“I kind of liked the little fairy kneeling coyly in the flowers,” Renie said. “But then there was also the viper with his mouth wide open. My favorite, though, was the woman dressed in a black leather bra and panties and black nylons, straddling a giant tongue. I had one all picked out for each of the rest of you, too. Lise was going to get a caduceus on her deltoid; Joni was going to get a pineapple on her ankle; and for you, Cece? A pithy aphorism, just above your sacrum, in Angelina Jolie script.”
“Seriously, do you really want a tattoo?” I ask.
“Not anymore,” Renie says. She climbs into the back of the car and slams the door. “Somebody else drive.”
“I think it looked a little like hell in there,” Joni says. “Did anybody else think it looked like hell in there? Those red walls, and all that black.”
“They had a devil tattoo,” Renie says. “Also a Jesus and a Buddha one. Never let it be said that they aren’t open-minded in hell.”
“Has anyone ever been to Des Moines?” Lise asks, buckling herself into the driver’s seat. She’s told the others about her plans to go there and see her ex-husband.
It’s quiet in the car, so I guess not.
“If I would have predicted what I’d be doing at forty-two years old, I would never have said I’d be on a road trip to see my ex-husband. In Des Moines, of all places.”
“What do you mean, of all places?” Joni says.
“I don’t know,” Lise says. “Des Moines just sounds like a city that you would use in a joke or something, like New Jersey.”
“You’re a snob,” Joni says.
“The original name for Des Moines was Fort Raccoon,” I say, helpfully.
“How do you know?” Renie asks.
“Fourth grade, Mrs. Menafee. We had to learn interesting things about cities and I got Des Moines. It also has the largest gold dome in North America, on the state capitol.”
“See?” Lise says. “That’s not interesting. If that’s all you can—”
“Every place is interesting if you open your eyes,” I say.
“That’s so bumper sticker,” Lise says.
“It’s true!”
“She tried to find me a few times,” Renie says, and it appears we’re on to another subject.
“Haley?” Lise says.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t she find you? Everybody’s findable these days. Santa Claus has two websites.”
“I don’t know. That’s just what she said. That she tried.”
“What’s she like?” I ask.
“Well, the reason I said she’s like me is that she’s guarded, like I can be. Even after she came back, she was pretty defensive, but then I expected that. Mostly we just kept sneaking looks at each other, and a lot of the content of what we said was lost to that. You know: Oh my God, it’s my mother, oh my God, it’s my daughter. I did, you know, apologize, after a fashion. And she accepted it, after a fashion. It went like this: I said there was a lot I’d like to explain to her about the circumstances of her birth. And she said she’d like to hear about that sometime. So.”
“So did you really feel like you were her mother?” Joni asks.
“I don’t know. I felt something. What does it feel like to be a mother?”
Quiet, and then Joni says, “You know those doors where you go in and you can’t come out?”
“What doors can you go in and not come out?” Renie asks.
“They’re in mousetraps.”
“Being a mother feels like being in a mousetrap?” Renie asks, laughing.
“A humane one,” Joni says. “You’re trapped because you’re always on call. Even when they get older, they still need you.”
Lise’s cellphone rings. Sandy, she mouths, and starts talking to her daughter about how to use the washer. Now that Lise isn’t there, Sandy has deigned to pay a visit.
“They especially need you when you’re not there,” Joni says.
“Thanks a lot,” Renie says.
“I didn’t mean … I just meant that … Look how Sandy has called Lise twice on this trip, and you know she never calls her.”
“Yes she does,” Renie says. And then, after a moment, “Yeah. You’re right, she never does.”
“We’re not too far from Des Moines,” Lise says, into the phone. “And we’re having a great time.”
We. It’s good to have friends, that fleshy stockade.
Lise sighs. “Nothing! I’d just like to see him again. It’s been a long time. Cece is seeing someone she hasn’t seen for—”
She listens, then says, “Okay, you know what, Sandy? You’re getting way ahead of—”
She listens again. “No. No I’m not. Will you just … All right, look. I’ll talk to you later.”
She hangs up.
Silence, and then Renie asks to have the radio turned up.
Lise adjusts herself in a way that looks like she’s either casting something off or readjusting it so that it will hang better on her.
“Good store, good store!” Joni yells, pointing to a cooking store called Pannifed, and we all pitch forward when the brakes are put on.
When we come out, Lise is bitching that all the new pots Joni bought won’t fit in the kitchen and Joni is bitching that Lise bought a coffee press that is the wrong kind. Renie bought polka-dot coffee mugs, a variety of fancy salts, and almond-scented dish detergent.
I. Bought. Nothing.
LISE AND I ARE SHARING A ROOM AT THE MOTEL IN DES MOINES. I’m waiting for her to finish getting ready to see Steven. She comes out of the bathroom dressed in a blue sheath dress and a string of pearls, her usual pearl studs. Low, bone-colored heels.
She sits on the edge of the bed, her hands tightly clasped, looks at her watch.
“Ten minutes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My heart rate is one-sixty.”
“You look really nice.”
It’s as if those words launch her back into the bathroom. She comes out in a couple of minutes changed into a pair of black pants, a plain white button-down, sandals. The necklace is off.
She sits back down on the bed and looks over at me. “Better, I think.”
“You looked lovely in that dress. Was it new?”
“Well, that’s right. That’s part of the problem. I want to be comfortable, and I can’t be comfortable in a new dress. Or … in a dress period. Better to be comfortable.”
“You still look nice.”
“Thanks. Cece, will you wait outside with me for him to come?”
“Of course.”
“It’s a gray Avalon we’ll be looking for. Help me to look for a gray Avalon.”
“I will.”
“Do you know where Renie and Joni are? I don’t want them to come out there. I don’t want it to be … a spectacle.”
“They went to the pool. They said they were going to have a soak in the hot tub.”
Lise nods. “I wish that’s where I was going.”
I reach over to touch her hand. “You’ll be fine. You need to do this. The cards said it would be good.”
“They didn’t say that.”
“Well, they didn’t say it would be bad.”
She looks at her watch. “Okay. Five minutes of. Let’s go.”
We go down to the lobby, and she looks out the window. “Oh God, he’s here.” She looks over at me. “I shouldn’t have done this.”
“Just … Have a good time. Have a good time! We’ll see you later.”
She goes out toward the car, and a tall, silver-haired man gets out to open the door for her. He’s good-looking, from what I can tell from here. He closes the door and goes around to his own side, and I see Lise make the tiniest wave at me. I wave back, then go and change into my bathing suit. It doesn’t matter how old I am, it doesn’t matter how I look in a suit (though this black halter-top one was designed by a compassionate person and I really like it). Putting on a bathing suit always gets me a little jazzed; I’m ready to have a good time. I cannot remember e
ver having a bad time in a bathing suit. I think about this in the elevator, on the way down to the pool, and it’s really true, I haven’t.
JONI, RENIE, AND I are back in the hot tub after having gone out to Dairy Queen, where we had sundaes and onion rings for dinner. A young couple comes into the pool room in their bathrobes. They stand a few feet away from the hot tub, watching, then leave the room. Almost immediately, though, the young man comes back and says, “Are you going to be in there much longer?”
“We just got in,” Joni says. “But there’s room for you two, if you want.” She gestures, in a halfhearted kind of way, to the other side of the hot tub, where there is indeed room for two more people.
“That’s okay,” he says, and leaves again.
But now the woman comes in and walks over to the edge of the hot tub and crouches down beside us. “Could I just tell you something?”
“Sure,” I say.
“We just got married? And we wanted to sort of have the hot tub to ourselves?” She’s a pretty girl, an open-faced blonde with a well-placed beauty mark above her lip. Her husband, too, is a fine specimen, though a little on the blank-eyed side.
I start to climb out and Renie yanks on my arm to pull me back down.
“I so know what you mean?” Renie says. “But we got here first? And you’ll just have to wait your turn? To have sex in the hot tub?”
“Renie!” I say.
“What?”
“They’re not going to have sex in the hot tub!”
“Yes, we are,” the girl says, giggling.
“We’ll be out in just a few minutes,” I say.
“Or whenever we feel like it,” Renie calls after the girl as she walks away.
“Age before sex,” she tells me.
“People have sex in public hot tubs?” I ask.
“Duh,” Joni says.
“Really?” I start to lift myself out.
“Oh, if you only knew,” Joni says. “But don’t worry, they put stuff in the water to kill everything.”
I hang there, half in the water, half out. Part of me is thinking, Oh, relax. It’s too late now. Whatever is in here is in you already. I sit back down.
A few minutes later, the door to the pool room bangs open and here comes Lise. I can’t read her face.
She pulls a chair up to the edge of the hot tub, slides her sandals off, and sticks her feet in.
Nobody says a word and then she says, “Well, this was a bad idea.”
“Was he a jerk?” Renie asks.
Lise shakes her head no.
We wait, and finally she says, “He was wonderful. I’d forgotten how witty he is, how smart. I’d forgotten that he was such a bad tipper, too; I slipped some cash on the table when we were leaving. How can you not tip on the whole bill? How can you exclude the alcohol? Especially when you’re making a ton of money; he’s making a ton of money.”
“But what happened?” Joni asks. “What else happened?”
“I’m going to tell you. But first I’m wondering if I should go and put on my bathing suit.”
“It is really nice in here,” I say.
“Don’t go and put on your suit!” Renie says. “Tell us what happened!”
Lise sits still for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Then she rolls up her pants legs neatly and puts her legs in farther. “So,” she says. “He’s the same, but he’s different. He’s … Well, he’s grown up, I guess you’d say. As have I. And I …” She looks at me. “Oh God. I really like him. I like him again.”
“Uh-oh,” Renie says.
“We went to his house after dinner and he put on a really nice Thelonious Monk CD. I asked him when he had gotten into Monk. He said he had always loved Monk, I just hadn’t known because I’d never asked. His house was nice: earthy colors, comfortable furniture. I saw a picture of Sandy and at first it was so jarring. I thought, What is he doing with a picture of my daughter? And then I realized, of course, that she was his daughter, too. And that just seemed so cozy and convenient and nice.
“We had a really good talk about her and he said he had no idea she was so awful to me, that in fact she spoke very well of me when she was around him. And when I went into his bedroom I saw a framed note on his dresser from Sandy saying she was sorry, he was right, and I realized that she must give him a hard time, too. But apparently he’s able to have a sense of humor about it, a necessary perspective. I realized I need to do that, too. And he is the perfect one to show me how.”
“His bedroom, huh?” I say.
She smiles. “He had this huge bouquet of flowers on his dining room table, and he said he’d gotten those for me, did I still like roses? I said, ‘So you figured we’d come back to your place, huh?’ and he said he’d only hoped for it. And then he put his hand alongside my face and I … Well, I started crying. And he kissed me, and we … Anyway.
“Afterward—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Joni says. “What came before afterward?”
“Afterward,” Lise says, “we had a really good conversation. Really honest. And we both admitted to some flaws we’d never admitted to before. I admitted to my … Well, I can be uptight. Sometimes I’m a little uptight.”
“You?” Renie says, mockingly.
“I can be looser, though,” Lise says. “If I want to.” She looks around the room, then back at us. “Watch this,” she says, and slides fully into the hot tub.
“Huh?” she says, and spreads her arms expansively along the sides of the tub.
“Great,” Renie says. “You got wet with your clothes on. Very wild. Now tell us more about what happened.”
“Okay. I’ll just say it: I think he might move back to Minneapolis.”
A stunned silence. Then everyone starts talking at once.
I WANT TO HAVE BREAKFAST AT A TRUCK STOP, AND I THINK LISE will probably complain, she of the Teutonic attitude toward healthy eating—she’s a big reason Joni got started with really healthy cooking—but she doesn’t say a word about the prospect. She says, “Oh, that might be fun.”
“I’m having biscuits and gravy,” I say, to make sure she’s really listening.
We’re just getting in the car when my cellphone rings. I see that the call is from the Arms. Annie, I think. Something has happened to Michael.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, climbing out of the car and walking a distance away.
But it’s not Annie calling, it’s Michael, saying, “I got your number from Annie, I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes! It’s even better than I thought it would be.”
His voice lowers. “So, I need to ask you something. When exactly are you coming back?”
I estimate the date, then say, as casually as I can, “Why?”
“Just wanted to know,” he says.
I hesitate, then go ahead and ask. “How are you, Michael?”
“The same. Nothing new. Hanging on. But Phoebe is here every day now. That’s new. She’s here every day.”
“Is that good?”
The silence on the other end lasts so long I finally say, “Hello?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” he says, and then, briskly, “Okay, come and see me as soon as you can after you get back.”
Lise toots the horn and I hold a finger up to her, Wait.
“I’ll come right away,” I say. “I won’t even unpack.”
“You can unpack,” he says, and I tell him I hate unpacking and welcome any excuse not to.
When I get back in the car I hear Joni ask Lise, “So is he a good kisser?”
“Yes, he is, he always was, but you know what the best thing was? We were finishing dinner and he all of a sudden got up out of his chair and came over and planted a kiss right on the top of my head. And then he said, ‘There, I’m sorry; I just had to do that,’ and sat back down and smoothed his tie, and I’d forgotten how much I love that gesture, a man smoothing his tie down. I
pushed my plate away and said, ‘Let’s go.’ ”
“Is he really thinking about moving to Minneapolis?” Renie asks. “Or was that the martini talking?”
“It was the martini talking,” Lise says. “But also I think he might move to Minneapolis. Not just because of me; he was already thinking about taking a job offer there. And he’d be closer to Sandy.”
“So, do you want him to?” I ask. “I mean, here in the cold light of day?”
She looks over at me and her face grows serious. “I don’t know. I had a dream a couple of days before we left. It was about Steve, and we were standing out on the front porch and I was holding him really tight. I was just sobbing. I was saying I was a terrible wife, I was so terrible, but if you would just come home. I could feel him shaking; he was crying, too. He was dressed all in black, and it was shiny, like a costume. He had brought an empty shopping cart with him, and it was parked at an angle on the lawn like a car for sale. After I begged him to come home, he pulled away from me and grabbed his cart and put a magician’s hat on and walked away.
“That dream means you can’t trust him,” Renie says. “He’s a trickster.”
“It means he is no longer going to deceive you,” I say.
“What do you think, Joni?” Lise asks.
“I don’t know. I think it was a dream. What matters is what you think. When you’re awake.”
Silence, then, as the car pulls into the gravel lot of the truck stop. We all get out and walk quickly to the entrance. This is a good truck stop restaurant, it’s not a chain, or at least none of us have ever heard of it. There are roosters everywhere: an exuberant one on top of the restaurant with his wings unfurled and his open beak pointed skyward, figurines along the windowsills, even the wallpaper features roosters. The place is called Doodle Doo’s, and I think if you were having a bad day and a friend called and said “Do you want to go and get some eggs at Doodle Doo’s?” a lot of that bad energy would immediately disappear.
When we sit at the booth and are handed menus, it takes Renie one second to decide. “I’m getting the Long Haul,” she says.
I read the description: three eggs, three strips of bacon, three sausages, two biscuits and gravy, grits, large orange juice, and a bottomless cup of coffee.