Interstate (37 page)

Lane
, it's a lane, the middle lane,” and she says “Lane, then, but go in it to pass him,” and I say “You're not supposed to pass from the right, he might not see me even if I'm flashing him, he certainly won't if I flash him as he hasn't seen me flashing since I started doing it, and then, without looking at his right side mirror and signaling me, he might suddenly decide to go into that middle lane himself the moment we're alongside him and hit us. He's supposed to move over when he sees us behind him so we can pass from the left lane. He's like some Maine driver—you know the ones I always complain about up there—on a two-lane back road, but they go fifteen or twenty miles an hour when they should be going the posted speed of thirty-five or forty. He's doing sixty now—not even sixty—fifty-seven or -eight,” and she says “So he's right, the speed sign before said fifty-five,” and I say “But you don't know, you're not a driver, you're allowed to go at least sixty-five on these Interstates even if the signs say fifty-five, the police allow it, everybody does it, and especially in the speed lane, this passing lane,” and she says “You're still much too close to him, Daddy; if he stops you'll crash into him and hurt everything,” her voice shaky saying this and I say “Okay, I give up, you're right, and as my dad said, ‘When you're right, you're right, and no one in the world should say you're not right,' I just wanted to get you to that skating thing in plenty of time to skate but I shouldn't take chances doing it,” and she says “The skating's not so important, I don't even want to go to the party if it means taking chances with the car,” and I say “You're right again,” slowing down a little to put some more room between our cars, check the rearview and see the car behind me's keeping just as close to mine, “And you talk like your mommy; you do,” and Julie says “I do sometimes too,” and I say “Yes, you're both—you're all three very smart and cautious and the way I should be, I admit it, I admit it, but that creepo, look at him, I can even see his eyes now in his rearview mirror, he sees me and he knows I see him and now he's looking away but that I'm angry and he probably even knows I don't want to honk at him, no, he couldn't know that, but he has to know he's going too damn slow for this lane,” and I signal right and look into the rearview and right side mirrors and cut into the middle lane to go around him and teach him a lesson by speeding past him and then cutting sharply in front of him and speeding on, but his car without signaling cuts into the middle lane second after mine does and when I see I'm going to hit it I brake and try to cut into the lane we were in but the car that was behind mine's already there and our sides hit, I brake all the way, didn't think about it, just did it, and our cars come apart and mine spins around my side and I try to brake with little pedal taps and then all the way when that didn't work but have no control of the car and it spins around again and nothing will help it it seems till it stops or slows way down on its own and then I can stop it and I'm screaming and the girls are and I yell “Duck down, down, duck down,” and a car from somewhere, not one of the other two, smashes into the passenger side in the middle lane and pushes us about a hundred feet before it stops, all the time we're all screaming. All sorts of things after. I must have been knocked out a few seconds. There's a gas smell and a burnt smell and a metal smell and a rubber one and I can hear cars screeching and people shouting and I think “No, this can't be, it can't,” my eyes are shut when I think this and then I think “I'm out of it again, I'm sure I put myself out because I don't want to know what's happened,” and when I open my eyes it's raining, but really pouring, sky's dark when just a few seconds ago, a minute, minutes, I don't know, but it seemed it was light, rain's slashing the windows and banging the roof when before it was dry, I'm sure it was, there wasn't a drop, I didn't have my wipers on or even thought I'd soon have to put them on and I tell myself “Turn them on now, no, that's not where you are,” and I think “I never would have made that lane change if it had been raining like this, never, ever, I'm afraid of driving in blinding rain and the rain slicks, cautious of them, extracautious, I hate them, hate to slide, and I would have slowed down to a hundred feet more between me and the old guy and gone into the middle lane when it was safe to and maybe even into the slow lane and then down to around fifty if the rain continued like this, forty-five, forty, thirty as I have on this same Interstate when it was raining hard as this and I couldn't see much even with the high-speed wipers on,” and then I'm quickly out of it again and in my dark shake myself awake and think “Hey, what's going on, I'm not driving, who's driving, somebody driving?” the last I either think or say and I shout “Julie, Margo, Julie, Margo,” and Julie's crying and I think “Where're they crying from, it sounds so weak, were they thrown out? but it's only one crying, Julie, not Margo,” and I look up, see the roof, hear the rain banging, try to sit up, for some reason can't, “What is it,” I say, “what, where are you girls?” and try to sit up again, my body's twisted around itself with the back of my head down on the seat, seatbelt's caught and I finger around for the clasp, “No no,” I say, “no, please tell me you're both okay, Margo, Julie,” and continue fingering, find the place to press if it's my seatbelt and I press and sit up, my neck, it stabs, head, holy shit, I can't lift it, feel it and feel a big gash with blood or some slick stuff all around it, I reach up and grab the top of the seat and hear whining behind it, Julie's, still not Margo's, and hoist myself up and am now on my shins with my knees facing the seats and get my face between the backrests and look. Julie's still on the seat. Someone's banging the driver's window and yelling “Sir, you all right, sir? How is it in there? Your girl pinned? Can you let us in?” Julie's still in the seat. “Julie, you all right?” and she says “I hurt, Daddy. I'm bleeding. There's blood,” and I say “Where's Margo?” and she says “Daddy, your head,” and I say “Where's Margo?” and she says “Here,” and looks where and I look and say “Margo, my poor Margo.” She's on the floor, not moving, eyes closed, not breathing it seems. “Margo, oh my God, oh dear.”

G
oodbye, darling,” and she says “‘Darling'; you never call me that anymore. I can't even remember when you last called me it, or if you ever did. Have you ever?” and he says “Sure, plenty, tons, or a few times at least. I can't recall each one, but certainly when I first met you. That very night at the party we were at, I said to the host ‘There's my future darling,' and she said ‘Who?' and I said ‘There, there, my future darling wife of my future darling kids,' and went over to you—you were with some guy you couldn't take your eyes off of, so I knew I had some doing to do, and I actually had to wrest him away from you by grabbing his wrist and giving it a bit of a twist to get his arm off you—and then I said to you…no, don't let me run on, and with such bullshit too, for we gotta go, gotta move, gotta hustle, darling,” and she says “I like it though, not said that way, but before with the more endearing ‘darling.' Where the other stuff comes from—juvenile fantasies of wresting men away from your wench—beats me. But the ‘darling'—I think I like it more than any other sweet talk from you, even if I can't remember if you ever called me it”—“I have, my darling, I have”—“and I call you it lots of times,” and he says “That he knows, his darling, and it's perhaps where he got it from,” and she says “Sometimes—no holding me in bed when we go to sleep, unless it's your first move to making love; no kiss goodbye and hello when you leave and come home if it's just to and from work—I even think we're, well, frittering apart in a way from what we were”—“Saved by the fritters and way”—“something I've thought a lot about lately and it…distresses me,” and he says “You were going to say ‘saddens,' yes?” and she says “Don't play prig,” and he says “I only wanted to see how sharply I was tuned in—you know, reading thy mind, but okay, what?—I'm an all-ears kind of guy,” and she says “One sure sign of what I see taking place, other than for the two or three I mentioned—” “Which were they?” and she says “
Nate
,” and he nods, “is that, one, just your being flip about it like this—” “You mean ‘three' or ‘four,' if I'm counting right, but I'm sorry, go on”—“trying to get around it with jokes when years ago you would have taken it seriously if not gravely…well, maybe not that bad. And, two, and maybe this is trivial, nevertheless I liked it: you don't say anything affectionate anymore when we make love or before or after it,” and he says “I'm the strong silent type, and after, a quick quiet sleeper—oops,” and she says “I really get an awful feeling sometimes of what might eventually become of us, this gradual dribbling away,” and he says “And you want from me that current term I hate, ‘reinforcement,'” and she says “Not right now but sometime soon, like on the phone tonight—something for you to think about on the long drive home,” and he says “But what a time for you to bring it up, when we're nice and tight like this, arms locked, pelvises stuck, ready for the big goodbye-darling pucker-up,” and she says “I mean it. You also don't make love to me as much, with or without the nice words,” and he says “
We
don't make love, the two-way street, darling,” and she says “I don't appreciate it when you use it like that, so please?” and he says “So what do you mean ‘we don't as much'? As much where, here in a public hallway? Or when, since the first few weeks after we first met? We make it every bit as much or just a touch less much or however such one should word it—little less touch, bit less mush, that sorta stuff, but none of those up to snuff. Look, it just isn't true, despite all the so-called detergents—deterrents of long-term marriage used-to-itness and the natural aging process, on my part at least and I've got almost a dozen years on ya, but we really gotta go—kids, car and me, and your dad waiting with them downstairs and by now possibly pissed off,” and kisses her lips, digs into them with his, she kisses back with not as much dig, wishes they had the time, if the gang wasn't waiting for him and his mother-in-law wasn't in the apartment, though even there, he'd say…he'd say “Darling, and this is no joke and I'm not playing up to you now with that word, well, maybe a little
bissel
, but if we could do it in a few minutes from pants-dropping start to pulling-them-up finish, last time for two days and nights, you know what I mean, the where and when, it's here and now, and we didn't do it all day yesterday and today so that makes three, even if we just go into the guest bathroom past your mother under the guise of my washing my hands and you going to the toilet and neither of us wanting to use their private john off the master bedroom, or other way around with the washing and toilet, and do it standing up, you leaning over and me from behind, wouldn't take me more than a coupla minutes and you might even get something out of it, I'm sorry but that's how it is, and as a parting even a one-sided goodbye-darling gift to me,” and she'd say yes, they'd hold their breath, or he would, she'd hardly have started, for they'd really have to be quick—when hasn't she said yes to sex unless she was very mad at him for something he said or did and she felt he hadn't sufficiently apologized, but have to go, must, hates keeping people waiting, one more kiss, does and then says “I mean it, you're my darling, I love you, okay?” and she says “What a way,” and he says “I mean, I just love you, plain and simple, ornate and complex, but I have to—” and jerks his head to the elevator door and she says “Okay, I love you too,” and they separate and she takes his hands and looks at them and then him, smiles pining-like, regretting already that he's gone? and says “You should get moving, it's unfair leaving them down there, I guess, and it's funny, I already feel you're gone,” and he says “Am I psychic?—I'll tell you tonight why I said that, you just have to remind me, but now's no time to quote unquote boast…say goodbye to your momma again for me,” and she says “I will,” and he's pulling his hands from hers when the elevator door opens and his father-in-law steps out: “Nathan, where are you?—Don't let the door close,” to the elevator car, “keep the Open button down—We've been waiting, it's been quarter of an hour,” and he says “Just toodle-dee-dooing to your darling daughter, no other harm; we're not used to long separations—Bye, dear,” and she nods to him with her eyes closed and he thinks “What's that mean? I mean, surely no tears; that'd be ridiculous. I was only kidding about the long separation. It's only going to be two days, so look at it as a break,” and waves and gets in the elevator, “Oh, kids, hi—of course, holding the door open,” Julie pressing down hard on the Open button with her whole hand, and Margo says “Daddy, you said you'd be down quickly,” and he says “I am—we will be—let's go,” and his father-in-law pushes the L button and door closes. “Oh, forgot to say goodbye to your mom, we gotta go back,” he says to the girls and Julie says “You're just fooling us now.”

“Drive carefully, precious cargo aboard,” his father-in-law says through the car window and he says “Horace, don't worry, I'm a good driver and I never take chances with the kids in the car,” and Horace says “You shouldn't take them ever. You're a family man with terrific responsibilities now so you should always drive as if they're with you,” and he says “That's what I meant—thanks for everything, you've both been wonderful,” and Horace says “And thank you for bringing your family—drive carefully, precious cargo aboard,” and he says “You bet, no high speeds, you can count on it; I don't care how long it takes to get there,” and starts the car, waits thirty seconds less than he usually does for the engine to warm up—doesn't want to keep looking back and forth at Horace and smiling and waving for him to go inside—checks the right side mirror a few seconds longer than he usually does when no cars are coming, so Horace will see how careful he is, and pulls out of the parking spot. “Wave to Grandpa,” he says and kids turn to the window and say “Goodbye, Grandpa, goodbye,” and he waves without looking as he drives up the block.