by Kris Radish
The bus nonetheless has already been an absolutely hysterical and fun experience, mostly because Rick had the bright idea to call the bus driver and tell him to let everyone, especially Joy, know that alcoholic drinks were not allowed inside the vehicle. And then Janet, of all people, showed up at Joy’s house before the bus was due to arrive, to make believe she was going to do some last-minute work with Stephie, but her real job was to keep Joy occupied and sober.
Janet talked nonstop, would not even take a breath to give Joy a second to suggest having a drink, which she may have done anyway the one moment when Janet had to use the bathroom. They made a dozen banners and posters, cooked dinner, and then the bus pulled up in Joy’s driveway and a very sober Joy stepped inside of it.
Emma had been the first one picked up. Sitting alone in the bus was the only quiet time she thought she might have for the next few hours, or possibly the next twenty-four years. Although Rick had organized the Bus-a-Go-Go, she had had to handle a flurry of phone calls about the pageant, the arrival back into Higgins of the happy bridal couple, Susie Dell’s seven thousand questions about Uncle Mikey, the one question about Samuel when Emma said no, she still had not called him back, and oh yes, there was work at the computer factory—a.k.a. her “real” job—and a round of fertilizing that needed to be completed, which had left about an hour for sleeping and eating since the day of the wedding and the prom dress alteration.
The bus driver, who is at least eighty years old, adjusted his seat belt straps for such a long time Emma wondered at first if he remembered he was actually driving the bus, but the pause gave her a chance to also wonder, if she did ever get more of a life, where in the heck would she put it? Well, she could bring a date to any and everything, or a husband if such a thing were ever to occur; the pageant would be over in a matter of hours and with it the need for seam sewing, personal coaching or wiping pre-pageant tears; the intervention, which might land more than one person in the hospital, would be over in the next twenty-four hours; Erika would be on her way back to Chicago—unless she got the job, which was something that would be fabulous; Marty would soon be more than occupied, what with her recent retirement as Gilford Commander-in-Chief and her new husband, and Emma thought then maybe, just maybe, she could have a few days in solitary confinement to count her recently discovered blessings.
Just as she sighed sweetly at that thought, and was relishing the prospect of the pageant, she also realized the bus driver had absolutely no idea where he was going and, from the look of the street signs, was headed for the discount store on the other side of town.
“Sir,” Emma yelled from her seat, “you need to turn around because you are going in the wrong direction.”
The driver looked in the rearview mirror and when he saw Emma his eyebrows went up past his hairline and it became obvious that he did not even realize Emma was in the van. Forget about direction, this driver was following his own internal radar system, and a map that no one else had ever seen.
He smiled, pulled over to the side, put up his right hand, dropped his head as if he was trying to remember something, which of course he was, and just as Emma moved to the end of her seat and tried to recall if she had ever driven a bus, he shouted, “I’ve got it!” and turned the van around as if he was a performance race car driver.
Perfect, absolutely perfect, Emma laughed as the bus jerked to a halt first in front of Marty’s house, then Debra’s, then Rick’s apartment and finally Joy’s house, until the van had fifteen occupants, and in Marty’s estimation, that meant there was simply room for ten more.
“What, Mom?” Debra asked as if Marty was lying. “You want us to just pull over and ask people if they want to go to the Miss Higgins pageant and then invite them to hop in for a free ride and hand them a Stephie for Queen poster?”
“Yes, darling,” Marty answered from the very last seat, where she was cuddling with Robert.
“Seriously?” Debra shouted while Joy started snorting into her hands, which made her look like she was praying and everyone on the bus secretly thought that was not such a bad idea at all.
Robert did not hesitate. He braced his knees, which apparently had been getting quite a workout lately, against the forward seats as he walked towards the driver, and then scanned the sidewalks for pedestrians.
“Pull over, fine sir,” he ordered.
Marty was in the back chuckling as Robert hopped out and approached a group of innocent bystanders. Emma and everyone else watched in amazement and glee as he bravely gestured towards the bus, probably mentioned the words “lime green dress,” and managed to lure a lovely young couple and their three children right through the accordion-like doors.
Five down and five to go.
The nieces and nephews, Bo, Riley, Kendall, Chloe and especially Tyler, who would always remember this night as the beginning of the second phase of his young life—the first being Pre-Gilford and the second being Forever-Gilford—had pulled down the windows and were hanging waist-high out of them in total amazement at what they were not only a part of but what could possibly happen next.
“Oh my God,” Tyler admitted, “if I was in Chicago tonight I’d be like in some dumb summer school math program, working at this dumbass job my mother got for me at the shoe store, and then thinking of some dumbass things to do after all of that when my parents were not looking.”
“That is about as dumbass as it gets,” Bo agreed, leaning out so far it looked as if his face would scrape the sidewalk if Mr. Antique Bus Driver turned too fast, which was more than entirely possible.
“But come on, you guys,” Chloe shouted into the wind. “What do you think our friends are doing tonight while we are riding around in this bus, picking up strangers, and on our way to watch awesome Stephie kick ass in this butt-fucking town?”
“Don’t say fuck so loud,” Kendall cautioned as they took a corner on what seemed to be two wheels and Robert spotted more potential bus riders. “All the moms are sober tonight and someone will hear us and then, well, shit, we’ll get a lecture.”
“Don’t say shit,” Riley said, laughing in a way that sounded like an old car horn, which made everyone laugh with him.
“You know,” Bo said after a few minutes, “Stephie would love this shit. She’d be out there pulling people into the bus and jumping up and down and singing or whatever she needed to do to get them inside of the bus. It’s kinda cool. You have to admit, dudes. Really. I cannot wait to see what Stephie does at this beauty-fucking-thing.”
This trashy teenage conversation ground to a halt as the bus came to another standstill while Robert leapt from the doorway and cornered a crowd of more than five innocent bystanders, which would be over the capacity limit, and the entire Gilford-filled bus held its breath. What would happen next? Who would get on? Would someone have to get off?
Robert bounced back into the bus and leaned over to talk into the ear of the bus driver. There was laughter. The Gilford crowd turned in every possible direction to look into the eyes of another Gilford or a Janet or a Susie Dell. Robert slapped the old fart of a driver on the shoulder and then they embraced.
They embraced. Imagine that.
Robert hopped off the bus and Emma suddenly knew, more than ever, why her mother loves her bold and beautiful man. She knows that he makes her laugh and that he does things that are as expected as they are unexpected and that he can handle a herd of Gilford jackasses as if they are new spring lambs. This man has what it takes.
Everyone on the sidewalk got into the bus, all eight of them, and the geriatric bus driver put his hands up to his face as if he was adhering blinders and did not even look as the capacity of the senior citizens’ bus exceeded its legal limit. And what a limit it was.
The new passengers had been on their way anywhere but to an antiquated beauty pageant. Two of them, adorable middle-aged gay men, were walking aimlessly after having argued about who should have paid the phone bill. Another couple had just come from an AA meeting and one of them
would turn out, within weeks, to be Joy’s first ever sponsor. The fifth was a woman who had heard about the pageant, had always wanted to go but was sick and tired of not going to events, restaurants and just about everywhere else because her husband was addicted to the almighty television set and who had, for the first time in thirty-eight years of marriage, decided to go someplace alone.
Marty jumped up to meet them as if she had just sold them a ticket and wanted to make certain they would all be happy.
“Hi there, hello, come on in, have a seat.”
None of this bothered or startled Emma who was watching the nieces and nephews, the new father, the new sister-in-law, the smitten cousin, the old sisters, two brothers-in-law, and her boss as if she had just picked up her own seldom-used television clicker and stumbled across an Oscar-nominated movie that had moments before been released on DVD.
Amazing, Emma thought. Every single person on this bus on their way to a small city beauty pageant is absolutely amazing. And that’s when she started to laugh and no one noticed. She was sitting next to Debra, who was totally engrossed in a conversation with the long-married and terribly lonely woman sitting behind them who was excitedly telling her that this bus was the miracle of experience she had been waiting for and that she would never ever again say no to herself, but she would pretty much be willing to say it to everyone else.
Behind her there were two rows of nieces and nephews who were talking about the eventual demise of rap music, how advanced placement classes suck, and how they all wanted to get a tattoo before the sun set so they could belong to what they were calling The Tribe of Stephie.
Marty had switched places with Robert and was talking to the gay men about how South Carolina needed more alternative power sources and how she thought that anti-gay-marriage amendments, and the people who sponsored them, were scared of their own shadows because more than half of them had been divorced.
Everywhere she looked, it seemed like a small circus was breaking out. Emma would not have been surprised to turn around and see someone juggling shoes, someone else blowing fire out of his nostrils, a sword thrower nailing Joy to her vinyl seat and six people forming a human pyramid in the aisle.
Stephie, she knew, would be proud. And as the bus wound its way along the most interesting route through Higgins, because the bus driver still had no clue about direction unless he was taking a group for some flu shots just around the corner, Emma also hoped Stephie was staying calm and was not letting the hairspray and red lipstick in the dressing room get to her.
That’s when Rick sidled up next to her and wanted to know if everything was okay with Joy.
“Do you mean has she been drinking today?” Emma asked him quietly.
“Well, yes, that’s what I mean,” he admitted.
“The coast is clear, from what I know,” she reported. “Janet went over there this afternoon and kept her busy. No one looked in her purse though.”
“Great,” her brother-in-law said through his clenched teeth as he pushed in so that Debra was jammed backward against the window and still gabbing with the people behind her.
“Look—I am thinking that she knows what a big deal this is for Stephie,” Emma told him. “If she does start drinking, I am also thinking it might be after the pageant. Janet is going to keep an eye on her. Don’t worry, Rick. Focus on Stephie.”
She told her brother-in-law that the bus ride, the posters, everything that he was doing had redeemed him, in her eyes at least, despite his affair with the redheaded tramp.
“That’s over already,” he said, dropping his head.
“What?”
“She dumped me. I told her about the intervention. And who in the hell wants to help someone finish raising a mess of teenagers who will always hate you for the rest of your life anyway?”
“I do,” Emma answered, gently putting her hand over the top of Rick’s. “I love your kids. We’ll get through this. We will.”
But first, she told him, this is Stephie’s night. Let’s do this one hour at a time. Let’s go to the pageant, support her, celebrate her—no matter what happens—and then the hour after the pageant, we’ll just see where we are.
“She doesn’t really think she is going to win, does she?” Rick asked, astounded.
Oh for crying out loud. Emma took a deep breath and reminded herself about the huge chasm between most daughters and their fathers. The distance that is lengthened a great deal when girls hit a magic month sometime around thirteen. That magic month when they hate not just their fathers, but especially their brothers, and men in general for an important amount of time. Absolutely dim-witted men and boys who seem clueless to know what to say to girls in puberty, and who seem to be mostly totally unable to understand what it might be like to be a girl growing into a woman, and this crucial moment is when the male species begins to retreat and the distance grows between them.
Rick had no clue. He did not know why his spunky, independent, brilliant daughter had entered the traditional and very fluffy Miss Higgins pageant.
“Get a grip, Rick,” she said in much the same way that Stephie herself would talk to her father. “She’s proving a point. She’s making a statement. She’s being herself. And she’s looking for a little redemption from you-know-what.”
Rick looked like he wanted to drop over and fall into Emma’s lap and when she sensed that, she put her arm around his neck, grabbed his shoulder so that he was as close to her as he could possibly get, and she simply held him.
“You are doing all you can,” she assured him. “Let it go now and let’s just have fun for the rest of the night. I set up my backyard and the gazebo so we can all go over there afterward and celebrate.”
“The Gilfords are pretty good at celebrating,” he agreed. “After the family reunion, and the wedding, I feel as if I’ve been at one long party for about a week.”
Just a week? Emma wanted to ask but Rick had closed his eyes and was no doubt trying to let go of his fairly large package of worries long enough to focus on his daughter and what was going to happen next as soon as the bus driver figured out how to find the community center.
By the time the bus stopped, the Little Miss Sunshine pilgrims had worked themselves into a mild pageant frenzy and even Rick was smiling.
That’s what Emma saw as she turned to run through the crowd and find her Stephie. The would-be queen of the South. The poetry princess. The lime green Gilford goddess.
Stephie was not hard to find at all. There she was standing with her neck and head bent around the side curtain of the community center stage with her newly pinked hair blazing like a wad of cotton candy under a crooked stage light.
And the old lime green prom dress waved under the curtain at Emma as if to say, “It’s never too late to resurrect a good thing.”
31
THE THIRTY-FIRST QUESTION:
Did you see the goofy chick who looks like
she should be inside a tropical drink?
EMMA IS ON HER WAY TOWARDS the center section of the community center where the Gilfords and their entourage have gathered en masse when she walks past a man who should obviously not go out in public any more than he has to, and she overhears him say, “Did you see the goofy chick who looks like she should be inside a tropical drink?”
Three months ago Emma might not have stopped. Maybe not even two weeks ago. But now she cannot help it. Now it is impossible for her not to stop. She has to.
“Excuse me,” she says, backing up so that she is standing right in front of the man who, Emma knows, almost for certain, is probably the father of one of the foofie contestants who all look as if they have been dipped into vats of something liquid so not one ounce or inch of them will move out of place. “Did you say something about the girl in the lime green dress?”
“Yeah, lady, I did. Did you see her, too?”
Emma steps so close to the man she can see the hair in his nostrils. And she loves the fact that when she looks up, and into his eyes, he look
s startled.
“That goofy chick is my niece and she has a four point three grade point average, is at the top of her class, speaks fluent Spanish, volunteers at a hospice center, and she is kind, generous, loving and is not the slightest bit afraid of taking risks.”
“Hey, lady, I’m sorry, come on,” the man says, backing up and looking around for some help. “She just, um, she doesn’t look like the other girls.”
“And thank God for that!” Emma hears Marty say from directly behind her. “She’s the only one up there who looks like an individual. Everyone else came out of the same batch of premixed beauty queens.”
Marty doesn’t give the poor guy a chance to say anything else but spins Emma around by the elbow, whispers proudly in her ear, “You kicked his ass, darling,” and then escorts her to the rows of relatives, new friends, and, of course, the bus driver who have all been watching the contestants walk back and forth across the stage while everyone is seated.
Emma’s throat remains lodged somewhere between her chest and her knees. Stephie was in a panic when she found Emma, fretting about everything from her poetry number to the way the other contestants were treating her when the pageant director was out of earshot.
“Be yourself, Stephie, and do not worry about them,” Emma advised as she took Stephie’s head in between her hands and made Stephie look into her eyes. “Now repeat after me, okay?”
Stephie nodded as if she was in a trance and Emma started talking.
I am beautiful.
I am wise.
I am smart.
I can do anything.
I am talented.
I am kind.
I can fly like the wind.
I will never give up.
I will always follow my heart.
I am a Gilford.
After she had finished and Stephie had repeated everything she had said, Emma realized that she was doing something that Marty used to do with her when she was growing up. Marty had started her “Repeat After Me” ritual when Emma was about ten and had just had her first encounter with girlfriends who are nasty and the ritual kept up even as Emma left for college.
