Marshall, on the other hand, seemed to be in a great mood. He told us a long, silly story about a movie he’d seen while he washed down a sandwich with a glass of tea. Then, with a shy grin he said, “Aunt Karen, do you have any ice cream in your freezer?”
Mom and Dory both laughed. “Do you remember that from the last time you were here?” Mom asked him. “It’s been years!”
“Sure, I do! You had three different kinds and I ate all of them!”
“I think it’s the only thing he does remember about that trip,” Dory said. “He still asks me why we can’t have ice cream at our house like Aunt Karen has at the farm.”
“Yeah, and you never give me a good answer either.”
Dory’s smile faded slowly as she thought about the question. “Hmmm. Well, you know, Daddy never liked to keep ice cream around. He liked it too much.”
“If he liked it, he should have kept it around.”
Iris looked annoyed. “He didn’t want to get fat, you idiot.”
Dory gave Iris a look, but didn’t say anything to her. “More likely he didn’t want me to get fat,” she said with a little laugh, as if she was telling a joke. But I guess it’s hard to joke about somebody you love who recently died when you weren’t even expecting it. All three of them got quiet and looked at their plates.
“Marsh, you can go get yourself a dish of ice cream if you want to,” Mom said, breaking the tension. “And if you still like cats as much as you used to, there are about eight of ’em out in the barn.”
“Thanks,” Marshall said. He headed for the kitchen fast, without looking at either his mother or his sister.
Dory played with her paper napkin, shredding it into long strips. “It hasn’t gotten any easier yet. People keep telling me it will.”
Iris pushed her chair back from the table as if she wanted to be farther away from her mother’s problems.
Mom put a hand on Dory’s arm. “It will, sweetheart. It just takes time.”
“One of the reasons I wanted us to take this trip together was so we could see that it was possible to have good times with just the three of us. To prove we could do it.”
“Then why did you want Robin to come?” Iris said.
Dory shot me a look of apology, then shrugged. “What I meant was, to prove we can function without your father. Robin is coming along to up the fun quotient!”
I thought I was coming along to help drive. If my job was to keep everybody laughing, I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge. I wasn’t sure Whoopi Goldberg would be up to the challenge.
“Oh, so we’re driving across the country to prove to ourselves that we can waste our time just like any other inane tourists, even though we have no father?”
Mom jerked back in surprise at the meanness in Iris’s voice. I felt like slapping her to Peoria myself. She was even creepier than I remembered.
“Iris, don’t torment me, please. Not today,” Dory said, massaging her forehead with her hand.
“Fine. Let me know when I can torment you, okay? I’m going outside, too.” She got up and slammed her chair into the table so hard the glasses shook.
“To the barn?” Dory asked.
Iris snickered. “Yeah, I think I’ll go milk me a couple of cows.”
The screen door slammed behind her and Dory groaned. “And she’s not even the one I’m worried about.”
“Teenage girls,” Mom said. “It’s not unusual behavior.”
And I was sitting right there! “Hey,” I said. “I never . . .”
Mom lasered me with her eyes. “I think you should go outside and try to get reacquainted with your cousins. Show them around the farm.”
Get out of here and let us talk, is what she meant. It was beginning to dawn on me that this trip might be more than just boring; it might actually be horrendous. I took my time clearing my dishes and those of my disappearing cousins so I could eavesdrop on a little bit of the dining room conversation.
“Marshall seems okay,” Mom said. “Why are you worried about him?”
Dory sighed deeply. “When he’s at his worst he makes Iris look like a cocker spaniel. There are things going on in him I don’t understand. He has all these fears now, and he can’t sleep at night, and he was . . . asked to leave the school.”
“What? Why?”
“He draws pictures. Violent pictures. People shooting each other and running over each other with cars. Red blood exploding all over. His teacher found one that was obviously a picture of her, with her head cut off.”
I turned the water off in the sink so I wouldn’t miss anything.
“Oh, but surely it wasn’t meant seriously,” Mom said.
“Schools don’t take these things lightly anymore, Karen.”
“I know, but he’s working it all out, don’t you think? You said he’s been seeing a therapist. Drawing pictures isn’t the worst thing.”
“He also hit another boy in the face and broke his glasses.”
“Oh, Dory.”
Dory shook her head. “He says he hates his therapist—he doesn’t want to go back to him. He gets so angry about it, he scares me—he really scares me sometimes. That’s part of the reason for this trip, too—just to shake us out of our depressing routine. Things have to change, Karen—they have to.”
When Dory started to cry, I slipped out the door as silently as I could. What the hell had I gotten myself into? I was going on vacation with a bunch of complete lunatics! Was there any way I could back out now? Maybe Mom would decide it wasn’t the best idea for her only child to go sightseeing with Superbitch and the next school shooter.
I wandered slowly toward the barn, in no hurry to see what my fascinating relatives were up to now. As I got closer I heard a shout of fear, and then Marshall, saying, “Get it away, Iris!”
The barn door was open and I could see Iris holding up a squirming Golddigger, our oldest and wildest barn cat, while Marshall hid his face behind his hands.
“Did she scratch you?” I asked. “That cat hates to be held.”
“No kidding.” Iris dropped the cat to the floor and it took off.
Marshall stood up and took his hands away from his face, trembling and embarrassed, it seemed, in front of me. “Iris made the cat scratch me.” He pointed to a mark on his chin, then kicked his foot out toward Iris’s leg, but missed her.
“I did not!” She glared at him, then stalked off. “You are such a baby! You’re afraid of everything!”
Marshall looked up at me, his happy smile now pulled into a tight scowl. “I don’t like cats anymore.”
I shrugged. “Well, that particular cat scratches when you pick her up, that’s all. But some of the others are very friendly.” I looked around and spied Hermit, a sweet old guy who’s lived with us for years. “Here. You can pet Hermit—he doesn’t scratch.”
Marshall shook his head and repeated, “I don’t like cats anymore.” His fingers kept tracing the line on his chin.
“Does it hurt?” I asked. “Do you want a Band-Aid?”
His eyes were big and worried. “Could I get cat-scratch fever? I read about that. You can get sick.”
I smiled. “Marsh, I’ve been scratched by cats about two thousand times and I’ve never gotten cat-scratch fever. I don’t think you have to worry.”
He looked only slightly relieved. “Anyway, I don’t like this barn. It smells.”
“Not a bad smell, though. Just hay.”
“Hay? I’ve got hay fever!” He looked at me furiously as if I’d invented hay, and then stalked off out the door.
Iris had strolled farther into the barn and was swinging around a post, arching her back and letting her head fall back. It reminded me of when I was younger and liked to pretend I was being filmed for a movie. I’d throw my body around very dramatically, thinking I looked beautiful. That was shortly before puberty hit.
Iris looked at me as I came closer. “He doesn’t have hay fever. He’s just nuts. He thinks he’s going to get sick all the ti
me now. Or something awful is going to happen any minute. Ever since Dad got hit by the car.”
I nodded.
“Mom took him to a shrink, but Marsh freaked out even more. He’s getting really psycho.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “It’s only been, what, seven months?”
“Eight.”
“Well, he’s still upset about it.”
“Duh!”
Oh, this girl was impossible. I decided it was best to just ignore her and turned around to go back inside, but she wasn’t finished with me yet.
“My mom says your boyfriend left you. Some guy you’re in love with.”
I bent down and picked up Hermit so I’d have something to do with my hands other than punch out my cousin.
“He didn’t ‘leave’ me. He’s on a program in Rome for the summer.”
“So, are you in love with him?” Iris’s mouth was hanging open just a little bit, as if she couldn’t wait to eat my answer with a spoon.
“Yes, I am,” I said, trying to sound sure of myself. No reason to go into detail for this little punk.
She gave a snort. “I have a boyfriend, too. I’m going with this guy Parker. I’ll probably break up with him when I get back, though.”
“Why didn’t you just break up with him before you left?” I kept my eyes on Hermit.
“So he couldn’t date anybody else while I was gone.”
“Nice. You’re very devious for your age.”
“My therapist says I’m mature beyond my years.”
“Something beyond your years. I don’t know if it’s mature.”
She sighed disgustedly. “Ooh, Farm Girl, you’re so funny. What kind of farm is this, anyway—you don’t even have any cows!” She swung off the pole and sailed past me out the door.
I gave Hermit a hug and asked him how on earth I was supposed to spend my summer with these aliens, but he didn’t have a clue either. I decided to go back inside and sit with Mom and Dory who were, at least, human beings. As I passed Dory’s minivan I saw Marshall sitting in the backseat, a big tablet resting on his knees. His back was to the window so I came up behind him to look in at the drawing.
He was obviously a talented kid. The picture was well drawn, like a cartoon in a magazine. You could even tell the cat was Golddigger—he had the markings just right. There was my cat, held to a dartboard by the three arrows sticking out of his chest. When he saw me looking, Marshall frowned, then carefully drew in drops of blood.
My sleeping bag and duffle fit neatly into a corner in the back of the van. Dory kept asking me if that was all I was bringing. “We can squeeze more in if you want to bring more,” she assured me. But that didn’t actually seem very likely. Between the three of them, they had five suitcases crammed into the rear storage space, plus sleeping bags, and the backseat was full of stuff Iris and Marshall obviously couldn’t be without for a minute: CD players, earphones, books, magazines, drawing supplies, bags of food, thermal water bottles, head pillows, neck pillows, and polar-fleece blankets. It looked like we were going on an expedition, not a vacation.
There was just enough room to squeeze in four people. Still, the van was comfortable. We each had our own cup holder and our own volume control for our own speaker. The seude-covered seats both reclined and swiveled, and were as padded as easy chairs. Poor Rupert with his cracked upholstery—I hoped he wasn’t looking.
I took the front passenger seat and put my shoulder bag at my feet. In it was one novel, a bottle of Poland Spring water, Mom’s old camera, two hundred dollars in traveler’s checks—which Dory assured Mom was more than I’d need because she’d pay for everything—my driver’s license, and a pre-paid phone card. “Just in case you want to call me without telling Dory,” Mom said.
She’d come into my room the night before while Dory and the kids were getting ready for bed. Or rather, while Dory was refereeing the fight over who would sleep where. “You think you’ll be okay?” Mom asked me. I was hoping she’d come in to say there was no way on earth she was letting me get into a car with such crazy people.
“I’ll be okay. The question is, will they?”
Mom sat down on my bed. “I’m sorry, Robin. Dory didn’t give me the whole story over the phone. I didn’t realize the kids were in such a state.” She tried to smile. “Once you’re on the road, seeing the country, I’m sure things will be better.”
“They couldn’t get much worse.”
She leaned in and gave me a quick hug. “I hope this isn’t a disaster. I know the kids are annoying, but maybe you can find a way to like them, anyway. All three of them could probably use a friend right now, and you’re good at that kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“You know. Helping people who feel kind of lost and alone. Scared.”
“I’m good at that?”
“Sure you are. Just ask Franny.”
By nine the next morning we’d had our pancakes—all of us but Iris, who selected a nonfat yogurt instead—and were arranging ourselves in the suddenly much too small vehicle we’d be calling home for a ridiculous amount of time. As we pulled out of our driveway with Dory at the wheel, Marshall yelled happily, “Now we’re really rolling!”
“Don’t forget to send my letters!” I called back. Dory had given Mom a list of addresses where we could get mail; I didn’t want to miss a letter from Chris.
She nodded. “I will!”
I watched as my waving mother got smaller and smaller, willing myself not to cry. What was there to cry about, for heaven’s sake? Sure, it wasn’t my dream trip, but at least I was going somewhere. I guess I wished Mom was coming, too. As much as she got on my nerves sometimes, I’d never been away from her for more than a night or two, and never in the company of crazies like these.
“So, where are we going first?” Marshall asked as we turned onto Interstate 80.
“We’re going to Minnesota!” Dory announced.
“Minnesota? That’s back up north!” Iris said.
“Yes, it is. I’m glad to see you know your geography.”
“Jesus Christ. It’ll take us a year to get to Los Angeles if we have to stop and see every stupid state in the country!”
“Iris, I told you, this is not a race. The purpose of the trip is the traveling itself, not arriving in California.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Iris said. She pulled one of the big pillows into position against her window and punched it into shape. “Wake me when we get someplace interesting. I’ve seen enough cornfields to last me the rest of my life.”
We weren’t quite out of the cornfields when Dory woke Iris up. In fact, we were in Farmer’s Paradise: the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. I could hardly believe it when Dory turned the van into the parking lot. Neither could Marshall.
“What are we stopping here for?” he asked suspiciously.
“We’re stopping here so that you and Iris can learn a little something about the culture your cousin and your mother were brought up in,” Dory said, smiling at me. “This is one of the biggest state fairs in the country, you know. It’s the one the musical is based on!”
“What musical?” Iris said groaning.
“State Fair!” Dory said.
“Never heard of it.”
It’s true that Mom and I used to come to the fair all the time back when Grandma and Grandad were still alive, but then we kind of stopped. Last year Chris and I came one night, but all we did was go on the rides so I could hold on to him and scream. Oh, and he won me a stuffed alligator by throwing tennis balls at plastic frogs. We had a great time, but we didn’t bother with the actual farm stuff. I could tell right away, Dory planned to bother with it.
She headed to the vegetable exhibit barn first—it seemed to make her extremely happy. “Oh, you guys, I used to come here all the time when I was a kid. Look at the size of those peppers! And that spinach—no wonder that took a first prize. Look down there—have you ever seen so many enormous eggplants?”
No one answered, so she kept going. “I always used to enter the pea-shelling contest—the winner was the kid who could finish the bowl first. I came in second once and got a huge red ribbon. It was just thrilling.”
“Wow. That does sound exciting,” Iris said.
Marshall picked up a zucchini and gave it a good bang on the edge of the table.
“Look at those strawberries! They’re gorgeous!” Dory was in heaven.
“So, this is, like, a competition for vegetables?” Iris said.
Dory ignored her. “Robin, I bet you come here all the time, don’t you?”
“I used to, but not much anymore.”
“Did you enter things? Did you do 4H Club?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t live on the farm back then. I never did 4H.”
Dory looked disappointed. “Really? I loved 4H!”
I’d never thought of Aunt Dory as somebody who’d loved 4H. I mean, she left Iowa as soon as she could and went to school in Chicago. And never came back. If she loved farm life so much, how come she lived in a city? She didn’t even have a vegetable garden in her yard—only a little patio with fancy furniture.
We trudged after Dory until she was finally ready to leave the lettuce and head for the mammals. First the sheep shed, then the cow barns, then the pigs.
Iris had been complaining since the moment her foot hit the the straw of the first animal barn, but the pigs put her over the top. “My God,” she said, holding her nose. “I thought the cows were bad, but these animals reek!”
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