When we get ready to leave, Mom has saved me the seat next to her. She has something to say, I can tell.
“Look, we got you something at the doll museum.” I’m afraid she’s going to hand me a doll, but Mom hands me a postcard. It’s cool, but I don’t want to tell her that, so I just nod. “Hm. Interesting,” I say.
“How about ‘thanks,’” she suggests.
“It’s just a postcard,” I say.
“Ariel.”
“Thank you for the postcard, Mother,” I say formally.
“What is bothering you?” she asks.
“Besides the fact you didn’t tell us we were going on a bus tour with a bunch of senior citizens?”
“What’s so wrong with that? I thought you’d be glad to see your grandparents,” she says.
“I am, Mom. But weren’t we going to visit them for a couple weeks, anyway?”
“Yes, but—”
“Where are we going, exactly? And what’s the point?”
“Does there have to be a point? Don’t be so rigid,” she says. “Not everything in life is neat and tidy. You’re so goal-oriented that sometimes you miss out on life.”
Yes, I am missing out on life. Right this second, I think, as I look out the window and see an animal that could be a bison off in the distance. That’s very cool, seeing a buffalo, and I almost tell her, but I don’t want to make her happy by acting happy. Some wild animals that were once nearly extinct won’t make up for the fact that we’ve been essentially kidnapped, all because she wants to get out of town and away from Dad and memories of Dad for a few weeks.
“I’m afraid you’re not being open to the journey,” she says.
“Mom, it’s day two. Are you going to get on my case already?” I ask.
“Well, every day counts,” she says, pulling her gray-brown hair back into an ear-of-corn-shaped barrette. It’s curly and thick and the barrette barely contains it.
“How about the fact I didn’t even know this was the journey we were going on? Does that count?” I ask.
She rummages in her oversize shoulder bag and pulls out a package of cheese sticks, offering me one. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t tell us what we’d be doing, or where we’re going, or anything,” I say. “Don’t you think that was kind of misleading?”
“It was a surprise. A well-intentioned surprise,” she says.
“Yeah, but did you think about us?”
“Of course.”
“And you thought it’d be okay for me to spend day after day sitting on a bus and having to find time to run like it was an afterthought?” I say.
“Running’s important to you. Yes. But it’s June, and I thought it wouldn’t affect you too much because the season doesn’t start until the end of August,” she says. “It’s not like I planned this trip for August. I could have, I suppose.”
“Well, who knows what you’re planning for August. But you’ll probably tell us in August.”
There’s a long, awkward silence, and then she says, “Speaking of August.”
“What?” I ask.
She clears her throat. “We might be moving, actually. In August.”
“Moving?”
“Sure, why not? Get a fresh start in a new house, a new neighborhood.”
“But . . . we love our neighborhood. And—Mom. Dylan lives there,” I say.
“Yes, well. We’re not going to organize our lives around Dylan,” she says.
She can be so heartless—and clueless that she’s being that way. I’ll be having the worst day ever, but instead of noticing, she’ll work late helping some client of hers with a new life-coaching plan.
I can hardly believe she’s saying this. “Moving. How far?” I ask.
“Maybe only a few miles,” she says, sounding nervous. “Maybe more than that.”
“I’m not changing schools,” I declare. “No way. I’m not leaving Sarah and all my friends.”
I can’t handle this right now. I stand up and walk down the aisle a few seats. “Uncle Jeff?” I ask. “Could you switch with me? I want to visit with Grandma.”
“Oh. Well,” he says. He seems a little reluctant to budge.
“We need to talk about girl stuff. And things of that nature,” I explain.
“Say no more.” Uncle Jeff is up and moving, and I sit down next to Grandma Timmons.
“Hi, there. What’s up?” she asks. “Did you want to talk?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Not really. I just needed a change of scenery. Is that okay?”
She nods. “Sometimes it’s better just to think things through than to talk all the time about them. Let’s play backgammon.”
We used to play every summer at their cabin in northern Minnesota. As I set up the mini travel board and swing my checkers into place, I think about how we’d all crowd into that small cabin, and how my dad constantly wanted to play “double or nothing” when it came to backgammon, or gin rummy, or Parcheesi. Then it was quadruple or nothing, and pretty soon we’d be laughing at how many times he could double “double or nothing” without losing track. He’d start with the doubling cube that came with the backgammon set, but when he went past those numbers, he’d stack pennies on the counter, like towering poker chips, to remind him of the score between us on rainy days when we played for hours. One time when he was out of pennies, he used pieces of puffed rice cereal instead—Honey Bears, I think.
“So. How’s it going?” Grandma asks as she rolls the dice.
“Fine. But we’re not talking, right?” I ask.
“Not at all,” she says. “But if you ever wanted to, you could.”
“Right.”
“But you don’t have to.”
“No.”
“Agreed,” she says.
I wonder if I could spell it out somehow in backgammon checkers.
SOS.
Corn Palace, Mitchell, SD
The one and only corn palace in the world!*
Dylan,
I miss you.
Corny enough for you?
I think I just figured out what my next science/art project will be.
Wish you were here.
Is that corny also?
This place is having an effect on me, what can I say.
AF
*That we know of!
Chapter Eight
We land at a place called the Horizon Inn for the night.
I don’t see much on the horizon, except for days and days in the future spent sitting on a bus. The sun is nowhere near to setting yet, which is nice. We have free time until we all meet for dinner at the attached steakhouse at seven.
I want to go running, but when I look around the parking lot, it seems like there are no roads, just little streets connecting different parking lots.
When we walk into our room, the curtains seem to be made of old, sun-faded striped rugby shirts, and there is a generally musty smell, which reminds me of swampy places we’ve visited before. I wish I could crack a joke about the place, but I can’t think of anything good, and it hits me that what this situation needs is a goofy dad.
One time we stayed at a motel where we lifted up the trash can and found a toad underneath it. My father immortalized it in a journal entry on our trip called “On the Toad, with apologies to Jack Kerouac.”
Dad made a cage for the toad out of one of my running shoe boxes and we took it along with us for a day. When the toad died, we buried him at a rest area near Topeka and took a picture with the caption “On Golden Pond in the Sky” and labeled his grave HERE LIES TOAD.
We had a memorial service that a couple other people actually attended. Strange people who lurked on the edge. The kind who might frequent rest areas looking for, I don’t know, companionship? The ones who might pull out those “Trucker Dating” flyers, looking for love on all the wrong interstates.
Anyway.
Dad might be completely irresponsible, unreliable, and shady, but he has this goofy side that can be fun, which is something Mom seem
s to have forgotten. He’s not completely evil; he never was.
Now, I try to rifle through the drawers in the desk, but the drawers turn out to be fake. Then I spot a postcard on the bedside table, right above the shelf for the miniature Bible. The postcard features a picture of the hotel in its glory days. Before real beds and TVs with more than ten channels were invented, when nylon sheets were, I guess, okay.
I pick it up and write:
The Horizon Inn & Steak House. Convenient to I-90 and other attractions. HBO and phone in every room. Charges apply.
Hey Dad—
We haven’t seen any dead toads (or frogs) (or Frog and Toad) yet, but if we do I will give them a proper burial.
We did kill one bird so far, and I’ve seen more bugs die on the bus windshield than I ever knew existed.
It would drive you nuts.
So would the Leisure-Lee bus sing-alongs.
So don’t even wish you were here, because you wouldn’t want to be.
A
“You can’t go running by yourself out here,” my mother says to me five minutes later, but she doesn’t offer to come along, which is fine by me. She makes some phone calls while I’m in the bathroom getting dressed, but I really don’t pay attention to her.
However, when I step out of our room onto the cheap-looking rusted balcony, my uncle and grandfather are standing there.
My grandfather is wearing running shorts and a T-shirt that says, GRANDMA’S MARATHON 2002, and looks to be in pretty good shape. Why didn’t I know this about him? Or did someone tell me and I forgot?
My uncle, on the other hand, is wearing he-capris, which are his extra-long khaki carpenter shorts, and a T-shirt that says, WE DELIVER FOR YOU. He has Greek fisherman–type leather sandals on his feet, with white tube socks.
It hurts to look at him, and it’s not just the sun’s reflection off the plate-glass motel window.
“I thought you were on disability,” I say, trying to talk him out of it. “Are you supposed to be running? I don’t think you’re supposed to be running.” I don’t know CPR.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Uncle Jeff says.
“It’s not his legs; it’s a mental disability,” my grandfather chimes in. “Squirrelphobia,” he whispers to me.
I notice that Uncle Jeff has a big scar on his shin. “Squirrel?” I point.
“No. Bike accident. Harley days.”
I nod. You know how some people have what they call their “glory days” or “halcyon days”? My uncle Jeff has “Harley days.”
“I just thought, since you’re here, and we’re all here, we could exercise together.” Uncle Jeff smiles at me, and it’s a sweet, honest smile, but is this really supposed to be the positive-male-influence stuff? “And if I can work off some of that weight I gained over the past six months, I’ll be in better shape, come what may.”
“True enough,” Grandpa says.
As we’re heading out of the parking lot, I see Andre coming back from a nearby store carrying what looks like a comic book. He waves at me, and I wave back. Then we stop near him, because already my uncle needs to make an adjustment to his sandals. This might be the longest, yet shortest, run I ever go on.
“Going to run to the next stop instead of taking the bus?” Andre asks.
“Hm. Good idea,” I say.
He checks out my outfit, my legs, my school team T-shirt. I feel myself getting warm from the attention. “You probably could, couldn’t you?” he asks.
“Sure, if they ever told us the next stops,” I say.
“So, you run a lot,” he comments. “Like . . .”
“Every day,” I say. “Or at least six days a week.”
“I always thought that people who ran were somehow mixed-up,” he says.
I did like him, until now. “Mixed-up? As in . . .”
“Confused. Tortured. Disturbed,” he says, but he’s smiling at me.
Why is he antagonizing me? What did I do? “Oh really? What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs and curls the comic book in his hands. “Running, as a sport, I mean, how much fun can that be? You run and run and you never really get anywhere, just back to where you started.”
“Runners are different,” my grandfather steps up and says. “Runners have a certain inner drive that most ordinary people don’t understand.” He gives Andre a stare that would kind of make me start running, if I were him. “And they crave solitude.”
“So . . . why are you running in a group?” Andre asks with a smile.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Grandpa says, exasperated with him.
“Well, I have to read this comic book and drink this grape soda. So whatever. I’m sure you’ll have a much better time pounding the pavement.” He lifts his can as if he’s toasting us.
I glare at him. I can’t believe my one and only ally just stood there and insulted me. Now what’s left? I’m a hundred miles into this trip, and I’ve got nothing to look forward to.
We head for the streets, and it turns out that my grandfather is actually quite fast, which, again, I should have known, but somehow I didn’t. He doesn’t get out of breath; in fact I don’t even hear him breathing much at all. For a second I wonder if he’s still alive, but he must be, because he’s still jogging and he has this completely comfortable gait.
My uncle, however, needs to lose about fifty pounds, and get some actual sneakers, and things of that nature. But he keeps chugging along, a few hundred yards behind us, and whenever I turn to check on him, he waves cheerfully back, as if this isn’t completely killing him, which I know it must be.
When I run, I think. Usually I fantasize about things. Like things that happened in the past that I wish would have happened differently.
I think about the comment I should have had for the Fox News I-Team when I was unprepared. Instead of “No comment,” I should have said, “This really isn’t a good time for us, so we appreciate your understanding,” or, “No, we didn’t know anything about this.”
When I stop rewriting the past in my head, I clue in to the fact that Uncle Jeff has caught up with us. He and Grandpa are talking about our possible destinations. Actually, Grandpa’s doing most of the talking, while Uncle Jeff huffs and puffs to keep up.
“What do you think, Jeff? Montana? Colorado?”
“Unh,” Uncle Jeff grunts.
“We’re headed straight west at this point, so of course it’s hard to say, and they’re known for pulling a switch at the last minute. Or so they claim. They may be all talk, though. I don’t trust either one of them,” Grandpa says.
Have I been sleeping through this first day? Why didn’t I realize or pay attention to the fact that we’re heading west—farther and farther west, in fact? “Grandpa? If we kept going west from here, where would we end up?” I ask.
“The Pacific Ocean,” he says.
I roll my eyes at him. “Before that.”
“We’d hit Wyoming first, I guess,” he says.
“Yes!” I throw both of my arms in the air.
“What’s so exciting about Wyoming?”
“Oh. I, uh, have a friend there I could maybe visit. That’s all,” I say. “It’d be fun if we, you know, went anywhere close to where he—” I cough. “She lives.”
“Mm-hm,” says Grandpa. “And how do you figure you’ll do that?”
“Bribe Lenny?” I suggest.
Grandpa doesn’t look amused, but I don’t care. Thanks to him I’ve just realized that I can ditch this bus trip and find Dylan. I can tell him that no matter what happens, no matter what my mom says? We’re not moving in August, or anytime soon.
Or at least, I’m not. Dylan’s family can take me in, or I’ll live with Sarah.
When I explain these plans to my mother, she’ll have only one choice: to decide this moving idea is for the birds. The ugly birds. The pigeons.
When we get back to the motel, I go to the lobby and ask the desk clerk/steakhouse host for a map. I look at where
we are, what direction we’re headed. If we keep heading west—and why wouldn’t we?—we’ll hit the Badlands and Mount Rushmore.
It’s funny, because my dad always talked about visiting Mount Rushmore—it was always “on the table” with his other trip plans every summer, but we never headed in this direction. He has this list of major things to see, and though we did the Grand Canyon, the Rockies, the Everglades, and New York City, we never made it to Rushmore. Now I will, and he won’t.
I’m walking out to go back to the room and take a shower when Jenny walks in. It’s not that hard to corner her by the plate of free beef jerky and cookies on the check-in desk.
“Hey,” I say, stopping beside her. “I have a question.”
“Sure thing, Zena,” she says.
I frown. “Ariel. Anyway. Is it possible you could tell me where we’re going in the next couple of days? You know, for the rest of the trip, actually.”
“Oh no. You know the Leisure-Lee rules. It’s a surprise itinerary. We find that guests have a much better time that way. It gives you the opportunity to relax without being hung up on timetables.”
Does she have any idea she’s talking to a runner? I’m standing here drenched in sweat, with a sleek Nike sports watch on my wrist, and she’s saying that timing yourself is a bad thing. I live for time.
“But does anyone know where we’re going?” I ask her. “I mean . . . you guys have to know.”
Jenny shrugs. “Yes.”
“So can you tell me, anyway? Because I am hung up on schedules and that kind of stuff. What day would we be at, say, Mount Rushmore?”
Jenny shakes her head and grabs another stale oatmeal raisin cookie, crumbs falling as she lifts it off the paper plate. “Impossible to predict. If we see something we really want to see, we’ll spend more time there. We don’t have to be anywhere on any particular night.”
“But what about hotels? Those must be booked already,” I argue. “And our bag lunches? I mean, someone has to make those in advance.” Poorly, I might add.
“Well . . . yes,” Jenny admits.
“So it can’t be totally spontaneous.”
She has a tight smile as she looks at me, as if she’s considering calling a bus vote to ask me to quit bothering her. “Why is it so important to know everything?”
The Summer of Everything Page 23
