boyfriend is coming after you?”
“I know he is.”
“So was this some kind of damn test? You call your grandmother to come get you just to make your boyfriend chase after you? Because I’ll tell you something, you put a man to the test often enough sooner or later he’s going to flunk.”
“Little lady.”
“What?”
“Young lady. When somebody older says that they usually say, I’ll tell you something, little lady. I’ll tell you something, young lady. Like every fucking time. Young lady. I was just waiting for you to say it.”
“Jesus.” Roy drops his cigarette onto the concrete and steps on it. “You are something, you know that?”
The notes of Lauren’s laughter are carried off on the wind.
AS THEY PULL back onto the highway, Roy nods in the direction of Lauren in the back seat and says, “She’s pretty sure they’ll be coming for her.”
“Not ‘pretty sure,’” Lauren says. “Like really sure.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Edie says. “Think about it. Men. If their dog runs off, they’ll chase after it.” She laughs a little. “They don’t want to think about their runaway ending up in someone else’s yard.”
Lauren laughs too and joins in. “Or like somebody else is scratching the dog behind the ears.”
“But it’d be all right,” Edie adds, “if someone else fed the dog.”
“Or scooped the dog’s shit!”
“All right,” Roy says and adjusts a vent on the dashboard that doesn’t need adjusting. “I believe I’ll stay on the outside of this conversation. I’m just the driver here.”
“Gary came after me,” Edie says. “As you recall.”
“Hardly a lost dog situation,” Roy says.
“I didn’t say lost,” Edie replies. “I said a runaway.”
“Was that what you were? A runaway?”
“I suppose,” Edie says and shifts her gaze to the fields of sunflowers growing close to the highway, all those flowers turning their faces toward the late af
ternoon sun.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Roy says and nods in the direction of the back seat.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Edie replies, “and I don’t mind who hears about it. At first I wasn’t running away from Gary; I was traveling to Dean. You should know. You set things in motion with that phone call.”
“I remember.”
“But then by the time I got to Gladstone, I was definitely running away.”
“And you were going to keep running.”
“Which was obviously impossible. I had a child. I was a mother.” Edie turns up her palms in a gesture of surrender. “Now here I am. Right back where I started.”
“In the car with me, you mean?” Roy asks. “With someone after us?”
“Gladstone,” Edie says. “I meant Gladstone. I’m back in Gladstone.”
Lauren, who is perhaps uncomfortable with the subject of a woman in motion, reaches forward to flick a few strands of her grandmother’s hair. “Hey, Grandma. Have you always had long hair?”
“I had a couple flirtations with short hair. But yes. Mostly.”
“Because I’m thinking when I get my hair cut we’ll cut yours too. Like, really short. And we’ll change the color too. And we’ll switch your lipstick too. Like really red. Oh, you’ll look wicked, Grandma. Won’t she, Roy?”
“Yep,” he says with a smile. “Wicked.”
“And when we hit the bars,” Lauren says, “the cowboys will all be like, ‘Whoa, who is that?’”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, honey.”
THEY’VE RISEN FROM the alkali valleys and passed the hayfields waiting for the second cutting. The strange rivers have been crossed. They’re in Montana now, less than half an hour from Gladstone. They’ve fallen silent as travelers so often do as they approach their destination. They can see the familiar water tower and count the church spires.
As the road begins to curve down a rimrock bluff, Roy says, “You’ll have to give me directions to your place, Edie. I’m not sure I know the way coming in from this direction.”
“Just before you reach the bottom of the hill you’ll take a hard right,” she says. “And then climb back up again.”
“So you live where we used to—”
“Exactly.”
“Huh. I must have gotten turned around in that new development. If there’s any place I should recognize, it’s that hill.”