I got to my quiet room and saw my guitar in the corner and knew that was the answer. It had been the answer for a while, and it would be this summer too, I was sure. I sat cross-legged on my bed with the acoustic guitar my grandparents gave me for Christmas when I was eight, when we still had big fun Christmases. The guitar was a big surprise, not necessarily something I had asked for or even had thought about wanting. I was the one grandchild they gave a guitar to—don’t know why they did. I picked it up and played it. I started reading the songbooks and figuring out the little chord diagrams that came with the case. I started writing songs of my own too, because when I heard other people singing theirs, they were relaying their own feelings out to the world. They weren’t being interrupted or shut down. They were having their say. I thought that was extremely wonderful. The idea of sitting on your bed with your guitar and singing the exact perfect words that exactly fit your situation seemed like the most glorious experience I could dream of having. So I went after it. I played other people’s songs because they were better than mine. I played my own songs because they were mine.
The sky was growing dark outside. It was getting late. I had nothing else to do so I kept playing until I became aware that the phone rang and then stopped and then rang again. I stopped strumming. I listened for the ring of the kitchen phone. There it was again. I didn’t answer that often because it was mostly bill collectors or people asking for my dad. But there it was again, two or three rings and then hanging up. I started to think it was someone trying to message me that I should answer. I scrambled off my bed and ran down to the kitchen. I stared at the phone on the wall. There it was again.
“Hello?” I said into the receiver.
“Sidney! Oh thank God!”
“Preston?”
“Sid, this is bad. Really bad. Dad’s gone crazy. He’s been drinking. He’s really mad. You gotta come get me. He went crazy. He pushed me out of the car. I’m all cut up. I tried to stay in, the car was going. I fell out. I rolled onto the gravel. I’m all cut up.”
“Preston, where are you?”
“I’m in a phone booth on the tollway. Two or three stops from our house. The tollway, you know what I mean right? You gotta come get me. I’m all scraped up from the gravel. Bring some towels.”
“Okay, I’ll come right now.”
“No Sid, don’t hang up. We can’t go back there. Dad went crazy. He fired me. He started screaming at me on the floor of the exchange. He’s crazy. It’s bad.”
“Okay I’ll come right now.”
“No Sid. We gotta leave. We can’t go back. You gotta get out of there. You have to take whatever you can and get Brandy in the car and we have to go to Mom. We have to get away from him. If he comes home he won’t let you come get me. Run around and grab whatever you can. Get me some pants and a shirt and my jacket. Get Brandy. See if there’s any money on my dresser or Dad’s dresser. Hurry! Shit! You gotta get out of there!”
I hung up and grabbed Brandy by his collar. We went to the closet and I put on his leash. I ran with him out to my car. I left the garage door shut. I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed his dog food. I ran that to the car. I ran up the stairs two at a time. I threw on my thick hooded sweatshirt and changed into my jeans. I ran around grabbing stuff in my arms. Cash from the dressers. My guitar. My flute in its black case. My book of sonatas for the flute. My songwriting notebooks. The quilt our great grandmother made by hand. I ran down and stuffed things in the trunk, leaving the trunk open. I ran back through once more, got Preston’s clothes. I thought about what was important to our mom. I had a brainstorm and ran into the dining room and found the wooden box containing my grandmother’s good silver service. I ran that to the car. I couldn’t think of anything else.
I prayed that I’d make it out without Dad seeing me. I pressed the garage door opener and prayed. “Please God don’t let him be here … ”
The coast was clear. I backed out the Volare and pressed the garage door shut. I looked up and saw the house, already abandoned and very dark. No outside or inside lights were on. When Dad pulled up he’d know I was gone.
I pulled out and drove fast to get out of our street, our neighborhood. My next thought was that if Dad wasn’t home by now, maybe he was going back to find Preston. Maybe he felt bad and was already picking Preston up and I’d get there and never find him. I thought about what I’d do then. In a way, I could feel my heart lifting at the prospect of the drive to the cabin, like the good old days. This was when we always went, when I got out of school. And my mother was there so it wasn’t like I was doing something wrong. I was just going up to see my mom at our family cabin. That sounded so normal. I started telling myself that I’d go whether or not Preston had changed his mind.
The tollway was well lit. I got to the first tollbooths and peered off to the side where there was a sign for a public telephone, but no Preston anywhere. I didn’t want to hang around in case Dad was on my trail.
I drove farther to the next set of tolls. This was the only place Preston could be if he wasn’t at the last one. I knew if I didn’t find him here I never would, so I pulled way over and slowly drove along the shoulder. My heart leapt into my throat when suddenly there was a figure frantically waving his arms at me and running toward my headlights. I leaned into the windshield to try to see. I would hit the person soon if I didn’t swerve or stop. Preston’s face, distorted with shouting, white as a ghost. I stopped and unlocked the doors. He jumped in. “Go! Go! Put the pedal to the metal! We gotta get out of here!”
“We have to go through the tollbooth. Take it easy.”
“No! Fuck them! Step on it! Bust through the gate!”
“Preston, stop it. I don’t see Dad’s car. There’s nobody around. Just let me pay the toll.”
I threw my coins in and the gate went up and we were on our way. Preston was talking really fast. “Dad was so crazy! He started hitting me as he was driving and then we slowed down to go through the toll and he reached over and opened my door and shoved me and I was hanging on saying, ‘No Dad, no!’ He just kept hitting me and shoving me and I fell out into the gravel on my face. Am I bleeding? I was bleeding really badly I think.”
Preston started crying hard, sobbing. I tried to look over at him and I could see some blood on his face. “What the hell is the matter with him? Jesus! I’m his son. We were buddies. I was gonna work with him, get the business back on track this summer. Fucking Tommy, that faggot. What the fuck will he do now? Just follow Dad around, say yes to anything. Fuck him.”
“Preston, do you think you need stitches any place? Do you need to go to an emergency room? Should we pull off and check your face? Dad’s never going to find us at some random exit ramp.”
“No! Are you nuts? He will kill us if he thinks we’re going to take this car and go to Mom. He’d fucking rather kill us himself than let that happen.”
“Look in the mirror. It has a light I think. See if your face is okay.”
“Sid, God, shut up about my face. My face is fine. Do you realize what’s happening here? He’s probably got the police out looking for us by now. We stole this car.”
“That’s ridiculous. He got this car for me and I’m driving it. I didn’t steal it. We’re his kids. He can’t say it’s stealing.”
“We have to get across the border to Wisconsin, Sid. You gotta drive faster! Is this as fast as you can drive? What are you some stupid pussy driver like Mom?”
“What are you talking about? You don’t know how to drive at all and you’re like twenty years old.”
“Yeah, I’m not crazy enough to get behind the wheel of one of these death traps. You’re my brave little sister who can do anything. Come on Sid! Push this thing! What a piece-of-shit car! Dad’s such an asshole. We gotta get out of Illinois.”
I got going about as fast as I could handle, maybe seventy miles per hour, and just tried to keep my eyes on the road.
Preston fell into silent contemplation, staring out the window. As I drov
e I thought back for a moment to the house, the fancy stuff of my mom’s that I left behind. Stuff in my room, stuff in my closet. I felt good that I didn’t care about any of it. Brandy, my guitar, my flute, were all I needed. My brother. Preston fell asleep. I thought about what was ahead for us. Mom didn’t know we were coming but she’d be glad to see us I was sure. I was happy that the way to get there was very clear in my mind. I knew we had to go to Wisconsin Dells first, through Janesville. After that it was up through Spooner and Rice Lake in Wisconsin. After that Cloquet, then Virginia, Minnesota. Before we hit the tiny town where we did our grocery shopping, we turned off onto the lake road. We had a long way to go. I didn’t care. All I had to do was watch the white line, stay on the road, mind my own business, not try to pass anybody. Stay well back from any other cars or trucks.
I hated the big semi trucks. The night was very dark outside the city and the trucks were going fast. They barreled down on us out of nowhere every few minutes. The highway was two lanes going in the same direction. The other side of the highway was pretty far off to the left so it wasn’t like we’d get hit head-on, but I had definitely heard people talk about truckers on the road at night nodding off and crashing. I was keeping my distance.
Many miles went by. Preston and Brandy were both sound asleep. I was tired but not that tired. I knew I could go to sleep in my cozy pink room when I got to the cabin. I was determined to drive all night and make it there by morning. We would probably be there by ten. That would be great. Mom was going to be so surprised and happy.
The next time I checked, the dashboard clock said it was four in the morning. We were somewhere outside of Rice Lake, where we used to stop at a pancake place with Mom and Dad. Those were very different times.
I had to pee and get something to drink. Brandy needed water and a chance to go out too. “Preston, wake up.”
“Shut up!”
“Preston, seriously, I’m stopping.”
“No, shut up, don’t stop. Dad is probably following us.”
“Oh my God. What is with you? There is no one anywhere for miles around. I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Piss in the woods. You can’t go into one of these truck-stop places. Dad will have police looking for us.”
“No he won’t.”
“Yes! He will! I’m not going with you. I’ll go in the woods. If they capture you, I’m making a run for it. They’re not gonna get me.”
“Preston, have you lost your mind?”
I took the next exit with a sign for gas, pulled into a service station and parked the car in front of a gas pump.
“We need gas, too.”
I counted the cash I grabbed from the house. Plenty for fuel and some drinks. I wasn’t good at pumping gas. I had only filled the Volare tank a few times because I didn’t drive very far back in Chicago, just to the ice cream shop and back most of the time.
I managed to pump the gas and went inside to pay. My legs were a little stiff. Dampness in the air and a fine mist made me feel like we were getting closer. The air here was like the Northwoods already. The clerk was asleep when I walked in. I cleared my throat a few times. He was a kid not much older than me. He looked surprised when he woke up and saw me standing there. He took my money for the gas plus two cold cans of root beer from the store’s cooler. I got a paper cup from the self-serve counter and filled it with water from their drinking fountain.
“I’m just going to set this stuff here, okay? Can I use the restroom? Does it have a key?” The kid looked confused. “No, it doesn’t have a key. It’s right there.”
I saw the door marked for women and went in to use the toilet. When I came back out I could see Preston outside with Brandy on his leash, slinking around behind the car. The sleepy kid behind the counter smiled. I smiled back and said, “Okay, well, bye. Thank you.”
We climbed back into the car. I pulled the Volare back out onto the entrance ramp, foot on the gas pedal, thinking of my driver’s ed drill sergeant, pressed harder on the gas, merged.
I was having fun. I was glad this was happening. I loved this drive. With every mile the landscape became more remote, wild, wide-open, beautiful. Dense dark stands of tall trees against the starry sky. Majestic out-croppings of granite. I saw several deer standing off to the sides, some with sweet fawns. The faint light of the coming morning was way off in the distance beyond the horizon as I drove.
I had a pang of guilt, a tug of compassion, for Dad. I kept picturing him coming back to the house and seeing the dog gone, his daughter gone, his son gone. I wanted to tell myself he deserved this. I kept wanting to replay the bad scenes in my mind to keep my conviction up but I didn’t really blame him for how he had treated me. He wasn’t that bad to me. Whenever my mind went down this path, I remembered the flute story.
A while back I wanted an open-hole silver flute because my beautiful fairy godmother of a flute teacher, who had studied in Paris under a very famous flutist and spoke French in what I thought of as the most divinely feminine manner, had decided I was ready for this rite of passage. My flute teacher was a person I never wanted to disappoint. My mother said we couldn’t afford the special flute my teacher said I needed, and that my rental flute from the school marching band was good enough. Mine was pretty dented and didn’t really take to polish much. Some of the keys got stuck when I played. My teacher said that the tone would never be right no matter how well I played it. The more advanced girls in the orchestra all had the open-hole flutes by now. Even a couple of girls below me did.
At dinner one night, I told my parents that I wanted the new flute for the big concert coming up. I was thirteen. We were still riding around in Jaguars. I didn’t have any idea that money was an issue. My mother was arguing with me, saying that we couldn’t afford it, that I didn’t need it, that I was never going to be a serious flute player so I should be happy with the one I had. I pointed out that my flute teacher had an older student selling an intermediate flute that we could get a really good deal on, and so we wouldn’t have to pick one out at the store. I didn’t think my dad cared. I didn’t think he was even paying attention to what my mom and me were saying.
A few days later, when I came downstairs in the morning, there was a check on the kitchen table for the amount I had said I needed for the new flute.
I brought the check to my next lesson and soon I had the new flute. The teacher worked with me on adjusting to the new fingerings. She showed me how to clean it. She was as excited as I was. I was happy. It was the right thing. That evening when my mother picked me up right in front of the flute teacher’s house for once, I was beaming. “Look, Mom!”
I jumped into the front seat and immediately opened the elaborate casing to reveal the gleaming article of craftsmanship in all its sterling silver brightness and glory.
“That’s beautiful Sidney. I hope you realize your father sold his favorite hunting gun for you to have this.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, he had those two nice hunting guns and that one was worth a lot of money. He took it downtown and sold it yesterday to write you that check. I don’t know how many fathers would have done that.”
“Wow. I love it so much. I’ll tell him when he gets home. He’ll see how wonderful it is. I can play you guys a little concert.”
“Well, I don’t know that we need that. The important thing is you had better be practicing and I better see your room neat and you had better be on extra good behavior with a smile from ear to ear from now on.”
My dad buying me the flute stayed with me. I couldn’t say I knew why he did it. I didn’t think my mom put him up to it. She wouldn’t have cared one way or the other whether I had a better flute. I often thought about my dad making that decision for me.
The sun was climbing above the trees as we hit Cloquet, a sleepy town in northern Minnesota. The local paper mill gave the whole place a distinctive odor that smelled like everyone in town was making oatmeal at the same time. I pulled into the weird but super cool-look
ing Frank Lloyd Wright-designed gas station and a guy pumped our gas and cleaned our windshield and our headlights, which were smeared with the multicolored fluorescent splattered guts of many dead insects. Brandy was crying to get out so I got his leash and we walked over to the roadside strip of grass.
Preston was waking up and looked disheveled and bruised. I watched him walk around to the back corner of the garage and I turned so I didn’t have to watch him urinate on the bushes. After that he took Brandy for me so I could go to the bathroom. I went around to the back of the cinderblock building and held my breath while I peed in the fly-infested bathroom’s grubby toilet. I washed my hands and got out of there as fast as I could. I went inside the station and saw that they had powdered sugar doughnuts. I bought a box and some orange juice for my brother and me. Preston looked happy when he saw what I was carrying.
Back on the road, the last stretch up to the cabin was a narrow highway through the encroaching woods on either side with only a thin yellow line saving you from every drunk and every nodding off trucker out there.
Preston wolfed down more than half the box of doughnuts and gulped orange juice out of the cardboard container. He fumbled around getting something out of his backpack. He started thumbing through a magazine, front to back, back to front, looking for something. I looked over and realized the magazine was full of pictures of naked women.
“Preston what are you looking at?”
“What? It’s Playboy. I got it for the interview with Jack Kerouac. It’s unbelievable. They have great articles. Everybody says that like it’s a joke, but it’s no joke. There’s an interview with Jack Kerouac. Seriously, this shit Kerouac is spitting out, it’s like fucking performance art. He keeps saying this great line about ‘up your ass with Mobil gas,’ fucking brilliant. And what about the pictures? You, intimidated by beautiful women? You’re as hot as these chicks. A lot of them are smart like you too. Seriously, Sid you could be making us some dough off those breasts of yours.”
“Preston!”
A Girl Called Sidney Page 12