Chloe grumbles something else under her breath, but I ignore her. I stretch out on one of the bench seats and put my feet on Mo’s lap. “I like your incessant critical analysis,” I say. “But also Chloe’s right. This road trip is about All the Kitsch.”
“Fine. You’re the boss.” Mo sighs. “Feel okay?” He kneads the backs of my calves gently.
I nod. “Just stiff. Per usual.”
“Okay, the hotspot is working,” Chloe says. “Are we ready for takeoff?” When she turns around, her face is flushed with more energy than I can imagine mustering for anything at this point, and I love her for it.
Mohit squeezes my leg. “I think your fans want to say goodbye one more time.”
Outside, Mom and Liam are emerging from our building with yet another bag of stuff. We’ve already weighed the Tomato down with more pain meds, fluids, hot and cold compresses, and fuzzy slippers than I can count, not to mention my new friend the Oxygen Tank and its constant companion, the Annoying Plastic Cannula.
Liam bounces into the Tomato. “Whoa! This is awesome!”
“Want the tour, dude?” Chloe offers. She shows him the bathroom, even runs the shower for a minute so he can see how it gets the whole “room” wet.
“Cool!”
Mom sits next to me. “You’re sure about this?” she asks quietly. I still can’t believe she’s letting me go.
“We’ll be fine, Mom. I promise.”
“You’ll keep in touch with me constantly, right? Text, phone, Facebook, et cetera?”
“All of the above. Except, can you please get off Facebook? It’s not good for your blood pressure.”
“Except, hello,” Chloe interjects. “That’s where most of our traffic is coming from. The people, they still love the Facebook.”
“See?” Mom says. “The people still love the Facebook. And I am the people.”
“Fine, fine.”
“And you’ll call Dr. Klein’s office if anything seems amiss, or you have questions about the pain meds, or anything at all?”
“We’re going to be gone for a week.”
She pulls me into her chest and buries her face in the top of my head. “I know, I know. I’m just—I can’t believe I’m letting you do this on your own. World’s Okayest Parenting Award, right here.”
“Mom. Mom.”
“What, baby?”
“Suffocating. Me.”
She releases my head a little bit. “Sorry. You know, when you were a baby I used to genuinely worry that I’d cuddle you so hard I’d squish you.” Mom squeezes me all over again. “I just love-love-love you so much-much-much.” She presses my cheeks together between her palms.
“Okay, okay. I hear you. I love you, too. And I think you’re in the clear on the parenting behavior on this one. Remember, you’re giving me the keys to my destiny. Isn’t that what all parents strive for?”
Mom raises an eyebrow. “If that’s what we’re calling this.” Then she looks at Mo. “Mohit, you’re in charge. If she’s hurting, or if anything seems off at all, I want to know about it. I don’t care what she says.”
“Roger that.”
“Why am I not in charge, Maxine?” Chloe asks from the driver’s seat, smirking at us.
“No comment, Chloe, my love.”
“And what about me? I get no say in this whatsoever?” I say. “I’m not dead yet, you know.”
“You’re an unreliable witness.” Mom kisses me one more time. “All right, Liam-boy, let’s let these guys get on the road. And I have your list of motels, but if you change any of your plans—which you should if you get tired and you didn’t get as far as you expected—I want details immediately. Got that? If I spot-check these motels, I expect to find you wherever you said you were going to be.”
“Are you going to spot-check the motels?”
“I am not ruling it out. So don’t make us both regret it.”
“Bye, Mommy.” I kiss her cheek. “Bye, dude,” I say to Liam.
“Bye, baby. Bye, partners-in-crime. Drive very, very safely. Both of you.” My mother looks from Chloe to Mohit and back again, her best serious-mom expression plastered all over her face.
“Don’t worry, Maxine. I’ve been driving the Tomato since I got my license.”
“Which was all of a year ago, Chloe.”
“Details. I’m an expert. And Mohit is … fine.”
We all look at Mo.
“I’ve been practicing!” He crosses his arms defiantly.
“Careful,” Mom says. “Under the speed limit, always. No texting and driving. No loud music. Constant contact with your mother.”
I let out a grand sigh. “Mom, we got it. All of it.”
“Fine. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
As we pull away from the curb, Mom and Liam wave frantically until we’re almost out of sight. I see Mom wipe her face, then shake it off. My own cheeks get hot, and I swallow back tears. Even though I’m super ready to go on this trip, and even though it’s only for a few days, I’ll miss them.
“Hey,” Mo says quietly. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Are we really going to Arizona to see the corpsicles?”
“Can we please stop calling them that?”
The sun is barely rising as Chloe eases the Tomato onto 93 South. She honks the horn. “Next stop! Points southwest.”
And just like that, weighed down with only about a thousand pounds of snacks, a veritable pharmacy, and the feeling that we are driving toward a future none of us can imagine, we’re on our way.
31.
We’re chatty for the first couple of hours, arguing over the radio (Chloe wants only Top 40; Mohit claims we’re rotting our brains with even one round of Justin Bieber) and breaking out the snacks already. By the time the day is fully awake, though, I’m tired and rest my head against the side of the Tomato’s bench seat. The old vinyl crunches under my cheek, but I’m too exhausted to get my pillow, or even to ask Mo to get it for me.
“Wake me when we get to New Jersey.”
We’ve decided to make the first day’s drive a relatively short one, just far enough to hit Lucy the Elephant in the afternoon and crash for the night. Even so, it suddenly seems like a very long first leg.
* * *
When I wake, the Tomato is quiet and still. I sit up gingerly, as I always do now, assessing my body one inch at a time. Head? Not throbbing. Back? Sore from the twisted position I’ve been sleeping in, probably, but not terrible. Legs? Sturdy enough beneath me, it seems.
I’m alone. Outside, I see Chloe pumping gas into the Tomato’s belly, staring absently out at the long road in front of her. Mo’s nowhere to be seen, but I’m guessing he’s peeing. Mohit has the smallest bladder of any guy I’ve ever met.
I stretch and manage to lower myself out of the vehicle without incident. Wherever we are, I can’t smell the sea. So I didn’t sleep quite all the way to the Jersey Shore, then.
The rest stop is called Benny’s 24 Hours, according to half-burned-out neon signage over the front door. Looks like your standard cigarettes/lottery tickets/slushies kind of place—not one of those new fancy rest areas with multiple dining options and arcade games and a playground and dog run off the parking lot. When we used to stop on the way to visit my grandmother in upstate New York every Thanksgiving, Mom always made us choose the healthiest food on offer, which seemed like it defeated the purpose of a road trip. Liam and I would negotiate our way into sharing a milkshake or a small McNuggets or something—anything—to go with our limp, days-old rest-area salads. After Dad left, Mom started packing a cooler full of snacks and sandwiches for our trips to Grandma’s, and she’d drive almost straight there, as fast as we could go without getting pulled over. We didn’t stop at all, unless someone really had to pee.
Mohit emerges from Benny’s. His face lights up when he sees me. “You’re up!” He kisses me. “Hey, this place is owned by Parikhs! We could probably get a deal on a room if we want.”
“A room?”
Mo nods toward a motel behind Benny’s. “Same owners, obviously. I told you Gujaratis are the kings of lodging.” Gujarat, the state in northwest India where Mohit’s parents were born, has apparently produced an outsize proportion of motel owners in America, among other entrepreneurial ventures.
“Where are we?”
“Not in Margate yet, that’s for sure. Still in New York.”
We’ve been on the road for what feels like an age already, but New York? That’s practically around the corner. I feel a twinge in my spine and try to shrug it off. Arizona feels far away.
“I should probably update my mom on our whereabouts.”
Mohit holds up a mini apple pie contained in a small paper wrapper. “Pie?”
“Ah, you’re a genius.” I take a bite. It’s microwave-hot and too sweet and really good, the kind of treat Liam and I would’ve begged for on a road trip.
“I’ve been texting her every time we cross a state line,” he says. “Which, to be fair, has only been twice because, like I said, we’re still in New York.”
“Thanks,” I say through another bite of too-hot pie. “You a ve-y goo boy-feh.”
“What was that?”
I fan at my mouth, chewing while trying not to scald myself.
“Uh-huh. I’d like to hear whatever you said just then one more time, without the pie.” Mo raises an eyebrow at me. “Was it something like ‘You’re a very good boyfriend’? I’m just wagering a guess. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
He certainly seems perkier than he did when we set off, and it’s a relief. I don’t think I could take a whole road trip to and from Arizona with Mo and Chloe bickering with each other. I stick my tongue out at him, revealing a mouthful of pie.
The Tomato honks—or more like squawks—at us from its parking spot, and Chloe leans out the front door. “We’re gassed up, and your third wheel would like to get a move on now, thanks!”
* * *
Chloe makes Mohit drive for a while, through the rest of southern New York and finally, mercifully, over the border into New Jersey, so she can film another vlog entry and post it to our site.
“So we’re on our way to Arizona,” I say, unbearably awkwardly I’m sure, into the camera. The light from outside filters through the smudged windows of the Tomato as stretches of flat, identical highway speed by. “We’re going to see the, uh, the cryopreservation facility there, which is where I would probably, um, be living—though not technically living—if I’m able to preserve my body. So, yeah. That’s it.”
I stop there. Chloe looks at me dully. “That’s it?” she says, pausing the camera. “Can you think of something a smidge more dynamic to tell your fans?”
“Chloe, I have no fans. The people watching these videos are, like, twelve of our classmates and your mothers.”
She rolls her eyes. “All of whom are people who gave you the money to take this little road trip, I might add. Not to mention the in-kind donation of the Tomato. So we may as well make them a video they can enjoy.”
I sigh. I don’t know how to make a video of myself right now that people can “enjoy.” We’re not on some quirky made-for-reality-television road trip. We’re in an RV, true, which is pretty cool, but when said RV is taking you to Arizona to check out the facility where at some point soon your posthumous body might be contained at subzero temperatures while your loved ones falter on in their lives without you, it’s not that cute.
I don’t say that to Chloe, or in the video, obviously. I get what she’s trying to do, which is be helpful. Raise money. Get me what I want for my dying wish. She’s a good friend like that. But I’m still having a hard time reconciling the two things—the privacy of illness and death with the public nature of posting videos to the internet and asking strangers for money. It gives me a twisty, sour feeling in my stomach every time I think about it.
But I won’t ask my mother for any more money than she’s already contributed. She doesn’t have more to give, even if I didn’t feel guilty about asking for it. So I push the sour-stomach feeling aside and pull my mouth into a smile, for the fans.
32.
We finally come off the Garden State Parkway and follow the GPS onto Route 563. Shortly thereafter, we find ourselves in Margate, where Lucy the Elephant looms large—six stories, just like the guidebook promised—right over the water. In the legions of great kitsch lining American roadsides, Lucy, it turns out, is pretty epic.
Chloe insisted that we spend our first night in the motel adjacent to Lucy’s park. It’s obviously off-season, so it’s quiet when we check in. It’s unclear if there are any other guests at all, actually. The kid at the front desk looks about our age and bored out of her mind.
“You want to see the elephant?” she says, absently, like she’s possibly high. We indicate that yes, we do indeed want to see the elephant. (Why else would we be in this motel in the middle of a Saturday in the dead of winter?) She snaps a piece of gum and shrugs as she hands us our room keys—one for me and Chloe, one for Mohit, per all our parents’ instructions. “Last tour starts at three thirty.”
The rooms are standard-issue coastal-town cheap, the same horrible wallpaper and horrible bedspreads that seem to have been sold in bulk to all the motels across the country. I rest for a minute on one of the double beds in our room while Chloe pees.
“Should you bring your oxygen tank to the elephant?” she calls from the bathroom, kicking the door halfway open so I can hear her.
I look at the tank and cannula, coiled up and waiting for me in the corner. They’re in the wheely cart, but it’ll be a pain to lug up what I imagine are quite a lot of stairs in Lucy’s leg.
“No. I’ll be okay.”
Chloe flushes. “Are you sure? Mo can carry it. It can’t weigh much more than his sax case, and he never goes anywhere without that.”
“No. I’m sure. I can climb the elephant on my own.”
* * *
We’re the only people on the last tour of the day. Another kid close enough to our age and apparently not as interested in Lucy as we are leads the tour with a mild air of irritation, like he was hoping the last tour would get canceled, but then we showed up.
The stairs are in Lucy’s back left leg, and though it’s a spiral staircase, I realize with some relief that there aren’t actually that many stairs. Chloe bounds up ahead, peppering the poor tour guide with questions based on the two paragraphs of Lucy’s history she read in our guidebook.
Mohit follows a step or two behind, spotting me, I can tell. “She looks like an Indian elephant,” he muses. “So why is her name Lucy? I’ve never met an Indian Lucy.”
“I have no idea, Mo.” I concentrate on walking, one foot in front of the other, one step, then another. I pause midway to catch my breath. A few minutes later, we come up into Lucy’s belly, where Chloe is already watching a video about the statue’s history.
You wouldn’t know it from the outside, but it’s quite spectacular in the belly of an elephant. I count twenty-two windows in every direction. The tour guide musters some enthusiasm when he tells us to look out Lucy’s huge glass eyes, which give us a perfect view of the ocean and the beach below. The beach is empty, and for a moment it feels like we’re the only people in the world, our little group of weirdos on a weird field trip. No cancer, no frozen bodies ahead of us, just me, Mo, and Chloe. Well, and the tour guide.
“Hey, look,” Mo says. “She has a pane in the butt. Get it?” He’s cracking up, pointing to the window in Lucy’s rear.
“I see what you did there.”
The late-afternoon winter sun shimmers through Lucy’s windows. Up another set of stairs, the guide leads us into the howdah, the carriage perched on Lucy’s back, for an even better view of the ocean as far as we can see.
“Whoa,” Chloe says, under her breath. “This is good.”
“Right?” I grin at her.
Mo wraps an arm around me, and I think of the first time we took in a beautiful view together
, our first conversation about God, the beginnings of becoming each other’s favorite people.
It’s cold up there, even in the sun, with the wind blowing pretty hard off the water. I savor a long, deep inhale of salt air. From here, the rest of the trip will be inland. Who knows when—if—I’ll smell the ocean again.
* * *
Later, after we’ve eaten cheeseburgers, the kind that are pressed perfectly thin against the grill, at a divey beachside restaurant, I call Mom.
“How is it?” she asks.
“Pretty great so far. We climbed a giant elephant and saw the ocean.”
Mom laughs, and for a moment she sounds like her old self, the person she was before I got sick and my sickness started to define how much fun she was allowed to have, how hard she was allowed to laugh. Her laughing got rationed. At least, it seems that way to me.
Anyway, she laughs. “That does sound perfect, my love.”
“It was.”
* * *
I’m so exhausted from this long day basically sitting in a moving vehicle that it’s all I can do to peel my clothes off and collapse into bed. Steam from Chloe’s shower filters into the room and makes me feel a little sticky; there must not be a vent in the bathroom. I hear her singing to herself, an Aretha Franklin song we heard on the radio earlier.
You better think—think! Think about what you’re trying to do to me!
I smile, picturing Chloe grooving under the hot water, maybe holding a travel-size shampoo bottle as a mic. She’s in a good mood. I’m glad. Maybe she’s gotten lost in the moment of all of this and let herself forget—or just push aside—the real reason we’re on this trip in the first place. I wish I could do the same thing.
I reach for my phone, but the battery’s dead, and instantly I know the charger is still sitting in the Tomato. Go figure. There’s no way I’m getting out of this bed and taking myself out to the parking lot to retrieve it. Instead, I grab the video camera off Chloe’s bed, prop it up on my chest on top of the covers, and start talking.
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