Family Night

by Maria Flook

“Get out,” she said. She hated standing there in the same spot where Cam had confessed his worries to her.

  Tracy told her the water was perfect.

  She saw the tilt of his hips, how his pelvis rose on the swell of water as he drifted supine. His body absorbed and reflected her thoughts. She wriggled out of her tank top and held it by the spaghetti straps; she was having second thoughts. Then she pushed her shorts down. She tested the water, brushing her foot back and forth. She climbed down and stayed by the gutter as he swam up behind her. She gripped the tile ledge. “Don’t get my hair wet,” she said.

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s too deep here,” she said.

  “I’ve got you,” he said.

  “I’m sinking,” she said.

  “No, I have you, shut up. For once, shut up.”

  She felt a strong jet from the filter vent, a velvety pressure against her legs. Tracy buoyed her, nipped the bony pebbles at the base of her neck, and she felt her cunt pulse and contract. He moved her the way he wanted and finding her profuse silk, he praised her.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Why do you always do this?”

  “Only when you’re around,” he told her.

  Margaret noticed the slow pull of a searchlight over the city. Perhaps it was a new car dealership or another discount drugstore opening. The funnel turned and fell, then rolled around again. She liked its regularity; it grounded her in her weightlessness, helped to trigger her orgasm. Then Tracy held her shoulders and pushed her under. He leaned all his weight upon her and she sank. Her descent was smooth, dreamlike, and at first she didn’t question which direction Tracy had steered her. When her feet touched the cement bottom, she twisted and pumped her legs, but he kept her down. She shook her head side to side. Huge bubbles escaped from her mouth, blurred pillows of air shooting upward, then two lines of tiny silver BBs. When Tracy let her rise, she was choking; the purified water burned her throat and sinuses.

  Cam stepped forward to the pool’s edge. How long he had been waiting, she didn’t know. “Nice,” he said. “People can look out their windows and see everything.”

  “He was trying to drown me!” She was coughing.

  Cam looked directly into Margaret’s eyes, avoiding Tracy altogether. He seemed more curious about her immodesty than her complaint against Tracy. Maybe Cam could have used a swim. It might have been good if they could reach some equal ground. Nudity can do that. Margaret started up the chrome ladder. Her nose was running, stinging from the chlorine.

  “Wait a minute,” Cam told her. He walked back to the office and came back with a towel. He handed it to Margaret.

  She pulled herself out of the water and pinched the towel under her arms, leaving her back to the air. She felt her brother’s eyes move over her hips. She finished with the towel and handed it to Tracy. Tracy wadded the towel and buffed his arms and legs. He didn’t try to cover himself up.

  “Why don’t you just lead a parade,” Cam said. He didn’t look away as they pulled their clothes on. Cam took them into the small office. There was a vinyl sofa with some blankets folded at one end. A pillow with a dirty slip was crammed on a bookshelf.

  “Is this where you’re sleeping these days?” she asked him.

  “That’s right,” Cam told her, “home sweet home.”

  Margaret saw his name embossed on a brass plate that was glued to a wedge of wood. This was something Darcy ordered for him. It looked stupid. “Is this where you work,” Margaret asked him, “and sleep?”

  “I’m never in here, I’m down at the new condos or running around somewhere. I don’t sit here.”

  “You’re not taking that money, are you?”

  “It’s just a loan.”

  “I’ve got some money at the house.”

  “We’re not going back to the house,” Cam said.

  Margaret said, “But whose money is that?”

  “It’s petty cash, money for plumbers or electricians, if something went out in the middle of the night and I had to get it taken care of.”

  “Oh, emergency money,” Tracy said. He smiled.

  “That’s right,” Cam said. The men seemed to understand one another.

  “We might have an emergency,” Tracy said.

  “Correct. Like Tracy here, he had a clog and got his pipes flushed, right? How much is that? A couple hundred?” He unfolded some bills and pushed the cash at Margaret.

  Margaret made a face, rolled her eyes. It was an involuntary reaction; she hated to roll her eyes. Hated the way it felt.

  “Look,” she said, “do you even know where this guy lives when we get to Chicago?”

  Cam told her the address, the apartment number, the zip code. He recited the telephone number.

  “You’ve talked to him on the phone?”

  “No. I’ve dialed it. He picks it up like he expects to hear from the president. Then I terminate the call. Slip it back in the cradle, nice and easy.”

  “You just hang up?” Margaret said.

  “He answers the same every time—like he’s taking reservations.”

  “Maybe he just has telephone manners,” Margaret said.

  “What are you going to say to him; what do you want to say?” Tracy asked.

  “I don’t have to say shit. I’m in a position of power.” He tapped the cash against the desk so the bills were even, and he put the money in his wallet. They walked back toward the car. Margaret saw a blue light twirling toward them on the street, but it was just a tow truck. It was a tow truck pulling another tow truck. The sight was strangely compelling, as if it mirrored some aspect of their situation.

  They started off without a change of clothes, without anything. Cam said he’d get toothbrushes for everyone. Margaret passed her tongue over her front teeth. She said, “A toothbrush is the least of my problems. I’m freezing. My clothes are damp.”

  “You’re hair’s wet,” Tracy told her.

  “Forty-eight hours, that’s all,” Cam told her. “We can buy something tomorrow. You can go to Marshall Field’s and get Levi’s.”

  “I can’t wear jeans until I wash them a couple times,” she said. “They’ll be too stiff and I hate the smell of the sizing.”

  “What’s wrong with your shorts?” Tracy said, smiling.

  She tried to shush him.

  “Do you want some Kleenex?” Tracy said.

  Cam said to Tracy, “You’re some lewd son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “I’m just relaxed about it, the erotic impulse. It’s human,” Tracy said. “I’d say you’re wearing your strap a bit tight. Do you always give movie ratings to every routine situation?”

  Margaret tried to imagine riding a thousand miles wedged in between the two men. It was crazy, but she didn’t decline to go on their journey. If two worlds converged, making one perverse expansion, what was her responsibility? Was she central? Its magnet? The feeling was heady. The Duster hardly gripped the pavement, skating forward in airy surges. The car seemed to cruise with the globe as it plunged in rotation, rolling into the dark.

  II

  They were riding up the Philadelphia Pike, a narrow antique four-lane that connected Wilmington with Chester, Pennsylvania.

  “I used to come up here with Richard,” Margaret said. “He took me on sales trips, into Philadelphia, to U.S. Steel, to the refineries at Marcus Hook and to the Scott paper plant. I watched them cut giant tubes of toilet paper into four-inch rolls—”

  “No kidding? Toilet tissue?” Tracy said. “Welcome to the world of Freud.”

  “Why must you take my simple memories and dice them up into some kind of psycho salad. Will you let me alone!” Margaret said. She tried to remember the names of the drinking establishments as they passed the roadside bars, the familiar saloons displaying tipped neon cocktail glasses over their doors, one after the other. Coming home from the plants, her father had usually stopped for a drink somewhere. He might try to buy her a Shirley Temple, but the cherry repelled her.

&n
bsp; At the White Horse Tavern, Richard argued with the bartender. Margaret loved the ornaments she saw, and Richard wanted to buy the heavy china horse heads, the handles on the taps. The bartender got the manager and the manager declined Richard’s offer. Nothing could go. Not even at that price. “The decorations are fixtures, as essential as the refrigeration,” the man said. Her father saw something else. He reached up to the well-stocked shelf and pulled a trinket from the neck of a brand of scotch; it was a small plastic horse on a loop of string. Richard handed this to Margaret. Margaret started to tell Cam about the souvenir, it might add a gram weight to the scales, on Richard’s behalf, but Tracy could twist the detail. Tracy might say it was another example of Margaret’s “equine obsession,” so she kept quiet.

  Cam had to stop for some gasoline and he found a twenty-four-hour Texaco place where a girl sat in a Plexiglas booth. The girl was reading a book, underlining several sentences with a yellow outlining pen. She was going overboard with the marker, Margaret thought: what’s the point if you underline every word? The girl didn’t seem too interested in the Duster and Cam parked in front of the pumps. He told Tracy to go talk to the girl just in case.

  Tracy was pleased by this idea, by his new partnership with Cam. He told Margaret to be cool, be like Bonnie to Cam’s Clyde. “You have the hair for it,” he said, “the blond hair. Just like Faye Dunaway.” Margaret watched Tracy go over to the girl and start a conversation. The girl was encased in Plexiglas and Margaret couldn’t hear what she answered, but Tracy was asking about White Tower hamburger stands. He was talking about the architecture of those restaurants compared to the golden-arches concept. Then the tank was filled and Cam paid the money. They drove away from the gas station and Cam pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car. He went in back and unscrewed the tiny light bulb over the license plate. He tossed it into a vacant lot. Margaret heard the bulb pop. Cam looked satisfied and he got back into the car.

  “Is this a joke?” she asked him. “I mean, if the police were looking for the Duster, wouldn’t they have nabbed us by now? We were all over Wilmington, they didn’t do anything about it.”

  “As time ticks by, they have to take us seriously,” Cam said.

  “Oh, you mean after so many hours, they say, that car isn’t coming home?” Tracy said.

  “True,” Cam said, “and, by now you can be sure Darcy’s been on the horn giving them hell. By this time, it’s in the hands of the troopers.”

  “Troopers?” Margaret said. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  Tracy said, “State troopers. It goes out over a computer network. They type it on a CRT, a description of the Duster, of us, of our wicked intentions.”

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  “Look,” Tracy said, “Clyde has a lot on his mind, so be a good Bonnie.”

  Cam said, “What?”

  “You know. Bonnie and Clyde? Don’t you think Margaret looks like Faye. Faye Don’-go-away.”

  “That actress?” Cam said.

  “Faye Don’-go-away. She’s a dream. All washed-out-looking with a dark mouth. Yes. She looks almost dead, but her lips are burning. She devours somebody in an instant. Eats you up. You’re in heaven.”

  Cam liked the description. He was smiling, watching the road, picturing something.

  They reached the Pennsylvania Turnpike at around midnight. They would use the turnpike until they crossed over to Interstate 80, and that would take them the whole way. It would be good to get out of the tri-state area, Cam was saying. Margaret agreed. She was happy to lose the landscape; a familiar landscape evokes so much.

  “We’re tired already,” she told them.

  “We’re fine,” Cam told her.

  “I’ve got my second wind,” Tracy said.

  “I bet you do,” Cam said.

  Margaret recognized Cam’s “poor me” tone of voice. Cam almost looked like Richard used to look on one of the family’s long trips. It was a mask of fatigue after driving a long way with all of them. The Scenic Route can often become a kind of hell. The winding roads, the small rise and descent from low, inconsequential hills, corresponded with the flux of Elizabeth’s complaints, the children’s sonorous then deafening inquiries.

  Then they saw their first police car acting funny. Tracy shifted his legs and Margaret sat up straight. There had not been too many cruisers, and each had passed them without notice. This fellow was going along in tandem as he talked on his radio. The trooper adjusted his speed according to the Duster’s, which gave Margaret a queasy feeling like running beside a mirror in a fun house or sliding backward and forward on ice.

  “Act regular,” Cam said.

  “Don’t look,” Tracy said.

  Margaret looked down at her lap.

  “You’re looking down, don’t look down! Look natural.” Cam talked with his teeth clamped.

  Just as suddenly, the cruiser moved away, accelerated, and disappeared into the dark ahead of them.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Margaret didn’t want any more of it. The next moment she was laughing in ragged bursts.

  Cam looked up at the car ceiling and rotated his head on the back of his neck, rubbing out the tension. Margaret tried to check her amusement and she pulled at her hair, pinching a clump and tugging her fingers down the strands to the end. Her hair felt strange, perhaps it was the chlorine; the strands no longer seemed to possess the ordinary properties of human hair. She pulled the rearview mirror down to study her face. Her hair looked metallic, brittle, like lamé thread. It had a strange luster as if artificially lighted by an unnameable source. “Jesus! My hair is turning green,” she told Cam.

  “It smells like Clorox,” Tracy said.

  “Can you please? I’m sort of busy here,” Cam said, watching the highway. He told them not to get comfortable. The cruiser was probably up ahead checking the tag and they were going to be nabbed pronto.

  “What should we do?” Margaret bit her lip to keep from laughing. She saw that Cam was serious. It was really between him and Darcy. It was something intimate; he was sparring with an absentee opponent.

  Cam took the next exit off the turnpike. “Fucking mounties,” he said.

  “Yes,” Tracy said, “they can be quite dogmatic. Inflexible. They wouldn’t understand the nuances of your situation. They’ve never seen it face to face, Darcy’s death rays. You’re being persecuted for every little wrong since you got hitched, right? This is the coal in your threadbare stocking. She’s dumping everything on you in one big, official zing.”

  Cam looked at Margaret for assistance. “Tell him to put a gag on it, will you?” Cam said.

  “You tell him.”

  “Tell me,” Tracy said.

  “I’m serious. Stop analyzing my private affairs.”

  “Since when are they so private? Here we are, riding in this stolen vehicle with you. I’d say we were pretty tight.”

  “I’d say you were a queer if I didn’t see you nailing my sister.”

  “Did you learn the first thing about it?” Tracy said.

  Margaret pulled her chin in as the two men bickered. They were talking about her. It was both vile and flattering. She hated it when her vanity took over. Then the car lurched, bounced hard, the shocks jangled. Margaret screamed. The asphalt ended and they careened off a ledge where the pavement stopped. The road stretched ahead just dust and gravel. A sign said PAVEMENT ENDS, but it wasn’t properly placed. It was after the fact.

  “The sign’s been moved,” Tracy said.

  Margaret said, “That’s sick.” Cam turned a circle and steered around a gully to get back on the road.

  Tracy said, “The perpetrator might be in the woods watching us right now.” The landscape was dark, wooded. Anything was possible.

  Margaret said, “If we’re going to make all these mistakes, I don’t want to keep going. You said we’d go straight through on the highway like normal people. I don’t want to go winding all over the place like this.”


  “Look at that map,” Cam told her. “You said you would be navigator, so navigate.”

  He flicked on the overhead light and she unfolded a map of the Eastern United States. She rubbed her finger over the paper. She liked the sensation; the paper was smooth, slightly furred.

  “We’re here, we want to go there.” A bold circle signified Chicago, a cloud of green designated the general metropolitan area. If they were going to avoid I-76, they would have to take some secondary roads, two-lane roads.

  “Head-ons,” Tracy said, “most of your head-on collisions happen on these country two-lanes. Then there’s always deer to consider.”

  “Can’t we just drive on the highway?” Margaret said. “It’s not like we really stole this car. It’s not like the time when we pinched that Dodge Monaco. This is your fucking wife’s car!”

  “Exactly,” Cam said. “She’s telling me loud and clear it’s hers.” He rubbed his shave. It was a full day’s worth of growth by now. Tracy touched his own face, started scratching it. Margaret couldn’t help smiling.

  Cam kept adjusting his mirrors and gunning the engine desperado-style, and it reminded her of the episode with the stolen Dodge. When they were teenagers, they took a five-finger-discount on a shiny Monaco and drove it around for the afternoon before crashing it up.

  It just happened to be Mother’s Day.

  Margaret and Cam often went driving with Cam’s friend Wayne in his old Chrysler. Cam was impressed by Wayne’s girl, Colleen. Her hair flashed moment-to-moment like sheet lightning. Margaret’s hair was regular blond, but Colleen’s was electric, white and glossy as a doll’s hair. She was studious in her bleaching habits. She used a brand called Midnight Sun, like a Nordic halo, a brittle spill that shivered each time she moved her head. She separated a few strands and tugged an icy point to suck between her teeth.

  They were riding in and out of the developments, screeching around the tiny cul-de-sacs. Sometimes they got out of the car to measure the length of “patch” they put down on the asphalt and to touch their fingertips against the hot smear. The radio and the hot wind off the asphalt had drugged Margaret into submission. She didn’t note the exact moment when it was no longer talk and they put it into motion. Wayne was driving slowly up the street and Cam was leaning far out of the car window the way dogs ride. They were searching for a vehicle with keys left in the ignition.