“Hey, there! Sorry I couldn’t let you know; you guys don’t have any way of being contacted, so . . . anyway. Family summer road trip.” He shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets, kind of like a little kid would do. “Seemed like a good tradition we should keep up.”
Mom doesn’t look like she agrees with any part of what he’s just said.
“Um . . . this might seem like an obvious question, but how did you know we’d be here today? At right this second?” Mom asks.
He shrugs. “I took a chance.”
Mom looks like there can’t possibly be enough miles between them. “I bet you did,” she says.
Dad laughs. “No, actually I called the bus company. You told me what it was called in your postcards,” he says to me.
“P-p-postcards?” Mom sputters. “Really.”
I imagine the look on my grandfather’s face when he sees Dad, and how he’ll probably chase him all the way out of the state, how he and Uncle Jeff will devise a plot to trip up Dad, how my grandmother might put down a slick layer of nail polish and hair spray for him to wipe out on. They’ll team up against him.
Where are they, anyway? I need help here. I try to signal to Andre, to say something like, “Save me!” with one look.
He appears frightened by my expression, but he gets it. “Mrs., um, Timmons. My mom wants to treat you to lunch,” Andre says, and he somehow manages to drag my mother away, her fists clenched under her Custer State Park sweatshirt sleeves.
“Timmons?” my dad mutters, and I decide not to get into that conversation, not yet.
Dad starts goofing around, posing in front of the presidents’ faces, as if I’m supposed to take pictures of him and we can laugh about them later. I wish I could laugh now, because this is really bizarre, but I just spent miles and miles getting away from him and the problems he created for us back home. And getting away wasn’t a bad thing. As much as I love him, it was not a bad thing.
“Am I more a Lincoln or a Roosevelt?” he asks.
Not that I’m a presidential expert, but he’s so unlike any of them. His pose reminds me more of a mug shot than anything else. There are these giant majestic faces of these great men, and then my dad.
So then I do take his picture, to make sure I’ll remember. He looks a little disheveled, like perhaps he used his last dollar to get here, and slept in the car, or something like that. He has little cuts on his face, as if he shaved with an old razor at a rest stop. I wouldn’t recognize this kind of stuff except I’ve seen some things in the past week, camping and roughing it and stopping at questionable rest areas, that I wouldn’t have known about before.
“Well?” he prompts as all these things go through my head, and the wind won’t stop blowing super hard, whipping my hair into my face, blowing the flags around us so it’s almost hard to hear each other.
“You’re more a Nixon,” I say, and I only know this from one of Lenny’s dumb games to pass the time while the bus was broken down, called Name the President.
“Ha-ha,” Dad says.
“So, Dad. How did you get here, really, and why are you here?”
He looks taken aback, as if this is an absurd question, as if his being at Mount Rushmore isn’t the thing that’s absurd.
“Well, you have to admit it’s a little strange. I mean, we’ll be home in a few weeks,” I tell him. “You could have talked to us then.”
He shakes his head. “Not back there. Everything’s . . . cloudy back there. I need to be on the road to sort things out. On the toad, rather.”
He waits for me to laugh, but I don’t. “And . . .” I prompt.
“You know how it is; you know how I’m always happier when I’m on an adventure.”
I don’t comment, because what I used to think of as his “adventures” maybe aren’t so fun anymore.
“But, Dad,” I say, thinking how strange it is that both he and Mom want to get away in order to make things work, but work in different ways. “What did you want to sort out?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He gazes up at the sun above, takes a deep breath. “I’m here to talk with your mother and see if I can work things out with her.”
“Dad, you can’t.”
“What?”
“Talk with her,” I tell him. “Or work things out.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too late.”
“How can it be too late? We were together seventeen years, Ariel. That’s not something you just toss away.”
“Isn’t it?” I say back. “I mean, isn’t that what you did?”
Zena suddenly runs up and throws her arms around him, and I wish I could still do that, but I can’t. Because I’m not twelve anymore. And not being twelve means knowing things that aren’t necessarily things you want to know, that your dad’s losing it a little bit, maybe more so now than he was before. That instead of pulling it together like you wish, he’s headed in the other direction.
“But you don’t have a car. So how did you get here?” asks Zena, curious in the same kind of way that I am.
“They have bus tours for everything, from everywhere. I got a cheap one to Deadwood, and then—”
“Of course you did,” I say. “The gambling express, right?”
Dad looks shocked.
“We were there, Dad. Didn’t see you at the casino, but then, there are lots to choose from.”
“Ariel, I didn’t go there to gamble,” he says. “I couldn’t get a decent flight to Rapid City, so Lee told me to fly to Scottsbluff and get a shuttle.”
“Lee?” I ask.
“I called him. He also thought there could be an empty seat on the bus; maybe I could take it.”
“No. There aren’t any extra seats,” I say quickly, because isn’t this trip hard enough without adding Dad to the mix?
“Isn’t there one?” says Zena. “The new bus has a few more rows of seats. We could bring it to a bus vote or something.”
“That’s what we do,” I explain. “We have these bus votes. Really dumb, but, you know. Fair. Democratic. Majority rule and all.”
“But hey, if there’s no room on the bus, I want you all to come with me,” says Dad earnestly. He puts his arm around me and squeezes.
That’s when I smell it. That lemon-lime casino scent. The towelette. I smell it, and I want to punch him in the stomach.
I could ask, and he could tell me that it’s restroom soap, but I know it isn’t.
I could ask, and he could tell me it was something he got from a restaurant, the kind they give you after you eat a rack of ribs.
But that’s not it.
I know where it’s from.
And if I asked if it was from a casino, he’d have some story at the ready, about how he ran in just to use the phone.
The fact that he’s still gambling doesn’t make him an awful person. It just makes him . . . not reliable.
I need reliable.
“We’ll rent a car, we’ll get off the beaten path, we’ll just see what happens, where we want to go,” he’s saying.
But we can’t do that anymore—or maybe he still can, but I can’t. If he’s going to come all this way to find us, but still be hitting casinos, then I don’t know what to say to him—at all.
No comment?
Mount Rushmore: You haven’t seen America until you’ve seen it. Open 365 days a year. Your camera is waiting.
Sarah,
Everything is so screwed up right now.
Dad’s here, at Mount Rushmore. And we’re moving.
Not on the bus, mind you.
We’re moving moving.
This sucks.
This postcard sucks.
Miss you.
Love,
AF
Before I mail it, I look at it again, and then I rip the postcard up and throw it out. One of the pieces misses the national monument trash can. I don’t care. I watch it get blown away by the blustery wind, bouncing down the avenue of flags. The next thing you know it’ll be su
cked into the air and wind, and bounce off Roosevelt’s glasses or Lincoln’s nose.
Let someone else find it for once. Found objects are overrated, but let them discover that.
You know that expression, being at your wit’s end?
I’m apparently there.
Chapter Nineteen
There’s no bus vote to decide whether Dad can join us, but Mom brings it to a family vote. We’ve gotten a hall pass for the night, and we’re at a “family restaurant.” As a family. One big, weird, dysfunctional family. They should clear the restaurant when they see us coming.
Except Dad isn’t with us. Mom asked him to “respect our space” and give us time to talk this over. I don’t want to talk it over. I don’t know what we should do.
“You should carb up for the race tomorrow,” my grandmother says when she sees me picking at my side salad. “Have some of these rolls.” She passes a basket to me and won’t set it down until I take one and butter it.
My grandfather is having spaghetti with extra bread sticks, and my uncle, king of the strip steak, is eating a salad. “A salad?” I ask, pointing to it.
“Don’t want to be bogged down.” He pats his belly.
“Right,” I say. “Good plan.”
“So, Zena, Ariel. What do you think?” Mom asks after we’ve all had a few bites of dinner. Like she wants us to get indigestion.
“That my cheeseburger needs more ketchup,” says Zena.
“That I don’t actually like honey-mustard dressing after all,” I say.
“Try ketchup,” Zena offers.
“On a salad?”
Mom clears her throat after polishing off a hot fudge sundae and before digging into her main meal, fettuccine Alfredo. The blood in her arteries must be slower moving than the traffic on the road up to Mount Rushmore. “I meant, about your father.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Sure,” says Zena.
“I will listen to you guys,” Mom says. “If you tell me you want to go with him, then we will, or you will, and I’ll stay here. Which will be really hard for me to do. But okay.”
“I don’t want to leave Bethany,” Zena says.
And I do want to leave, I think, but not with Dad. “I, um, don’t think it would be a great idea. You know how it is when you come into a theater or the living room and everyone else is in the middle of watching a movie? It’d be like that for him.”
“So, is that a ‘no’ on inviting Dad onto the bus?” asks Mom, ready to wrap this up before we’ve even really discussed it.
“Yes. It’s a no,” I say.
“Right,” Zena agrees, and I’m very relieved she agrees, but I can’t help wondering why she does so quickly, when she seemed so thrilled to see him earlier.
“Well, then. How about going with him? On another trip?” Mom can barely choke the words out, I can tell. She’s been twisting the same piece of fettuccine around her fork for the last three minutes.
“Does he even have a car?” Grandpa wants to know.
“Sure,” says Zena.
“A decent car?” asks Uncle Jeff. “One that can get you from here to there?”
“He didn’t drive here. That’s all I know,” I say. “So we’d have to rent a car.”
“Rent a car.” My mother coughs, that piece of fettuccine finally having gone down—the wrong way. “With his credit record, good luck.”
“Mom? Not seeing any personal growth here,” I comment. “You talked badly about him when we left home and you’re still doing it.”
She looks a bit taken aback by my comment, but she nods. “The purpose of this dinner is to give you guys a voice.”
“So you’re including us in this decision. But not in the moving one,” I point out. “Zena? Listen. We’re actually moving. I mean, aren’t you furious? How can you just sit there?” I look over at my grandparents and uncle. “No offense, you guys. This is just . . . it’s news to me. Brand-new news.”
Zena turns to me, and her face for once looks older to me and slightly harsh, except she has a tiny drop of ketchup in the corner of her mouth that reminds me she’s still Zena. “Ariel, I can’t be furious. About anything. If I start being mad? It wouldn’t stop. And it wouldn’t help.”
“But you’re with me, right?” I ask. “You don’t want to move. You’d have to leave your friends—”
“Half my friends ended up being jerks to me anyway,” she says. “Do you know how many things I was suddenly not invited to this past spring?”
I think about it. “Yeah. I kind of know what you mean. But I just feel like we’re running from our problems.”
“Oh, really, and you don’t do that? Anyway, making new friends isn’t that hard. What about you and Andre?”
Uncle Jeff starts to cough. “A good guy. Andre. Good guy.”
I hope they don’t notice that my face is turning red, that I’m remembering him, and me, and him on me. I change the subject as quickly as I can. “Gloves. What about Gloves?” I ask. “She won’t know where to come home to. She’ll get lost, Z.”
“She has that cat sense of smell. She’ll figure it out,” says Zena.
“She won’t have her favorite window ledge anymore to lie on in the sun. That cat across the street. Oliver. They’ll miss hissing at each other.”
Zena just stares at me and raises her eyebrows. “I think she’ll adjust, A.”
Maybe she will, I think. But what about me? I could say that I wouldn’t leave town, that I’d stay and live with Dad, only I can’t. I know that. I guess I knew it before, but for some reason, now that I’ve seen him here, seen his road persona again, seen how he’s a little nervous and unhinged, I know it even more than before.
“So. Have we voted?” Mom asks.
Grandma suddenly drops her spoon into her empty soup bowl with a clatter. Her face is bright red, like she’s going to burst. I’m about to ask if she’s okay when she says, “We? It’s not up to us, Tamara. It’s up to them.” She points at me and Zena.
“Well, I’m sorry!” says Mom, tossing down her napkin.
“Here’s what’s going to happen, girls,” Grandma goes on. “You’ll come to visit us; you’ll see what you think. Not everything has to be decided tonight, or on this trip. Give them a break! They’ve had enough to deal with. This is supposed to be their vacation, for goodness’ sake!” She stands up, pushing her chair back, grabs her purse, and bolts for the ladies’ room. Zena is right behind her.
Mom leaves, but doesn’t head for the restroom—she goes straight outside. Uncle Jeff follows her.
That leaves me and Grandpa. I look awkwardly at him, but his face is stoic, even in the midst of this. Looking at him makes me think about my track coach, whether she really believes in me much or not, whether the team would care if I moved away. I think about all the offhand, rude comments from people, about how I feel like I have to prove myself over and over again. The newspaper article taped to my locker. No comment.
It doesn’t take anything to become disliked. I mean, you can wear the wrong shirt one day and you’re suddenly on the outs.
And this is so much more than that.
Whenever I see Dad now I just can’t like being there, because I can’t stop thinking about this stuff and how it’s affecting me every day of my life. I make nice and talk to him, but the whole time I’m burning up inside.
I can’t spend much time with him until he works on things long enough to get them right. I hate that I think this, because it sounds like something my mother would say, in fact, has said. I don’t want to agree with her, on principle, because she can be awfully preachy and condescending about this stuff, but she’s right.
It’s not like the problem just started at Christmas. It started a long time before that, and just built until it reached a crisis point.
My grandfather looks like he wants to say something, but he can’t. Maybe it’s because Grandma told him to be quiet. Finally he says, “Would you mind going to check on them?”
“Sounds
like a good idea.” I stand up and walk to the back of the restaurant and into the restroom. Zena’s blowing her nose, and Grandma is standing in front of the mirror, reapplying her eye makeup, because clearly they’ve both been crying.
“Maybe he is too old for you,” Grandma is saying, “but are you at least learning any German?”
“My favorite word is schlecht,” Zena replies.
“What’s that?”
“Not good,” Zena says as she opens the restroom door, striding out without even acknowledging me. “Crappy. Crummy.”
We get back to the motel, where Dad was supposed to meet us at eight. He isn’t there. We wait and wait. Finally our room phone rings.
“Dad?” I say as I answer it.
“No, Andre,” he says. “You’re out of Skittles, right?”
“Yes, actually,” I tell him. “It’s Andre,” I whisper to Mom and Zena, though I wonder why I just admitted that to Mom.
“Can you meet me in the lobby?” he asks.
I look at Mom. “I don’t know,” I say.
“Come on, please. You’ve got to save me. My mom’s talking about signing us up for the next Leisure-Lee trip—like, the one that starts the day after this one ends. I think it goes to Arizona. She and Lee spent a little too much time together at the cocktail lounge tonight. She just went down to the lobby to meet him and a bunch of other people for a nightcap.”
“You’re kidding,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“No. I wish,” he says. “Come on, Ariel. I know I was a jerk the other night, but you’ve got to come with me. It’s the plan, you know? I won’t make it to L.A. without you.”
“You have a point,” I say.
“So are you in?” he asks.
I look over at my mom, because she’s making frantic signals at me and I don’t understand them. “Ariel. Get off the phone! You’ve talked long enough. We need to keep the line clear.”
“Why?” I ask her.
“Your father’s probably trying to call, to explain why he’s late,” she says.
“Sure, Mom,” I say. “I’m sure he is.”
The Summer of Everything Page 32