Queen of the Road

by Doreen Orion

  She didn’t get that way just because best friends Morty and Miles constantly ganged up on her (Morty because he could, Miles because he just wanted to gum her a little). No, from the moment we rescued Shula from under an acquaintance’s double-wide and she buried her head in my lap for the entire ride home, she’s proved herself a neurotic victim. Before our bus trip, all our friends (well, at least the ones who had actually ever seen her) asked with incredulity, “You’re not taking Shula, are you?” We felt she could be just as miserable on the bus as she was off it. You gotta be tough to survive in our dysfunctional little furry family.

  Morty, of course, had no problem at all in the “be tough” department. Nothing fazed him. If Tim wanted to vacuum, he had to move that cat. Unlike Shula, Morty was never shy about anything, especially his own presence. Upon entering a room (including the bedroom while we slept), he’d let out a series of loud MEOWs, as if he were not a mere mutt of uncertain parentage rescued from the pound, but royalty being hugely inconvenienced by having to announce his own entrance. Whenever Tim wanted affection from me, he’d learned to say, “Pretend I’m Morty.” He was not alone. Everyone in the house considered me Morty’s bitch, for, as in a prison yard (which, in effect, our house had become for our indoor cats), if Morty saw Shula in my lap, he calmly caught her eye, causing her to immediately skulk away, terrified. He would then resume whatever he was doing; he didn’t particularly want me at that moment. He just wanted the other inmates to know: That’s my bitch.

  Although I adore my poodle, Miles has always made it clear to me why I am a cat person; he’s just so darn happy—including first thing in the morning. (I am much more in tune with felines, whose initial inclination on being awakened is not to snap to with a “Well, well! What fascinating activity is in store for us, today?” but reluctantly relinquish somnolence with an even more snarky version of what has always been my own personal battle cry: “What do you want from me?”) As a result, Miles blithely follows Tim everywhere. Clearly my husband is a deity in the poodle universe. I guess I’d be that happy too, even first thing in the morning, if I knew I got to sniff God’s butt all day.

  As I turned off the bedroom lights (the better for Shula and I to cower), lightning struck. I remembered the large extension cord plugging the bus into an outside outlet, allowing us the electricity to run our air-conditioning, lights, appliances, computer, etc. Might we be electrocuted before we were even submerged? It seemed as if Sunnydale’s Hellmouth (yet another favorite teen drama—Buffy the Vampire Slayer) had opened a franchise in Van Buren, Arkansas, trying to reclaim a lost member to the fold—our very own Hellbus. Unto every generation, a pathetic Princess who listens to her husband’s idiotic plan is born. Oh, Buffy, where are you when I need you?

  Meanwhile, Tim was facing a near-death experience of his own, as Frances was racing him in her Lincoln Town Car over narrow, winding, backcountry roads, hitting 70 mph to get to Cousin JT’s house. On arrival, Tim found Cousin JT covered in sweat, struggling for breath, wearing only his briefs and an open bathrobe, sitting in his favorite recliner, swearing to anyone who would listen, “I’ll be OK if I can just set a spell.”

  Living in the land of chiggers evidently makes you tough.

  Of course, Cousin JT proved no match for Tim’s patented powers of persuasion, although fortunately in this case, Tim used those powers for good, rather than evil. JT agreed to go to the hospital and just in time; with two punctured lungs, four broken ribs, and a broken clavicle, he ended up spending three weeks in the ICU.

  But first, they had to get him there. With Bob at the wheel, trying to both speed down the highway yet slow down for bumps (because they caused JT to gasp for breath as though each one would be his last), they started to take the exit for the nearest hospital, when JT got even more agitated, explaining “that place” had done him wrong when his wife had been a patient there a few years before. As he so eloquently put it, given the circumstances, “I—GASP!—won’t—GASP!—go there!” Not wanting to agitate him even more, Bob swerved back onto the freeway for an additional fifteen-minute drive to the next, more acceptable facility.

  Tim told Bob to pull in where it said, “EMERGENCY VEHICLES ONLY,” assuring his father that this was, indeed, an emergency. He then instructed Bob to remain in the car with Cousin JT, so that Tim himself could do the talking. As Tim leapt from the car, he knew he didn’t have much time to convey the gravity of the situation and rehearsed all the medical jargon he was going to use: how an elderly white male had suffered blunt-force trauma to his abdomen and chest and appeared to have a pneumothorax. Tim burst through the emergency room doors and wound up face to face with the triage nurse. She glanced at him wearily and he could see behind her the waiting room teeming with people who had upset stomachs and colds. He looked back at the woman, assumed his best “I’m a doctor” stance, and blurted out, “Cousin JT’s been run’d over by the tractor!”

  Her eyes got wide as hubcaps, for he had unknowingly spoken exactly the right language to get her attention.

  “Nooooo!” she cried.

  “Yeeeees!” he answered. She grabbed a gurney and an attendant, and they all raced to the car.

  Later that day, as we drove into town for a quick errand, Tim tried to explain to his father the folly of asking a psychiatrist to make a house call during a medical emergency and broke out his best Dr. McCoy: “Damn it, Bob! I’m a psychiatrist, not a real doctor!” Something told me Bob had never seen a Star Trek episode. On the other hand, Bob did know the correct, non-MapQuest route out of town, and since we were leaving in a few days, he showed us how to go. Unfortunately, there was construction, considerably narrowing the two-lane road. Worse, it had large, concrete masses on either side, which Tim helpfully informed me were “Jersey barriers.” Naming them didn’t ease my apprehension.

  “Are you sure we’ll fit?” I kept asking Tim. Yes, yes, he kept trying to reassure me.

  “But look how little room there is! What if you hit a—”

  Finally, he interrupted with an exasperated “Maybe we can get Bob and Frances to drive you to the highway.”

  “Maybe we can get Bob and Frances to drive me to the airport,” I retorted under my breath.

  Our last night, Bob and Frances took us a few miles away to the home of Joanne and Jay. There, most Wednesday nights for the last decade, Jay and his friend Don played bluegrass. Jay, a distinguished-looking seventy-year-old, strummed a guitar and mandolin. Don, a handsome, slightly younger, lanky man with a ready, knee-slapping grin (unless he had an instrument in his hand, when he compensated for the lack of knee slapping with an even larger grin), played the guitar and banjo.

  We all sat out on the deck with another neighbor couple and Joanne and Jay’s two-year-old Chihuahua, Troubles, running back and forth between each of us, begging for a lap. It was obvious Troubles was female, as I’d seen this sort of grass-is-always-greener attitude often in my practice among young human women: As soon as Troubles got the lap she professed to want, she’d decide there was better lap to be had and demand to get off. Tim and I each held her many a time, knowing full well there’d be hell to pay when we got back to the bus, in the form of accusatory looks from our own animals when they figured out we’d been cheating on them.

  Although during our entire visit thus far I could not understand why anyone would want to live in Van Buren, that night I found myself charmed. As we sat out on the deck, surrounded by tall, graceful trees, night fell and hummingbirds gave way to fireflies. A deer and her fawn lingered at the edge of the yard. But it was not until I was enveloped by the easy company of longtime friends that I could understand how people might want to settle here. While Tim and I enjoyed going out with other couples, it was all too often something we’d have to “schedule.” It was almost as if by doing so, we were sacrificing something else—although what it was, exactly, was never clear. Our lives were so crammed with demands on our time that something we should have found pleasurable became almost another burden. I ne
ver got that sense from anyone in Van Buren.

  Jay and Don played a few tunes, then let their fingers rest while everyone chatted a spell, then played some more. Don laughed at times while he strummed, presumably because he’d made a mistake, although I never did catch one. As Bob told him, “Don, if you didn’t laugh, no one would know you’d hit the wrong note!” During one of their breaks, Jay talked about a cow he had with some muscle disease that made him smell real bad. Don offered that it wouldn’t bother him, because he couldn’t smell: His nerves had been cut during a dental surgery years before. “But,” he went on with that ready grin, “there’s a guy at work who can’t taste or smell, so I figure I’m ahead of the game.”

  He came to playing late in life: At age thirty, he simply felt the call, found a teacher, and discovered he had a gift. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear enough of that wonderful sound, as Don had to leave early to be up at 3:30 the next morning for his shift at the manufacturing plant. It seems that even more than that gift, his true talent is to understand what’s important in his life; although by selling it he could make what he earns in a year at the factory, he refuses to part with his banjo because he has never heard another with as good a tone. Out of all my possessions, I could not think of one I held as dear.

  As we got ready for bed that night, Tim and I talked about how much we enjoyed the evening. He remarked that it was a throwback to a simpler time, when people depended on each other for entertainment, rather than technology. I wondered which is simpler, really: relying on radio, Internet, and TV for social glue or on ourselves and each other, on our own imaginations and talents to delight and ultimately bind us together. I had been so focused on the change in lifestyle thrust on me by this trip, that I didn’t even consider it might actually be causing changes in me. We hadn’t even started the official journey yet, and already I was encountering ideas and experiences that were putting a chink in my designer armor of dearly held beliefs.

  Surely, if I’d had even an inkling that it might cause me to change in any way, I would have protested this whole bus thing far more vigorously.

  Yet, as I looked at my husband, brushing his teeth and humming one of Don’s tunes, I couldn’t help but think that maybe, maybe Tim had the right idea all along. That, perhaps, poking my head out beyond my own door once in a while might open me up to experiences that could never be as rich when passively observed in my pajamas, sitting in my favorite chair in front of the TV. Tim had, in a variety of ways, been trying to point that out for years, but just hearing the words never convinced me. Then, even more surprisingly, Tim commented that through sharing bluegrass in the woods, he got a glimpse into how I experience life, living in the moment (OK, so it’s usually an indoor moment) instead of worrying about tomorrow or planning what it should bring. We realized that night, that while reveling in our differences is fun, perhaps, even after all these years, we each had something to learn from the other.

  The rest of the summer was a blur of packing up the house, readying it for our renters, and putting whatever belongings we were not taking in storage. Vanture kept the bus for a while, working the bugs out—minor details like getting the door to lock, fixing the broken stereo cabinet, inducing both the lying bitch not to lie and Peter to fix the TV.

  When a girl finds herself forced to live in a bus for a year, the least she can do is throw a fabulous going away party. Besides, one must always look for occasions to wear one’s boa.

  We and the Vanture guys invited all our friends and neighbors as well as everyone who worked on the bus. We got plenty of snacks and even more plentiful booze (these were mostly our friends, after all). Chris and John surprised us with what I think was the sweetest, albeit shortest-lasting gift we’ve ever received: a case of our own “vintage” wines complete with a picture of our bus on the label.

  Tim and I were busy greeting guests at the entrance to Vanture’s warehouse when one of our friends came over and, a bit timidly, asked to see the bus. It was clearly visible in an adjacent garage bay, but Tim gamely shrugged and took him over for a private tour. It was only when he got to the passenger’s side that Tim realized what the fellow’s hesitation had been: There was a line. A long one. By then, 125 people had showed up to the party. What I found even more astounding than the sheer volume of people was that every single one of them wanted to get into the very bus that I couldn’t wait to get out of.

  The same friends who initially told me how crazy I was about the whole bus thing were now actually trying to be supportive in the face of the fiasco our meltdown cruise had been. There were variations of “I’m sure you’ll get used to it” and “All the bugs are certainly worked out by now,” sprinkled with “What an adventure!” But, seeing my hands shake and my lips quiver whenever the words “bus,” “road,” or, for that matter, “hi there!” were uttered, they would usually resort to leaning in close and urging, sotto voce, “Get Tim to hypnotize you.”

  For some reason, our neighbor Jackie seemed to share my bus phobia, even though I’ve never seen anything larger than a perfectly respectable van parked in front of her house. When I related my fear of overpasses, rather than try to reassure me as everyone else had, Jackie instead exclaimed, “Oh, no! Of course there’s less room than the signs say! When they pave the highways, they don’t take away the asphalt that’s already there. They add to it!” I gave her a wide-eyed look and asked, “Did Bob make you live on a bus, too?” Of course, her husband never had, but Jackie’s Australian, so maybe that explains something.

  Chris and John had their own rock band and played occasional gigs around town. A month before the meltdown cruise, when I was not yet feeling homicidal toward my spouse about the whole thing of bus, I asked if they’d be willing to back me up if I sang a song as a surprise for Tim. They were thrilled to do something nice for my husband (he still had that effect on people), and got Kirby and Manny from their shop to play keyboard and drums, respectively. John’s adorable eighteen-year-old daughter, Katie, sang backup. We practiced a couple of times and it all went well, but still, I had never sung in front of anyone before.

  Chris, as lead guitarist, had arranged that when his band warmed up, he’d bring Tim and me over to say a few words to the crowd. Tim started with a hysterical monologue about building the bus and then learning to operate it, in which he thanked his driving instructor, Robin, for her gentle ways. He explained, “If I did a turn properly, she’d say, ‘Nice turn. You wound up in the lane in the right position’ if I screwed up a turn, she’d say, ‘Good entrance into that turn’ and if we nearly hit a lamppost, she’d say, ‘Nice application of the turn signal.’”

  When Tim finished, Chris handed me the microphone, and as we’d agreed, I pretended to be terribly nervous speaking in front of all those people. I hemmed and hawed so convincingly that I clearly had Tim fooled. (He told me later he started getting really anxious for me, until he remembered, “Wait a minute. My wife, shy?”) Even Chris, who had been in on it all along, felt compelled to step in front of me and helpfully comment, “Just say it like I’m the only one here.” Nice ad lib, Chris. Now get out of my spotlight.

  When I determined I had made the audience so uncomfortable that no matter how I sang, it would be a relief compared to what they already endured, I grabbed the mike, turned to the band, and commanded in my best gravelly voice, “Join in anytime, boys.”

  To the tune of the Pointer Sisters’ version of Bruce Spring-steen’s “Fire”:

  I’m riding in your bus.

  You turn on the radio.

  You’re pulling me close.

  I scream, “EYES ON THE ROAD.”

  I say I don’t like it,

  But you know I’m a liar.

  ’Cause when you brake…

  Oooooh, squeal of tires.

  Late at night,

  You’re drivin’ us home.

  I say, “Park in a Wal-Mart,”

  But you’re in the zone.

  I say I don’t love bus life,

 
; But you know I’m a liar.

  ’Cause when you brake…

  Oooooh, squeal of tires.

  It had a hold on you right from the start.

  How could I compete with that Series 60 tart?

  Live in it a year?

  I said I’d never agree,

  Until those four magic words…

  In-motion satellite TV.

  Ralph Kramden and Otto.

  And now my Tim.

  My new motto

  Is “Leave the driving to him.”

  My words say, “HOLY SHIT WHAT HAVE WE DONE?”

  But my words, they’re lies.

  ’Cause when you brake…

  Oooooh, squeal of tires.

  Oooooh, squeal of tires.

  Hot bumper over tires.

  Aluminum wheels on tires.

  New lug nuts with tires.

  Skid marks from tires.

  I like the way you’re drivin’ now…tires.

  Take me home to tires.

  I told friends who missed the show they could “catch it soon at a Wal-Mart near you.”

  Toward the end of the evening we wrapped the “Name Our Bus Contest.” We had put up a bulletin board with small squares of paper, explaining that whoever wanted to enter should write down their brilliant idea for a bus name on one side and their own on the other, tacking the bus name side up (we didn’t want the judges to be unduly influenced). After a couple of hours, Tim and I took the bulletin board down and conferred in the Vanture conference room. Names like “Boris” and “Fred” were quickly discarded. We also disqualified “Paradocs,” as too many people would share the prize. Personally, I liked “Crosswalk Killer,” but Tim, who within nanoseconds of thinking up the idea for the contest had decreed himself head judge, demurred.