Around the Bend

by Shirley Jump

  “You found my mother’s medical condition on Google?”

  “Yeah.” His gaze met mine. “That’s what men who love their women do.”

  My heart melted, and I wanted to crawl across the table, into his lap, and give in to that feeling for a while. To give in like I had in the hall for that one second, lean into him and let him take care of me.

  But doing that would mean believing he would be there tomorrow. Sure, he was here today. And he was saying all the right things and doing all the right things, but in five years or ten, or when the road got a little bumpier, would Nick still stay? Or would the smile in the photo fade and he’d stop taking airplanes to meet me in the middle of the country, stop using Google, stop taking care of the woman he loved, and instead turn away?

  Would he start to feel imprisoned by marriage and lock himself away? Would one or both of us stop laughing, watch our spirits get sucked down a deep, sorrowful drain? I’d watched it happen to my father.

  I couldn’t watch it happen to Nick, too.

  I wagged a French fry at him, passing it off as a joke, because I had no other way to deal with the seriousness on his face. “You are way too beta for me.”

  Nick didn’t laugh—which wasn’t typical Nick. Instead, his lips thinned again, and frustration took over his normally placid features. “Fine. You want me to ride in on a motorcycle with a leather jacket and treat you like crap, I will. Will it make you think I love you because I ignore you or stand you up because my buddies are having a beer, like every other man you’ve dated?” He shook his head. “Is that what real love is to you, Hilary? Or are you finally ready for a grown-up relationship where a man actually cares about what is important to you and maybe, just maybe, once in a great damned while, takes care of you?”

  “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  “Yeah, because you’re doing such a damned fine job of it yourself.” He rose, making his chair screech in protest against the tile, threw his paper napkin on top of his tuna and stalked out of the cafeteria. The ranch dressing soaked through the napkin, and absorbed it in a spreading circle of destruction.

  If there’d ever been a metaphor for my life, it was sitting on the black paper plate before me.

  “You got any advice? Because everyone else seems to be hell-bent on telling me what to do.”

  Reginald grunted again, burrowed his head into the ground and rooted around in the grassy field behind the motel. Looking for leftover Halloween candy, the second coming of Jesus, I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

  Rather than going back to my mother’s room to face her, Nick and the wrath of Mrs. Lott, I’d returned to the motel to walk Reginald. The pig had practically bowled me over when I’d opened the door, clearly in desperate need for a potty break.

  “What do you want to do, Reginald? Go back to Boston, or forge westward?”

  He grunted, wiggled his tush, and pawed at the ground. I’m sure in some bygone primitive culture, that would be a communicative sign.

  In my culture, it was simply a pig getting ready to let loose another one.

  I stepped out of the line of fire and sighed. “I’m not taking her to San Francisco. Uncle Morty’s the one with all the money. He can just load up a U-Haul, drive it on out to Boston, let Ma pick and choose, and then drive himself back with the leftovers.”

  Reginald toddled over, his tail wagging back and forth behind him.

  “I’m not going.”

  Reginald seemed okay with that, and seemed done with his afternoon toilette, so we headed back into the motel room. I took off his leash, refilled his food and water bowls—undoubtedly wreaking havoc with his dining schedule—then lay on the bed for thirty minutes, waiting for an answer.

  I already had my answer. But for some reason, I kept stalling on the action-and-exit plan.

  I heaved myself off the bed, heading toward the bathroom to fill one of the hotel’s plastic cups with some tap water, too lazy to go fill the ice bucket. My father stood to the right of the bathroom door, on permanent vacation.

  I stopped, drinking in the sight of his blue-green eyes, his windswept dark blond hair, his lean, but over-fifty-and-starting-to-go-soft frame. An ache I hadn’t felt in a long, long time started in the pit of my stomach and grew, building in intensity like fire in a dry woods, gathering steam with every breath, curling around emotions that had lain in wait for a thousand miles.

  “Dad,” I whispered.

  I wanted him to step out of that cardboard, to pouf into three dimensions, but most of all, to come back to me and sit between my mother and I, to form that cushioned barrier. He’d been the only one who could soothe the waters between us, and ever since this third leg of the triangle had left the family, the rest had collapsed. Neither one of us knew how to hold up just two sides of something that could—and had—only worked with three.

  I took a step forward, my grief giving way to anger, disappointment, frustration, the miles, the long day, the shock in the hospital hallway, all of it catching up with me in one big torrent. The cheap plastic cup crushed into a hard tight ball in my fist, then fell to the carpet with an almost imperceptible plop.

  “Why did you leave me with her?” I asked. “What were you thinking?”

  Dad stared back, a slap-happy grin on his face. That “there’s nothing wrong in my life, all is well, we’re so happy” smile sitting there.

  One of the biggest lies in the room.

  “You knew,” I said, moving even closer to his picture, to face those pixels, one-on-one. “You knew we didn’t get along. How did you expect us to make it without you?”

  No answer, just that same damned smile. I’d thought I’d known that smile.

  I ran my fingers along the crease of his grin, tracing the familiar line, wanting it back so bad, the ache nearly tore my heart in two. I closed my eyes, the cardboard cold beneath my fingertips, yet solid and real, and tangible enough that I could just pretend that he was here, and not in a small brass urn atop my grandfather’s casket at Blue Hills Cemetery in Braintree.

  In view of the koi pond, but not me. Never me. Had he really seen me, he wouldn’t have left.

  “What am I supposed to do, Dad?” I whispered, as lost as when I was four and had wandered off in the JCPenney men’s department, bored because my father took too long to pick out a tie for my grandmother’s funeral. It had taken them an hour to find me, an hour I’d spent huddled inside a rack of suit jackets, tucked inside myself like a ball, scared and sure I’d never see his face again.

  And then, he’d been there, parting the sea of navy and gray, reaching long arms in to pull me out, drawing me to his chest, warm and safe and secure. Home again. Always, I’d thought, my father would be there.

  Until he wasn’t.

  And this time, too, he wasn’t coming, and I had to handle all of this on my own. Without a compass, without a map, without a single damned clue.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked again, my voice a sob now, the tears I’d held back from Nick coming hard, streaming down my face, but I didn’t feel them, didn’t wipe them away, just let them wash over me. “Dad, tell me. I don’t know. I don’t know her.”

  He didn’t put out his arms.

  He didn’t smile and make it all better with a joke, or an impromptu magic trick.

  He did as he’d done for the last seven states. He stood there with that look on his face that said “Come on out in the cold, Hilary, it’ll be fun.”

  But it hadn’t been fun at all. And I was still lost, still without any answers. I stumbled back onto the bed, dropped my face into my hands and cried. For what I didn’t have anymore and for what I couldn’t find.

  Something nudged my ankle. I turned around, and found Reginald at my feet, his blanket in his mouth, as if he was packing. Ready to go. He oinked.

  “But she could die,” I said to the pig.

  Reginald grunted, waved his snout, the blanket like a toreador’s cape.

  “I can’t—” The sentenc
e lodged somewhere between my heart and my throat. I turned again to my father’s picture, seeking an answer. And still didn’t find anything but an empty, silent smile.

  I was on my own—

  Unless I wanted to take the advice of a pig.

  Reginald still stood beside me, waiting, four little patient hooves and a pair of beady eyes that seemed far smarter than mine.

  twelve

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stop? Walk around? Maybe we should. You need to move your legs, Ma.”

  The hospital was forty-five minutes behind us. My mother had dutifully written down the doctor’s instructions, even though he’d also given her a typed copy of his exit advice. She’d taken her prescription, gone over the writing on the label with him twice, then tucked it in her purse, and kept both on her lap ever since we’d left. “I’m fine, Hilary. If we keep stopping, we’ll never get to California.”

  A little blue sign appeared, announcing a rest stop in three miles. I put on my directional, moving into the right lane. Already ready to get there, miles ahead. From the rearview mirror, I saw Nick smirk.

  “No more Stormin’ Norman?”

  “Shut up, Nick,” I muttered. Later, I’d show him where to put that nickname for my driving style.

  “What does he mean, Stormin’ Norman?”

  Nick shoved his face forward, right between us, all sweetness and light. “First Gulf War, Mrs. Delaney. Norman Schwarzkopf just went on in there, plowing over anything in his path. That’s pretty much the way Hilary normally drives.”

  My mother raised a brow. “Oh, really?”

  Oh, Nick was going to pay, and pay big later. “I have to, Ma. It’s Boston. I think Dukakis reclassified the city as a war zone back in the eighties.”

  “He did not.”

  I shrugged, and kept on plugging toward the exit. I would not raise her blood pressure. Or mine. It was bad enough I’d let a pig talk me into finishing this trip.

  “I told you, I don’t need to walk yet.”

  “You’re going to walk and that’s that.”

  “When we get to the Illinois border. That way, at least we’ve made some progress.”

  “Ma, that’s almost an hour away. The doctor said—”

  “I know what the doctor said, Hilary,” my mother exploded, her voice louder than I’d ever heard it before. It reverberated off the interior of the minivan, startling Reginald, who scrambled to his feet with an oink-grunt and backed up against the side of the van. Nick reached out a hand and soothed it over the pig’s head. Reginald sighed and pressed up against Nick. My mother smiled. Jeez. The man had everyone in the van on his side. “I have Dr. Barton’s instructions.”

  “Then why the hell haven’t you been following his or any other doctor’s all this time? You didn’t go in for your regular blood tests, or your Coumadin wouldn’t have gotten out of whack. I talked to your doctor, Ma. I know what went wrong.”

  “Hilary, you don’t understand. I have my reasons.”

  “Reasons you choose to keep to yourself. Especially the really big one. Like why we are driving to California when we should be driving you home so that you can put your feet up and be near a phone with 9–1–1 service?” The last part shrieked out of me. Especially since parts of Indiana had limited cell reception, which raised my blood pressure and had me popping aspirin just to keep my head from exploding with worry.

  Nick sat back, quiet, and out of the fray. Wise man.

  “I want to see my brother. I want to see California.” Ma looked over her shoulder at my father, half-folded to keep his head from blocking my rear view. “I want your father to see California.”

  “Why?” I flicked on the directional again. I didn’t care what she said, we were getting off, and she was walking, if I had to put one of her feet in front of the other myself. “You keep saying because you want to, but not why. What are you, two?”

  “I am sixty-seven years old, Hilary Jean.” She gave me the evil eye she’d perfected during all the nights I’d come in after curfew, or with beer on my breath, or with a C on a report card. It didn’t quite have the same effect on me at thirty-six as it had at sixteen. “I don’t have to tell you why I want to do anything.”

  I gritted my teeth. She made me insane, but I searched deep inside myself and found a hidden well of patience. The well was about as shallow as a teardrop, but it would have to do, because California was still a long ways off. “I am driving you all the way across the country, Ma. You do too owe me an explanation.”

  Nick leaned forward, clearly not smart enough to stay out of our argument. He caught my eye in the rearview mirror, as if trying to imbue me with some visual patience. “Mrs. Delaney, I don’t mean to intrude, but I think the little hospital thing—”

  “Little hospital thing?” I mouthed at him.

  “—gave Hilary a scare,” he went on, ignoring me. “So what do you say we stop here, stretch our legs a bit, let Reginald out, give him one more taste of Indiana, and then go on our way? I could use a snack anyway.”

  My mother considered this a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Nick.”

  “Just like that, you’re agreeing with him? After I—”

  Nick put a hand on my shoulder, his wide palm as calming as a Valium. “I think we all could use a snack. And a break.”

  So we did as Nick said. I thought of nominating him for the U.N. by the time we were done. He clearly had hidden skills in peacekeeping.

  This was part of what I’d always loved—loved? I left that word alone for now—about Nick. How he could smooth over a situation, as easily as he could smooth the wood he worked with. If I was Stormin’ Norman, he was Gandhi, making sure no innocent civilians were harmed in the process.

  I flicked a glance in his direction, but he was no longer watching me. Instead, his gaze had gone to the passing scenery.

  He never had told me where he’d been those nights he’d gone out. Even though he was here, I sensed a fence between us, a line in the sand. And like sand was wont to do, there would come a time when it would all shift beneath me—

  And probably leave me with nothing but some algae and a bunch of cracked shells.

  At the rest stop, we ended up with ordinary coffees this time, because the fanciest thing available was a gloppy cappuccino that sputtered out of a wheezing, dirty machine in the gas station. I grabbed a packet of M&M’s, two bags of Doritos, a fully caffeinated and sugared Coke and a chocolate chip Grandma’s cookie. Ma didn’t so much as glance my way when I dumped my junk food frenzy on the counter, slapped a few bills in front of the pierced and bored clerk, then headed back to the van, after Ma shrugged off my attempts to help her.

  Before I could get there, Nick wrapped his arm around my waist and stopped me. I leaned against him, wishing I could read his mind, then again not so sure I wanted to know what he was thinking about us right now. “It’s going to be all right, Hil.”

  “She won’t listen to me,” I said, the words tearing out of me on a sob, but I refused to cry, and kept the tears in check. “I can’t do this if she’s going to break all the rules. That’s what landed her in the hospital the first time.”

  “Maybe she’s not listening because you’re not talking.”

  “What do you call this?” I mocked mouth movement with my fingers, quacking them up and down.

  Nick raised his brows, then took the junk food out of my hands and climbed into the van, taking the driver’s seat before I could protest. I sulked a little in the back, then brightened when he dumped my snacks into my lap with a smile. He added a Clark bar that he had bought to the stack. “Here. Eat up. Sugar always makes you feel better,” he said. And he was right.

  The man knew me well. He’d clearly paid attention, and I appreciated that.

  My mother settled into the passenger’s side, sharing a snack of crackers with Reginald, making sure she broke the treat into teeny tiny pieces before feeding them to her pig, who slobbered said pieces all over the floor at my feet. I rolled my eyes and
tried not to gag.

  When everyone was buckled in and the car was gassed up, Nick turned to my mother. “Mrs. Delaney, I looked at our route, and I know you wanted to see some travel spots with Mr. Delaney,” he said, as if my father were real, and sitting right there beside her, “but I think it might be wise if we spent the next couple of days getting some miles under us. There’s a lot of the country to see when we get closer to California. I’ve been out that way myself and I can show you some great things. Where the Donner party disappeared, for one. That’ll make a great snapshot, especially the lake. It’s gorgeous, even though it has a sad history.”

  “You never told me you’d been to California,” I said. When had he gone? Who had he gone with? Suddenly, I was Jealous Jan, which was completely unlike me. I opened the M&M’s and popped a few into my mouth, quick, figuring it had to be a dip in my blood sugar.

  He grinned. “You never asked.”

  “What else don’t I know about you?”

  Nick pivoted on his seat, draping his arm over the headrest, his brown eyes meeting mine, a dare in them. “Marry me and you’ll find out everything.”

  My mother looked at Nick, looked at me. I fully expected her to put in her two cents, but she didn’t. She kept silent. Waiting, watching, for my response. I hadn’t felt this much pressure since the eighth grade spelling bee.

  I yanked the road atlas out from between them and flipped to the full map of the United States. Didn’t see a thing on the pages, but still studied them, avoiding everyone else’s stares. “Where did you say the Donner party disappeared?” I glanced at Nick. “I might have some plans for that place.”

  He just laughed, put the van in gear, and started driving.

  Miles to go—and lots of secrets still untold.

  thirteen

  That night, in a four-star hotel room we splurged on in Omaha—with Nick finessing the desk clerk so that Reginald could room with my mother—I crawled into bed beside Nick, spooning my body against the familiar warmth of his. It had only been a few days since I had lain in his pillow-top queen in Boston, but it felt like ten years. “You’re warm.”