Interstate (38 page)

“You bring any fresh bagels, Daddy?” Margo says and he says “Did I bring fresh bagels? Did I hear someone say ‘Did Daddy bring fresh bagels?' Does Daddy ever forget to bring fresh bagels for long trips?” and Margo says “What kind you get?” and he says “Oh gosh, I forgot the bagels. The poppyseed, sesame, blueberry, jalapeño—” and Margo says “I don't like those kinds,” and he says “Good thing, for I only bought chocolate and plain, plenty of chocolate and plain, plus a coupla garlic in their own bag since you can't stand their stink on the chocolate and plain, and in that same ‘own' bag one everything bagel for me. But too much about bagels already. Your bagel bag's under your seat next to my briefcase if neither's been moved. Split one with Julie,” and she says “I want one for myself,” and he says “Then offer the bag to her—Julie, sweetie, want a bagel?” and Margo says “Why you being so nice to us now and when nobody's around?” and he says “Why do you say that? Julie, you want a bagel?” and Julie says “I just want to look outside. The city's so gray. I only like traveling on sunny days. That makes the trip happier. But when the day's gray it makes everything gray and there's nothing more grayer than a gray city on a gray day,” and he says “Little quiz: Which came first, the gray city or gray day and, as a bonus question for extra points, how'd it get across the road?” and Julie says “I'm glad I don't live here. With all the gray I feel something awful's going to all of a suddenly happen,” and he says “Margo, don't offer her a gray bagel,” waits for a laugh, is none, says “Mommy and I did—lived here—for years. As kids, public-schooled all the way, then when we met and got married, and we turned out healthy, stealthy and okay—we had you two wonderful girls at least,” and Margo says “Phooey flattery, Daddy; you won't pick our spirits with that,” and he says “Okay, I won't correct you, but listen: people who don't live in this city—” and she says “We know, you told and told us: ‘they can't appreciate it,'” and he says “And the day'll get brighter, I promise, though we'll first see it on the road. The weatherman calls for sunny cheerful weather on the whole Northeast coast,” and she says “The weatherman said ‘cheerful'? That's nice, I like that kind of prediction. What will he mean when he says ‘cool'?” and he says “Boy, are you ever getting tuned into life and its meanings. Both, but if I can say this without either of you thinking I'm underrating or deprecating the other, right now Margo more,” and Julie says “That's not nice,” and Margo says “She's right, you shouldn't choose anybody,” and he says “You see? I fail at honesty, fail at fibbing, fail at any imaginative mix of the two and whatever else is left. I'm sorry, and whatever I say now to help my case will I'm sure be taken unfavorably, so, since you have your bagels, books, games, dolls and each other, I'll just dummy up and drive,” and Margo says “Daddy?” and he says nothing, something about the things he has to do when he gets home is coming into his head and he wants it to continue, and she says “Daddy…Daddy…please say something, you don't have to go that far,” and he says “Really, sweetheart, I was just using that excuse so I could think for a while, because talking, thinking, the two things at once, it's hard,” and she says “Then that's all right.”

They pass a sign saying there's a rest area in three miles and Margo says “Can we stop at the next rest place coming up? I have to go,” and he says “But you went at home,” and she says “No I didn't,” and he says “But I told you both to go just before we left. I said ‘Julie, Margo, everybody, including Daddy, go to the bathroom before we set out. Mommy, you don't have to be cause you're staying here,'” and she says “Maybe I did go then but I have to again,” and he says “How can you go so soon after you just went?” and she says “I didn't just went; you kept us waiting in the lobby for a half hour when you said you'd be right down,” and he says “It wasn't half an hour; it was ten minutes at the most,” and she says “Longer. Grandpa said so when he looked at his watch. He said ‘Where's your father? He's been kibbutzing'”—“Kibitzing”—“‘kibitzing upstairs for more than a half hour,'” and he says “Grandpa likes to exaggerate, not so much to make me look bad but to make himself—anyway, when he came up he said it was only quarter of an hour. ‘Nathan,' he said, ‘it's been quarter of an hour we've been waiting'—and it wasn't even that, I don't think,” and she says “Grandpa doesn't exaggerate or tell lies,” and he says “Wait, can you hold it a second? The music's about to end and they'll give the title and composer of the piece—it sounds like Vivaldi but there's something that tells me it's Marcello. No, it's all right, that was a false end,” sitting back again after leaning forward to the radio. “Look, maybe Grandpa's watch runs a little fast and he got the time wrong,” and she says “His watch is very expensive and has a battery worth ten dollars in it and he says he checks his watch with the radio every morning so it'll always have the right time. And he said we've been waiting a half hour downstairs, so even if his watch was five minutes fast or ten it'd still be a half hour we were down there. And when we went upstairs to get you it'd be more than a half hour because of the time it took in the elevator and upstairs, so that makes more than an hour altogether since I went to pee,” and he says “Wait, you lost me, and you're also cheating yourself with the total time. My point is only that you still shouldn't have to yet—go to the bathroom. We've been on the road”—he presses a radio button and the station numbers turn into the time—“almost an hour, which means it's been at the most an hour and a half since you went. Can't you keep it in another half an hour? That way we'll have gone about seventy miles, if the traffic continues to move the way it is, which will be more than a third of the trip, even if that's fewer miles than when I like to first stop, which is ideally about a hundred—halfway,” and she says “I think I can hold it in another ten minutes. But the sign we're passing says the rest area is in a mile and the next one is twenty-six miles and I know I can't hold it in for twenty-seven miles,” and he says “All right, and I'm losing the signal to this New York station fast, so I'm sure I'll never find out who wrote the piece—it's beautiful though, isn't it?” moving into the slow lane, “—that oboe and with the harpsichord going in back,” and she doesn't say anything and he says “I'm not trying to take your mind off your bladder, Margo, but you don't like this music? It's so soothing, even with the losing-the-station noises,” and she says “It's okay,” and Julie says “I have to go also, Daddy,” and he says “You're just saying that to help your sister, but you needn't, we're here,” pulling into the exit road. “You know,” he says, walking to the building from the parking lot, “even if you're not hungry, get something to eat, for I don't know if I'll make another stop till we're home,” and Margo says “Even if we have to pee bad?” and he says “Then I'll stop, of course; I wouldn't want to damage your insides. But I'm going to ask you both to go twice, once when we come in and then when we leave,” and Julie says “We won't have anything to pee,” and he says “You can always pee something, always; you'll just sit on the potty till you do,” and she says “It's not a potty. These places don't have them and I'm too old for one,” and he says “Sorry; but do you want something to eat? Margo?” They're inside now and Margo sees a place that sells tacos and says “Tacos,
yes
, I want two—can I, and something to drink?” and Julie says “I don't want them but I'll find something,” and he says “First you both pee. I'll do it twice too, now and later. Meet you both outside here, and don't go wandering if by chance you're out first,” and goes into the men's room.

Passes several urinals till he sees one that's clean. One had a cigarette butt in it and three in a row needed to be flushed. What are the pissers afraid of, germs from putting their fingers on the flush lever? Then use a paper towel to flush it, if they have them here and not just hand dryers, or toilet paper, but that'd be thinking too far ahead, and if you only think it while standing at the urinal, then too much work to get it. And who throws a butt into a urinal? They don't know someone has to take it out? Not with the hand but just any way you take it out, even with pincers or a nail at the end of a pick, is disgusting. Just the idea that someone has to take it out.
Has to
if it's part of his job and he doesn't want to be fired or quit. In that way the people who clean the ladies' room have it better. But they're probably the same cleaning men; they just block off the ladies' room when they clean it, for he's never seen a cleaning woman in one of these places, not to say because he hasn't seen one they haven't been there. At least there aren't cuspidors anymore. Now those things had to be the worst to clean. When he worked in Washington they were all over the Capitol and Senate and House office buildings, even the public hallways. Worse cleaning them than preparing bodies for funerals, he'd think, or as bad. But they're professionals, embalmers, and probably go to school for it or through some long apprenticeship before they start doing it on their own and they're no doubt a lot better paid than cleaning men. They wore white jackets and black slacks, or is he mixing them up with the waiters in the Senate and House dining rooms? But he seems to remember seeing them, in some congressman's office or Senate committee room, in that starched white jacket buttoned all the way up, emptying…not humidors. What are they called again besides spittoons? How can he have the word one second and not the next? “Spittoons” will do, but cuspidors, like on a cusp, which is maybe where the word came from—the shape of the thing, the lip—if he knows what cusp is, or exactly, but he bets it's from the Latin somewhere for that's how far back cuspidors probably go. They did it with a big can on wheels, about the size of a water bucket but the top covered except for a wide slit to pour the spit and chewing tobacco crud in. They probably emptied the bucket into a toilet someplace—where else?—and then cleaned and maybe even had to polish the cuspidors and probably cleaned those buckets as well and the toilets and slop sinks they poured it all in and maybe the area on the floor around the cuspidors where the spit missed. They also took care of the offices and committee rooms, vacuumed carpets, rugs, dusted, work like that, emptied trash baskets, made everything shine, while embalmers only work on bodies, he thinks, and have nothing to do with things like selling caskets and seating the funeral guests. So one job's as bad as the other. Or the em-balmer's job is worse, especially since there aren't cuspidors around for cleaning men to empty anymore. Though cleaning a bunch of those still couldn't be equal to embalming or just preparing for burial a decomposed or particularly ravaged or mutilated body, and even worse, the body of a child no matter what condition it comes to him in, but he supposes they get used to that too after a few years. He's heard of embalmers, once from a woman he was seeing who answered phones for a funeral home, who used the navels of corpses they were working on as ashtrays, though maybe those were just stories or the very odd case. If a senator still has a cuspidor in his private office, do the cleaning people there have to empty and polish it? He just doesn't see anyone doing that chore anymore, maybe not even for the president, but then who would do it, for you can't let the thing run over? A devoted follower perhaps or a janitor from the old days who sort of got used to putting up with it or some young flunky who wants to become assistant to one of the administrative assistants and for that future job might even do something worse. When he was in the office of a senator or congressman he was waiting to interview—a different era, almost, but that has nothing to do with what he was saying, which was, well…he'd be looking around, in a way wasting time till he was called into the senator's or representative's private office, and suddenly find himself staring into a cuspidor on the floor. Didn't do it out of any curiosity or because he was somehow drawn to it, that's for sure, or maybe that
was
it; more like an accident of the eyes, he'd call it, that happened a number of times. But how'd he get into this and here while holding his dick? Something to do instead of just looking at the urinal while he tried to piss. He finally does—had to go when he walked in here so doesn't know why it didn't just come—flushes and goes to the washstand to clean his glasses and wash his hands and throw water on his face to help make him more alert for the rest of the trip, dries his hands—no paper towels, just the dryers, and for his face and glasses, his handkerchief—and leaves, kids aren't there, looks around and doesn't see them, goes to the gift shop and the wall by the exit where there are some video games, two places they'd wander off to without money, starts to get worried, thinks “Wait, who's going to take both of them?” for both would have left the ladies' room at the same time. Maybe they're still in it, and at the door there cups his hands round his mouth and says “Margo, Julie, are you still in there?” and from what sounds like way inside it Margo says “We're coming out,” and they come out, he says “What the heck were you doing? Don't you know we're in a hurry to get home?” and Julie says “Why do we have to? We want to see some things here; it's a good place,” and he says “There's nothing to see; let's just eat,” and she says “There's video games, a good gift shop; we've been to this stop before,” and he says “They're all alike, up and down America; they all have everything you want to take all your dough. Come on, a snack—I'll give you plenty of time to eat, and then I want to get home in time to prepare you a proper dinner and give you a couple of hours between dinner and bed to do what you want—read or ride your bikes or just relax,” and Margo says “It wasn't our fault we took so long. All the toilets were filled. Ladies don't have those stand-up things to pee in and they take longer than men,” and he says “Oh yes, boy oh boy, are you the observant one,” and takes Julie's hand and they get on line at the Roy Rogers while Margo goes to a different fast-food place for tacos.