Queen of the Road

by Doreen Orion

  Until we started moving again.

  Chapter Three

  QUEEN OF THE ZARCONS

  * * *

  Hurlatini

  1 part rum

  2 parts Midori

  1 splash pineapple juice

  1 splash sweet ’n’ sour

  1 white-knuckled squeeze of lime

  Pound martini shaker against emergency exit until window breaks or ingredients sufficiently mixed for tasty self-medication.

  * * *

  On July 1, we began the next leg of our meltdown cruise, sallying from the serenity of Carlsbad to the surreal of Roswell, New Mexico, for the annual UFO Festival. I had first heard of the festival from the short-lived WB series Roswell, about a group of stylish alien teens trying to keep their otherworldly identities secret from government agencies eager to dissect them, while still managing to look fabulous for prom. (I’m a sucker for teen dramas, but I’m not embarrassed by that fact at all: Since I write screenplays, it’s easy to rationalize it as “working.”) Tim and I had both eagerly anticipated the festival as a rare opportunity to observe weirdness recreationally, without the expectation that we do anything about it. Once there, however, we quickly felt compelled to unlearn years of professional practice making eye contact with people.

  We had tickets for the UFO Festival concert (Willie Nelson was headlining. You don’t suppose…?), so stayed at its venue, the Eastern New Mexico State Fairgrounds, which provides RV hookups “around back, by the swine barn.” Oh, Princess from the Island of Long, how far hast thou fallen?

  As we rolled in on the bus, everyone at the fairgrounds—campers, staff, and cowboys alike—stood on their feet, waving at us with what can only be described as stares of reverence. We were used to the “celebrity” treatment, but this was a bit much. It was only when we parked, got out, and were approached by several people who asked, “Is Willie in there?” that we realized what all the fuss was about. I pulled Tim aside, managing to murmur to him while keeping a Stepford-like serenity on my face, “If we say no, they’re liable to turn ugly.”

  “What do you suggest?” he whispered back.

  “Let’s tell ’em Willie’s sleeping, but we can get them his autograph for five dollars apiece,” I replied, opting for the practical. Tim shook his head, ever opting for the plausible and walked back to the crowd to explain.

  “We’ll say it’s for Farm Aid!” I called after him weakly. Guess we won’t be enjoying diesel on Willie this trip.

  In the end, we spent only one day being assimilated into the UFO fold (hold the anal probe, thank you), as a little seemed to go a long way. The main events took place at the Roswell Civic Center, where, in the exhibition hall, a dozen or so authors wearing plasticine smiles congregated to hawk their books. One such scribe, as detailed in the conference brochure, “retired early to a mountaintop in southern Arizona to explore his relationship with reality.” As shrinks, Tim and I could have spared him the damage wrought on his 401K from early retirement by pointing out that if reality is something you have to explore your relationship with, the two of you probably went through a messy divorce long ago.

  We strolled around the floor, passing various booths, and soon found ourselves at one manned by a couple, where I made the mistake of making eye contact with the wife. She immediately launched into her well-practiced—some might even say android-like—spiel.

  “My husband”—she nodded over at her partner, whose wild-eyed look I’d seen before in many a padded room—“kept his abduction from me for eighteen years. He never talked about it with anyone, even though they didn’t tell him he had to keep it a secret,” she confided, woman to woman, as if I could not help but concur with the punishment she undoubtedly meted out for such a marital infraction. Well, actually I could. Concur, I mean. Infractions are infractions, after all, especially when committed by husbands. But then, she continued, picking up his tome, “This book is in large print for older people.” Saleswoman of the Year, this one. Then, “And I made him take all the profanity out so it’s suitable for kids.” Now she’d really lost me. Fortunately, a true believer arrived and distracted her with a question while I made my escape.

  “Why didn’t you rescue me?” I hissed at Tim accusingly.

  He was just as fierce back. “Don’t you be making eye contact with these people,” he admonished.

  We stayed to hear a lecture by the “original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident,” who actually put forth an intriguing theory as to why aliens have returned to our planet so often to take so many of our citizens: We’re someone’s crop. Does make you stop and think now, doesn’t it?

  We left New Mexico none too soon, for after spending only a few days in the Southwest (and especially after buying my first cowboy hat—well, I needed something to wear to Willie’s concert), I started speaking with a distinct twang. Now I know what got into Madonna after she moved to London.

  Once back on the road, I couldn’t help noting again how Tim seemed mellower, as if he were starting to “detox” from his many years of medical director and patient care duties. His boyishness and sense of fun came back in full force. One day, we took a break from a long drive at an empty highway rest stop that had a grassy picnic area with shaded benches and room for the dog to run. As we ate our sandwiches, we talked, threw the ball to Miles, and watched the traffic go by. Just as we were about to get back on the road, Tim belched, then farted.

  “All systems go!” he cackled. That’s my Timmy.

  The rest of the trip to our next campsite was uneventful. Tim even managed to navigate through aggressive rush-hour traffic without skipping a beat, although unfortunately for my bus phobia, showed me his shaking hands once we stopped. He also recounted how, during his bus driving lessons with an RTD instructor, they had encountered heavy traffic on the freeway. The instructor told him to take an upcoming left-hand exit, but Tim balked. She said that was fine, but “sometimes you just have to change lanes.” Now it was hearing that refrain, playing over and over in his head, that got him through. (As did remembering that if cars wouldn’t let him in, just allowing the bus to drift over caused a simply divine effect, as if magically opening up a space, like the parting of the Red Sea.)

  When we stopped for the night at an RV park in the desert, we high-fived each other, exclaiming, “Another leg without a disaster!” We spoke too soon. It was over a hundred degrees and when we plugged into shore power, we got none. We tried to fire up the generator, but after an eight-hour drive, it was overheated. So were we. So were Miles, Morty, and Shula. The maintenance guy for the campground came by and said the entire line of campers went down as soon as we hooked in. We don’t know what he did, but in about a half hour, it was fixed. He came back and assured us he would monitor the problem. Good thing. The power only lasted another five minutes.

  I called the office and got us moved to a different site. As we made our way to our new spot, everyone came out of their rigs, shooting us the same looks obese people get when boarding airplanes. Fortunately, we were able to plug in without incident.

  We soon discovered another heat-inspired near calamity: Since the RV park was nearly all asphalt, the ground was way too hot for Miles’s paws. So, rather than walk to the dog walk area, Tim lifted the poodle out of the bus, deposited him directly into the Jeep, and drove him over to the designated grass whenever it was potty time. Frankly, Miles seemed to enjoy the royal treatment. I could relate. I tried to get Tim to carry me into the Jeep as well, but it’s hard to get good liveried help these days.

  The next morning, we headed to Tim’s father’s house in rural Arkansas—Van Buren to be exact—the last stop of our three-week meltdown cruise. He and his dad had had their struggles; Tim always felt abandoned by Bob after his parents divorced. For decades, he and his father spoke to each other by phone three times a year and no more, on their birthdays and Christmas. Tim had a similar relationship with one of his half brothers, although they spoke three times less a year.

 
I could never understand just cutting someone off like that, no matter how upset you were with him, and eventually chalked it up to cultural differences: Apparently, in WASP families, if you don’t get along with someone, you have as little to do with them as possible. In Jewish families, if you don’t get along with someone, you move next door to make them as miserable as possible.

  As Bob got older, he reached out more to his only child, but Tim still felt awkward with the whole situation. Being too busy with work to visit became a convenient excuse, as much to Bob as to himself. After Bob got ill with cancer a few years back, however, Tim tried to make more of an effort even though work continued to remain an obstacle, like it was to nearly everything in his life, taking up most of his time. Now, at least for the year, we had nothing but time. Hence, the decidedly meandering and indirect route of our meltdown cruise: Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and now Arkansas.

  This leg, however, would prove the most challenging yet.

  We made the mistake of following MapQuest directions to Bob’s house. The Internet instructions seemed easy enough, but what we soon learned about MapQuest is that it gives the most direct route—not necessarily the most drivable one. When we got off the highway several miles from Bob’s house, the roads kept getting smaller and smaller. Soon we were traveling over tiny, one-lane bridges perched precariously over creek beds. Then we passed a “no trucks” sign.

  “We should turn back!” I protested.

  “We’re not a truck,” Tim blithely responded. “Besides, there’s no place to turn around.” He was right. We had no choice but to continue. We arrived at a bridge with the sign “Limit 30 Tons.”

  “How many are we?” I cried, reeling with bus phobia.

  “Twenty,” he replied. “Don’t worry.” We made it over that bridge, only to quickly come to another, this time with the sign “Limit 13 Tons.” That was all I needed to turn my reel into a full-fledged centrifuge; I could feel my lunch quickly separating itself from my intestinal tract.

  “WE’RE TWENTY TONS! WE’RE TWENTY TONS!” I screamed, contorting to grab something, anything to steady myself, even as my eyes remained glued to the road. That there are no armrests turns out to be a serious design flaw when the buddy seat is inhabited by a bus phobic.

  “Don’t worry,” Tim assured me, a manic gleam in his eyes as he barreled onward. “It’s too small for us to have all three axles on at the same time.” He hit the gas and we lurched to the other side. Then we came to an obstacle that would even have lent the Simpsons’ Otto pause: a washed-out culvert. Tim stopped the bus, climbed down, and inspected the impasse firsthand.

  “We need to back up,” I moaned weakly. The lack of airsickness bags was another huge design flaw. That this was probably due to the absence of a seatback in front of me was little comfort. “We won’t make it.”

  “I might agree,” Tim said, “but we still can’t turn around.” He was right again, of course. We were on a single-lane road, with no room to park the Jeep, let alone turn the bus around. Predictably for Tim, rather than get a tad out of sorts like me (OK, maybe I should just go with the streamlined “hysterical” here), this was just one more technical puzzle to solve. Not to say, however, that my husband wasn’t mightily embarrassed by the entire incident. Bob had, after all, offered to give us directions, but Tim demurred, saying, “We’ll be fine. We’ve got a computer!”

  After he positioned himself back behind the wheel, Tim gingerly maneuvered us through the stream and got us on a larger road. Then he promptly dashed right by his father’s house, completely missing the place. This occasioned a frantic call to our cell phone.

  “Was that you? There’s no place to turn around where you’re headed!” Indeed, there wasn’t. We unhooked the Jeep, Tim managed to find a spot to do a K-turn, and I followed him back to the house. I think I kissed the ground when we arrived, but I can’t be sure: It’s all a blur, in large part due to the green-tinged drink I invented to commemorate the occasion, the Hurlatini. Bob and his wife, Frances, had a good laugh when they heard about our ridiculous route.

  “We won’t even drive our cars that way!” Bob informed us.

  Tim parked the bus on Bob and Frances’s front lawn. The first evening, as we said goodnight and left the house to go to bed in the bus, Frances, who is one of the kindest souls on the planet, eyed my capri pants and exclaimed, “You better watch out or the chiggers’ll git you!” I couldn’t believe my ears. This woman I had thought so lovely was nothing more than a disgusting racist! My eyes grew wide and I was just about to open my mouth even wider to allow some choice words to escape, when she grabbed a small aerosol can and offered it to me. Now I was stupefied into silence. Did she really expect me to mace these…these…Well. I was not about to use the C-word. Seeing my expression, Frances repeated her admonition slowly, as if I had ridden into town on a short bus.

  “The…chiggers! The…chiggers…’ll…git…you!” she insisted. I examined the can. Bug spray. Chiggers, I soon learned, are nearly microscopic dots of torture that lie in wait in grass to burrow under your skin, causing itching and unsightly blemishes. If I’d had jurisdiction, I surely would have banished them from this strange kingdom.

  While we were on Bob’s farm, I asked to drive the tractor. I may not have been willing to get behind the wheel of my husband’s precious Prevost, as he thought I should, but at least I could attempt to partially counter my bus phobia by driving some type of big rig. Bob readily obliged after being assured by his son that a high entertainment value could be had. I was not daunted, but rather filed Tim’s glee away on the complaint form for the mythical home office I’d concocted in my head, devised on our first day out, at about the time the door flew open for the third time, in order not to feel we were so very out there, so totally on our own. Now “insulting passenger” joined “nearly killed passenger,” “nearly killed passenger,” and “nearly killed passenger.” Maybe they’d send a replacement driver.

  Poor Bob must never have been in the presence of royalty before, as he actually began the process by showing me the clutch and seven-speed pattern with high-low differential. As usual, I was possibly able, though most definitely unwilling, to comprehend mechanical gadgets and simply asked, “Don’t you have anything with an automatic?” He looked at me as if calculating the increase in insurance premium I was about to cost him. But donning my new cowboy hat (not to mention adorable black-and-white cowboy boots and designer jeans), I drove the thing and not only didn’t stall it once, but moseyed across the length of the cow pasture and back with nary an injury to man or beast. To Bob and his son’s dual expressions of amazement (if not disappointment) upon my return, I simply imparted the obvious lesson that should have been gleaned by those foolish menfolk: A Princess can do anything she puts her mind to—provided she’s wearing the right outfit.

  Arkansas left me in a state of perpetual moaning, à la the Hindenburg disaster: “Oh, the humidity!” The resulting hair debacle was on an order of magnitude neither Tim nor I had seen since almost a decade earlier, when, after a horrendous perm, I’d immediately gone swimming in a highly chlorinated pool in an even more highly misguided attempt to commit permacide.

  It had been raining in Van Buren for the past week (the same rains that had washed out the narrow roads on our way there), causing a far worse problem than that to my coif. Turns out, parking in Bob and Frances’s front yard was probably not the brightest idea: We started sinking. By our second day, we were pitching distinctly starboard. Since we had no intention of touching the stereo electronics again anytime soon, my Titanic CD was out of the question. I simply had to provide the illustrative background music myself and sang “Nearer My God to Thee,” in my best falsetto, every chance I got, alternating with an even more overwrought rendition than the original “My Heart Will Go On.” I still have a mark on my chest from the climactic thumping part. Where was Celine Dion when I needed her?

  One morning, we were awakened by Frances banging on the bus door.

&nbs
p; “Tim! Tim!” she cried. “Come quick!” We both assumed something terrible had happened to Bob.

  “Cousin JT’s been run’d over by the tractor!”

  Seventy-something Cousin JT, who lived down the road a piece, had been tinkering with the dead engine on his tractor when he reckoned (as Tim later explained in excruciating and painstaking detail) he’d take a screwdriver to touch across its battery’s poles to see if it would spark. It did, although he hadn’t counted on simultaneously hot-wiring the engine—especially with him standing in front of it. Fortunately for Cousin JT, the same rains that had so vexed my hair and our bus’s equilibrium were precisely what saved his life, for as he was mowed down, the soft earth underneath his body gave just enough to keep him just enough alive. It was his head, however, that was fixin’ to prove his undoing: He refused to go to the hospital. Naturally then, Bob and Frances wanted the doctor in the house to make a house call. OK. I guess my husband the psychiatrist can ask JT how he feels about his near-death experience. Before I even finished the thought, Tim dashed out the door.

  During the four hours before he returned, it started to pour. Now the bus was seriously listing. Would we ever be able to get out? Did the local AAA have a flatbed truck to rescue us with? Was there even a local AAA here in Van Buren, Arkansas? Would the entire earth swallow us whole, and if it did, how would I rescue the pets? I decided that with Tim AWOL, I was acting captain and had to go down with our ship of fools. The only thing to do, then, was huddle under the covers with Shula, contemplating our murky demise.

  Shula, our beautiful seal-point Balinese with Tim’s intense blue eyes (proving paternity, I often said), could surely be counted on whenever cowering was called for. We had always explained her skittishness away with “Well, we got her for her looks.” I maintained that Shula’s beauty was more of a curse than a blessing, as if she knew she could get by in life just being stunning, rather than bothering to develop a personality. (Or maybe it was I who was being catty, remembering how I envied all the gorgeous cheerleaders in high school.) In any event, Shula’s a cat only a mother could love.