The Mother Road (6 page)

My smile falls to a frown as I storm off to the bathroom, my dad chuckling behind me.

Campground bathrooms are all the same, a few toilets and a few showers to match, all encased by wooden stalls. The inside smells like an old camper and the little touches of a frilly curtain over the small window and the light rose stenciling on the pink walls makes it feel like a Grandma’s cottage, mauve colored tones and all.

The showers offer little privacy with their four foot doors that are supposed to cover you while you shower. Basically, if you’re not an average height of five-five, you’ll be showing tatas or puss puss. Thankfully, I’m covered as I scrub my body diligently at least five times before washing my hair and then conditioning.

When we were younger, I can remember Paul whining like a little bitch about how the men’s showers didn’t have any covers. Not wanting to show off his little peen, he always had to shower in a bathing suit, washing his junk under the nylon lycra fabric of his shorts. It was one of the little victories I had against Paul.

When we pulled into the KOA, I announced to the men that I would be taking a shower and I expected dinner on the table when I got back. I didn’t care what we ate, as long as I didn’t have to cook it. Every single one of them were in the dog house after what happened. Porter tried to tell me he had nothing to do with me being urinated on, but I claimed he was guilty by association, and then gave him my death glare. He seemed to shut up after that.

Before an elderly woman can pop in the shower area and stare me down, I dry off and put my Route 66 shirt on and a pair of little shorts, rolling them once because, why not? Might as well torture Porter if I can.

My hair is still wet as I braid it into two French braids. It’s my go-to hairstyle when I want a light wave in my hair the next day, but don’t want to bother with a curling iron. The next day I just spray a little sea salt mixture in my hair to add texture and let it air dry, giving me the perfect beach hair. Please note, I keep my braids loose; if you keep them tight, then you will get a bit of kinky wave…keep them loose and you are bound to have that beach hair.

You’re welcome for the tip.

The walk to the RV is pleasant. The sun is setting, casting an orange glow across the sky, kids are chasing each other around their campsites and the gravel crunching under my feet only reminds me of the multiple KOAs we stayed at while growing up.

I might have been peed on today, and the man who ripped me apart years ago might be sitting within feet of me in a tiny old RV, but I’m still enjoying my time on the road. I missed my family, no matter how much they drive me insane.

From around Tacy, I can hear my dad talking to Porter and Paul. I pause to hear what he’s saying. “Now when she gets back, we are going to treat her like the princess that she is. No piss jokes and no comments about her lapse of sanity out in the desert. You got me?”

“Yes, sir,” Paul and Porter say at the same time.

I smile to myself, happy that my dad has finally remembered who his favorite child is.

“Hello, boys,” I say, as I round the corner of Tacy. “What are you cooking?”

“Hot dogs, of course,” My dad says with his arm stretched out. He pulls me into his chest and gives me three kisses on my head. “You smell nice and your shirt fits you perfectly. Don’t you think so, boys?”

“It’s a little tight,” Paul comments, enticing my father’s evil eyebrows to appear. Paul falters and covers up his last statement. “I mean, looks great. Not tight at all.”

I glance over at Porter, who is refusing to make eye contact with me. Instead, he’s flipping the hot dogs, concentrating solely on the flames under them.

“I haven’t had a hot dog in a long time,” I comment. “I haven’t actually had meat in a while.”

With a scrunched nose, Paul asks, “Are you a vegetarian?”

“No, but I try to eat organically most of the time. All those toxins aren’t good for you.”

“Actually…”

Whenever Paul starts a sentence with the word “actually,” I just tune him out, and that’s exactly what I do now as he goes on and on about the myths about non-organic food. I take the time to put my shower items away in Tacy. That’s when it dawns on me that there are three beds in the camper and four people.

“Uh, where is everyone sleeping?” I ask, stepping off the bottom stair of Tacy and sitting in a camping chair next to my dad.

“Didn’t you know? You’re sharing the bitch bed with Porter,” Paul laughs.

“What?” My face turns bright red as I turn to see Porter’s reaction. Sharing a bed with Porter would have been a dream come true four years ago, but now I would rather sleep in a tub of my brother’s urine.

Actually, that’s not true. If Porter crawled into bed with me, I wouldn’t flee the scene right away. I probably wouldn’t even kick him out. I might kick him in the gonads and then rub my cheek against his chest because that’s the kind of girl I am. Beat them and then treat them.

My dad pats my hand. “Porter will be sleeping in a tent outside of the RV.”

Why did that answer disappoint me? Like my dad and brother would really allow Porter to sleep with me. “Why did you lie, Paul?”

“Because Dad said we couldn’t make fun of you for being urine face; I had to get my jabs in somewhere.”

“I’m not urine face!” I yell, the whole campground probably hearing my outburst. “It hit my chest. If anything, I’m urine tits.”

“I’m not calling you urine tits. You’re my little sister; you’re not supposed to have tits.”

“Can we not use the word tits, please?” my dad asks, but we both ignore him.

“So then what would you call these?” I ask, holding my boobs up. I catch Porter take a glance at me fondling myself before he turns back to the hot dogs, clearing his throat at the same time. “If these aren’t tits, then please tell me what they are.”

“Stop touching yourself.” Paul covers his eyes.

“Every girl has tits, Paul. Savannah has tits just like I have them.”

“Don’t.” Paul points his finger at me. “Do not associate your tits with Savannah’s.”

“Why not?” I stand and grip my boobs in my hands, dancing circles around Paul while I rub them together. “Don’t want to think about my tits as Savannah’s tits?”

“Stop, you’re ruining everything,” Paul cries, the palms of his hands pressed against his ears while he hums so he can’t hear what I’m saying.

“Enough with the tit talk, Jesus.” The Bern-Man has spoken and the eyebrow has made itself known. No more tit talk for tonight, but I note the damage it has done to Paul and remind myself to use such torture devices in future fights.

“Hot dogs are ready,” Porter calls out, placing a plate of charred dogs on the picnic table.

Putting our fight on hold, we all take a seat at the picnic table. I sit next to my dad and across from Paul, happy that I have to turn my body diagonal to talk to Porter, the less interaction the better.

The chips are broken out, sodas are cracked, and condiments are passed around the table as we decorate our dogs, preparing them for a toast.

We raise our hot dogs like every other trip we’ve had, Porter follows suit, and my dad prepares his speech. “To a safe and fun trip across the country. May Tacy guide us down the Mother Road, may our stomachs be full of wieners—” enter snort from me, “—and our days full of laughter. Here’s to getting our kicks on Route 66.”

“Hear, hear,” Paul says, like a dumb ass.

We clink our hot dogs together and all take a bite. The texture of the beef is an unfamiliar one to me, since it’s been a while since my last bite of a hot dog, but I chew like a pro and swallow. Not so bad. It’s not the best hot dog I’ve ever had, but I’m not throwing up, so I’m happy.

The boys talk about the baseball playoffs coming up, and when I say boys, I mean Porter and my dad. Paul is as feminine as they come. He might sport the beard and he might have been in the Army for a short stint, but when it comes to building things, knowing sports statistics, and guzzling enough beer to belch, “I Will Always Love You,” he is not your man. If you’re looking for someone who can show you how to break into someone’s hard drive, if that’s a thing, and bake one mean pineapple upside down cake, then he’s your man.

“How’s Savannah? Is she okay with this trip across the country?”

Mustard drips off of Paul’s beard as he licks his fingers. “Yeah, she was the one who found Mom’s map. She suggested the trip after I talked about all of our vacations out on the road.”

Damn, I knew I liked that woman. It’s not very often you like your soon to be sister-in-law, unless your sibling has struck gold, and somehow Paul luckily did.

“Savannah is a good girl,” my dad chimes in.

“Do you always have to say her name like that?” I ask my dad, who also has mustard on his beard.

“How do I say her name?” My dad feigns innocence.

“As if you were born in the deep burrows of Georgia and have molasses dripping off your tongue.”

Every single time my dad says Savannah’s name, he uses a rich southern accent, as if he was transported back to the massively inappropriate cotton picking days.

“Sounds better when said like that. Plus, she likes it.”

I roll my eyes. “Where did she find the map?”

“In Mom’s photo album. We were looking through old pictures and it was in the back. She thought it would be good for us to have one more trip together. It all worked out when Porter was out in California to…”

“We don’t need to talk about what I was doing,” Porter interrupts Paul. “I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time. Hell, if I wasn’t, I would have missed urine face.” He can’t even get the sentence out of his mouth without laughing. Paul gives him a fist bump, and like the children they are, they blow it up and go back to their hot dogs.

“What did I say? We’re not talking about…urine face,” my dad snorts.

“Dad!” I whack his arm.

“I’m sorry,” my dad chuckles. “But, sweetie, you almost drank our piss.”

Everyone with a beard at the table breaks out into a fit of laughter. Hands slap the table, guts are held onto, and the deep rumble of their chuckles vibrates through the air.

I brush off my hands and crumple my napkin, then toss it on my plate. “Yuck it up, boys. Get your jollies in now because when I get you back, you’ll want to remember this moment when I warned you.” I lean over the picnic table and I enunciate every word. “Don’t mess with me.”

Satisfaction runs through me as Paul gulps, clearly fearing what I can do to him a week before his wedding, but Porter’s reaction is the exact opposite. He sees my threat as a challenge. What he doesn’t know is it would give me the greatest pleasure to mess with his arrogance. I have some planning to do.

Our dinner is cleaned by Paul, while my dad and I lay out the next portion of the trip, and Porter takes a shower. Arizona has a few attractions we want to stop and visit, the meteor crater being one of them. If you are to take back one thing from this trip, you will learn that my father, Bernie McMann, is obsessed with space. He grew up in the era of the great space race and swore to his friends that his fiftieth birthday would be celebrated on the moon. To his dismay, it was celebrated at an Old Country Buffet with his kids, but boy did we pig out that night.

Paul and I don’t mind space; we grew up to our dad talking constantly about the moon, watching
Star Trek
, and being launched by my father from our living rooms to our beds as if we were our own personal rocket ships. The fear that threatens to take over me on this seven day trip is the many, and I mean many, space conversations my dad will try to have, especially after that show about astronaut wives just aired. He called me after the pilot and talked to me for two hours about the Gemini and Mercury crews and how they were the real pioneers of the space age. Lucky for us, there is a plexi-glass astronaut in Illinois dedicated to the Gemini men. My dad is practically frothing at the mouth from excitement over the damn thing.

“I’m going to hit the shower.” My dad kisses the top of my head and pats my shoulder. “So glad you could come with us, Buttons. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, Dad.”

“Come on, Paul, you smell like ass.”

When I was young, it was always me and my dad and Paul and my mom. I was in charge of the map and giving my dad directions, while Paul helped mom in the kitchen, hence his pineapple upside down cake skills. When I moved across the country, I knew it was a big adjustment for my dad, especially since Mom was no longer alive, but he encouraged me, knowing it was the best move for my career. I try to visit back home as much as possible, but I know it’s not like it used to be, something my dad is still adjusting to.

While the men are showering, I step up into the RV and stare down the bitch bed, aka, the dining table. If it’s anything like I remember, I’m in for a night full of the inability to stretch my body out, my arms getting stuck in the crevices of the cushions, and the worry if I’m going to fall through the table only to end up with a particle board piece of scrap shoved uncomfortably up my ass.

Dreading the night in front of me, I toss the cushions to the floor and grab the leg from underneath that’s holding up the table. It’s a little rusty, so trying to fold it up is challenging.

“Come on you geriatric plate holder. Get in there,” I say to it.

With fear of being pinched by the rusty leg’s button that won’t go in, I grab the hem of my shirt and bring it up to the button to protect my fingers. The cotton shields me, giving me more confidence to press harder.

“Don’t be a little bitch; work with me here.”

I grunt and shift my body to apply more pressure. Sweat starts to tickle my temples and I swear some more, throwing my entire body into the table.

“Do you need me to warm you up before I push your button? Are you a needy little lady? Fine. I can stroke you.” I take a break from the button and start running my hand up and down the leg of the dining table. The cold metal starts to warm from my pumping. “Yeah, you like that, don’t you, leg? Come on, work with me now.”

Moving my shirt back up to the button, exposing almost my entire front half, I press it in, throwing my back into it. With a final grunt and a thrust from my upper half, the button gives in. I scream from surprise and my fingers slip, trapping my shirt in the button hole while the leg of the table still stands straight as an aroused pencil cock.