Vida (28 page)

“Where are you from?”

Here it is, she thought. Worse to refuse to answer. “Erie, Pennsylvania. Ever been there?”

“No … What do you do for a living, Sam?”

He glanced sideways at her, behind the shades. Glint of green contact. “I sell siding. Aluminum siding.”

“Oh, I guess people with old houses, like in Queens, put that on because it’s practical, isn’t that so? You don’t have to paint it, do you? We had a brick house … I don’t know what’s going to happen to us now. I just don’t.” Tara started to weep again, and the baby woke and joined her.

“Damn it, is that snow?” Joel stared ahead.

“Sure looks like it,” Vida said glumly. “Maybe it won’t stick.”

“I’m hungry!” Tommy was awake. “Mommy? Where’s Ralph? Did you leave Ralph?”

“Ralph is in the last thing we carried down,” Vida said. “In the trunk.”

“I want Ralph! You left Ralph!”

“No, Tommy, the lady says Ralph is in the trunk.”

“Are we there yet? Let’s stop now.”

The baby was bawling desperately, “She’s hungry, poor little soul. I have to heat her bottle. You said we could stop on 7 and it says Route 7.”

”Okay,” Vida said, “But it’s starting to snow”“

“I have to use the ladies’ room, and Beverly’s hungry, and I bet Tommy is too. Aren’t you, Tommy?”

“I want Ralph, Let’s stop now, I want to be there! Mama! Where are we going, anyhow?”

“If they won’t warm the bottle, I have a plug-in warmer in my plaid bag. I can do it in the ladies’ room,”

Joel pointed, “What about that place?”

“It looks like a truck stop, Really!”

“Mama!” Tommy said louder, “Where are we going?”

“Oh, it’ll be a nice place,” Tara said doubtfully.

“Will there be a color TV? Or black-and-white, like Grandma’s?”

“Color” Tara said firmly, “It’s only for a little while, Tommy. Then we’ll have a place of our own”

“Will there be other kids?”

“Yes” Tara made herself sound cheerful and firm.

“Who?”

“I don’t know their names.” She was wavering again.

“Will there be swings and slides, like in the playground?”

“We’ll see. What kind of road is this, where the restaurants are shut? On the Thruway, they’d be open. That one’s closed too.”

“Well be in another town soon,” Vida said testily. She had to pee too, and finding a restaurant to satisfy Tara and family would do nothing for her problems.

“How about that place?”Joel asked in the next town. “I bet that’s where the local people eat. Home cooking.”

“I guess so.” Tara was dandling the screaming baby. “We’ll try it.”

Vida pulled up outside. “Do you have a watch?”

“A watch? No. What for?” Tara fumbled for her purse and carryall.

“I’m sure there’s a clock inside. In forty-five minutes—at eleven thirty— we’ll come back and wait outside for you.”

“You’re going to leave me here and go someplace? What for?”

“We’ll be back in forty-five minutes. Is that enough time?”

“Not to feed Baby and change her and have a little lunch. Poor Tommy didn’t even get to eat his breakfast.”

“Yeah, you poured my milk down the sink. I want a hamburger. And French fries.”

“Okay. We’ll pick you up at twelve. Is that enough time?”

“All right, all right. But I need my bottle warmer from the plaid case in the trunk … I don’t see why you can’t just come inside with me and sit down!”

“I have to call my office and several customers” Joel said. “I can’t take off for almost a week without staying in touch. And … she has to call our baby-sitter. We’ll pick you up.”

They drove back to the last wayside picnic area and brought their bag from Natalie to a table. “See how complicated it gets when we have to make up stories?” she said. “I feel like I’m tripping on all this rope strung around.”

Joel pissed against a tree, moaning with relief, and she went past him into the bushes. When she came back, he said, “Now we’ll both be in better temper.”

“Mama, did I have to go! What kind of sandwiches did Natalie pack?”

Lightly the snow fell on the rustic table, on the rocky ground, on the rushing waters of the Housatonic with a faint hissing. The snow touched Joel’s ski cap, the glasses he had pushed high on his head, the bag between them. She giggled at the silliness, a picnic in the snow, still melting as it alighted.

“Chicken on whole wheat, roast beef with Russian dressing on dark rye … “ he said, exploring.

“Oh, give me a roast beef!”

He sulked. “Sure. Take it.”

“Baby, there must be another. I know Natalie. Look.”

There was. Then they each had a chicken sandwich, and they finished the coffee. “Next time she stops, I’ll ask her to get the thermos filled” Joel drawled, patting his belly.

“It’s nice to escape them for a little.”

“That kid drives me crazy,” he mumbled. “ I keep wanting to swat him.”

“Really, love? I’d never have guessed. You’ve been an angel.”

“Reminds me of my little brother. Spoiled rotten, and nothing’s ever good enough. He’ll grow up to be just like his old man.” Contentedly he picked his teeth with one of his hairs used as dental floss. “I can’t get used to thinking of her as younger than me! Why didn’t you want to go in the restaurant? Not to have to talk to her or not to spend the money?”

“She can’t get a good look at us in the car. She sees the back of my wig and this green scarf and your ski cap. If we sit across the table from her, she has nothing to do for an hour except stare at us. You can’t leave those stupid glasses on inside.”

“Did you like the aluminum siding?”

“I love it. She makes me nervous. Nice, dull specific answers are the ticket.”

”How many kids do we have?” He ate a chocolate-chip cookie.

“A little girl sixteen months old named Amy. Sam and Cynthia and Amy. We came in a Cracker Jack box.”

“I’d like to crawl in a Cracker Jack box with you right now. Let’s fuck in the car.”

“Joel! I can’t.”

“Oh?” His face darkened instantly, as if five-o’clock shadow of the psyche crept over it. She swore his bones thickened when he sulked.

“It’s the facade we have to keep up. I can’t put the walls down suddenly for twenty minutes. I can’t be vulnerable just for a flash”

“Or you’re getting tired of me already. Getting bored”

“I’m not bored with anything except her company … I have friends where we can maybe stay tonight.” Agnes’ farm. Hardscrabble Hill.

“I have friends up there too, where I used to live. I had an off-books job helping make antiques, and on the side I fixed people’s cars”

“Making antiques?”

He grinned. “There ain’t enough to go around naturally. All the summer people and tourists want them. It was a good job, except for lousy ventilation in the winter. That stuff gets in your lungs … Do you still love me?”

“Of course!” She almost suspected he could read her mind about Leigh, but her better sense told her it was only his usual insecurity. “Are you sorry we took this job?”

“It’s good for us to work together. I want that … What do you think?”

“Why not?” She rested her chin on her cupped hand. “Anything in mind?” Recent issues flashed through her mind, riffling through a deck of cards: abortion, gay rights, falling dollar, unemployment, racism in the North, South Africa, tenants rights, union busting. She felt in a closing vise of time. By the weekend she must have at least the scaffolding of a proposal, for she suspected Kiley was looking for a meeting to make a proposal of her own. To come unprepared was to cede too much.

“That nuke stuff gets me” Joel scowled. “It’s gross. It’s like none of the rest of it will happen if there’s no people here, right? I mean, I always believed the propaganda that those things couldn’t blow up. But any breeder reactor can blow sky high. One little fucking pinch of plutonium you couldn’t hardly see could off a townful of people. There’s guys dying right now in England from processing the stuff. It’s a poison that don’t even exist naturally and they want to make it by the barrel.”

“Ummm” She paced around the picnic table. In a way she thought he had a point, and in a way she thought it would cause her a lot of political trouble. Everything had to be done, of course; all issues must be worked on. She could see too that if Joel caught fire on an issue it would be good for him. He needed a purpose beyond survival. If they stayed together, they needed common tasks and shared goals; if they stayed together. Everything was piling up at once: seeing Leigh again, getting plugged back into the Network, Joel seeing Kiley, and preparing her own position for the Board meeting. The organization must act or rot. What did Kiley want? She glanced at her watch. “Time to leave.”

Tara was not waiting outside, but she came out with Tommy and the baby within five minutes. Then they had to find Ralph in the trunk. Tara stood to one side jiggling the baby as Vida pawed through the panty hose, toys, baby powder and bubble bath in the carryall. Tara asked, “How come the car has New York plates if you’re from Pennsylvania?”

“This isn’t our car,” Vida said. “Our car could make it too easy to trace you.”

Joel took over the driving, sliding his sunglasses up on his head and finally taking them off and putting them on the dash. The thickening snow meant he could not drive over forty-five. Snow was beginning to thatch the bushes and grass, to gust in waves across the pavement. He concentrated on driving as the road got slipperier and the light dimmed and the windshield wipers sloshed in time to the bland sugar rock gushing from the radio. She scanned the map, watching the highway signs and keeping an eye out for a tail.

Driving through the snow in an old car …Years ago. She was at the wheel, Eva was with her and they were running two deserters up to Canada from Hardscrabble Hill. It was dangerous, of course, but they were being paid and they had good fake I.D. and they’d done it before. But a storm had closed the road they meant to take, and the old car shimmied and groaned as the trip took hours more than they had expected. To top it all off, Eva and she had got in a furious argument with the two ex-soldiers about the women’s movement and abortion. One of the guys had got so angry he had called them whores and murderers, and she knew he would have hit them if they had not been necessary to his safety. When they had finally let off the men, Eva was shaking. “It’s all theoretical for me. Women don’t make you pregnant,” Eva had murmured. “My hand’s stiff and sore from gripping the knife in my pocket. I was scared they’d attack us.” They had both been scared, but they did not say anything when they got back to Hardscrabble Hill. That was while Kevin still ruled, and neither Eva nor Vida would admit to anyone else being scared of two men. She wanted to tell Joel the story, but in front of Tara she could not.

Tara dozed, except when Tommy poked her. In mid-afternoon they stopped for gas outside Lenox, and again Tara made a small prickly scene about paying for the gas. She seemed reluctant to let go any money. Vida understood. When was Tara going to get more? How was she going to live? Vida understood, and yet she had no choice but to insist. On they went in the early dark with the snow gusting into the windshield and packing down on the highway. She drove again, lucky when she could get up to forty on a recently plowed stretch. The snowplows were out, and sometimes a long line of late-afternoon traffic was backed up.

They stopped for a four-o’clock snack and a six-o’clock supper and to use a bathroom at seven forty-five. The snow continued to fall. Joel and Vida ate their last sandwiches, walking around the car beating snow from their arms as they waited each time for Tara. The second time that Tara forgot to have the thermos filled with coffee, Vida sent her back into the restaurant. “I’m afraid we can’t go on without it” she said firmly. “It would be dangerous.”

“Why don’t you go in yourself?” Tara folded her arms.

“I didn’t eat a meal there. I doubt if they’d fill a thermos for me. If you want this car to move, get the coffee, Tara”

Route 9 was in worse shape. They saw cars in the ditch, a van overturned. Between Woodford and Searsburg they had to wait for twenty minutes at a standstill while a jackknifed truck was cleared from the highway. Their faces were lit by the flashing lights of the police cars. As they stalled there, Joel tapped her arm and took over the driving again. At nine o’clock, traffic began to creep past the wreckage. The car skidded but kept going over the mountains and through the snow drifting in the hollows, piling up in the curves. At a little before eleven, the car crawled into Brattleboro. Pulled over to the side of Main Street, Vida bent over the map Natalie had drawn. “Go two more blocks and then left, up the hill away from the river”“

The car labored up the hill, the wheels spinning on ice. To be done, done with all this and in bed! She burned cold with fatigue. Her shoulders, her back, her neck ached from having clutched the wheel hour after hour. She could no longer find a position in which her back did not ache. She and Joel had stopped speaking, because they could no longer spare the energy. Ten inches of snow had fallen and still it came down wetly, thickly. Where the streets had not yet been plowed she could not tell what was roadway and what was not. Cars that had been snowed in looked as if they were parked in the middle of fields. They crept up to the marching outskirts of town, where the houses were farther apart and the street lights stopped. She had to get out of the car and wade through the snow to read a street sign. “Not yet. I hope we didn’t go too far.”