Tunnel of Love

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “Same difference,” Robin said. She had an answer for everything. And she was so paranoid; according to her, Cynthia intended to kidnap Phoebe and turn her into a “slave,” too.

  Now, all the way from Hollywood to Benedict Canyon, Robin heckled and instructed Linda. “Faster. Faster” was her steady refrain on the freeway, and when they drove locally, she kept urging Linda to run over anybody crossing against the light. She even opened her window and yelled “Roadkill!” at a couple of startled pedestrians, and then argued that they were just asking for it. She couldn’t seem to sit still for a minute, and Linda worried that she was on speed or something. First, Robin turned on all four air-conditioning jets full blast in her own direction, so that her hair blew wildly around her face while Linda sweltered, only inches away. Then she pushed the radio buttons rapidly from one rock station to another, and bounced around to the noise that filled the car. She lingered longest, it seemed, on any number with a violent message and a grating beat. Linda wondered once again what she was doing trying to teach someone like Robin to drive. It was really criminal, like putting a loaded Uzi into the hands of a known serial killer. She thought of those amusement parks they’d stopped at on their trip West, at Robin’s insistence, and her insistence that they try all the dangerous rides, monstrous contraptions with names like “Death Rocket” and “Trip to Hell” that spun you madly around, or turned you upside down and inside out until you were nothing but streaming hair and tangled guts and a sustained, high-pitched scream. Linda had begged off everything but the safe and sane Tunnel of Love, using her pregnancy as an alibi, but she wouldn’t have been too willing under any circumstances. Robin went on the other rides by herself, anyway, while Linda stood there watching her and feeling almost as queasy as she would have been aboard. Even on the benign bumper cars, Robin had driven head-on into other cars with what seemed like malicious glee. But she was full of adolescent bluff and bluster; all the awful things she’d threatened to do since Linda had known her, and then hadn’t, could fill a book.

  The one thing Robin seemed sincerely determined about, though, was driving a real car. She had been talking for months about getting her learner’s permit, and right before her fifteenth birthday, in early July, she’d signed up for the Driver’s Ed course offered in summer school. Her grades in English and social studies had fallen off considerably the past semester, but driving was the only subject she’d volunteered to take during her vacation. Linda knew that if she opposed her, Robin would simply “borrow” the car one day without anyone’s blessings, including the state’s. She’d managed to pass Drivers Ed somehow and get her precious permit, but she definitely needed further instruction, and lots of practice.

  Linda couldn’t afford to pay for professional lessons, so Nathan had promised to do the teaching for her. He’d come up with several reasons why Linda was unsuitable for the job: she was too nervous, Robin didn’t like or respect her, and her own driving stank, no offense. He said that she drove like a little old lady, stiffly and slowly, as if she’d once been reckless but had learned her lesson. He hunched over in cruel imitation of her, staring bug-eyed into an imaginary distance and holding an imaginary wheel in a steel grip. When Linda squealed in protest and swatted at him with a magazine, he tried to temper the insult by kissing her neck and shoulders. And when she mentioned, as tactfully as she could, that he’d been stopped for speeding twice recently, he brushed her off in that same exasperating way, telling her to just let him take care of everything, muñeca, okay? Nathan had once worked at a driving school in San Diego (where hadn’t he worked?), and he claimed there wasn’t a driver born he couldn’t handle. Linda certainly wasn’t looking forward to teaching Robin to drive, and Nathan and Robin did seem to be getting along much better. But when he took her out in the 88 the following Sunday, they came back less than an hour later, both of them grim-faced and ominously silent. “What?” Linda asked in alarm. “What happened?”

  No one bothered to answer her. Robin slammed into her bedroom, and Nathan splashed some cold water on his face before he slammed out of the house and roared away in his Z. When Linda tried to raise the subject with him the next evening when they were alone, he muttered angrily to himself in Spanish, like Ricky Ricardo after Lucy had just pulled some crazy stunt, and she was afraid to press the matter any further. Robin was even less forthcoming. Linda asked her, “Did you have an accident or anything, honey?” and Robin looked right through her with slitted eyes and didn’t deign to reply. Linda seemed able to read her mind, though, something that was happening more and more lately. Maybe it was a common phenomenon between people who lived together for a long time. What Robin appeared to say was, “I had an accident, all right, asshole, and you’re it.” Or, “Yeah, I had a terrible accident—I was born.” Either way, Linda didn’t want to hear about it.

  So the driving instruction was left up to her. After they delivered the baby to Cynthia, they were going to a supermarket a couple of miles away maybe the only one in all of Southern California that wasn’t open around the clock. For some reason, probably to do with either religion or sports, the Food Bazaar didn’t open until noon on Sundays, and the huge, empty parking lot would be a perfect place for Robin to practice. And at twelve, when the market opened, they could get some groceries. Margarine, milk, detergent, oranges—Linda made a mental shopping list as she drove, feeling marvelously efficient for once.

  The approach to Cynthia’s house, her mansion, still delighted Linda; it was like entering an enchanted forest. But Cynthia was hardly the fairy-tale ogre and slave driver Robin made her out to be. If she was, they wouldn’t be here now, would they? In the driveway, Linda got out and struggled to the front door with the baby and all of her gear. She rang the doorbell with her left elbow, setting off the chimes and starting the dogs barking and howling inside. Robin stayed safely in the car, just in case someone let them out again. In moments, Lupe appeared and whisked Phoebe away. Cynthia came out next, followed by her handsome young houseman/chauffeur (whose name, Linda had found out, was Mitchell, not Mellors). He relieved Linda of the diaper bag, the Muppets mobile, and the folded stroller, and carried them inside. “So long, kids,” Cynthia called, so as to include Robin, who had moved over to the driver’s seat of the 88 the second Linda vacated it. “Remember—drive safely now!”

  “Yeah, right,” Robin called back as she revved the idling engine, “and you remember who that baby belongs to!”

  “Robin!” Linda said, and then turned to smile at Cynthia in apology, but she had already gone into the house and shut the door. “You’re crazy, do you know that?” Linda said to Robin as she got in beside her. “Now, don’t forget to fasten your seat belt, and are you wearing shoes?” But even as Robin pressed her bare foot to the gas pedal and peeled out across the gravel, Linda looked anxiously back at the many inscrutable windows of the big house, suddenly longing for one more glimpse of her child.

  There was another car at the Food Bazaar when they got there, a silver Chevy Caprice with a teenage boy behind the wheel, and a man, probably his father, sitting erectly beside him. The boy drove in slow motion past the 88 as it entered the parking field, and Linda could make out all the details of his long white face, the geography of his freckles and pimples and silky stubble, the way the sunlight shone pinkly through his protruding ears, and how his mouth hung open in absolute concentration. Linda thought he looked desperate, as if he were being kidnapped and couldn’t signal for help with anything but his eyes, which rolled like a spooked horse’s as the cars passed one another. The father and Linda were the real captives, though, and she sent him a telepathic message of empathy and courage.

  “Oh, shit, traffic,” Robin said. Of course she was only being sarcastic. She’d wanted to take her lesson on the freeway, but Linda wouldn’t risk that in an armored tank with Robin driving.

  “Don’t be smart,” she warned her, and leaned forward to shut off the radio, which Robin had allowed to settle on a rap station, adding to Linda’s feeling
s of apprehension.

  Robin flipped it right back on. Then she said, “Hey, I know that kid,” turning her head in the direction of the Caprice. “What a retard.”

  Linda sighed. Robin always said she knew people when she clearly didn’t. It was just a cover, Linda thought, for her own loneliness, an adolescent version of imaginary friends. “You do not know him, Robin,” Linda said. “Now keep your eyes on the road, please, and don’t forget to signal.” Her head was beginning to ache. She turned the radio down a little.

  “Road?” Robin said, snorting. “You call this a road?”

  She was only doing about twenty, but it felt to Linda as if they were zipping past the light poles: A1, A2, A3; past the handicapped spaces, with their blue lines and universal wheelchair symbols; past the windows of the Food Bazaar with its advertised specials on chicken breasts and rump roasts; past the chained gang of shopping carts; and the silver Caprice with its retarded, wild-eyed, teenage driver.

  Linda felt grudging admiration for Robin, who grasped the wheel and went forward with such unwarranted confidence. Linda would never have learned to drive if Wright hadn’t gently but firmly nudged her toward independent flight, like a mother bird. If he had lived to teach Robin to drive, too, he never would have lost his temper, or his determination to have her succeed. That’s the way he’d been with Linda, even after two trained driving-school instructors had declared her unteachable. The main trouble was that she would think too much, think: this is the brake, this is the gas, this is the clutch, and, oh, God, this is me driving! That would quickly lead to: this is me married, and a stepmother besides! And from there it was an easy leap to: a few weeks ago I was single, and not long before that, I was a child myself; once I never existed at all, and someday I won’t again, forever and ever. Her mind often tumbled out of control that way, down into a spiral of black thoughts that inevitably ended in the grave. It wasn’t something she could help doing, or comfortably confide to anyone—it seemed so neurotic and childish—so she never tried. When Wright rubbed her back and asked her what was wrong and why she couldn’t just relax, she blamed it on her high-strung nature. “You know me,” she’d say, and he would smile, although he didn’t really know her, not in that most acutely intimate sense. And neither did Nathan, who was a sweetheart in most respects, except for his short fuse and his tendency to be bossy. He would never gently inquire of her what was wrong; he would probably shout orders and accusations in two languages, instead. She could just imagine the circumstances of Robin’s aborted driving lesson last Sunday.

  Again, Robin drove past the silver car, and this time the man in the passenger seat turned slightly to look at Linda, with what she perceived as interest. Like a swinger out cruising for women, instead of a father teaching his child to drive. In the brief moment of their passing, Linda noticed that he had thick sandy hair and a pleasant crinkly look around his eyes. Green eyes, or hazel, she thought. And he looked tall, if you could really tell that about somebody sitting down. Anyway, he was more her usual type than Nathan, who was compactly built and so exotically handsome, almost pretty, with his endless eyelashes and creamy mocha skin. God, what was she thinking about?

  Just then, Robin began using the light poles as a kind of obstacle course, by zigzagging between them. “What are you doing?” Linda demanded. “Stop that this minute!”

  “But this is so boring,” Robin complained. “Why can’t we go on the freeway?”

  “Because,” Linda told her, “I want to live to be twenty-nine. And slow down, will you?”

  “We’re practically standing still now,” Robin said. “If I go any slower, we’ll be going backward in this ugly, decrepit car.” It was true that the 88 wasn’t glamorous, with its dull tan finish and worn plaid seat covers, but it got you where you wanted to go, even if that was only in circles in an empty parking lot. Robin kept grumbling, but she slowed down and straightened the car out just as the Caprice passed them once more, going in the opposite direction. Again, Linda found herself arrested by the glance of the driver’s father. This time he smiled, and before she could stop herself she smiled back.

  “Who are you smiling at?” Robin asked immediately, as if she had a side-view mirror attached to her head.

  “I’m not smiling, I’m gritting my teeth, you make me so nervous.”

  “You were smiling at that guy, weren’t you—at that retard’s father. God!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Linda said, more annoyed with herself than with Robin. She knew very well that her love life was a sore point between them; Robin often intimated that Linda was promiscuous—although that wasn’t the word she used—and she couldn’t understand why anyone was attracted to her in the first place, beginning with Robin’s own father. Sexual attraction was a mystery Linda wasn’t prepared to solve or explain, but she was certainly not promiscuous. If anything, she was absurdly faithful. It wasn’t her fault that some of her relationships ended abruptly when the man in question died. Robin treated her like someone old and out of it, who should have been cremated along with Wright, or buried with Manny. But this was the prime of her life, even if she hadn’t entirely gotten the hang of it yet.

  Linda stole a peek at her watch—the dashboard clock was fixed forever at 2:35—and saw that it was only a little after ten. It actually was boring, riding around and around like this; she didn’t know how much more of it she could take. There was no law that said she had to let Robin continue driving until noon, so she cleared her throat and said, “I think that’s about enough for today dear. You did very nicely, though.”

  “What!” Robin said, ignoring both the false tribute and the implicit order to stop. “I don’t believe you! I hardly drove at all!”

  “Tomorrow is another day,” Linda sang out gaily, even though there really wouldn’t be a lesson the next day, and she knew how much Robin hated that kind of cliché. “Let’s pull over now, please.”

  “Tomorrow!” Robin said scornfully, as she continued to drive. “What’s the matter? Can’t wait to see your stupid boyfriend?”

  “Nathan isn’t even home,” Linda said, hating herself for dignifying Robin’s accusation by responding at all. “He’s down in San Diego for the weekend, on business.” What kind of business, she suddenly wondered.

  “I meant him,” Robin said, indicating the stranger in the Caprice, which they were passing again for the zillionth time. And to make matters worse, the man chose that moment to wave to Linda. She didn’t wave back, although that took the effort of one hand holding the other one down in her lap.

  “My, what an imagination you have!” Linda exclaimed. But it was her own imagination that was unleashed by Robin’s remark, and by the man’s friendly gesture. In her mind’s eye she’d already eliminated Robin and her teenage male counterpart from the picture. The man, whose name, she decided, was either Mike or Dan, was recently divorced—no, widowed—and he was having a terrible time dealing with his loss and his sense of isolation. All he really wanted was someone nice to talk to, someone who’d understand what he was going through, someone who loved to dance and eat Chinese food—someone, perhaps, whose favorite author was J. D. Salinger. The week before, Linda and Nathan were lying in his bed, pleasantly spent from lovemaking, when she asked if he’d ever thought she had named Phoebe for Holden Caulfield’s sister. And Nathan, predictably enough, had said, sleepily, “Who?”

  As Robin drove on, Linda was transported to a charmingly furnished house in the Valley, where she and Mike were sitting in front of a blazing fire, sipping wine. When he dipped his head to kiss her, she felt the pleasure of affection along with the sexual thrill. It was companionship Linda craved as much as love, a concept Robin would never understand, and would probably mock, as she mocked just about every important thing Linda tried to tell her. Linda had to admit that she dismissed a great deal of what Robin said, too. But that was because the girl couldn’t seem to separate the truth from her fantasies anymore. That business about Cynthia plotting to steal Phoebe, for insta
nce. Still, Robin’s overprotection of her baby sister was kind of sweet. Their physical resemblance became more striking every day, especially now that Phoebe had some hair. Robin had really freaked out last week when they discovered that Cynthia had trimmed it just a teensy bit, had made a feathery fringe of bangs so it wouldn’t get in her eyes, like Robin’s always did. You would think Cynthia had performed major surgery on Phoebe, the way Robin carried on. In fact, that was what she warned Linda was probably coming next. “You’ll go there,” she said, “and Feeb will have, like, this nose job, and maybe she’ll be a brunette or something. One of the slaves will come to the door with those killer dogs and tell you you’ve got the wrong place. No habla ingles, señorita. Adios!” It was a perfectly ridiculous scenario, and typical of Robin, once she got going. Hadn’t she warned Wright that Linda was only after his money? What money, she’d like to know. The debts he’d left behind had almost depleted his meager savings, and now Linda was working overtime to support the family he’d bequeathed her. But when Robin spouted all that nonsense about Cynthia, Linda had shivered, involuntarily. That was the trouble—people with overactive imaginations tended to be contagious. Before she knew it, Linda began to have her own disturbing thoughts, which she didn’t bother to share with Robin. Starting with the white cashmere blanket that came home with the baby the last time she stayed with Cynthia. It was clearly very expensive—amazingly dense and weightless at once, and the color of vanilla yogurt. “Where did this come from?” Linda asked, and Cynthia only smiled and shrugged, as if cashmere blankets fell from the sky. Maybe they did, if you lived in the right neighborhood. “We went shopping,” Cynthia finally said, “and it was on sale, and you know our Bebe, she can never resist a bargain.” They laughed together over that and Linda thanked her, profusely but said she really shouldn’t have, it was wonderful enough that she’d kept the baby all day like that. It was only after she got home and put the baby to sleep under the beautiful blanket, and finished dinner, that she allowed herself to remember that Cynthia had said, “Bebe,” not “Phoebe.”