The Mother Road (8 page)

I know he’s trying to crack the tension between us, but that doesn’t stop the flames that encase my face as I instantly turn red. I want to go scared turtle on him, dip my head and limbs into my shirt, and fall flat to the ground, praying I camouflage with the asphalt.

Not giving me a chance to answer him, he says, “I was able to figure out what was wrong with the toilet, wasn’t too hard to realize once I got a good look. I fixed it and I’m making sure it’s ready to use for the rest of the trip.”

His voice is sincere, his eyes look at me gently, and I can tell he’s trying to be as nice as possible, but it doesn’t matter; all that runs through my head is that Porter, the man who stole my heart, is emptying out my shit like an incredibly hot version of Randy Quaid.

Mortification hits me first, followed by the need to throw up from embarrassment.

“Excuse me.” Before he can ask me what’s wrong, I sprint back to the front of the RV, where my dad and Paul are just returning. They have bags in their hands as well as two large water jugs. Their faces are somber, the same faces they gave me when they found out I “became a woman.”

“Hey, Buttons. How are you feeling?”

“Your coloring looks better,” Paul adds. “Dehydration can be a serious thing, and for the amount of time you were on the toilet, I calculated your dehydration level to the brown level—no pun intended—which needs medical attention. Dad didn’t think you would want to go to the hospital, on account of pooping in a non-working toilet, so we got you a bunch of water instead.” He finishes his rant with a smile while holding out a bottle of water to me.

Ignoring their comments, I ask, “Why is Porter cleaning out the toilet?”

“He offered,” my dad answers. “He’s developed some good plumbing skills and was able to fix the toilet this morning.”

“Did he…” I can’t even get myself to say the words. I take a deep breath and gather my thoughts. “Did he fix it from inside the trailer or from the outside?”

Paul and my dad glance at each other and I already know the answer without them telling me. Utter mortification sets in.

Pushing past them into the RV, I grab my toiletries bag, toss the blanket off my bed, and pull out a quick pair of clothes to change into, avoiding eye contact with every male in the vicinity.

Call me dramatic, but it pretty much feels like my life is over. Porter Smith, my very own personal heart-throb, cleaned up my poop-capades this morning. Can’t get much worse than that for a girl.

**PORTER**

Rolling stones must have played five times during our almost four hour jaunt across Arizona, but no one even dared to ask Marley to pay her “mooning” dues. Instead, the men huddled close together, keeping our distance from Marley, who couldn’t seem to stop grinding her teeth. She sat in the back of the RV on her dad’s bed and typed on her computer.

Bernie whispered that we were in red dot special mode right now, and were to stay far away from Marley and on guard. Growing up with the McManns, I knew exactly what red dot special mode was. It meant don’t talk to the beast and protect your junk. You were to blame if you got knocked in the nuts.

This morning, I was trying to get the toilet job done before Marley even woke up, but the pump was so damn loud, I was surprised she didn’t wake up earlier. The minute I saw her, I tried for a joke, bringing up one of our favorite Christmas movies we used to watch, Christmas Vacation. It didn’t quite have the effect I was hoping for. Quite the opposite, actually. Pretty sure she hates me even more.

“Fifty thousand years ago, the meteor struck earth at twenty-six thousand miles per hour. It made a divot of two point four miles in circumference and five hundred and fifty feet deep. It’s one of the oldest preserved craters to date.”

Classic Paul and his encyclopedia barf.

“Could you imagine being alive when there was a meteor coming straight at you? Do you think you would be one of those people in the movies who just stares at it, or do you think you would run?” Paul asks.

“Run. What kind of idiot would stare at it?”

“Paul would,” Marley says from behind us.

In synchronization, the men scrunch their shoulders from her voice. They’re still waiting to see what happens next. She walks up to the cab area, a water bottle in her hand and a carrot hanging out of her mouth like cigar. This morning, Paul and Bernie made sure to grab healthy options from a grocery store the local owner of the KOA drove them to. Marley was a healthy eater and they wanted to make sure, after last night, to accommodate her. That didn’t mean they still didn’t get their all-time favorite snack: Funyuns. They were always on the list; it was a McMann tradition.

This morning, when she was wrapped in her blanket, I would have loved to get lost in her warm, fresh-out-of-bed body. Her eyes were still sleepy, her brown hair was falling out of her loose braids, and her heart-shaped lips were plump and ready to be kissed. She was too fucking tempting.

After she got ready for the day, she painted her face, put some product in her hair, and dressed in a pair of skin tight jeans and a hot pink T-shirt. She was gorgeous, but she wasn’t the girl I grew up with either. The girl I knew wasn’t into wearing makeup; she wasn’t much into looking at herself in the mirror either, but this older Marley was different. Made me wonder how much of the girl I grew up with still existed.

Cautiously, Paul defends himself. “I wouldn’t stand there and watch. I would run like Porter.”

Marley snorts and sits on the back of the dining table bench. “Paul, who are you kidding? If you saw a meteor coming toward earth, you would drop trou and jack off.” Marley pretends to jerk off a fake penis and says in a deep male voice, “Oh, yeah, a meteor, a gift from the unknown.” She scrunches her nose and then sprays her hand at Paul, fake orgasming his face and says, “Meteors!”

“That would be dad you’re talking about,” Paul scoffs, wiping away the fake jiz from his face.

“Watch it,” Bernie warns, clearly not liking his kids talking about him whacking it off to space items.

Paul folds his arms over his chest. “I don’t get off from space.”

“Paul, you used to speak Klingon to me. Pretty sure you would beat your meat to a meteor. You practically pissed yourself that one time we watched a meteor shower. Remember, out on the trampoline?”

I chuckle to myself as I remember that night. Paul and Marley had a trampoline on their farm, the kind of giant trampoline that existed before the safety netting that prevented children from orbiting around the yard and breaking their necks. We spent many nights out on the bouncy service staring up at the sky, picking out the constellations and making ones of our own.

The meteor shower was like nothing we’d ever seen before. The night was clear and it almost looked like it was raining in the sky, water never falling down to earth. We each had a liter of orange soda to our name, and Paul being the daredevil he was, waited until the last minute to go to the bathroom, nearly peeing his pants. He sprinted away, holding his crotch until he made it to the bathroom.

Even though Paul almost pissed himself as a teenager, what I remember the most from that night was the stolen moments I shared with Marley. We laughed together and rolled on the trampoline in a fit of amusement, running right into one another. My hand fell to her hip and her fingers brushed against my chest. Her eyes searched mine frantically, and that’s when I knew she liked me. She didn’t see me as a brother…she saw me as something more.

Marley looks over at me briefly and I catch a glimpse of reminiscing in her eyes, a look that reflected in my own. She must be thinking of the same moment as me.

“Are you feeling better?” Bernie asks, changing the topic for Paul’s sake.

“I am. Thanks for going to the store for me.”

“Does this mean no more hot dogs?” Paul asks, earning a whack from his father to shut his mouth.

Marley tenses up, but says, “No, I think I’ll be okay. Can’t stop the tradition now. I’ll just make sure to drink lots of water and keep my wieners to one a day. Two inside me is just too much.”

“That’s so wrong,” Paul laughs.

“There it is!” Bernie bellows.

I watch in amusement as Bernie and Paul practically hum in their seats as we park the RV. Once the keys leave the ignition, Bernie and Paul bolt, leaving us in their dust. To me, a meteor crater is just a hole in the ground, but to Paul and Bernie, it’s a shining beacon in their love for space. Paul will deny how much he loves space, but it’s evident in the way his leg is bouncing up and down as if he was a dog getting scratched on the belly.

We all walk inside the visitor’s center, where Paul and Bernie spend their time reading each factoid presented, while Marley takes pictures of the attraction with her Polaroid.

With my hands in my pockets, I observe the area, but find no interest in really reading about the history because, honestly, why bother when Paul is going to recite it back to us in the RV the minute we start driving? I choose to wait for the cliff notes, aka, the Paul Notes.

Stepping outside, I take in the massive hole the crater produced in the earth’s surface. Desert surrounds us, not a tree in sight, just rolling grounds of dirt. Growing in upstate New York, you’re used to the trees obstructing your view, but out here, in the west, you can see the landscape for miles.

Marley leaves the educational portion of the visitor’s center and looks out at the crater. Her hands rest on a metal bar that keeps visitors from veering off course. She looks resigned, almost sad in a way, and I wonder if it has anything to do with her mother not being here.

“Pretty big, isn’t it?” I ask, not knowing what else to say, but wanting to talk to her.

She looks back at me briefly and sighs. “Yeah, bigger than I expected.”

“Really? Didn’t you hear Paul’s spiel about the dimensions?”

She chuckles. “I guess you never really know what a five hundred and fifty foot hole really looks like until you see it.” She lifts the camera and takes a picture. A little white photo pops out the end, which she grabs and starts shaking.

“You know the shaking doesn’t really do anything.”

“But it looks cool,” she replies back with snark.

Silence falls between us as I try to decide what to say to her. I want to tell her I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused her. I want to know firsthand what the last four years of her life have been like, rather than hearing spotty stories from Paul, I want to know this new Marley who seems to be a little jaded and not so much country girl anymore.

Instead, I bring up the one thing she probably doesn’t want to discuss because that’s how intelligent I am.

“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you earlier with the bathroom stuff. I was just trying to be helpful. If it makes you feel better, I’ve seen worse.”

Don’t worry, I know the idiocy radiating off of me is at nuclear level. I’m well aware.

She turns on her heel toward me with her hand on her hip and a blaze in her eyes. “If it makes me feel better?” She practically hisses at me with her entire body turning into a venomous serpent ready to strike my exposed jugular with her poisonous fangs. So not the right thing to say. “Do you seriously think I want to spend my time at a crater hole talking about my poop from last night? What is wrong with you?”

I think about covering my neck, not wanting to be struck by surprise or choked by her leg that is twitching below her.

“I was just trying to be nice,” I defend, tacking on a smile for good humor.

“By embarrassing me?” she seethes through her teeth.

She’s angry, I should have stuck to the red dot special code. The urge to protect my balls is overwhelming as my hands shift south as a shield.

“I’m not embarrassing you. I was just trying to explain.”

Looking around and pointing at me with her thumb as if she’s talking to a crowd, she says, “Oh, so you’re trying to be Mr. Nice Guy now? Four years too late, Porter.”

Now I’m angry. She has no clue what that night felt like to me. I might have hurt her, but I hurt myself more.

“Are you going to keep throwing that in my face?” I grab her by the arm as she tries to run away from me. She looks over my shoulder, as if scoping out her family.

“Keep throwing it in your face? News flash, Porter, I haven’t seen you in four years. How the hell could I continue to throw that in your face if you haven’t been around? Great disappearing act, by the way, really made a girl’s self-esteem sky rocket.” Sarcastically, she gives me the thumbs up.

To me, the thumbs up is more devastating than the middle finger because by giving the thumbs up in a sarcastic manner, you’re basically telling the person they’re a bonafide moron.

“There is so much you don’t understand.” I’m being as evasive as they come. This is not the time nor place to get into this conversation and I make that known. “It’s in the past, no need to bring it up now, especially since we’re only going to be together for the next couple of days. Why don’t we try to enjoy each other’s company rather than be at each other’s throats?”

Marley’s facial expressions are impossible to read right now as she steps closer to me. “Don’t count on it, Porter. I plan on making your life a living hell on this RV.”

“Is that right?” Challenge is in her eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Watch your back, Smith, I’m coming for you, and you know what? Payback is a bitch.”

“Pay back for what?” I ask, semi-liking the fire I see spouting off of her.

She gets on her tippy toes and whispers in my ear. “For splitting my heart in half and leaving me to bleed on my own.”

Her breath tickles my ear as her words sink in. My body itches to pull her up against me and apologize for all my wrongdoings where she’s concerned, but I resist. The better thing to do would be to apologize for hurting her, but the prideful man inside of me decides on a different route, a less well-received route. A route that will instantly send me to the rickety doghouse she’s been trying to shove me in from the moment I stepped on the RV “Glad I cleaned up your shit then, should have let you do it yourself. Oh, and did you have corn recently?”