The Leisure Seeker (5 page)

Tonight, though, what makes this particular photo interesting to me is
me
. (Why are we always attracted to the image of ourselves in a photograph? This doesn’t change, even at my age.) I’m in the background of the photo, standing in a corner, staring off to the side, not talking to anyone.

“You were sad that night,” says John, out of nowhere.

I’m surprised that he would say this. But looking at the slide again, I realize that I do look sad. “I was? What was I sad about?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly, I want to know the cause of my sadness. It becomes very important to me to know, but I can’t remember.

Behind us, on the road, a young family stops and waves. The husband, a dark-haired athletic fellow in his thirties, smiles robustly like he knows us.

“How you doing there?” he says, tugging his reluctant little towhead boy our way. His wife, a pert blonde in a pink sundress, follows behind, indulging her chatty husband in a way that looks mighty familiar to me.

The wife kneels down to the boy, points up at the screen. “See, honey, that’s what things looked like in the olden days.”

The boy, who looks about seven, is wearing a T-shirt that says:
BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, BOUGHT THE T-SHIRT.

I recognize the look on his face. He wants to escape, probably to go play with his Game Boy, if he’s anything like my grandkids.

“Nice setup you’ve got here,” says the husband.

“We like it,” I say. Somehow, I can’t bring myself to say much more. I’m hoping John will say something, but he’s concentrating on the screen. A few years back, you wouldn’t have been able to shut him up. John used to love to gab with strangers. He and this fellow would have gotten on famously, chewing the fat about the weather or camping or our respective destinations. But now, John sits in silence. The family stays for a few slides, then says good-bye. I’m glad when they leave, slightly annoyed with the blonde’s comment about “the olden days,” but mostly just ashamed
of myself for my envy of their youth, of their lives so full and unfolding before them, of their complete unawareness of their great good fortune.

Some other folks walk by, and I have to say they get bored pretty quickly with our lives projected up there. Then a man and a woman in their late sixties come by. They stand and watch for quite some time. I can tell it’s not just a quaint amusement to them. This is probably what their life looks like, too.

When our kids were growing up, their idea of hell was to watch slides. When Cindy was a teenager, she couldn’t run from the living room fast enough when we’d drag out the projector. Kevin wasn’t much better. I’d make them watch for ten or fifteen minutes, then they’d get so fidgety that I’d let them go off so John and I could watch in peace. But in the past few years, both kids have come around. They like watching slides now and so do their children. I think they’ve realized that this is their history. It’s the history of all of us.

Up on the screen it is a different day on that same summer weekend, a barbecue with everyone outside playing catch, children doing somersaults for the camera, everyone loading up on hot dogs, hamburgers, mustard potato salad, three-bean salad, and ambrosia salad. The other cottages behind the people in the slides look bland and generic, like theatrical backdrops meant only to fill the eye. During a horseshoe match, I am far in the background again, looking no cheerier than before, yet John kept including me in his shots. I don’t know why. Then I remember something. I remember John waving at me
from behind the camera that day, trying to cheer me up. It was shortly after my third miscarriage, the baby I had carried for so long, then so suddenly lost. Crushed, I had given up on having a second child at that point. A weekend party was the last place I wanted to be, but John and my sister Lena thought it would be good for me.

Even though I know the ending to this story and it’s a happy one—I changed doctors, and a year and a half later I gave birth to Kevin—it still wounds me to see that pained young woman up there trapped in her horrible present. I stop clicking forward and continue to stare at my blurry, background self. I am barely recognizable as I start to dissolve. I don’t proceed to the next slide. The oldsters wave good-bye to us and head back down the road, probably thinking that I’m nuts. They may be right. We’ve barely watched a tray and a half of slides, but I think we’re done for the night.

After passing the Route 66 Flea Market, the Route 66 Drive-in, the Route 66 Salvage Yard, another Route 66 Diner, and the Route 66 Bookstore, we enter Kansas. I’ll say this: there may only be twelve miles of Route 66 in Kansas, but they are very well marked. Not only are there “Historic 66” signs everywhere, but the 66 insignia is also painted on the road practically every ten feet. They don’t miss a trick.

Yet the joy of crossing a state line is short-lived. John and I soon find ourselves in “Hell’s Half Acre,” a dire, barren landscape of coarse scrub, welts of dried muck, and random piles of crushed rock. My guidebook says this stretch of land was permanently damaged and depleted by years and years of strip mining. I don’t like this place one bit. It makes me think of smiling, cruel-faced men cutting into the earth, ripping every
thing out, all the while telling you something good will come of it, but leaving only scar tissue.

I feel for that earth. After a lifetime’s worth of appendectomies, episiotomies, cesareans, hysterectomies, lumpectomies, hip replacements, knee replacements, endarterectomies, and catheterizations, the landscape of my body is its own Hell’s Half Acre. (More like a whole acre in my case.) A topographical map of stitches, scars, staple marks, and the sundry etchings of medical procedure. So this time, when the doctors were, for once, loath to slash me open, you can see why I was glad. You can see why I had to take off with my husband and hit the road. Sooner or later, enough is enough.

Here’s how it works: doctors like to save people, but when you’re talking about someone who’s eighty years old, what the hell is there left to save? What fun is it to cut
them
open? They’ll do it if you really want, yet they’re sure to let you know of the complications. The dastardly buggers pull out tongue twisters like “comorbidities.” It’s a word that takes you a while to figure out, but once you do, it makes perfect sense. It’s the horse race between the things that are eventually going to do you in:
Coming up to the stretch, in the lead is Metastasized Breast Cancer! Second is Advanced Hypertension, behind him, Carotid Blockage is a distant third with Kidney Failure bringing up the rear. Oh! But coming on strong is Ischemic Stroke! Now Stroke is neck and neck with Breast Cancer! Stroke, Cancer! Cancer, Stroke! Ladies and Gentlemen, what a race!

Besides Eisler Brothers’ Grocery Store, the only pleasant sight my guidebooks and maps mention is an old bridge referred to as a “Marsh Rainbow Arch.” There used to be three of these long, elegant rainbow-shaped 1920s bridges in Kansas, but the other two were torn down, so now there’s only the one left. I direct John toward it. In no time at all, we see a lovely little concrete bridge, a long arching span, recently painted white, over a short drink of a creek. Someone has stenciled the 66 insignia at the end of the rainbow. There’s no one around for miles, so in the middle of it, I tell John to stop the van.

“What?” says John, not sure if he’s hearing me right.

“Stop the truck, John.”

Once he does, I open my door and get out. I go stand out on this tiny bridge that links the two sides of Brush Creek.

“For Pete’s sake, what are you doing?” says John, peeved.

I don’t know, but all I want to do right now is stand here for a moment. According to the photos I’ve seen, the other two bridges were much bigger and even lovelier. They were destroyed simply because someone thought they needed something new and bland. Why does the world have to destroy anything that doesn’t fit in? We still can’t figure out that this is the most important reason to love something.

I feel at home here braced between shores. It’s how I feel these days, stuck between here and there, dark and light, heaviness and weightlessness. I lean over the edge of the bridge and try to peer deep into the water, but it’s dark and murky.

“Ella!”

“Just a
second
.” I look down the creek and spot something along the side. It’s a creature of some sort—cat or muskrat or beaver, with a kind of slick black fur. Whatever it is, it’s been dead for a long time. I don’t know if this is what made me want to stop and look, but if it is, I’m sorry I did. A vision of death is not what I needed. In fact, seeing it makes me fumble myself back in the van, holding on to every extra handle John has jerry-rigged over the years, faster than I can usually move these days.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, John.”

We pass through Baxter Springs. Shortly afterward, there is a sign that says
WELCOME TO OKLAHOMA.

“That was fast,” John says.

This is how quickly we go through Kansas. Even John notices.

“I’ll say. We’re really making great time today,” I say, smiling at him. He smiles back. He seems good this morning, so it’s a surprise when he says what he says to me.

“Ella, have you seen my gun around?”

I’m not really sure what to say. His gun is here in the Leisure Seeker, but I know he doesn’t know where it is. I made sure of that. Anyway, it’s really
our
gun and we’ve always traveled with one, especially the last twenty years. It’s quite illegal taking a firearm across state lines, but we need something to protect ourselves.

I suppose that I should explain right here that sometimes John, in his more lucid moments, wants to kill himself. He has not said this to me in so many words, mind you, but I know that is what he is thinking.

Decades back, John’s mother had the same disease he has now, only then they called it “hardening of the arteries.” He was not terribly close to his mother, but her illness made a huge impression on him. Truth be told, she was an unpleas
ant woman who believed that the world owed her much more than she ever received. I don’t believe that she was ever really close to anyone, not her two husbands, not her son or daughter, and she certainly wasn’t close to me. Even still, it hurt John terribly to watch her turn into something that was much worse than his unhappy mother. Toward the end of her time at home, she would be up and down all night, wandering her neighborhood, prone to fits of rage and apoplexy.

We started getting late-night calls from her second husband, Leonard, a gentle, easily defeated man, pleading for our help. After she ended up in the nursing home (and this was the early days of nursing homes, where they had the genuine look of hell to them), John said he would never end up in one of those places, made me swear that I would never put him in one, no matter what happened to him. He told me that he would kill himself first, if he ever thought he was going senile.

It was about a year ago when I started finding the gun stashed in strange places in our house—sock drawer, kitchen cupboard, magazine rack—I was terrified. I’d ask him about it, but he never knew how it got there. The problems were getting worse then, and I knew that people in his condition tend to think everyone’s after them, so I hid the gun for good. He kept asking me if I’d seen it, sometimes three or four times a day. Then he just seemed to forget about it. I was relieved until a few months later when I found a half-written suicide note stuffed between the pages of one of his favorite Louis L’Amour books,
The Proving Trail
. I couldn’t decipher a lot of it, but I
got the gist. As you can imagine, it was pretty upsetting. But how upset should you get over a suicide note where the person seems to lose interest in the middle?

As I’ve said before, these days, John only occasionally realizes that he is losing his mind. I think that’s when he asks about his gun. This is the evil, damnable, and lucky thing about his sickness. By the time he finds the gun, he has forgotten what he wanted it for.

“I’ve seen it, John, but I just can’t remember where it is.”

“Is it in the van?”

“I don’t know, John. I just can’t remember things like I used to. You know how that is.” I glance at him, and he seems satisfied at this explanation.

“Look at that, John,” I say, pointing to the side of the road at the telephone poles, splintered and crooked, that have been following the road for some time. This line of drunken soldiers has suddenly veered off to the right out of sight.

“Where do you suppose they’re headed to?”

John says nothing. I know he’s still thinking about that gun while he can, before his mind hits the reset button. Stiffly, I chatter on, trying to fill the air, fill his head, with words. “I read about those poles in my guidebooks,” I say. “The telephone lines are following an old alignment of Route 66, but there’s no road there now. There are a lot of different old stretches of the highway. They kept changing it over the years. Sometimes the road goes though towns that don’t even exist anymore.”

John nods, but not at me blathering on about forgotten
roads leading to phantom towns. He is having one of his arguments with himself, telling off whomever it was that stole his gun. He’s following his own forgotten road.

I’m wishing the wandering line of phone poles would return because I want to follow them, find out where they would take us. A ghost town sounds good to me, a fine place to set up shop. I roll down my window a little farther, pull off my cap, and drag a brush through my hair. The bristles scratch my scalp, but it feels good. I pull the greasy strays, the opaque flecks of skin from the brush and release them into the wind. I rummage through the glove box until I find a rubber band, which I use to make a short pigtail. This is how I will wear my hair now, I decide, thinning or not. I put the hat behind the seat. I’m tired of looking eccentric. I have not lived an eccentric life.

“Mother, where are you?”

I’m talking to my frantic son this morning. I had John stop for a moment in Miami, Oklahoma, to take a quick look at a beautiful old theater there, the Coleman. (It put me in mind of the Vanity Ballroom off Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, where I used to go dancing during the war. Me and three girlfriends along with dozens of other girls and their girlfriends, and a few 4-F fellas pleased with the odds.) When we drove past, I spied a phone booth and decided to call.

“We’re in Oklahoma, Kevin.”

“Everyone is so worried about you two. I’m going to fly out there and pick you up.”

I have steeled myself for this battle. “No, you’re not. Your father and I are having a wonderful time, but we don’t wish you were here.”

Kevin takes a long breath and exhales loudly through his mouth. I can feel his shoulders slump, right over the phone. “Mom, we are very close to calling the police and filing a Missing Persons report.”

“Don’t you
dare,
Kevin!” I mean it, too.

He sighs. “Mom. This is crazy. Why are you doing this?”

“Dear. Because we want to. It’s so nice to be traveling again, I can’t tell you.”

“Really?” he says, his tone changing, allowing a hint of enthusiasm. But a moment later, his voice grows frantic again. “Wait, wasn’t there some kind of problem with the van? Something with the exhaust manifold?”

“Oh, we got that fixed ages ago, honey.”

“Are you sure?” he says, not quite believing me. “That could be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry, Kevin. Everything’s working just the way it should be.”

He sighs again, even louder this time. I don’t mean for this to be hard on him, but Kevin is forever upset about something. Even when he was a child, he was always sad or guilty or crying about something. Cindy took care of herself. Kevin was the sensitive one. You learn these things about your chil
dren: their personalities reveal themselves the moment out of the womb.

I suppose he was a mama’s boy, but I can’t say I cared. I wished he didn’t cry so much, but I was glad when he came to me for comfort. Yet John would get so upset with him. He was afraid the world would eat him alive, and he was right. Bullies could spot Kevin six blocks away. He was always coming home with something broken, something stolen, something thrown in the mud. John tried to toughen him up—pep talks, boxing lessons—but it never seemed to take. He kept trying to get Kevin to not be afraid, to put up his dukes, but it was no use. Those dukes were down.

Even now, Kevin tells me stories about the company where he works, a place that distributes replacement engine parts for one of the Big Three, how his coworkers take advantage of him, bully him. Some things never change.

“You gotta come home, Mom. Are you taking your medications?”

“Of course I am.” This is mostly the truth.

“Oh Mom.” Another sigh.

So now, I’ve had it. “Damn it, Kevin. Stop being such a sad sack. We’re not coming home. What do you want me to come home to? More doctor appointments? More treatments? More drugs? I take so many right now, they’re going to turn me into a dope addict. No. There will be no coming home. Do you understand?”

One final sigh. “Yes. I understand.”

“Good. Now, how’s Arlene and the boys?”

A pause. “They’re good. How’s Dad? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, honey. He’s driving great and he’s doing really well. Don’t worry so much about us. We need to do this.”

“Okay. Just be careful.”

I see John futzing around with something in the van across the street and think I need to get over there pretty quick.

“Bye-bye. Give our love to everyone.”

“Mom—”

I hang up in time to watch John start to put the van in gear. For the love of Christ, I think he’s going to drive away without me. The Leisure Seeker lurches forward a few feet, and I scream John’s name as loudly as I can. People on the street stop and look at me. I want to run, but I can’t run. My knees won’t do it. I wave my cane at the van.

“Someone please stop that truck!” I screech.

A young man wearing mechanic’s overalls comes up to me. The patch over his right pocket reads
MAL
. His hands are filthy, but he’s got a kind smile and he speaks gently to me. “Do you need help, ma’am?”

“Yes. Could you run up to that van and tell the man to wait for me?”

Without even looking both ways, the young man runs off into the street toward the van, which is moving slowly down the street. But before he gets around to the driver’s side, the van stops. He disappears around the side, so I can’t see what’s going on, but I hightail it across the street, as much as I can hightail it.

Once I get to the passenger door, the young man is talking
to John through the window. “It’s fine, ma’am,” he says. “He wasn’t going anywhere. May I give you a hand?” He opens the door for me.

“Thank you so much, Mal. You’re a doll.”

Mal smiles at me, offers me a filthy hand, and I gladly accept it. I notice the patch over his left pocket as he helps me up. It’s a Phillips 66 insignia. I guess The Road provides. I step up into the van, close the door, and wave. I wait until we’re a good ways down the street before I speak.

“What are you,
nuts
?” I scream at John. “You going to take off without me? Where are you going to go? What are you gonna do? You’d be lost without me, you goddamned idiot.” I feel my blood pressure rising. “Where were you going to go? Huh? Tell me. What? You stupid asshole.”

John looks at me, a mixture of anger and befuddlement. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I just thought I heard a noise, so I drove forward for a couple of feet. For Christ’s sake, I wouldn’t take off without you.”

“Well, you goddamn well better not. Crazy old man.”

“Up yours,” says John.

I grab a Kleenex from our dispenser and wipe my hand. “Up your own.”

No one says anything for the next dozen or so miles. After that, John turns to me and smiles. “Hi, honey,” he says, putting his hand on my knee.

This little greeting is something we’ve always done, shorthand for “I’m glad you’re here,” “You’re dear to me,” or some
thing to that effect. Whatever it means, I am not in the mood for it right now. I move my knee out of reach.

“Go to hell.”

“Why?”

“I’m still mad at you.” I cross my arms. “You almost took off without me.”

“What?”

God, how I hate it when he does this. We get into an argument and start screaming at each other, then five minutes later, he’s forgotten all about it. He’s all lovey-dovey. What do you do when someone forgets to stay mad? How do you fight with that? You don’t. You just shut up because it’ll make you crazy.

“You were gonna take off without me, dumbass.” I guess knowing what you need to do is different from actually doing it.

“You’re crazy. Go screw yourself.”

That makes me feel better. We’re both angry now, the way it should be. There’s another silence for about a minute, then John turns to me.

“Hi, honey,” he says.

I sigh. “Hi, John.”

It was my granddaughter who first noticed the changes in John’s behavior. During a Christmas celebration at our house about four years back, she found John downstairs in our
rumpus room, where we keep all the memorabilia of our vacations, including a mounted map of the United States where John has marked the routes in color-coded tape. According to Lydia, he was walking around, bewildered, looking at everything and muttering to himself, “It’s going to be hard leaving all this.”

Lydia walked up to him and said, “Grandpa, are you all right?” She said that he looked at her as if he wasn’t sure who exactly she was. When she repeated the question, he just nodded.

Then she asked him, “Where are you going, Grandpa? You said you have to leave all this.”

He just said, “Nowhere. I’m not going anywhere.”

By the time Lydia got him upstairs, he seemed all right, more like himself, but she took me aside and told me what happened.

When I asked John about it later, he denied it. He was sure that he hadn’t even been downstairs, but I had seen him come up myself. Nothing happened for a couple of months after that, so I managed to push it out of my mind.

Then we went to Florida. We were headed to Kissimmee to visit friends who had a condo down there. All along the way, John had indigestion and light-headedness and shortness of breath. He kept saying he was all right, but I didn’t believe him. Midway into our second day of driving (we were trying to make it there in two days, always the big rush), he pulled over to the side of the freeway, panting. Then he opened the door and threw up.

“John, what’s wrong?” I was really scared by this time.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” He was coughing and wheezing by then. “I can’t breathe, Ella!”

I thought he was having a heart attack, but he wasn’t holding his chest or his arm or anything like that.

John held his hands over his mouth, breath shallow, eyes welling, voice trembling. “I don’t know if I can drive, Ella. I feel so light-headed. I’m afraid.”

It was the only time I ever heard him say that to me.

Around then, another Leisure Seeker pulled up behind us. A man in his fifties came up to the window and asked if everything was okay. (Leisure Seeker owners stick together that way.)

“I think my husband’s having a heart attack,” was what I said.

The man looked at John and saw he was truly sick. “Can you drive your van?” he asked me.