All Rivers Flow to the Sea (9 page)

Give it a rest, Rose!
Ivy doesn’t say.

“To live in this world, Ivy,” I pretend-read from the book, “you must know how to drive.”

This world of roads and highways and cars and trucks and stop signs and blinking red lights and yellow lights that mean caution and green lights that mean go and engines that can throw a rod and tires that can go flat and brakes that can fail and air bags that may not inflate and gas stations, the endless ugliness of gas stations with their hoses and their pumps and their stink of gasoline.

To live in this world, you didn’t always have to know how to drive. Once upon a time, people rode horseback. Once upon a time, the inhabitants of this world walked on foot, carrying their belongings in packs. Once upon a time the inhabitants of Pompeii ran, carrying their children in their arms.

I close the manual. Let Ivy sleep.
Sleep, sister, sleep.

“You ever have a dream where you’re falling, Younger?” William T. says from the blue chair. “One of those falling dreams? Jesus Christ, I hate those falling dreams.”

“Sometimes,” I say. “What brought on that comment?”

“Nothing in particular.”

I turn around in my green chair and look at him, bent over the little table, pencil clutched in his big hand, underlining sentences in his bird book. I open the driver’s manual again.

“‘Sometimes it’s better not to make eye contact with another driver, especially where conflict can occur,’” I read to William T. “‘The other driver may interpret eye contact as a “challenge.”’”

“That’s true,” William T. says. “God knows I’ve run into enough of that up on Route 12.”

“‘If confronted by an aggressive driver, stay calm and relaxed. Make every attempt to get out of the way safely. Do not escalate the situation.’”

“Never escalate,” William T. says. “And never de-escalate, as in a falling dream. Excellent advice.”

“‘Put your pride in the back seat. Do not challenge an aggressive driver by speeding up or attempting to hold your position in your travel lane.’”

“Especially if he’s a Statie,” William T. says. “Those troopers take their travel lane position very seriously.”

“‘No matter how carefully you drive, there is always a chance that you will be involved in a traffic crash. You cannot predict when it may happen.’”

William T. is silent. He bends over his bird book.

“William T.,” I say, “when your son died, what did you do?”

His pencil hovers a fraction of an inch over the page. Searching, searching. For what? He doesn’t look up.

“I wanted to die too,” he says.

His pencil keeps hovering. Then I watch it underline a sentence swiftly and surely. Then another one. Another one. The pencil is a speed skater, practicing for the Olympics.

“But I kept on living,” William T. says. “It’s a weird thing, Younger, how sometimes we think we can’t, but we do. We just keep on living.”

Ivy and I had an accident. It was dusk in the Adirondacks that night. Ivy’s foot pumped the brake when the light blue truck began to slide toward us. She knew what to do and she did it. She pumped lightly and quickly, her foot in its black winter boot moving like a piston on the brake. The boy in the light blue truck was wearing brown work boots. He was from Remsen. It was only his third time alone in the truck. That’s what his mother told me.

“Had I known what would happen,” she said, “I never would have let him go.”

DUH,
I thought. It’s weird how sometimes part of your mind can be separate from the rest of you, and think things like
DUH.

“Younger?”

“William T.?”

“How’s your driving coming along?”

“It’s not.”

“Well, it better. I got you an appointment for a road test.”

“You what?”

“You heard me.”

“William T., I can’t take my road test yet. I don’t know how to drive!”

“Learn, then. Because the appointment is three short weeks away. Get on it, Younger. Hop to it like the bird of the day — a greater yellowlegs sandpiper — would hop to it, trim and alert and dashing about in shallow waters.”

I roll my eyes.

“What?” William T. says. “You got something against sandpipers?”

I turn back to the manual.

“‘Chapter Eight: Defensive Driving,’” I read to Ivy.

“Always drive defensively,” William T. agrees. “That is rule number one. Drive as if the other person is crazy. Or drunk. Expect the unexpected.”

“What are you, the peanut gallery? I’m not reading this to you, William T. Go back to your sandpipers.”

“I’m finished with sandpipers. On to pewees and tyrannulets, drab flycatchers that perch upright.”

“‘Almost all drivers consider themselves good drivers,’” I read aloud.

“But when you come right down to it, Younger, most of them are piss-poor drivers.”

“‘To avoid making mistakes yourself or being involved in a traffic crash because of someone else’s mistake, learn to drive defensively.’”

“Didn’t I tell you? Rule number one.”

“No, you didn’t tell me. The manual told me. ‘The defensive driving rules are simple. Be prepared and look ahead. Maintain the proper speed. Signal before turning or changing lanes. Allow yourself space. Wear your seat belt. Do not drive if you are very tired, are on medication, or have been drinking alcoholic beverages. And finally, keep your vehicle in good operating condition.’”

“‘Keep your vehicle in good operating condition,’” William T. repeats. “Excellent advice.”

Excellent advice? William T.’s own truck is a mess. The passenger door doesn’t open; the heat doesn’t work; the horn mews; and even after you fill it up, the gas registers perpetually empty. I give him a look. He shrugs.

“Do as I say, not as I do, Younger. Who the hell’s perfect? Not me.”

Not me either.

“The hell with the driver’s manual.”

“Younger, did I just hear you curse?”

“No. I would never curse.”

“Younger, are you being sarcastic with me?”

“No. I would never be sarcastic with you, William T. Nor would I be acerbic or mordant.”

“
Mordant?
What the hell does
mordant
mean?”

“I’ll tell you what
mordant
means if you tell me what the hell we’re doing here, William T.,” I say. “What the hell are we doing here with Ivy? In thirty years, will we still be here?”

“I hope so,” William T. says. “I hope that thirty years hence, I will be sitting in the back seat of a car in good operating condition that my Younger will be driving defensively, and my Elder will be sitting up front next to her, and we’re looking back on this time and shaking our heads that we survived it all. That’s what I hope.”

That’s the kind of thing that, once in a while when you least expect it, William T. says.

“Driving is easy, Younger, and so is driving stick,” William T. says. “All you have to do is think like a truck.”

We’re sitting in the truck in the parking lot of the Rosewood Convalescent Home. We’ve said goodbye to Ivy and Angel. William T. wants me to practice my driving. Now.

“It’s not possible to think like a truck,” I say. “Trucks don’t think. Trucks are not sentient beings.”

“
Sentient?
What the hell does that mean?”

“Look it up.”

“You’re a tough customer, Younger.”

“Not when it comes to driving.”

If trucks were sentient beings, they would want to move. That’s what wheels are for. That’s what a gas pedal is for, to urge it forward; that’s what windows are for, to open on a summer day so that the summer wind can blow clean and wild through a truck moving fast and far.

“Think like a truck anyway,” William T. says. “Think like a truck would think if a truck
could
think.”

“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” I chant.

“Don’t change the subject. To live in this world you must know how to drive, Younger. Let me give you a lesson.”

“No.”

“Because I could, you know. I’m a damn fine teacher.”

“No.”

“I taught my son to drive,” he says. “By the book, too. Hands at ten and two, seat belt fastened at all times.”

William T. hardly ever mentions his son. I look at him, but he doesn’t look back at me.

To live in this world you must know how to drive.

After dinner, spaghetti that I make for my mother and me, I walk out to the end of the driveway, where the Datsun is parked. The driver’s manual lies open on the seat next to me.

Every time I try to advance, the truck stalls on me. How can I blame it? The screech and whine of tortured metal are almost too much for me too.
Easy on the gas; let up slowly on the clutch — both actions simultaneously.

William T. has drilled that mantra into me, but I still can’t get it right. Every time my right foot starts to push gently on the gas pedal, my left foot comes up too fast on the clutch. And every time I actually get going and need to upshift, my right hand shoves the stick too fast, before the clutch is “fully engaged.”

Not good.

None of it good.

After a while, the truck has jerked across the road right into the corn field itself. The hell with it. I sit in the truck, both of us beings — one sentient, one not — in the field of young corn, soft green leaves caressing each other in the breeze. If at first you don’t succeed. My right hand clutches the top of the gearshift. If each finger clenches as tight as it can possibly clench, then that will be the focus of my concentration, and I can resist shoving up on the knob too soon, before the clutch is fully engaged. That is my plan.

Right?

Wrong.

Before the accident, my sister’s hands were always in motion. Like birds flying. Words came more easily for her when her hands were moving. The phone would ring for Ivy, and she’d start talking, holding the phone like an ordinary person. Then she would shift the phone to the crook of her neck, between her jaw and her shoulder. When her hands were free to fly, she relaxed. She would wander from room to room talking, hands flying.

Think like a truck? Trucks don’t think. Trucks move. Trucks slide. A light blue truck slid toward me and my sister.

A long time ago, in the haymow, Ivy and I were playing truth or dare with Joe and Tom. Ivy lost and Joe gave her a dare. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough for Ivy.

“You call that a dare?” she said to Joe. “I sneer at thee.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Then go stand in the window.”

She hesitated. Ivy hated heights. We all knew it, but would she admit to it? No. Beyond us the paneless window gave onto the hill where the blackberries grew. The paneless window was more like a door. It began at the floor of the barn. It had been open as long as I could remember, a sheer drop to the hill below, with its blackberry canes and their thorns, and the rocks that surround the springhouse. Nothing to break your fall.

“Go on now, then,” Joe said. “Stand in the window for ten seconds. I’ll time you.”

“What are you, man or mouse?” Ivy said. “More.”

“More?”

“More. Give me your best shot.”

In the darkness, Ivy and Joe looked at each other. My sister Ivy with her one fear: heights. Afraid to climb higher than a six-bale-high fort, afraid to swing on the swings at school, afraid of stairs without railings, the bald top of Bald Mountain. Every time I think of that night, that night in the haymow, it seems darker. I watched Ivy the way you would watch a stranger in the darkness. She was no longer a person with outlines and boundaries. She was only a being, a being wary of heights.

“Swing on the rope swing, then,” Joe said to Ivy.

That was something she’d never done. The rope swing, a thick braided rope hung from the highest rafter, was my delight. I loved it, its freedom, the swish of the air on my face, my closed eyes as I leaped from the tallest stack of hay bales and swung, and swung, and swung, a human pendulum, until the rope slowed and I dropped from it onto the pile of hay. I love height. Mountains. Tall buildings, the way they rise straight from the solid earth, laddering themselves skyward as if trying to touch heaven, whatever heaven might be.

“Grab on to the rope swing,” Joe said, “and swing right on out that window. Let’s see you do it.”

Ivy was silent.

“Time’s a-wasting,” Joe said.

Ivy stood there, a presence in the darkness. Beyond the small circle of the four of us, the paneless window was a rectangle of indigo in which stars were beginning to appear.

“Afraid?”

I reached out in the darkness to find my sister. I knew how much she hated heights.

“Ivy, you don’t have to,” I said.

She turned to me in the darkness.

“Ivy,” Joe said. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

That was years ago. That was before Joe and Ivy were boyfriend and girlfriend, but long after the time when my mother stayed in bed, the time when William T. started making scrambled eggs for us and checking on us, the time when we were still children.

I sit in the truck and gaze out the windshield with its shivery line where a rock flung up from the pavement hit it. Think like a truck. The corn field is silent. Patient. The paneless window glimmers in my mind. Joe Miller teases my sister about being afraid. The waters are rising within me and want out. Out. Out.

Out of the truck. Dusk has gathered over the Sterns Valley. I start walking up 274 toward Remsen, and Gray’s Automotive, and Joe Miller, Joe Miller who loves my sister.

By the time I get to Gray’s, it’s closed, but I tap on the window until Joe looks up from stocking the candy counter and comes around and shoves open the door for me. Something I want to say to Joe Miller, although now that I’m here, I don’t know what it is.

“She’s not officially brain-dead,” I say. “She still has a respiratory drive.”