Family Night (16 page)

Cam had to stop for some gasoline and he found a twenty-four-hour Texaco place where a girl sat in a
Plexiglas booth. The girl was reading a book, underlining several sentences with a yellow outlining pen. She was going overboard with the marker, Margaret thought: what’s the point if you underline every word? The girl didn’t seem too interested in the Duster and Cam parked in front of the pumps. He told Tracy to go talk to the girl just in case.

Tracy was pleased by this idea, by his new partnership with Cam. He told Margaret to be cool, be like Bonnie to Cam’s Clyde. “You have the hair for it,” he said, “the blond hair. Just like Faye Dunaway.” Margaret watched Tracy go over to the girl and start a conversation. The girl was encased in Plexiglas and Margaret couldn’t hear what she answered, but Tracy was asking about White Tower hamburger stands. He was talking about the architecture of those restaurants compared to the golden-arches concept. Then the tank was filled and Cam paid the money. They drove away from the gas station and Cam pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car. He went in back and unscrewed the tiny light bulb over the license plate. He tossed it into a vacant lot. Margaret heard the bulb pop. Cam looked satisfied and he got back into the car.

“Is this a joke?” she asked him. “I mean, if the police were looking for the Duster, wouldn’t they have nabbed us by now? We were all over Wilmington, they didn’t do anything about it.”

“As time ticks by, they have to take us seriously,” Cam said.

“Oh, you mean after so many hours, they say, that car isn’t coming home?” Tracy said.

“True,” Cam said, “and, by now you can be sure
Darcy’s been on the horn giving them hell. By this time, it’s in the hands of the troopers.”

“Troopers?” Margaret said. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

Tracy said, “State troopers. It goes out over a computer network. They type it on a CRT, a description of the Duster, of us, of our wicked intentions.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“Look,” Tracy said, “Clyde has a lot on his mind, so be a good Bonnie.”

Cam said, “What?”

“You know. Bonnie and Clyde? Don’t you think Margaret looks like Faye. Faye Don’-go-away.”

“That actress?” Cam said.

“Faye Don’-go-away. She’s a dream. All washed-out-looking with a dark mouth. Yes. She looks almost dead, but her lips are burning. She devours somebody in an instant. Eats you up. You’re in heaven.”

Cam liked the description. He was smiling, watching the road, picturing something.

They reached the Pennsylvania Turnpike at around midnight. They would use the turnpike until they crossed over to Interstate 80, and that would take them the whole way. It would be good to get out of the tri-state area, Cam was saying. Margaret agreed. She was happy to lose the landscape; a familiar landscape evokes so much.

“We’re tired already,” she told them.

“We’re fine,” Cam told her.

“I’ve got my second wind,” Tracy said.

“I bet you do,” Cam said.

Margaret recognized Cam’s “poor me” tone of voice. Cam almost looked like Richard used to look on one of the family’s long trips. It was a mask of fatigue after driving a long way with all of them. The Scenic Route can often become a kind of hell. The winding roads, the small rise and descent from low, inconsequential hills, corresponded with the flux of Elizabeth’s complaints, the children’s sonorous then deafening inquiries.

Then they saw their first police car acting funny. Tracy shifted his legs and Margaret sat up straight. There had not been too many cruisers, and each had passed them without notice. This fellow was going along in tandem as he talked on his radio. The trooper adjusted his speed according to the Duster’s, which gave Margaret a queasy feeling like running beside a mirror in a fun house or sliding backward and forward on ice.

“Act regular,” Cam said.

“Don’t look,” Tracy said.

Margaret looked down at her lap.

“You’re looking down, don’t look down! Look natural.” Cam talked with his teeth clamped.

Just as suddenly, the cruiser moved away, accelerated, and disappeared into the dark ahead of them.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Margaret didn’t want any more of it. The next moment she was laughing in ragged bursts.

Cam looked up at the car ceiling and rotated his head on the back of his neck, rubbing out the tension. Margaret tried to check her amusement and she pulled at her hair, pinching a clump and tugging her fingers down the strands to the end. Her hair felt strange,
perhaps it was the chlorine; the strands no longer seemed to possess the ordinary properties of human hair. She pulled the rearview mirror down to study her face. Her hair looked metallic, brittle, like lamé thread. It had a strange luster as if artificially lighted by an unnameable source. “Jesus! My hair is turning green,” she told Cam.

“It smells like Clorox,” Tracy said.

“Can you please? I’m sort of busy here,” Cam said, watching the highway. He told them not to get comfortable. The cruiser was probably up ahead checking the tag and they were going to be nabbed pronto.

“What should we do?” Margaret bit her lip to keep from laughing. She saw that Cam was serious. It was really between him and Darcy. It was something intimate; he was sparring with an absentee opponent.

Cam took the next exit off the turnpike. “Fucking mounties,” he said.

“Yes,” Tracy said, “they can be quite dogmatic. Inflexible. They wouldn’t understand the nuances of your situation. They’ve never seen it face to face, Darcy’s death rays. You’re being persecuted for every little wrong since you got hitched, right? This is the coal in your threadbare stocking. She’s dumping everything on you in one big, official zing.”

Cam looked at Margaret for assistance. “Tell him to put a gag on it, will you?” Cam said.

“You tell him.”

“Tell me,” Tracy said.

“I’m serious. Stop analyzing my private affairs.”

“Since when are they so private? Here we are, riding
in this stolen vehicle with you. I’d say we were pretty tight.”

“I’d say you were a queer if I didn’t see you nailing my sister.”

“Did you learn the first thing about it?” Tracy said.

Margaret pulled her chin in as the two men bickered. They were talking about her. It was both vile and flattering. She hated it when her vanity took over. Then the car lurched, bounced hard, the shocks jangled. Margaret screamed. The asphalt ended and they careened off a ledge where the pavement stopped. The road stretched ahead just dust and gravel. A sign said
PAVEMENT
ENDS
, but it wasn’t properly placed. It was after the fact.

“The sign’s been moved,” Tracy said.

Margaret said, “That’s sick.” Cam turned a circle and steered around a gully to get back on the road.

Tracy said, “The perpetrator might be in the woods watching us right now.” The landscape was dark, wooded. Anything was possible.

Margaret said, “If we’re going to make all these mistakes, I don’t want to keep going. You said we’d go straight through on the highway like normal people. I don’t want to go winding all over the place like this.”

“Look at that map,” Cam told her. “You said you would be navigator, so navigate.”

He flicked on the overhead light and she unfolded a map of the Eastern United States. She rubbed her finger over the paper. She liked the sensation; the paper was smooth, slightly furred.

“We’re here, we want to go there.” A bold circle
signified Chicago, a cloud of green designated the general metropolitan area. If they were going to avoid I-76, they would have to take some secondary roads, two-lane roads.

“Head-ons,” Tracy said, “most of your head-on collisions happen on these country two-lanes. Then there’s always deer to consider.”

“Can’t we just drive on the highway?” Margaret said. “It’s not like we really stole this car. It’s not like the time when we pinched that Dodge Monaco. This is your fucking wife’s car!”

“Exactly,” Cam said. “She’s telling me loud and clear it’s
hers
.” He rubbed his shave. It was a full day’s worth of growth by now. Tracy touched his own face, started scratching it. Margaret couldn’t help smiling.

Cam kept adjusting his mirrors and gunning the engine desperado-style, and it reminded her of the episode with the stolen Dodge. When they were teenagers, they took a five-finger-discount on a shiny Monaco and drove it around for the afternoon before crashing it up.

It just happened to be Mother’s Day.

Margaret and Cam often went driving with Cam’s friend Wayne in his old Chrysler. Cam was impressed by Wayne’s girl, Colleen. Her hair flashed moment-to-moment like sheet lightning. Margaret’s hair was regular blond, but Colleen’s was electric, white and glossy as a doll’s hair. She was studious in her bleaching habits. She used a brand called Midnight Sun, like a Nordic halo, a brittle spill that shivered each time she moved her head. She separated a few strands and tugged an icy point to suck between her teeth.

They were riding in and out of the developments, screeching around the tiny cul-de-sacs. Sometimes they got out of the car to measure the length of “patch” they put down on the asphalt and to touch their fingertips against the hot smear. The radio and the hot wind off the asphalt had drugged Margaret into submission. She didn’t note the exact moment when it was no longer talk and they put it into motion. Wayne was driving slowly up the street and Cam was leaning far out of the car window the way dogs ride. They were searching for a vehicle with keys left in the ignition.

The streets were deserted; they could smell the charcoal going in the backyards of the split-level houses. Acres of houses with no variance but for the decals on the mailboxes and the tiny footprints and signatures that ruined the new sidewalks. Their plan seemed highly feasible, even sensible in its way. A simple task necessitated by a complex mood resulting from a series of emotional outbursts in public places with their parents, until they reached their target consciousness.

Wayne inched up to a car, a ruby-red Monaco with a vinyl roof. Keys dangled from the steering column, caught the light, glittered. Margaret had a strange tickle in her throat, like the sharp threads of an artichoke.

Cam got out of the Chrysler and touched his toes. He stretched his arms over his head like it was seventh inning, then he got behind the wheel of the Monaco. The early cicadas were piercing the quiet in short ugly spasms that killed the whine of the flywheel as Cam started the engine. Cam rolled it away from the curb and the Chrysler followed. They left Wayne’s car in Westside Terrace and tumbled into the red car. Margaret
sat up in front with Cam. Wayne nestled in back with Colleen; he was already pulling her neckline down over her shoulders. Cam floored the gas pedal so that the car shivered in place for a few seconds before flying forward. He circled the block to examine the patch, a couple thick black smears, variegated like snakeskin against the new white concrete.

Cam drove them everywhere around the city. The Monaco was a rental car, the key chain said
WE
TRY
HARDER
. There wasn’t anything personal in it. It was fresh, vacuumed, the vinyl seats smelled strong. It accelerated harsh but fast, it flew.

“We try harder,” Cam said, accelerating to beat a light. When Cam passed a cherry top or if he recognized an unmarked cruiser, he slowed the car. He sank in his seat and bounced up and down, twisting the wheel back and forth like a hick farmer driving an old tractor. He was baiting the police, but they didn’t seem to notice. His steering was becoming more and more exaggerated and frantic. Margaret began to feel weightless, anchored by a fragile string like one of those Chinese paper flowers unfurling in a glass of water. Her friends were grinding their hips together in the backseat, but Cam didn’t seem disgusted. Colleen was immersed in it, her hair looked bad, it looked spent, colorless as fishing line. She held on to the boy, pulling his collar, pressing his face with little sucking kisses. Margaret thought, It’s got nothing to do with me and Cam. Then the cruiser was abreast of them. The officer lifted the brim of his hat and tugged it down again. It was a tolerant warning, and he allowed them a moment to consider it before he turned on the siren and the light started circling.

“Guess what—” Margaret said.

Cam said, “I see him. I see him.” Cam accelerated in a straight line up the highway. He was cutting a path right through the moving traffic, making his own getaway lane right up the middle. Cam nosed between cars and the traffic veered to the left and right to avoid them. It was a reverse wake, a terrible seam ripping upward. Margaret could hear the sirens, several of them, but they seemed distant. Suddenly the windshield went dark, like an air raid curtain, but it was just an underpass and the light came back. Margaret tried to speak. Words clattered through her like small geometric pieces, sharp, lodging in her throat and lungs.

“One hundred, one hundred five.” Cam was reading the speedometer. Margaret couldn’t believe he wasn’t watching the road. His fear looked like a form of pleasure, a chilly, high-altitude intoxication. He kept reading the speedometer as it inched up. He looked as if he had suddenly found his purpose and accepted what it meant, its toil and labor, its rewards.

Colleen was leaning over the front seat, screaming for Cam to slow down. The intersection flashed, appeared and dissolved in an instant. They were hit once in the right front and immediately they were hit in back on the opposite side. The car whipped in a full circle, skated left, was clipped a third time, and its front axle flew off. The hood of the car curled through the windshield, glass sloshed in like a wave of rhinestone buttons. Then nothing. Stillness. Colleen fell between them. She was asleep with her eyes open. The girl whispered, but she wasn’t using words; a sudsy vermilion spray surfaced on her lips. She had bitten through her tongue.

They were taken to Wilmington General; everyone needed some stitches. Colleen was in surgery, but the others were placed in jail to wait for the appropriate signatures. That summer, they had one day in family court. It was decided that Margaret would meet with a probation officer in the basement of the Wilmington courthouse for a full year, twice a week after school. Cam went straight to boot camp at the crest of a record heat wave.