Queen of the Road

by Doreen Orion

  As the boys played with the door lock, I lay awake—again. I was too wound up to sleep, even after days of sleep deprivation. All we had been through since leaving Boulder, not to mention that it was dawning on me how drastic my change in lifestyle was to be for the year, left me strung out, on edge, and way too wired. With only a couple of hours to nap before Dorothy’s birthday brunch, I was also desperate. I sat on the floor of the kitchen and perused the liquor cabinet. My exhaustion precluded shaking ingredients into a martini. I needed to figure out what would taste acceptable without flourishes. I spied my prize.

  “Ah, Frangelico! Come here, my nutty little friar friend,” I cooed. I had that monk unfrocked so fast, he didn’t know what was sucking the life out of him. I drank the sweet, hazelnut nectar straight out of the bottle, then grabbed his chocolaty, if misnamed buddy crème de cacao (who’s not creamy at all. Why is that?) with my other hand, gulping it down as a chaser. Tim walked in.

  “What are you doing?” he exclaimed, looking at his watch. I’m not a big drinker. I’ll have a cocktail on the weekends, maybe a glass of wine with dinner then, too, but that’s about it. Here it was, barely noon on a Sunday, and I was well on the road to getting soused. On the road. Oh, God. Better have another.

  “Honey,” Tim said gently, prying my hands loose from my new best friends. “I am really sorry for dragging you on this trip. This whole bus thing was my idea. I can’t believe I’m putting you through all this. Say the word and we stop.” I looked up at my husband, his face a mixture of concern and hope. He does so much for me—everything, in fact. I’d always felt the unevenness of it all, not that he ever complained (or that I ever wanted it to change). But now, this was something he desperately desired. It seemed the least I could do.

  “Look, it’s your dream, but I don’t blame you. I did agree to it. And,” I lied, “I’m not ready to quit just yet.” He gave me a grateful hug.

  This first leg of our trip was proving even more stressful to Tim than to me. Dorothy wasn’t doing all that well. Although they spoke regularly on the phone, Tim hadn’t seen her in about a year, and in person, the difference was startling. We knew she was getting more forgetful, but it was much easier for her to hide the extent of her decline when interacting long-distance.

  Spending time with her in Reno, however, it quickly became obvious: Her house was in disarray. Bread and jelly sat by themselves in the otherwise empty fridge. She was confused by the dishwasher. During her birthday brunch, she seemed anxious and uncomfortable around that many people, even though we were all family. (Including not only her three sons and their spouses, but her eight grandchildren and their significant others and kids.) Even more disconcerting, she didn’t really seem to understand why we were all there.

  Tim and his brothers stayed by her side all during the meal, and she did seem to enjoy herself after a little while. The rest of us did as well. I particularly delighted in noting that one of her great-grandchildren, an adorable three-year-old named Ileana, wore a lovely blue satin frock for the occasion. I was even more impressed, however, when she chose a perfectly matching balloon to take home. Now, there’s a girl who knows how to accessorize.

  One of Tim’s brothers offered to have Dorothy come live with him and his family. She would have none of it. We offered to have an aide come stay with her. She would have none of that, either. But Tim was able to convince her to at least see an attorney with him, so when the time came, he could be appointed guardian. For now, however, we couldn’t force her to stop living on her own. With a son and several grandkids in town, someone would at least be looking in on her every day.

  Tim had always been close to his mom. For many years, after his parents divorced when he was thirteen and his much older brothers moved out, it was the two of them against the world. Now there was no escaping that she was in trouble and there was very little he could do—that she would let him do—about it.

  Although Project Nerd sure tried: He cleaned her house and even rented a carpet shampooer, bought her groceries and clothes, did the laundry, and easily found a host of repairs that needed to be done.

  None of it made him feel any better about leaving her like that when the time came for us to go.

  As we prepared to depart Reno for New Mexico, Tim procrastinated. I figured he was just hesitant to leave Dorothy, but in addition to that, he finally admitted he was wary of the next disaster down the road. An insecure driver behind the wheel of twenty tons of bus is not a good thing. I tried to console him.

  “I know,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen.” An irrational bus driver is even worse than an insecure one.

  Once we got on the highway again, Tim relaxed as he always did while driving. He loves anything with a motor, particularly old cars; he thoroughly enjoys tinkering with them, driving them (when they work), even cleaning them. For me, a car is just a means to an end.

  When we first dated, I had a ten-year-old “shit blue” (as Tim dubbed it) Toyota. It was my first car. I had gotten a deal on it from the lot (why no one else wanted it, I’ll never understand), and I couldn’t have been happier. It was reliable and got me where I needed to go.

  “At least let me clean the thing!” Tim begged.

  “Why bother? I don’t care and you never ride in it. We always go in your Corvette, which, I might add,” I pointedly informed him, “is ten years older than my car.” He rolled his eyes.

  “At least let me change the oil for you.”

  “What oil?” His eyes stopped in mid-roll.

  “You’ve never changed the oil? You’ve had that thing for nearly two years!” I shrugged.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It runs on gas, not oil.” The very next day, he was under my car doing the oil change thing. It looked like a crappy job, so I offered to do his laundry.

  Growing up a Princess, I had never learned to do laundry. As an adult, I taught myself. And as a big proponent of not wasting energy (mine, not the electric company’s), I figured it was good enough to throw everything in together on cold. Worked for me. Unfortunately for Tim, that particular load included his favorite baseball shirt—and my new red blouse. As we sorted together afterwards, he surveyed the damage, grumbling, “No wonder all your underwear is pink.” That was the last load I ever did.

  On the drive out of Reno, Shula spent the entire day sitting in the buddy seat with me. It wasn’t that she’d suddenly gotten courageous, but rather we had decided to keep the door to the bedroom shut (we really liked our new mattress). As soon as the engine started to rumble, she climbed up on my lap and dug her face in against my stomach. See no evil, hear no evil, be no evil, I guess. Occasionally, she’d lift a terrified eye in my direction for a quick, accusatory glare.

  “Looks like she’s saying, ‘Mommy! Make the nightmare stop!’” Tim said. But I couldn’t wake her—I was sharing the same bad dream. After a little while, I actually thought she was purring, but soon realized the “purr” was coming from her haunches. Trembling was more like it.

  Miles and Morty, on the other hand, seemed perfectly content hanging out together on the love seat. I started thinking that maybe there was some bus-related weakness on the double X chromosome, especially as we continued onto Carlsbad and a new problem arose: bus phobia.

  On the slightest downhill, I’d try to mind-meld with Tim, to get him to put on the engine brake, my foot stomping on air. At every turn, I’d clutch the seat, anticipating a rollover. At every dip in the road, I’d hold my breath, listening for the sound of bending steel, a portent of our imminent, albeit mercifully swift, midsectioning. It didn’t help that the glasses in the wine rack clinked. What was I afraid of? I kept asking myself. The answer was always the same: careening off the road amidst the sound of our belongings crashing. I didn’t even get so far as to imagine my own or anyone else’s demise. It was the careening and the crashing. Careening and crashing. Phobias aren’t rational.

  On a particularly hilly, winding, and dipping road, I became particul
arly scared and particularly quiet. As a good shrink, Tim noticed.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I realized I’d better start talking about something, anything, before he caught on. Just then, we happened to pass a highway sign announcing the number of miles to Albuquerque. Without even thinking, I launched into a rousing rendition of that old Partridge Family hit:

  Point me…yee

  In the direction of

  Albuquerque-e-e-e…

  And, then, with a bit too much feeling:

  I want to go home.

  I need to get ho-o-o-ome.

  Sometimes, a song is just a song. Not in this case. By the end of that line, I was sobbing.

  “What is wrong?” he asked again, more insistent. I mulled over my response. I’ve always found that it’s just not worth keeping things from my husband, for not only does he eventually find out, but I also always somehow feel better after confiding in him. I guess that’s why he had such a busy psychiatric practice. Yet this appeared to be a special case; telling him I was terrified of riding in the bus, while he was driving the bus, did not seem like a particularly good plan. On the other hand, he knew something was wrong, and keeping it from him would let his imagination run wild, although how he could possibly think something worse was beyond me. I took a deep breath and plunged in.

  “OK. Look,” I began. “I can tell you what’s wrong, if you really think you want to know what’s wrong, but if you don’t,” I breathlessly continued, “you should tell me right now, because I don’t really have to tell you. Especially while you’re driving.” After an introduction like that, how else could he respond but “Tell me, already!”

  “Fine,” I said, continuing in a rush of words, “It’s not that I don’t trust your driving. You’re a great driver. It’s just that people are idiots!” I never for an instant included my idiotic self in that assertion. “What if someone makes a sudden stop? What if we hit an elk? What if the brakes go out? I keep imagining us careening over the edge of the road. I don’t even imagine the dying part, just the careening. The screeching of tires, the shattering of glass. But, most of all, the careening. The CAREENING. I can’t take it anymore!” He gave me an incredulous look. I nearly lost it.

  “HEY! Hey, driver! Eyes on the road! You’re getting too close to that car!”

  “And to think, I almost bought a system with radar,” he said. I ignored his comment.

  “What about the overpasses! And the WMD?”

  “What WMD?” he asked, exasperated.

  “Exactly!” I cried, triumphant. “The government lied about WMD, they could lie about the overpasses! How do we know they’re as tall as they say? Whenever we go under one, I keep thinking, ‘It’s going to sheer our heads clean off!’”

  “I can’t believe it!” Tim exclaimed. “You’re phobic about the bus.” So much for making me feel better. I guess he gave at the office. I certainly didn’t need a shrink to tell me I was phobic, especially when his solution was to pull over to a deserted parking lot so I could learn to drive the thing, to “feel its power.” Yeah, maybe in my next life. Just my luck, I’ll come back as John Madden’s wife.

  Before the bus had even been converted, Tim asked if I’d want to drive the thing.

  “Are you insane?” I asked. He couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t at least give it a try, but he also couldn’t hide his pleasure: Not only did he love to drive, but he didn’t particularly like when I did. Whenever we went anywhere, he always drove and, inevitably, would comment on some cockamamie maneuver by some other driver.

  “Look at that!” he’d exclaim. Then, on hearing my noncommittal “Hmm,” he’d shoot me a sideways glance.

  “You don’t do that, do you?”

  “Uh…kind of…” was the most I might allow. Tim was only too thrilled I didn’t want to drive the bus. I even started a blog on our journey to keep our friends and family apprised of our whereabouts and called it “Leave the Driving to Him.”

  Although I remained fearful the rest of our trip to the campground, the welcome sign outside a small town in New Mexico did manage to bring a smile to my face: “Portales, home of 12,000 nice people and 2 or 3 grouches.” Once we landed in Carlsbad, we toured the caverns and stayed for the evening flight of hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats. I didn’t even scream as they spiraled out of the cave. I guess that’s one plus of my newfound bus terror: Even a phobic’s gotta prioritize.

  I calmed down after several days spent safely docked, until Tim decided to fire up the stereo for the first time and couldn’t get enough bass. He thought perhaps it had to be adjusted through the TV, and lowered the 42-inch flat screen from its tucked perch in the ceiling…right onto the only ever so slightly ajar stereo doors. They and their glass inserts cracked into hundreds of splinters. I should know; I was still pulling shards out of my feet when we got home.

  The next day, he decided to tackle doing laundry in our Comb-o-matic 6200, an unholy joining together of a washer and dryer into one space-saving unit. Up until now, this mutant machine had slumbered in our closet, awaiting animation from its first jolt of 110 current. I cringed as he got out the instructions for the Frankensudser.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Tim reassured me. “What’s the worst that can go wrong?”

  “Flood? Locusts? Pestilence? And for that matter, rioting townspeople?” I offered. He started perusing the manual.

  “Christ! This isn’t a washer-dryer. It’s the control panel to the space shuttle!” I relaxed, figuring it would take a while for anything to implode, pondering the relative horrors of a lumbering nineteenth-century monster who couldn’t squeeze through our side aisle versus the malevolent machinations of an artificial intelligence wrought by some evil genius with a cleanliness fetish. My reverie was soon interrupted.

  “OUCH!” While probing around the machine, Tim hit his lip. It was bleeding. I guess HAL didn’t feel like washing clothes just then.

  Soon we had a name for yet another cabinet-dwelling computer: “the bitch.” She was a system Vanture had installed, but we hadn’t paid any attention to. Until now.

  “Alert!” she’d squawk. “Fresh water system, three-quarters…gray water system, seven-eighths.” She apparently lived in the kitchen, along with all the master controls for the bus. Tim and I dubbed her “the bitch” because she never said anything really useful, like “Alert! Front door about to fly open!” Or, “Alert! Cat about to pee in bed!” Or more useful still, “Alert! This bus thing is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had! Abort! Abort!” Within a few days, after we realized that the pronouncements she did make weren’t even true—i.e., we had far less fresh water than she said we did—we started calling her “the lying bitch.”

  Tim, Miles, Shula, Morty, the lying bitch, HAL, and I settled into a routine while parked in Carlsbad for the week. I would do insurance reviews and write during the day (my blog and screenwriting, which I had taken up a few years before), while Tim did paperwork to close out his practice, some bus or Jeep maintenance, or hiked with the dog. We’d rendezvous late in the afternoon and do something together: a walk or a bike ride, a swim or a trip into town. Afterwards, we’d have happy hour. Tim had discovered some local beer, and back in my pink designer tracksuit, I loaded up my fairy godmother (which, I understand, some people refer to as a “martini shaker”) and, in a silvery flash or two, was transformed into a Princess once again. We’d drink, have some snacks, sit on lawn chairs near our rig, Miles lying by our sides, and watch the sunset. It was always so spectacular that I started bringing out my camera and discovered a new passion—photography. I found myself actually getting my butt off the chair, even lying on the grass to get the perfect shot. Tim enjoyed watching me enjoy my new hobby.

  “I’ve never seen you so active!” he marveled. “And outside to boot!”

  After the sun set, we’d cook…er, thaw dinner. Then, sit inside our new home and talk. It didn’t even matter what we talked about: sights w
e’d seen that day, what we were going to do the next, even wondering what friends at home were up to. I was reminded of that first “date” in the bar, talking for hours and hours about who knows what, just feeling close and laughing with one another. Spending time this way, without any of the distractions I used to consider essential (TV, going out to fancy restaurants, wearing high-end clothes) made me start questioning just how essential they were.

  I quickly pushed those thoughts aside.

  But then, I noticed Tim mellowing. He started taking pleasure in little things. We had splurged (of course) on a new set of dishes for the bus, one with a travel theme, each plate depicting a different place (Mount Rushmore, San Francisco, even a spaceship on the moon). As I watched Tim set the table for dinner each night, I could see his boyish delight as he discovered where we would be dining next. And I couldn’t help it. I thought about downsizing, again.

  And quickly made myself another martini to forget all about it.

  The days and nights passed pleasantly. At home, we would have watched a network evening news show while eating dinner, then both worked for a couple of hours before watching some other show before bed. It seemed Peter had done us one good turn by screwing up the TV. Cocooned in our own little steel and fiberglass world, it finally felt…right.