Rules of the Road

by Joan Bauer

  “Well,” he blubbered, “watcha been doing?”

  An El train barreled by overhead, shaking the street. Steel scraping steel, the train screeched around the corner. I gave him two years and seven months worth. “Stuff, you know.” The gas had worn off. I’m definitely off helium for good.

  “Me too.” He swayed down on the steps as two old women moved quickly past us. “You probably think I’m drunk, Jenna girl, but I’m not.”

  “Really.” He always called me “Jenna girl” when he was plastered.

  “I’m on medication that makes me . . .funny.”

  I focused in hard at the Lemmy’s hot dog poster (steaming dog with everything, including grilled onions) so I wouldn’t have to look at my father or see the staring people looking at me like I’m some poor, pitiful case.

  Drunken Dad Disgraces Daughter.

  We stayed there for a while not saying anything. When I was nine, Mom had sent me to a therapist, Ms. Lynch, after she and Dad got divorced so I’d have a place to yell and scream, which I never did. Ms. Lynch had a puppet, a brown furry chipmunk named Chester, that I’d put on my hand and tell him the story of my dad’s alcoholism and how I’d never known if he was going to be a good dad one day or a bad one. One time, Ms. Lynch made Chester’s voice and said it was okay if I got angry. I got angry all right, but not at Chester. I told Ms. Lynch that Chester was a chipmunk and didn’t talk. Then I told her I knew that storks didn’t bring babies so stop trying to snow me.

  Dumb as it seems, I could have used Chester now.

  “I’m going to have to get back to work, Dad.” I said this low, mature.

  Dad belched. He was wearing the Timex watch I’d sent him last Christmas. Nice to know it arrived.

  “Jus wanted to see you, honey. I meant to call.”

  He always said that.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  I felt the armor going over my heart and mind, the steel rod shooting through my back. I didn’t ask where he was working now. The jobs never lasted long. He was always selling something—aluminum siding, screen doors, toasters, used cars—I got my gift for selling from him, that’s what people said. He had a brief stint as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman; kept a ball of dirt in his pocket to throw on the carpet when the front door opened; got bit bad by an irritated pit bull who didn’t appreciate the Eureka suction. Part of me wanted to walk away and leave him there, the other part couldn’t. I’d worked hard at seeing his alcoholism as a disease he was stuck in. Love the person, hate the bad things they do. Sometimes loving from far off is a whole lot easier than eyeball to eyeball.

  “Is there someplace you’re staying, Dad? Someplace you need to get to?”

  He tried standing up to reach in his pocket, fumbled badly, finally pulled a matchbook out, opened the cover, handed it to me. “Sueann Turnbolt, 1260 Wells Street, 555-4286,” it read.

  Another girlfriend probably.

  “Is she there now, Dad?”

  “S’waiting for me.”

  Mr. Romance. I hailed a cab, got him inside, gave the driver ten dollars and the address. “We can get together when I’m not working, Dad.”

  “Okey dokey, Jenna girl.”

  I shut the cab door and watched it head down the street. I felt exhausted, like I hadn’t slept for days.

  Daddy’s home.

  The last time he showed up was when I was a freshman. I was walking home from school with my friends and he pulled up in a broken-down Dodge, jumped out with a big toothy smile like I should have been expecting him all along. Dad always made an entrance.

  He hung around town that summer, drinking, not drinking, making promises, breaking them.

  Daddy’s home.

  I leaned against the elevated train stairway, closed my eyes, threw back my head.

  I didn’t know if I could handle it this time.

  CHAPTER 2

  Keep going.

  I ran back to Gladstone’s Shoes pushing aside pain and anger. Murray said customers are like wild animals—they can tell when you’re upset and they’ll use it against you.

  Smile.

  A few people in the store, but Murray was handling it. Mrs. Gladstone was studying the Johnston and Murphy display like it held the secret to life. Maybe I could tiptoe around her into the—

  “Your father,” said Mrs. Gladstone in her soft Texas drawl, “is quite a—”

  My body clenched. “I’m sorry about him, ma’am. If you don’t want me to work here anymore, I’ll understand.”

  Mrs. Gladstone folded her skinny arms across her chest. I was toast.

  I would not fall apart if I got fired.

  I’d just take my stuff and go.

  “What manure,” she spat.

  I guess I wasn’t fired.

  “Why would I penalize you for something that is clearly your father’s problem?” She stood there waiting.

  “Well . . .”

  What could I say to her?

  What could I say to anyone?

  My father has had this problem all my life and if I had one wish in this world it would be that he could beat it.

  But you know how it is with wishes. Some you catch, and others are like trying to grab Jello.

  Mom’s note on the dining room table to me and Faith read:

  Daughters of mine,

  In case you haven’t noticed, no one has seen the top of our dining room table in months. I seem to recall it is oak, but as the days dwindle by, I’m less and less sure. Perhaps this is because your school books, files, papers, magazines, letters, underwear, etc., are shielding it from normal use. My goal for you, dear offspring, to be accomplished in twenty-four hours (no excuses), is the clearing/exhuming of this space so that we may gather around it once again and spend quality time. Even though I am working the night shift, I will still be watching. Do it or die.

  Your loving mother

  My younger sister Faith padded in, holding a box of extra-heavy garbage bags. At fourteen, Faith was beautiful beyond knowing—blonde, green-eyed, finely cut cheekbones—an example of what God could do if he was paying attention. It used to bug me that she got all the gorgeous genes, but like my grandmother always said, there’s a downside to everything. I can walk into a room looking like I’ve slept in a torture chamber with poisonous snakes, and people mostly ignore it. But when Faith looks bad, she’s got a crowd around her telling her about it.

  “You want the front half or the back?” she asked, turning up her perfect nose at the table. Faith always seemed put together—her head matched her neck; her long legs matched the rest of her body. I felt like I’d been glued together with surplus parts—my shoulders were big and boxy, my legs were long and skinny. I had a swan-thin neck that held my round head in place.

  I studied the table to figure out which half had the least work. “If we split it lengthwise down the middle,” I said, “you take the one closest to you—”

  “That’s got more stuff, Jenna!”

  Precisely.

  “I saw Dad.”

  Faith sat down. “You did?”

  I told her.

  “Oh, Jenna, you must have been mortified!”

  “It hasn’t hit me yet.”

  Faith fidgeted on the chair. She tugged at her long ponytail. “Did he mention me?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” He hadn’t.

  “Well . . .what did he say?”

  “He misses you and wishes he could have come around more and wonders how you’re doing.”

  I always told her this. There’s a responsibility that comes with being a big sister. I guess she believed me, although you can’t always tell with Faith. Last Father’s Day she was storming around the house, slamming doors, telling everyone to buzz off, she was fine. Father’s Day is my least favorite holiday. I can never find the right card. I can’t send the “Dad, I can always count on you” ones; I nix “Thanks for everything” and “You’re the greatest.” What the world needs is an alternative card: “Dad, I love you, even though you
haven’t been there for me.”

  Faith lifted a stack of fashion magazines from the table like they weighed six tons. She is probably going to become a model someday even though I warned her that smiling and twirling under hot lights has been medically proven to cause shallowness. I think it’s fine to look the best you can, but when that’s the biggest thing you concentrate on, you can miss the fun of life’s grungier moments like hanging around in men’s pajamas, eating pork fried rice from the carton with chopsticks, and not caring how much gets ground in the rug.

  “Do you think he does miss us?” Faith asked.

  “I think he’s got a disease, Faith, that keeps him from being the person he could be.” I learned this when I went to Al-Anon, a group that helps families of alcoholics. Faith didn’t go. “Faith is handling things,” Mom explained. “She doesn’t have the memories you do, Jenna. She was so young when your dad and I divorced.” It made me feel like some big infected boil that needed lancing. Faith always got off easy.

  Faith looked at the cover of Vogue sadly. “Do you think he ever misses us, Jenna? I mean really?”

  I grabbed a garbage bag. “I don’t know.”

  “If he really cared about us, he’d stop drinking.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Well, don’t you think I know that, Jenna? What do you think I am, some moron?”

  Faith flung her hand across a corner of the table, knocked my personal pile of Travel and Leisure magazines on the floor, ran into her room, and slammed the door.

  Part of me felt like kicking in her door, telling her to grow up. It wasn’t my fault she never saw Dad. It’s not like she was missing much. Everyone loses when Dad comes back.

  I knelt down to pick up the travel magazines, knocked one off the top with an article about Texas. “Everything is Bigger in Texas” the headline read. I threw it at Faith’s closed door.

  “I don’t think you’re a moron,” I shouted as Faith’s sobs filled the apartment.

  I was standing at the stove, having just flipped my world-class grilled mozzarella and tomato sandwich in the pan. It was perfectly brown on one side, the mozzarella cheese was melting and oozing from between the seven grain bread. Ooze was the whole point of a grilled cheese sandwich—my grandmother taught me that.

  I read my mother’s note that she had taped over the sink of dirty dishes:

  Someone wash these. It doesn’t matter who. What matters is that when I return home after ten hours on my feet patching up emergency patients that I will not see the pot roast pan from four days ago with petrified gravy still on it. Make no mistake about it—this is a test.

  It was signed, “YLM” for Your Loving Mother. Mom is an emergency-room nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital and is working the night shift for the time and a half pay. We don’t see her much, which is hard, but Mom’s schedule is toughest on Faith. She needs more of Mom’s time than I do. Faith is at that age where she hasn’t seen enough of the world to know she can handle herself.

  Mom works hard to spend time with each of us. She and I like to take long walks together all around Chicago—being Type A personalities, we do our best talking when we’re moving. The thing we’ve got most in common is our independent streak—we know how to take care of ourselves and we like being on our own. But sometimes my mother goes into guilt overdrive. Saying how she should have been tougher on Dad and left him sooner. Then she tries to make up for everything in my life that she thinks made me the social zero that I am today.

  Wouldn’t you like to have a big party? she asks. I know we didn’t have your friends over much when you were younger, but parties are a good way to get to know more people.

  Not really, Mom. I don’t like crowds much.

  Maybe you should go to ballroom dancing class, Jenna. Having social dancing skills is always important later in life.

  The boys come up to my armpits, Mom.

  Maybe you shouldn’t work such long hours, honey. I’d like you to have time to just be a teenager.

  I’m trying to make money, Mother. I like selling shoes.

  I’m more like my dad than my mom. That used to scare me because I thought it meant I’d end up like him. But Grandma sat me down and said how God had managed to give me the best parts of my father (his sales ability, his business sense) without all the tragedy.

  I studied my sandwich in the pan. It had achieved perfection. I put it on a plate with red grapes and dill pickles, counted fifteen seconds, the exact amount of time to wait before biting into a grilled cheese without burning the roof of my sensitive teenage mouth.

  The phone rang. I waited two rings, three. Faith, the phone queen, wasn’t getting it, which meant she was still having her snit. Four rings. I grabbed it.

  “Hello?”

  “Jenna Boller, if you please,” said the familiar southern voice.

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Madeline Gladstone.”

  I stood at attention.

  “Are you there?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I racked my brain.

  I locked the storage closet before I left today, counted the money. Murray took it to the bank.

  “Is everything okay at the store, Mrs. Gladstone?”

  “It is.”

  I waited.

  “I have a proposal for you.”

  “You do?”

  “You drive? I assume.”

  “You mean like a car?”

  “That was the concept, yes.”

  “I’ve had my license for six months.”

  “You drive properly?”

  “I guess . . .I mean . . .yes.”

  Faith had just come into the kitchen to forage for food. She was opening and closing doors, shaking Tupperware containers. She was doing this while practicing model poses and expressions. Fashion models don’t smile much. They get paid to look like someone just pinched them from behind. Faith saw my grilled cheese, started toward it. I grabbed the plate, held it over my head. Faith tried grabbing it, but she’s only five eight. I had three inches on her. Grandma always said it’s a blessing to be tall.

  “Come to my home tomorrow morning at seven o’clock, Jenna. You can drive me downtown in my Cadillac. After that we’ll see.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Gladstone sighed. “I need a driver.”

  “A driver . . .?”

  This was a full-fledged disaster waiting to happen. She gave me her address on Astor Street.

  “Mrs. Gladstone, I’ve only driven a twelve-year-old Honda Civic, never a Cadillac.”

  “That will change tomorrow, won’t it? Good night.”

  “But—”

  Click.

  I felt the color drain from my face. I put the plate down.

  “Who was that?” Faith asked.

  I hung up the receiver, sat down on the wobbly stool by the sink. “I’ve never driven a Cadillac.”

  “You’ve never been in a Cadillac,” Faith countered, grabbing half my sandwich.

  Morning. Five forty-four.

  I lay in bed looking at the ceiling; a spider’s web hung between the corners, camouflaged against my ivory walls. A fly buzzed around it.

  “Stupid,” I said to the fly, “you’re going to be brunch.”

  The fly buzzed closer to the web, too close. He struggled against the sticky threads. The spider came down from a string on the ceiling.

  Any last words, fly?

  The spider watched the fly until it stopped moving, then dug in.

  Life and death played out before my very eyes.

  You don’t see these things if you clean your room regularly.

  Five fifty-five. The alarm blared. I turned it off, eased my numb self up. Headed for the shower, wondering if Dad made it to Sueann’s; rounded the picture wall of family photo memories.

  Mom glaring at a roasted pig at a Hawaiian luau.

  Faith modeling a surgical pants suit at a hospital charity luncheon.

  Me at th
e beach, submerged in sand from the neck down, “Beware of Teen” written across my stomach.

  My grandmother, like I always remember her—bent over her Singer sewing machine, bright fabric everywhere. The photo was taken in her tailor shop on Clark Street before she was diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease that took piece after piece of her memory until her old self was all but gone.

  Grandma was my best friend. She understood everything about me—how serious I could get, how hard I worked at my part-time jobs. When I was twelve I won the Chicago Tribune “Blood and Guts Award” for selling more daily and Sunday subscriptions than any paper kid in the city or suburbs. Grandma said she always knew I was going to win something big. She took me out to dinner at Wok World, my favorite Chinese restaurant, and stuck my winner’s plaque right on the table by the low sodium soy sauce.

  Two years ago Mom and I brought her to a nursing home. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Faith rode with us in the car for two blocks, but she couldn’t handle watching Grandma just stare out the window. Faith jumped out at North Avenue and ran home crying.

  I visit Grandma at the home. Take the 151 bus up Sheridan Road past Belmont Harbor to Shady Oaks Nursing Home where she lives. Her roommate Gladys always remembers me. Grandma remembers me sometimes. Mostly she remembers how I used to visit her when she lived in Wisconsin when I was small.

  I bring her flowers sometimes. Daisies are her favorites. I used to read to her from the newspaper, but she got depressed at how bad the world has gotten. Mostly I just sit with her and smile when she looks at me with her scared eyes. I tell her how when I get my own car I’m going to take her for a ride and we’ll have a picnic with fried chicken and lemon cookies like we used to when I was little. Then I stand by the memory board I made her. It’s a bulletin board with “I love you, Grandma” across the top in red felt letters. Below are photographs of me, Mom, and Faith, pieces of fabric like she had in her shop, a few postcards of Chicago, the satin ribbon she braided my hair with when I graduated from eighth grade, her huge flowered hat that she’d wear to church on Sundays. She goes up and touches the board sometimes, particularly the fabric; rolls the tweeds and silks between her fingers and for that moment she seems connected. Before the Alzheimer’s got really bad she said to me, “Jenna Louise Boller, I’m counting on you. As this thing gets worse, you’re going to have to help me remember.”