After that, the girls were on the road.
Eleven
Fragments of conversation from the road north:
“Oh hell. I don’t think I turned off the coffeemaker.”
“You did.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. And you locked the back door and turned off the oven and checked that the upstairs toilet wasn’t running.”
“Thank God for your brain, girl. So, I thought we’d stop in Berkeley on the way. I need a raincoat and there’s a good outdoor store there.”
“I wonder if they have boots.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but those shoes you’re wearing aren’t going to do it. Athletic shoes are great for California, but the rest of the world is a little tougher.”
“It’ll be wet up there, won’t it? And we may be in the snow.”
“Count on it.”
“God, Kate, this is going to be so great. I love snow.”
“Let’s look at boots, then. Or heavier shoes, anyway. And we’ll stop in Sacramento tonight, to get your school project out of the way.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. The last time I went to the capitol building was when I was your age. I wonder if it’s changed.”
“You don’t think I should have gotten those heavier boots?”
“These will be much more useful. And they really are waterproof.”
“I like your hat.”
“At least this one doesn’t itch.”
“What a boring thing it must be, to be a state legislator.”
“One more career option to cross off your list, eh?”
“I’d rather teach kindergarten, or be a garbage collector. Or a cop.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“No offense.”
“Is anything wrong, Jules?”
“No. Not at all. Why?”
“I thought you were going to fall out the window looking at those soldiers, and they weren’t even very cute.”
“I wasn’t looking at them. I mean, I was, but not at them in particular. I was just thinking the other day that I didn’t really know any soldiers; I don’t know anything about them. When you were growing up, you must have had a lot of friends who went to Vietnam.”
“I was a little young. I had a friend whose older brother was killed over there, but that was before I knew her. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know, just curious. Wearing camouflage clothes in a city seems kind of…incongruous, I suppose. And having to keep their hair so short, and wear those heavy boots and…well, the dog tags.”
“Dog tags.”
“Yes, the identification tags they wear.”
“I know what dog tags are. Why are you so interested in dog tags?”
“I’m not.”
“You sound like you are.”
“They’re just kind of strange, that’s all.”
“How so?”
“Well, what do they do with them when a soldier dies? And could they be faked? How can you check up to see if the number is real? Do they keep records?”
“Um, yes, they certainly do. The Veterans Administration could tell you about that, although they have to preserve confidentiality. I suppose a set of dog tags could be faked—they’re only pieces of metal—although the number would have to be backed up by actual identification—for example, if the vet were trying to apply for benefits. They’re not like a driver’s license. And as for what they do with them, I’ve always assumed they send them to the next of kin. Why are you interested?”
“I just am, all right? Can’t a person be curious? God, you sound like a cop.”
“I am a cop, for heaven’s sake.”
“Yeah, well, don’t act like one all the time, okay?”
“Sorry,” Kate said to the back of Jules’s head.
“Why did you become a cop, Kate?” This time, they were not in the car, but in a pizza parlor near their motel north of Sacramento.
“I thought I could do some good. And I guess…I don’t know, I suppose the tight structure of it appealed to me. It does to a lot of the people who join the police. You know where you stand, and who stands with you. At first, anyway; it gets more complicated as time goes on.”
“Sounds like a family.”
“It is, a bit. Tight-knit and squabbling.”
“It’s my word for the day.”
“What is, family?”
“You sound surprised.”
“Most of your words for the day are more complicated than that.”
“I’m beginning to think that some of the most basic words are the most difficult. You know what family comes from? The Latin famulus, which means ‘servant.’ It meant all the relations and servants who lived together under one roof. In my dictionary, it’s only the fifth definition that gets around to describing a family as two adults and their kids.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Which would make you and Lee and Jon a family. When you’re all together, I mean.”
“That’s a terrifying thought, being related to Jon.”
“Ashley Montague says that the mother and child constitute the basic family unit.”
“Well, I’m safe, then. You want that last piece?”
“Can I have the pepperoni off the top?”
“Sure.”
“Dio’s family sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it?”
“Has he told you anything about them?”
“Just little things, here and there. It’s what he doesn’t say that makes me think it was pretty bad.”
“You’re probably right.”
“You must see a lot of that kind of thing.”
“Too much.”
“Why do parents do that to their kids—ignore them and hurt them and push them out?”
“A lot of them never learned how to be parents. Their own parents abused them, so they never learned the skills, and never had the self-confidence to make their own way.”
“Sounds like those experiments on animals, when they take baby monkeys away from their mothers. It’s so sad.”
“It is. But it doesn’t excuse them.”
“It explains them.”
“To some degree.”
“Yes.”
“What is your father like?” Jules asked.
“My dad? Oh, he’s been dead for ten, eleven years now. He was a good man, honest, hardworking. He ran a store that sold fresh fish and seafood. My grandfather—his father—had a fishing boat out of San Diego, and Dad had all sorts of cousins and uncles who let him have the pick of their catch.”
“He sounds…well, ordinary.”
“He was, I suppose. What they call ‘the salt of the earth.’”
“I wonder what that means? I’ll have to look it up when I get home.” She took out a slim book with a sunflower on the cover and made a note.
“Do you write everything in your diary?” Kate asked.
“I write a lot. My words for the day, things to remember, ideas.”
“Not so much daily happenings?”
“Sometimes, if I think they’re the kinds of things that will interest me in ten years.”
“Ten years, huh?”
“Did you keep a diary?”
“For a while. Just daily things—who did what to whom, tests, teachers. Dull stuff.”
“I like keeping a diary. It helps me think about things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Just…things.”
“You want me to put on a tape?” Jules offered.
“Sure.”
“You have some great music, but some of these people I’ve never heard of. Who’s Bessie Smith?”
“Old-time blues, real old-time.”
“Janis Joplin I know; Al has a couple of her tapes. She’s incredible.”
“The woman sings straight from her—she sings with feeling.”
“What were you going to say?”
“A word your mother wouldn’t wa
nt me to use. I’m afraid I’m not a good influence on you, Jules.”
“I know all the words.”
“I’m sure you do. And their derivation from the original Anglo-Saxon, no doubt.”
“I’m sorry. I must’ve been showing off again.”
“Showing off? Hell no, I get a kick out of the sorts of things you know.”
There was a brief silence as Jules went through a shoe box full of cassettes.
“Do you want k.d. lang or Bessie Smith?”
“Bessie Smith is a little hard on the ears. Put on k.d.”
“She’s supposed to be gay, isn’t she?” Jules slid the tape into the player and adjusted the volume.
“So I heard.”
“Did you know you were gay, when you were a kid?”
“No.”
“Sorry. Do you mind talking about it?”
“No, not really.”
“Meaning you do.”
“Meaning I don’t. What did you want to know?”
“Just if someone always knows their orientation.”
“Some part of you knows from the beginning. Lee knew from the time she was eight or ten. I was in denial for years.”
“Until you met Lee?”
“Until long after I met her.”
“Did your family think she had made you into a lesbian?”
“Good heavens. How did you guess that?”
“It was in a story I read one time. Actually, being gay or straight seems to be inborn, doesn’t it?”
“About the same percentage of the population is born gay as is born left-handed. Left-handedness used to be seen as a moral flaw, too.”
“Are you serious?”
“The word sinister refers to the left hand.”
“God, you’re right.”
“And you can force a leftie to write with the right hand, just as you can force a lesbian to act straight. With much the same damage to their psyche.”
“Do you think I might be a lesbian?”
“Frankly, no. Do you?”
Jules sighed. “I’m afraid not.”
Kate began to laugh. “Being straight is nothing to mourn over, Jules.”
“I know, but I always wanted to be left-handed.”
“Are you sorry you didn’t go to Mexico with your mom and Al?”
“No. Not at all.”
“You just seem distracted.”
“Tired, I guess. It’s been a really busy fall term.”
“You’re sure that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Jules, why did you cut your hair off?”
“I just wanted a change.”
“You sure it wasn’t out of solidarity with my bald head?”
“No. I think I cut it because my mother didn’t want me to.” Silence followed this admission. Then she said, “Guess it’s kind of a stupid reason.”
“Hey, if you can’t use that reason when you’re thirteen, when can you?”
“Oh well. It’ll always grow back.”
Twelve
Another rest stop on the same freeway, but this one was more of a park than a mere parking lot with toilets, and this time, without Lee, Kate did not have to take the closest possible spot to the block of rest rooms. Instead, she drove past the center of activity, past the RVs and dogs and cranky children, around the van giving free coffee and brochures about the dangers of drunk driving, to pull the Saab into the farthest parking spot. Silence descended. Kate reached back for her jacket, and handed Jules hers.
Outside, on the tarmac, it was cold, but a bleak afternoon sun struggled for an illusion of warmth. Jules walked off to the toilets, and Kate left the parking area to stroll up a small rise of scruffy lawn. There was a river on the other side of the grass, fast and full and gray and cold, although, when she had scrambled cautiously up onto the boulders that formed the banks, Kate could see a lone fisherman downstream near the freeway bridge. She chose a flat rock on the top of the ridge, pulled her hat down over her ears and her coat down as far as she could, and she sat, watching the water go past.
Jules came after a while, stood and looked; then she, too, sat. Her hand came up to brush at the cropped hair on the back of her head.
“Still feels funny?” Kate asked.
“I’m getting more used to it. I don’t feel so…naked anymore.”
“You sorry you did it?”
“No, I like it. It feels…How does it feel? Unprotected. Risky. Daring.”
“Freedom is always a risky business,” Kate intoned.
“Philosopher cop,” Jules jeered. “But I don’t think I’d go as far as Sinéad O’Connor. I’d get frostbite of the scalp.”
“She probably wears hats a lot, in Ireland.”
“I want a hat like yours—a nice warm hat.” Jules pulled her collar up around her unprotected ears and pushed her bare hands into her pockets. “I wonder where fishermen get their clothes,” she said after a while. “That water must be freezing.” They watched the still figure, totally swathed in hat, coat, gloves, and hip waders, standing in the water. The only bits of human being actually showing were the circles of wrinkled skin around his eyes and nose—which were surrounded by the balaclava hat—wisps of white hair straggling from underneath, and the very tips of his fingers. He noticed them watching him, and raised one hand slightly. They waved back at him. “Those are cool gloves,” Jules said, the final word accompanied by a shiver. Kate stood up. Her head was clear now, but it was beginning to ache from the cold. She handed Jules the keys.
“You get in the car; I’ll just be a minute.” Kate walked across the vacant portion of parking lot toward the ugly green cement-block building, where she gingerly eased her bare skin onto the icy toilet seat, washed her hands in water from a glacier, and walked out of the open doorway into an arctic blast and what at first glance appeared to be a tribe of Afghan gypsies with Frisbees. At least twenty college-aged kids, swathed in layers of colorful ethnic garments, had emerged from a resigned-looking bus and were spilling out across the pavement in chattering confusion. Three neon green plastic disks sailed back and forth between gloved hands while sandwiches, plastic food containers, and thermoses were pulled from nylon backpacks. The odors of damp wool, cigarettes, curry, and stale dope hit Kate’s frozen nose, and she paused to absorb the spectacle. She had been too young for the first onslaught of the true hippie movement, but each generation of university students seemed to discover it anew. Once, her second year at UC Berkeley, she had taken a trip like this, with half a dozen others to New Mexico during the winter break…
A trio of nearly identical twenty-year-olds pushed unseeing past her, three lithe bodies in boots and jeans and Mexican sweaters, carrying on a high-speed conversation.
“—think they’d have a microwave or something. My uncle has one you can plug into the cigarette lighter—”
“Yeah I mean, cold lentils are pretty gross.”
“That sauna we stopped at was pretty cool, though.”
“I don’t think that bus has a cigarette lighter—”
“Why couldn’t they put them in these rest stops? I mean, they have those hand dryers, so why not a microwave?”
“Yeah, like you could put a dime in for thirty seconds—”
“Like for a Tampax or something.”
“Why not? It’d be a public serv—Oh God!”
“Oh shit, that’s cold!”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Why can’t they heat these goddamn toilets?”
“I’d pay a dime for—”
“—Stand up on the seat like they do in—”
“God, I wish I was a man!”
Grinning hugely, Kate tucked her hands under her armpits and walked back to the Saab. Another group of refugees from middle-class America were on the ridge overlooking the river, one of the girls looking like a sheep with a camera. She waved her furry arms to arrange her victims, two boys and a girl wearing a glorious coat, into a pose of buffoonery, and when she was satisfied, she sn
apped two pictures, took one of the frozen fisherman, and turned to take two or three more of her companions below, arrayed around the sides of the bus. Jules was still standing outside the car, shivering and watching the activity with the half-envious interest of a younger generation. Kate shook her head at lost youth, got in behind the wheel, and started the car. They drove off beneath a shower of Frisbees.
The car warmed up rapidly, as did they. Kate’s cold-induced headache did not fade, however, and she was torn between the desire for fresh air and the soothing stuffiness of the heaters. Then, when half an hour later Jules suggested they stop for dinner early, her stomach gave a lurch at the thought of food, and her heart sank.
“Well,” she said in resignation, aware now that she really was beginning to feel ill, “I had thought we’d make it to Portland tonight.”
“That’s okay then,” Jules said. “I’m not starving.”
“No, I mean I don’t think we’ll make it. I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop, anyway.”
Through the incipient nausea and the tightening throb of her peripheral vision, Kate saw Jules look at her quickly.
“Your head?”
“I’m afraid so. I haven’t had one for nearly a week; I thought they were over. Sorry.”
“Oh God, Kate, don’t apologize. Just stop.”
“I could go on for another hour, I think.”
“Why?”
Why indeed?
“We can’t just stop. It’ll have to be a place for the night, so I can go to bed. I’ll be fine in the morning,” she lied. She would be shaky and distant tomorrow, but functional.
“There’re a couple of motels and restaurants two exits from now—that’s what made me mention dinner. The sign said five miles.”
“Would that suit you?”
“Sure. I have a book.”
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