Wish You Were Here (6 page)

It was getting dark, shadows filling in the trees, bats flitting like swallows. From the screenporch came a blast of laughter—Lise—and then his mother saying something, and Arlene, and more laughter, the children in it this time. What they were laughing at he could not imagine, this strange family of his. He stood under the chestnut with the spatula in hand, waiting, like his father.

“I can't believe this,” her mother said, digging through the napkins in the bag. “I swear, they are such idiots.”

Her mother jerked the van left and pulled a U-ey across the oncoming lanes and half onto the gravel and back toward the lights of the Taco Bell. Justin's milk rolled out of the cup holder and fell to the floor, but it wasn't open.

“It's okay,” Sarah said, since it was her Mexican pizza they'd forgotten.

“No, it is not okay,” her mother said, as if she was the one who messed up. “You need to eat something. We paid for it and we're going to get it, that's the way this thing works, not whatever they're trying to pull.”

She didn't apologize while they waited in the drive-thru line again, and when they got up to the window, she said, “My daughter ordered a Mexican pizza?” to the guy in the visor, like it was a crime, and all Sarah could do was look away, hide in the dark of the car. Beside her, Justin was almost done with his Gorditas. Shreds of lettuce stuck to his shirt, a glob of sour cream on Tigger's arm. She wiped it up with a finger and reached between the seats for a napkin.

“I hope you don't do this very often,” her mother said. “It's not a very good way to stay in business.”

Mom, she wanted to say, it's Taco Bell; no one cares. It was like Mark, getting majorly pissed off about something tiny.

“Sorry about that, ma'am,” the guy said, but her mother had the overhead light on to inspect the new bag, to make sure what was in the box was actually Mexican pizza. She clicked the light off and handed it back to Sarah before pulling forward. Sarah sat the warm box on her lap, unopened. She didn't feel like eating it now, she just wanted to be out of there.

It wasn't PMS, her mother was just like this sometimes, and it frightened her, not knowing when this crazy person might show up. Once she was out, there was nothing anyone could do, not even her father, certainly not her. And then five minutes later she would hug you and kiss you on the forehead and say she was sorry, that things had been hard for all of them lately, as if all of them had been screaming and swearing because someone left a towel on the floor.

On the highway, the dark fallen around them again, her mother asked her how her pizza was.

“It's okay,” Sarah said.

“What?” her mother said. “I can't hear you. Speak up.”

“I said it's okay.”

“After all that it better be fantastic, hunh?”

She was always doing this, trying to make things funny after they happened.

Sarah took a few bites and then closed the lid and set the box on the floor with the rest of the mess. The van was like this most of the time
now. Before a trip, her father used to take two grocery bags out to the driveway and fill one with trash and one with pop cans. Her mother didn't even think of it, so they rode in a nest of crumpled maps and rolled Doritos bags and used tissues, in the pockets of the doors an army of sticky Rugrats and Darth Mauls.

“Did everyone get enough to eat?” her mother asked an exit later, and Sarah made sure to answer clearly. Justin mumbled, and her mother was on him immediately. Sarah gave him a look: don't be stupid. She pointed to the food on his shirt and he brushed it off without her mother seeing.

He tapped the back of his wrist and she held up two fingers for two more hours. They were still in Ohio, not even to Cleveland. She clasped her hands together and tilted her cheek against them, feigning sleep, then pointed to him. It was already past his bedtime. Sam and Ella wouldn't be waiting up for them this late, only the adults. They would have to go straight to bed, her mother trying to find Justin's toothbrush and then telling him to just use Sarah's.

He didn't want to go to sleep, so they sat there in silence, their faces now shadows, now sliced by light, angles opening and closing like doors. Outside, trucks whined by the other way, headed west. She couldn't decide if she missed Mark. He promised he'd write and then he didn't. He was probably still pissed off about that last time, using it as an excuse. He'd wanted more than she wanted to give him, and then was hurt when she said no.

It wasn't her fault. Everyone said so. Liz and Shannon both thought he was being a jerk. She thought of him at camp, teaching little kids how to do archery. The way they left it, Sarah was sure he would feel justified meeting someone new. She could see her, some blonde with a ponytail and field-hockey legs. Tiffany, her name would be, or Ashley. Something dumb.

Her mother lit a cigarette and opened the window a crack, switched the radio on, veering across the dotted line as she tried to find a station, then correcting. She finally settled on dinosaur rock, keeping it low. She tapped the wheel along with the song, her ashes falling on the carpet. The next rest area was in fifty-three miles. Sarah leaned back in her seat, hoping to go to sleep herself.

The station played too many commercials. Voices caught her short of falling, and she tried to relax her eyes, forget their muscles, see nothing.
Her father listened to jazz on trips, long honking solos floating them cross-country. He taught them the names of the greats so they could guess who was playing. John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. There was even one guy who played the flute like her, she could never remember his name. She'd brought hers to practice this week, and to play for Grandma and Aunt Arlene. Next year in school Justin was going to take tenor saxophone so the two of them could play duets. Her father would come and listen to them, maybe tape them so he could listen to them when he was driving to work, or to Grammy's place in the U.P., the long haul through the pines. Thelonious Monk made him smile and play the dashboard like a piano.

He was probably in his apartment right now, watching TV. The one time he'd had her and Justin over for dinner they watched
Austin Powers.
It wasn't as funny as it should have been, probably because the place was strange—the plates she'd never seen, the glasses with the flowers on them, the green couch. But Justin laughed. “Oh, behave!” he said all the next week, and every time she thought of the cramped bathroom, the grocery bag her father was using for a trash can beneath the sink. There was a clump of blond hair in it, and the strip from a maxipad. She hadn't told anyone, as if he had asked her to keep his secret. It made her feel strange and powerful, but just privately, like she was in her own little world away from everybody, a place no one could go.

Maybe he was asleep.

Maybe they'd gone out to a movie or to a nice restaurant, dressed up, and for a minute Sarah saw the blonde woman as beautiful and tall, her hair done like someone on TV, and she wanted to be with them instead of here, in the van smelling like old Taco Bell. “This is my daughter Sarah,” her father would say, and the woman would like her because she knew how much Sarah meant to her father. The three of them would be a new, glamorous family. Justin would be stuck with their mother. He'd visit them in the summer for a week and beg to stay.

He was asleep now, his head bent forward on his neck. Sarah wedged Tigger under his chin but it didn't help. She took the sleeping bag between them and pushed it against the far door, then pulled his knees sideways towards her so he leaned back. He smacked his lips and mumbled something, that was all.

“Thank you,” her mother said, “that was nice,” as if her being nice to him was something unusual.

“You've been pretty quiet,” her mother said.

This was how it started. She would want to talk about Mark, and next year.

“I'm tired of being in the car.”

“I thought you might be missing Daddy.”

It was a tricky question, one her mother had been asking her all summer. Her usual answer was “a little,” but that wouldn't work here.

“
I
do,” her mother said, encouraging her. “I'm not used to driving the whole way by myself.”

Sarah didn't know what to say. It's not your fault. That's what her mother wanted.

“It's worse because this is when he's with us the most, in the summer,” her mother tried. “I think when school starts it'll be easier.”

She could agree to this and then pretend to go to sleep, it would be so easy. But all she could say was “Maybe.” Even that was more than she'd wanted to say. She hated when her mother made her give away her feelings. It felt like they weren't hers anymore, or fake, just what her mother needed.

“I'm going to need your help even more then, with Justin and the house. Will you do that for me?”

This she could promise honestly.

“Thank you,” her mother said, way too grateful, like Sarah had done her the biggest favor. “I know I can count on you.”

Inside Sarah's head, a buzzer went off, like on one of those game shows. Wrong, she thought, but just sat there in the dark—as if no one could see her ugly, secret little heart.

“I'm afraid if I sit here any longer I'll fall asleep,” Emily said. “I hope no one minds.”

Why did she have to be so dramatic? Lise thought. Of course no one minded.

“You're sure?” Emily asked.

“No, go ahead,” said Ken. “I'll wait up for her.”

Lise expected this, but to hear him say it so plainly, in front of everyone—it was not that he'd chosen Meg over her, or that she was jealous. It was the fact that he hadn't bothered to discuss it with her, left it unsaid and therefore understood between them. Of course he would want to talk with Meg alone, especially now. And yet she suddenly wanted to stay up with them.

It was greedy, wanting to be part of everything he did, everything that meant anything to him. In the same way she wasn't really jealous of his work, she just wanted to be included. It was exactly what her parents warned against, the curse of the only child. She would hear it all from Ken anyway, tomorrow morning in bed, and that conversation would be richer, being theirs.

Besides, she was tired from the drive, and she wanted to read her book. It had been a long day. She felt like she was still in the car, still moving. She wished she hadn't had that piece of pie. The news was on in ten minutes, but she really didn't care. She was on vacation. Let the rest of the world go on without her.

“I'm going to water Rufus before I hit the hay,” Arlene said, taking a cigarette and her lighter from the mantel. She was good about not smoking inside, she just disappeared from time to time. “Unless either of you want to do it.”

“That's all right,” Ken said.

“Come on, lazybones,” Arlene called, and Rufus lifted himself in stages, his front half first, his back end dragging, stiff-legged. She held the door for him, and the screen, then gently closed it behind her. The lawn was dark, and Lise watched as Arlene put her hands out to her sides, afraid of tripping over the croquet wickets. The porch light followed her only so far. The night swallowed all but her ankles and tennis shoes, and then there was just the glow of her cigarette, headed for the dock.

Lise turned from the window back to the bright room. For the first time today, she and Ken were completely alone, but he was reading the paper and didn't seem to notice. With his family around, he was on vacation from her. Maybe it would be good, a break for both of them.

“I think I'm going to head up,” she said, closing her book. She wished, ridiculously, in this pause, that he would stop her, take her hand and pull her down to the couch. He was reading opinions, letters to the editor. She turned and made for the stair door.

“I'll be up as soon as they get here. Are there pillows for Sarah and Justin?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for putting the beds together.”

“You and Sam did ours,” she said, her hand on the knob, because it was like him, overpraising her, as if she needed encouragement. She wanted to tell him not to stay up too late but worried that he'd misread her. Instead, she asked what their plans were for tomorrow.

“The kids'll probably want to go out on the boat. Is there anything special you want to do?”

“I was thinking the flea market. We won't be able to next weekend.”

“Good idea.”

“As long as you don't bring your camera,” she said, then could see he thought she was serious. “I'm just kidding, I don't care if you bring it.”

“I wasn't going to.”

“Well, you can if you want. You shouldn't listen to me.”

He completely ignored this, went off into logistics, how many life jackets they had, and that was what drove her mad, how he chose not to acknowledge her apologies. And she wanted romance? He probably hadn't thought of it at all, with Arlene on the dock and the kids in the same room with them, but there was a lake, a moon, the lawn. Once they'd made
love on the tennis courts, the asphalt warm on her back, but that was years ago, before Sam. She couldn't remember the last time they did it outside.

It didn't matter. She had her book.

“So after the flea market we come back and have lunch and then do the boat. I think that's pretty ambitious for our first day.”

“Your mom has those chickens for dinner up at the Lighthouse.”

“Whoever picks them up should get another milk.”

“She's already got a list on the fridge.” It was a private joke, how rigid Emily relied on lists, and so a good note to end on, the bond reestablished between them. So often marriage felt like work, and then with no warning they were back in that easy familiarity, the intimacy of things long agreed upon.

“I hope they're okay,” Ken said.