Hit the Road, Manny: A Manny Files Novel (3 page)

A week after school let out for summer vacation Dad brought home an RV that had the words
CRUISE AMERICA
on the side and had a picture of snow-covered mountains and people on bicycles. He had rented it for my birthday surprise trip. When Dad gave us the tour of the RV, Lulu screamed, “This is my seat!” and sat in a booth that was by a table.

The manny whispered to her, “I’m going to steal it when you get up.”

She didn’t get up at all during Dad’s tour, not even to see the tiny kitchen or the bathroom that had a vanity mirror surrounded by lights. Lulu would like it if there were a chair that sat right in front of the mirror. She likes to practice facial expressions in the mirror. Angry. Thoughtful. Surprised to be getting an award.

The RV had one bed in the back (probably for Mom and Dad); one above the driver, which Lulu and India claimed; and the booth folded out into another bed for the manny. The seats were really big, like thrones for kings and queens, and Mom said that they folded down and would make perfect beds for Belly and me. India sat kindergarten style in one and pretended to meditate with her hands on her knees and her fingers pointing toward the roof of the RV.

I sat down in one and said, “This is the most comfortable chair I’ve ever been in. I could stay here forever.”

“Good,” said Dad. “Because we’ll be driving a long way before we fly back home from Las Vegas.”

The manny squealed when Dad said “Las Vegas.” He loves Las Vegas.

“Where else can you travel the world in one evening without ever having to change out of your thongs?” he pointed out to India.

“Nobody calls them thongs anymore,” said India. “They’re called flip-flops. Thongs are different.”

“Oh, sorry,” the manny apologized as he pretended to adjust his thong underwear through the back of his jeans.

Elton John has a show in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace, and the manny really wants to go. Elton John plays a concert whenever Céline Dion is on vacation or is filming car commercials. She’ll be gone when we’re in Las Vegas. Lulu tried to find out where she would be by surfing Céline’s Web site, but it didn’t say. I looked over Lulu’s shoulder while she was searching, and I saw that Céline Dion has her own perfume, only it was called a fragrance instead of perfume.

“What do you think it smells like?” I asked the manny.

“Probably like talent and determination, with just the right touch of attitude,” he said. “Like Lulu after gym class.”

“Your fragrance would be a fruity mix of sarcasm and starched shirts,” Lulu said back to the manny in her snotty voice.

“I’d call it Mannytopia, and I’d have candles made too,” said the manny, raising his hands in front of him like he was imagining his name in bright lights on a billboard.

The manny started typing on the computer when Lulu was done. He said he wanted to look at the Elton John Web site to see if it would be appropriate to wear a feathered boa to the concert. Elton John’s Web site has pictures of him playing the piano and wearing wild glasses with sparkly diamonds around the rims. There’s a link on it where you can actually hear a message of his voice. I think it was an old message because at the end he said, “Happy Christmas,” and Christmas was more than five months ago. Elton John has a British accent, like Sarah’s mother.

Sarah called to tell me good-bye and asked me to send her postcards from interesting places. I wrote down her address on a piece of paper and put it in my silver money clip. My silver money clip doesn’t have any money in it, just phone numbers and old movie tickets. And Sarah’s and Scotty’s school pictures.

The morning that we were scheduled to leave on our road trip, Uncle Max came over. He was going to feed our dog, Housman, and stay at the house while we were away. He couldn’t come with us because he was having a showing of his paintings at a gallery at the end of the summer and needed to get some painting done. He said the manny distracts him. The manny distracts me when I’m trying to do my homework by doing handstands.

This is Uncle Max’s first official show in a gallery, and he wants the paintings to be perfect. He showed one to me. It was a family around a dinner table. It reminded me of last Thanksgiving, when we had dinner around the dining-room table. When nobody was looking, Belly grabbed Dad’s glass of wine and drank it in one big gulp. She thought it was grape juice. There wasn’t very much in the glass, but she still talked like a drunk Teletubby for the rest of the afternoon.

She kept saying, “Her loves you, DecapiTina,” except it sounded like, “Her lubyu D’captain-a.” Mom told us not to tell that story to other people.

Mom had packed an ice chest full of water bottles, juice boxes, grapes, and string cheese. She put it under the table in the RV so we could snack on the road. It’s a family trait that we all get cranky when we get hungry. Mom calls it “low-blow sugar.” I think it means that you haven’t had enough sugar, so you start saying mean things to each other.

We had so much luggage that it wouldn’t all fit in the storage closet. We had to pack the rest in the bathroom and jam the door shut. Dad said we needed to not use the bathroom unless it was an emergency, because it would be a pain to unpack all the time.

Lulu sat in the seat she had called a few days before and refused to get up and help pack the RV. She was worried that someone (the manny) would steal her spot. She didn’t even get up to go to the bathroom when Dad yelled, “Last call. Use the restroom in the house before we start motoring down the highway. Over.”

Dad had started talking in trucker lingo after he had picked up the RV. He kept saying things like “Keep on trucking” and “Over” whenever he was done saying what he was saying.

Uncle Max hugged all of us good-bye. When he hugged me, he said, “Keats, please send me a postcard from all the places that you visit…and put interesting facts on them! I yearn to learn!” Then he laughed.

I nodded and remembered the coconut that the manny had sent in my school lunch last year. He had written
BE INTERESTING
on it in Sharpie, and I kept it on my dresser. I bet we will visit a lot of interesting places, like the world’s biggest ball of yarn or a Krispy Kreme, where they make the doughnuts on a conveyor belt.

Uncle Max stood up from me and gave the manny a hug. The manny kissed Uncle Max good-bye. It was really dramatic, like they were on
Days of Our Lives
and they were saying good-bye forever.

“Not in the driveway,” screeched Lulu. “That’s so inappropriate.”

Lulu uses the word “inappropriate” a lot. Usually when Belly jumps on the trampoline without pants on or when the manny tells Belly to pull up her pants because “Crack is whack!”

“Be good,” Uncle Max said to the manny. “No teasing the children.”

Just then the manny pulled Lulu out of her chair and dropped her on the floor and sat in her “saved” seat.

“Noooo!” Lulu squealed so loudly that Mom looked back from the front seat.

The manny jumped out of the seat and said, “Yessss, Lulu, you have to put your seat belt on, we’re getting ready to leave, and it’s the law.”

Lulu gasped. She doesn’t like to be accused of a being a lawbreaker. She called the manny a troglodyte. India told me that a troglodyte is like a caveman. The manny does have hair on his knuckles like a caveman, but I don’t think he would ever wear a shirt with only one shoulder strap. In fact, the manny doesn’t even wear tank tops. He says that armpits shouldn’t be on public display. Lulu thinks it’s funny that the manny considers tank tops bad taste but laughs when Uncle Max makes the toot noise with his hand in his armpit.

We waved to Uncle Max as we began pulling out of the driveway. He had Housman in his arms and was making him wave his little paw. Dad honked the horn until we couldn’t see Uncle Max or Housman anymore. The manny looked a little sad, like the little boy at the end of
E.T.
when E.T.’s spaceship has come back for him.

“He’ll be right here,” I said, and pointed at the manny’s heart just like they did in the movie. Except my finger didn’t light up.

That’s when we heard Uncle Max yelling, “Wait, wait,” and saw him running up to the side of the RV. He was holding Belly in his arms. She had gone in to the bathroom, and in our excitement we loaded up and started on our trip without her. And we almost made it.

“I guess you won’t be getting the Parents of the Year award this year either,” said India, and the manny started to laugh. The manny had said the same thing a few months ago when Belly burped really loudly during one of Mom’s friends’ wedding ceremony. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Belly hadn’t thundered in her foghorn voice, “OH MY GOSH! THAT WAS A BIG ONE!” and tried to high-five Dad like they do at home.

After Dad had honked the RV horn, Mrs. Waycott, our neighbor across the street, came out on her front porch. She blocked the sun with her hand, squinted her eyes, and watched Uncle Max hand Belly inside the RV. Mrs. Waycott shook her head as if she was disgusted that anybody could actually forget their child. She was hanging up a new wind catcher. She makes them herself out of the same yarn that afghans are made of. This one was orange and blue. There must be fifty of them on her front porch. They blow in the wind and make her house look like a Mardi Gras parade float. Dad used to call her Crazy Waycott when he thought we weren’t listening. “Crazy Waycott’s got some hairdo today.” “Looks like Crazy Waycott adopted another cat.” “Crazy Waycott backed her Buick into her mailbox again.” He stopped calling her Crazy Waycott last March when he rode his bicycle by her with Belly in the baby seat and Belly yelled, “PRETTY HOUSE, CRAZY WAYCOTT,” and started waving.

As Mom shrugged and smiled at Mrs. Waycott, the manny strapped Belly into her car seat and then kissed Uncle Max again. This one was on the forehead, so Lulu didn’t dry-heave.

Dad honked the horn and said, “We’re back on track. Over.”

“Please don’t talk like that anymore,” Mom said, flustered. Mrs. Waycott was still on her front porch making judgmental faces. That’s what India said.

“That’s how we talk in the big rigs, babe,” he said to her. I’ve never heard him call Mom “babe” before. He usually calls her “sweetie” or “hot mama.”

Mom stared at Dad without blinking just to let him know how much he was annoying her. Lulu stares at me that way when she wants me to stop singing “Hey Ya!” by OutKast. It’s usually when I get to the “Shake it like a Polaroid picture” part and start jerking like a short-circuited robot. Lulu raises her forehead as far as she can and stares at me without blinking. She thinks I stop because I’m scared, but really I stop because it’s hard to sing and count the wrinkles in her forehead at the same time. She looks like a shar-pei puppy.

Mrs. Waycott went into her house as we left our driveway, probably to call all of her friends to let them know about the second-rate parents who live across the street. That’s what India said. Mom looked worried.

The RV was filled with the excitement of a road trip. Belly was talking nonstop and telling stories about her friend Justin. They weren’t really stories because they didn’t have a beginning or an ending or a point. They were more like little facts. Like about how Justin eats turkey and cheese sandwiches without the crust. How Justin wears cowboy boots. How Justin wants to marry her when he grows up.

Mom and Dad were in the front seats, and they both had smiles on their faces while they talked about the last time they had gone on a road trip. It was in Dad’s little green Mustang that he had in college. They drove to Florida for spring break, but Dad forgot to make hotel reservations and there were no more rooms available anywhere. They ended up staying with Mom’s great-aunt Jill at her retirement community. Dad was hoping for a spring break full of girls in bikinis who needed help rubbing on their suntan lotion. Instead, Mom and Dad spent most of their time playing bingo and taking water aerobics classes. Mom says that’s where they fell in love.

“It already felt like we had grown old together,” Dad added, reaching over and squeezing Mom on the back of the neck. India says it’s their secret way of saying “I love you” without having to say it in front of all of us.

India smiled, thinking she was in on their secret, and then went back to reading the book that she had brought on the trip. It wasn’t a Summer Reading Program book like Lulu had brought. It was
Glamour’s Big Book of Dos and Don’ts.
It’s a big pink book that has fashion tips for women and pictures of people in clothes that say either “
Glamour
Do” or “
Glamour
Don’t” underneath them. The pictures that say “
Glamour
Don’t” underneath them have a black bar on the person’s face, but you can still tell who the famous ones with the bad outfits are.

India read, “‘
Glamour
Do: Dress up a casual skirt with a sweater and a blazer.
Glamour
Don’t: Don’t let a cruel skirt give you muffin top.’” India pointed at the picture. It was a skirt that hung low on a woman’s waist, and there was back flab pushed out over the top like the top of a muffin. Mom calls her back flab “backfat.”

“‘
Glamour
Do: Make a hippie skirt look modern with citified boots.’

“‘
Glamour
Don’t: Don’t show your thong underwear over the top of your jeans.’”

Lulu wasn’t really paying attention to India’s
Glamour
Dos and
Glamour
Don’ts. Lulu was pulling out her “supplies.” A roll of masking tape, a small piece of white poster board, and a set of Magic Markers.

At the top of the poster board she wrote
CONDUCT MARKS
in big red letters.

“What’s a conduct mark?” I asked the manny.

“It’s a spot drawn on the ground so a band conductor knows right where to stand so he doesn’t accidentally poke someone with his baton,” he said.

“It is not,” Lulu said in a teacherlike voice. “A conduct mark is a mark against somebody for bad behavior or for not being prepared.” Then she wrote all of our names in a column on the left side of the poster board. Belly’s name was first and in blue. Mine was next in green. Then the manny, India, Mom, and Dad. Lulu didn’t put her own name on the list. She took the masking tape and taped her new sign on the window next to her.

“What’s that for?” India asked.

Lulu answered without looking up. She was marking off a big square around her chair with the masking tape as her personal space not to be crossed. She does this at home, too. We’re not allowed to walk close to her room.

Lulu said, “The only way to keep some kind of organization and order on this trip is to make a set of rules and enforce them. I’ll make them up as we go, and I’ll enforce them. If somebody’s conduct isn’t appropriate, they will get a conduct mark next to their name as a warning. With every five conduct marks there will be a punishment.”

“What’s the punishment?” Mom asked without a second thought that Lulu would be in charge of the rules of our trip.

“It’s different for each person,” said Lulu. “Like if Belly gets five, she’ll have to give up DecapiTina for a day.” Belly’s eyes got big, and she clutched on to DecapiTina’s body and kissed the stub of a neck where her head used to be. “And if the manny gets five, he will have to be silent for a day. It’s a punishment, so I’m choosing things that will really challenge you.”

“It is hard for me to be quiet,” the manny agreed.

“How come your name isn’t on the conduct mark list?” I asked.

“Oh, I won’t get any conduct marks. You should probably model your behavior after mine,” Lulu said confidently.

India rolled her eyes and laughed. Lulu drew a red hash mark next to her name and explained that it was for eye rolling. She turned and looked around, and I could tell she was thinking,
Anybody else?
The manny could tell that’s what she was thinking too. He straightened up his posture and put his hands nicely in his lap. Lulu pointed to his foot that was partially on the masking-tape boundary line that she had made. He moved it back into his own personal space and asked Belly if she wanted to sing Disney songs. Belly loves to sing Disney songs.

“NO, THANK YOU,” Belly said, looking at Lulu. “HER DOESN’T WANT TO GET ANY CONDO MARKS.” Then she waved at Lulu and said, “HER LOVES YOU, LULU.”

Lulu took out a smiley-face sticker from her backpack and put it next to Belly’s name.