Odd Adventures with your Other Father

by Prentiss, Norman

  Oh, that’d be a good one. Almost worth it to see Nora’s reaction. They’d drag Celia off to the funny farm immediately, after that kind of outburst.

  No thanks. She stuck to her dad’s job as explanation. It made more sense, anyway. He worked with rare scholarly books, so that automatically made him seem like kind of an egghead. He wasn’t a snob or anything. Maybe he was more comfortable with books than he was with people. Sometimes.

  #

  “Ten hours in the car with your dad,” Nora said.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be fun.” Celia helped guide her friend’s chair down the ramp that extended from the side of her mom’s van—a procedure Nora often referred to as “the dismount.”

  “Hear that, Mom? Celia promises it’ll be nonstop laughs from here to Alabama.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.” Nora’s mother strolled around the front of the van, but by the time she got there her daughter was already maneuvering to the back to retrieve her suitcases. Mrs. Dunaway wanted to be helpful, but she was always a step or two behind. “Where is your dad, anyway?”

  “He’ll be out in a minute.” Celia pulled the larger case to the edge of the hatch, then let the wheeled end drop to the pavement. “He’s not much of a morning person.”

  There was a pause, and Celia knew Mrs. Dunaway was thinking, Not an afternoon or evening person, either, from my experience, but was gracious enough to keep quiet—about that at least. “I hope he’s awake enough to drive,” she said eventually.

  “Oh, Celia’s driving the first couple hours,” Nora said. “I’m taking the second shift.”

  Without intending to play off Nora’s joke, Celia produced the car key from her pocket and clicked the unlock button. Mrs. Dunaway looked flustered for a moment—as if Celia, thirteen and an avid stickler for rules, was ready to slide behind the wheel; as if Nora could work the gas pedal and brakes on her father’s unmodified Prius. The car’s trunk lifted slowly, and Celia’s cases were already inside: she’d packed them last night to save time. Nora wheeled herself to the Prius, the extended handle of the smaller suitcase hooked over one of her chair’s handholds. Celia hefted the large case inside, then Nora guided the other next to it.

  Nora’s mom inspected the trunk. “Doesn’t look like there’s room for your chair.”

  “We’ll lay it over the cases, or in the back seat.” Celia handled the logistics whenever her dad drove her and Nora someplace. This trip shouldn’t be much different—just a lot longer.

  “Stick with the trunk,” Nora said. “We’ll need the back seat for when we pick up hitchhikers.”

  “Oh stop.” Mrs. Dunaway made a you’re just kidding . . . aren’t you? face, then she walked up the driver’s side like a wary buyer at a used car lot. “You’d be much more comfortable in the van. I wish your father or I could have taken off work.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Nora said.

  The front door to Celia’s house opened, and her Dad backed out. In one hand he carried the cooler of bottled waters and snacks Celia packed up, with a CD wallet balanced on top—discs they’d picked out last night. His other hand gripped a tall coffee thermos. Dad Shawn set the cooler on the porch while he locked the door, then picked up the cooler again and headed to the car. Halfway there the CD wallet slid off, and he grumbled and tried to pick it up with his thermos hand, almost dropping everything in the process. He finally hooked two fingers under the strap and dragged it with him. He stashed all his items in the car before he greeted anyone.

  “I think we’re ready,” he said.

  “You’ve got our numbers?” Nora’s mom asked.

  “Celia programmed them into my phone. Nora has them, too, I bet.”

  Mrs. Dunaway started to list a few precautions, advice about how frequently they should stop, and what assistance Nora might need in a public restroom.

  “Celia can handle all that,” her father said. Which was true, and Nora was clearly getting annoyed about the sudden fuss. While her mother continued to imagine complications, Nora rolled to the passenger side, locked the wheels of her chair then slid herself into the front seat. Celia folded up the chair and took it to the trunk, where it easily fit over their luggage.

  “Oh, I’ve got a hanging tag I left in the van,” Mrs. Dunaway said. “So you can park in the close spots.”

  “We’ll be fine,” her dad said.

  “How about some money for gas and food?” She took out her wallet, muttered something like, “Oh, I thought I had more,” but Celia’s father cut her off.

  “Not necessary.”

  Nora hadn’t shut the door yet, and she yelled over the car to her Mom: “Have him send you a bill.”

  “Wait, I haven’t said goodbye, yet.” Mrs. Dunaway rushed over as if the car was already backing out of the driveway. She leaned into the front seat to give her daughter a hug. “Have a great time at camp,” she said. “Call me when you get there.” She smoothed Nora’s hair, then checked the seat adjustments and made sure her safety belt was fastened.

  “Gotta get going.” Dad Shawn started the engine, and the passenger door beeped until Nora shut it. Celia was sitting behind Nora, so it would be easier for them to talk during the long drive.

  “My dad won’t say much,” she explained. “He’s usually really quiet, unless he launches into some long story, but I don’t think he’ll do that during our trip.”

  They waved at Mrs. Dunaway as the car backed out of the driveway.

  #

  True to form, her father was mostly silent. They listened to CDs as they drove, and he let Nora put in the discs—after consultation with Celia, of course. Included was a collection of pop songs Nora had burned for Celia a while back. Some of them were silly, but she liked a few, and they offered a good variety. There was a “Best of” from Sondheim musicals that her dad liked, and a couple of old-time radio shows she’d downloaded off the Internet for him: two Jack Benny shows, and a hard-boiled serial from Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Celia and Nora chatted about school off and on during the music, but mostly listened during the radio shows.

  She’d also brought along two history CDs from the “Great Lectures” series, borrowed from the library. The speaker’s voice was a bit monotonous, but his subject matter was interesting: “Superstition through the Ages,” with summary accounts of different beliefs across different cultures. On occasion, a new narrator would cut in with dramatic readings from fictional works to supplement the historical lecture: quick excerpts from Dracula and from stories by Shirley Jackson and Sheridan Le Fanu. Other than some quiet humming during a few of the Sondheim numbers, the only sounds Dad Shawn made over any of the recordings were three brief outbursts during the history lecture. Each time, a quick, skeptical “Ha!” in response to a narrated fact—as if Celia’s father had better sources or experiences to refute the expert.

  Celia wondered what her friend thought of these apparent commentaries. Nora didn’t react at the time, as if she politely ignored an involuntary sneeze or cough.

  Between CDs, her father might make a “you girls” comment. Do you girls need a bathroom break? or I hope you girls are getting hungry, because I sure am, or I’m starting to wish you girls found a camp closer to home (this last one at about hour seven, or eight CDs into the drive).

  Celia had hoped the long drive would help Nora understand Dad Shawn a little better. The brief comments were nice, directed at both of them. Her dad was making an effort to be inclusive, at least.

  When they arrived at Graysonville University, it was almost eight o’clock. Still light, in those long summer days, but not for much longer. They followed cardboard signs to the registration area. There wasn’t much of a line since most of the campers had arrived earlier. Celia’s dad waited with her and Nora while they signed in and got their room keys, then he drove them to their dormitory and helped them unload the luggage. Their shared room was on the first floor, an accommodation for Nora, with an easy cement ramp to the building entrance.

  “I guess you girls
are going to want to get settled and then meet some new friends.” They could hear loud laughter down the hall—probably a bunch of kids gathered in one room after dinner, relaxing. Judging from the printed schedules in their welcome packet, they’d be pretty busy starting tomorrow morning, so the free time was at a premium.

  “Thanks for driving us,” Nora said. “That was really nice of you.”

  “Glad to do it. You were good company.”

  Celia hugged her dad. As he returned her hug, his grip was strong for only an instant—long enough to let her know he loved her; that he didn’t really want to let her go, but would anyway.

  “Don’t call me unless you’re having a terrible time,” he said. Point being, he wanted her to be so busy at camp that she’d practically forget her old dad. Of course she’d miss him a lot. Celia fully expected to get homesick. She’d never spent more than a night away from home, and this camp lasted two weeks.

  All the same, she thought it might be tougher for her dad. She had Nora for company. He’d be by himself.

  “Don’t forget to call your mother,” he reminded Nora. She had already spread her packet of papers over the back desk, a low table with a handicap icon in the left corner. A waist-level shelf housed school supplies, and some toiletries in a plastic cup.

  “I think you got a better room because of me,” Nora said.

  “Good deal.” At Nora’s instruction, Celia had marked on her application that she would help her friend get around the campus, in case there were any access difficulties. The college used several different dorms for their summer camp, mostly older buildings, but they were placed in a modern building with better facilities.

  “Seems clean enough.” Her father noticed Nora had claimed the area near the window, so he rolled Celia’s suitcase to the foot of the other bed. “See you girls in two weeks, okay?”

  He waved, then turned and left. Celia felt guilty. She wanted to follow him out and drive back home with him.

  Instead, she inspected the dresser and cabinets on her side of the room and started to unpack.

  “Save that for later,” Nora said. “Let’s meet the other campers.”

  “Just a minute.” It would bother Celia not to unpack right away. The clothes had been in her suitcase all night, and all day in the car’s hot trunk. They were suffocating. Things needed to go in their proper places.

  Celia worked quickly, because her friend was clearly getting impatient. But Nora was polite, too. She knew Celia was also building up nerve to step into a room full of strangers. Nora wouldn’t abandon her by going ahead on her own.

  “That was a fun ride,” Nora said.

  “Oh, I know. Long.” Celia pushed the second drawer closed, then hung up some shirts and pants in the standing wardrobe. “Sorry my dad’s not much of a talker.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic, Celia. He was letting us talk, you know? And your dad was an awesome driver. He never got lost, and he didn’t make a constant fuss like my mom always does. And boy, if my dad drove, I swear he’d have reminded us the whole time what a favor he was doing.”

  Celia had more items to unpack—her computer laptop and cords, her books, the extra pair of shoes, a full zip-bag of toiletries—but she decided they could wait. She’d fallen into her usual pattern, apologizing for her father’s behavior, but it turned out her friend was actually beginning to understand him. She was so pleased at what Nora said about him.

  Her friend’s kind words were almost enough to help Celia forget the awful betrayal at the heart of her visit to camp here at Graysonville University. Celia never broke the rules . . . but now she’d done it about something important.

  A lie—a forgery, really—on her application form. She’d altered the document after her father signed it.

  Celia had printed names in the “Permissions” section, listing adults who should be allowed to visit her during the camp session. She’d then checked “yes” in the adjacent boxes, indicating that these people should also be allowed to take her off campus.

  BENEATH THEIR SHOULDERS

  An Odd Adventure with Your Other Father

  It was my hint to speak; such was the process.

  And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

  The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

  Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

  Would Desdemona seriously incline.

  —Shakespeare, Othello

  “Celia, I’m always happy to tell a story about your other father. The best ones involve you, of course—those calm sweet days when we’d settled down at the yellow house on Birch Street. But I know you’re asking for one of the adventures—the more, what you’d call, sensational stories from our younger days, during that strange year of travel after college.

  “We drove Jack’s punch-red VW Beetle across the country for thirteen months in the mid-eighties, a trip funded courtesy of an extravagant journalism prize Jack won as a graduating senior. I had the journey planned in advance in a meticulous organized folder of maps and TripTiks from Triple-A. My idea was to hit all the highlights, those cities and monuments you were supposed to see before you died. I was excited at the chance to check them all off during a single, extended road trip.

  “Except Jack kept driving us off the edge of the maps.

  “In Jack’s mind, Chesapeake University gave him that award before he’d written anything noteworthy. He needed to live more, to find his great subject . . . and he always said that would never happen if we stuck to the main highways, visited the usual tourist spots.

  “Considering our old Beetle wasn’t the most dependable car around, I would have preferred we kept within easy distance of a Motel 6 and a well-lit filling station. But Jack was in the driver’s seat. I was along for the ride.

  “The ride got pretty bumpy now and then.

  “Here’s another case in point:”

  #

  The car’s dome light never worked, so I aimed my flashlight at the fold-out map—a real challenge in the cramped passenger seat. We hit another dip that grated my teeth together. My jaw muscles were getting sore. “Map says there’s nothing here.”

  “It’s not the best road,” Jack said, “but it is a road. It has to lead somewhere.”

  Not true. Some roads led into construction sites or collapsed into sink holes; some wound in endless circles. Some roads led off a cliff. “I think we should turn around.”

  “Let’s just try another mile or so.” This was Jack’s idea of a compromise. After a few minutes of driving nowhere, he’d stall me again.

  “Civilization,” Jack said, out of the blue. He hit the brakes, I ground my teeth, and gravel spun up from the unpaved road. He turned left at a handwritten wooden sign that was nearly impossible to read in the Beetle’s weak headbeams. It said something like GAAORA, though some As and Rs might have been Bs. A thick line beneath the name presumably once served as an arrow, but the directional tip had faded off from whichever side. Jack was taking a fifty/fifty gamble.

  For an instant, I feared we actually had driven off a cliff. The forest road angled down in a steep drop, and a tree root suddenly lifted the passenger-side wheels in a jolt, threatening to tip the car on its side.

  I told Jack to turn around.

  “We can’t,” he said. “Not enough room.”

  True enough. Trees pressed close on both sides, and an occasional cluster of branches scratched against our rolled-up windows. Eventually the drop in the road grew less steep, but the nose of our car still tilted downward, its headlights prodding a dim fog of yellow light ahead of us.

  Time and distance traveled are hard to judge, especially when you’re lost, but it seemed like we’d been on that road for a mile and a half. Rough as this descent had been, puttering back up the same hill would be nearly impossible—that is, if we ever did find a spot to turn around.

  The same thought likely hadn’t occurred to Jack. He was good at driving us headlong into trouble, without planning an escape route.

&nbs
p; Another car appeared on the road beneath, heading quickly toward us. Compared to us, all cars were big; this one looked big as a Buick or New Yorker. The driver didn’t seem to notice us in his path, and there was no room for us to swerve aside. All Jack could do was stop the car and hope for the best.

  I put my hand on Jack’s knee to signal that I loved him. He pressed the horn and flashed his highbeams.

  (Back then, Celia, a Beetle’s horn meeped like a toy car. That would have been a pretty embarrassing note to go out on.)

  #

  The other car kept coming. It didn’t stop until after it had edged past us on Jack’s side.

  The local driver knew the path better than we did, obviously, knew where that massive car could tamp down underbrush to form an impromptu shoulder to the road.

  Strangest thing, though: before the oncoming headlights had veered to the left, our own beams briefly lit the car’s interior. It didn’t look like anyone was sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “You okay, Shawn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lucky I didn’t crap my pants.” Jack rolled down the window to stick his head out and crane his neck toward the other car—a Dodge Royal Monaco, I guessed, dark blue with a leather hardtop roof.

  The Monaco door opened a crack, and the driver’s arm slipped through and waved. “I’m fine,” he shouted. “I didn’t hit you, did I?”

  “We’re fine, too,” Jack said. He looked at me to confirm, and I nodded okay.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Garora,” Jack answered. “Did I pronounce it right?”

  “Close enough.” The arm slipped back inside the car, but his door stayed ajar. Although he yelled to Jack across a darkened road, there was a casual lilt to his words, like a neighbor speaking over a backyard fence. “Got a place to stay?”

  “Not yet. You have a recommendation?”

  Silence for a moment. Then the stranger said, “Mrs. Bittinger puts up lodgers now and then.” The arm came out again as he shouted a few directions, index finger hooking to indicate each turn.