The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

  “What is it?” I say.

  “Sorry, dude.”

  “For what?”

  “I think I’m gonna need those Tums.”

  east of the mountains

  We motor east on I-90, through the broad-shouldered green foothills and into the steep-faced swells of Snoqualmie Pass. We travel mostly in silence. Trev takes in the scenery with what appears to be only mild interest, but it’s not that he isn’t interested. He’s just anxious; I can tell by the way he leans forward slightly, his elbows on the armrests, his knotted hands dangling inches above his lap. We’ve already made bathroom stops in Factoria, Issaquah, and Fall City. Trev would like nothing more than to avoid the indignity of another service station bathroom with no stall and yours truly standing by at a distance of three feet. But he’ll have to settle for even less. When nature calls again at the Snoqualmie summit, we’ve no choice but to pull over at the rest area, where the only facilities are glorified honey buckets. Further complicating matters, the structures are not in compliance. No ramp, no bar, no room to maneuver. The entire ordeal is awkward in every way.

  Emerging with Trev in my arms, and setting him in his chair, I see we’re being watched by a teenage girl in fingerless gloves and a tartan skirt, sitting on the curb in the shadow of the van, smoking a cigarette. Trev blushes when he notices her, no doubt embarrassed by his predicament. She wears her hair cropped short and bleached blond, except for her long black bangs. Her nose is pierced. She watches us with the expert dispassion of a teenage misfit, picking absently at the skin of her wrist and spitting on the sidewalk, as Trev pilots his chair onto the ramp, and I begin raising it with an electric whir. Cute kid, when you get beyond the fashion statement. About sixteen or seventeen, I’d guess. If she’s not a runaway, she could play one on TV. Somewhere nearby, a car honks, and abruptly the girl tosses her cigarette aside, stands up, and dashes into the tree line separating the autos from the trucks.

  “Something we said?” says Trev.

  “Or maybe something she ate.”

  I joke, but the truth is, I can scarcely lay eyes on a teenage girl without wondering what kind of teenager Piper might’ve been. I picture her like the smoking girl, except happier and not smoking and not biting her cuticles or running away from anything.

  As we roll down the leeward side of the Cascades through the basin and into the high desert, the dense fir and cedar give way to sparse pine woods and channeled scablands riddled with boulders and basalt. Soon Trev is asleep in his wheelchair, still leaning slightly forward, and I’m alone with my thoughts and two hundred miles of desert.

  I can’t help but think of that family trip in ’05 through the Southwest, all the cracker crumbs and hokey fanfare—miracle ponds and painted rocks—all the sticky vinyl seat backs and starchy hotel linens and gas-inducing roadside victuals. Sort of an exhausting nightmare, really, what with Janet seven months pregnant and the hundred- degree heat and the broken air conditioner. I can see Piper, as though in a photograph, on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, the bright red halo of a cherry slushy ringing her mouth. I can see her holding hands with a venerable Indian in full-feathered regalia at the Jackrabbit Trading Post. Beaming in pigtails at the Amboy Crater. Wild-eyed at the Rattlesnake Museum. None of the photographic evidence suggests what was nearly lost that afternoon at the ghost town.

  Trev awakens about ten miles west of Vantage, where the high desert begins its gradual descent into the gorge. His spirits have improved considerably. His whole comportment is more at ease, and he leans back, his arms stretched out at forty-degree angles (which is as far as they can stretch), looking out the side window at some distant point.

  “What’d I miss?” he says.

  “Oodles. There were some cows about sixty miles back. And something that looked like a tree.”

  “Damn.”

  “Oh, and a hitchhiker—I think it might’ve been Moses.”

  Trev breaks into a grin—not his signature evil genius grin or the uncomfortable tacked-on grin with which he so often greets adversity great or small but a genuine, lighthearted, devil-may-care grin. And something about it makes me want to cry.

  george, washington

  The town of George, Washington (population 528), just east of the gorge, is the first lunch stop on our seven-day itinerary. We are an hour and thirty-seven minutes behind schedule as we pull off on exit 149 in the blistering heat of midafternoon. Had we arrived in 1983, we might have been treated to a slice of the World’s Biggest Cherry Pie (subsequently dethroned in Traverse City, Michigan in 1987, and again in Oliver, British Columbia, in 1990). However, those golden days of seventeen-thousand-pound pies have flown. As it stands, visitors are forced to settle for a six-story water tower emblazoned with our founding father’s silhouette, which looks more like the silhouette of an infant with Paget’s disease and a cauliflower ear.

  The chamber of commerce really dropped the ball in George. Talk about missed opportunities! No gift shop. No powdered wigs, no wooden dentures, no coin-fed lie detector, no nothing. Okay, there’s a bronzed bust of General Washington outside a filling station on the near edge of town. Otherwise, a tour of George, Washington, might include the sheriff substation, a squat green portable surrounded by scorched lawn and a couple of parched-looking trees. Fire District No. 3, an equally squat gray edifice of the sort of cinder block construction one might expect to see in an outbuilding at Stalag Luft. The George Community Hall, the very nerve center of public life in George, a blotchy and windowless structure possessing all the architectural allure of a two-car garage. And no tour would be complete without a drive past aluminum-sided city hall, which with a few more windows might make a nice retail outlet for ball bearings. I can only hope that the town of Joe, Montana, has more to offer.

  After a brief stopover at the foot of the water tower, during which Trev and I scrutinize President Washington’s silhouette in the manner of a Rorschach test, we lunch at a dubious Mexican restaurant on the edge of town, a dicey proposition given the recent state of Trev’s digestive tract. But Trev is in high spirits at last and insists on a fiesta. The place is called La Paloma or La Palamino or Los Pintos, but the pretense ends there. The interior could just as well be any truck-stop diner from Cle Elum to Bismarck. They’re playing newfangled country over the sound system—Clint somebody or Toby what’s-his-name or maybe that Kenny guy. The waitress is rail thin in that chronic smoker kind of way. If she had a name tag it might say Lana Sue. She looks about thirty-five long years old.

  Trev orders the fish tacos in spite of my nonverbal exhortations—a prominent two-handed yield gesture, accompanied by an emphatic shaking of the head. The scablands of eastern Washington are not generally noted for their seafood.

  Trev winks at me as Lana Sue takes leave. “What can I say? I’m feeling reckless.”

  Our food arrives much too quickly. My beef chimichanga is the size of a yule log, slathered in an improbable gray-brown gravylike substance.

  “Yikes,” says Trev, inspecting his entrée. “Blue tacos? Uh, how did that happen?”

  Maybe it’s just the afternoon light filtered through tinted windows, but the fish does seem be a bit on the blue side. “Looks like you got the Smurf tacos,” I say.

  Trev smiles warily, picking around the edges of his blue tacos with a fork, wondering perhaps whether he should attempt to pick one up or abort the whole ungodly mess. In the end, he decides to abandon the tacos in favor of his side of beans and rice. Meanwhile, I begin poking my way tentatively around the edges of the yule log, which has begun to sag beneath its own weight and seems to be breathing. The more I poke at the behemoth, the more it lets off steam and slumps in its gravy wallow, until I’ve exhausted the thing and it lies breathless, flat on its belly. I keep waiting for it to groan.

  “How’s the beans?” I inquire.

  “Not bad. How’s your, uh . . . how’s that thing?”

  “Dead, I think.”

  Near the end of the meal, by which point in time I??
?ve devoured roughly 20 percent of my burrito, my cell phone rings. The caller ID is unknown, though I’m fully expecting a check-in call from Elsa anytime now.

  “Okay, Ben. This is it, do you hear me? I’m dead serious this time.” It’s Janet. She’s trying to sound tough, but I know she’s exhausted; I can hear it in her voice.

  “Relax. I’m coming down there to finalize everything,” I assure her. “I swear. Everything’s ready to go.”

  She knows I’m lying. “Oh, cut the crap, Ben. I’m coming up there the minute I get off of work, and you’re going to sign those papers, and this time I’m not going to leave without them.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Watch me.”

  “It won’t do any good—I’m not there.”

  “Then where are you?”

  “I’m on my way to Utah.”

  She’s greets this news with a silence so cold and dense it has a vacuum effect.

  “For work,” I say.

  I can feel her gritting her teeth on the other end of the line. “What kind of stunt is this, Ben? Exactly where are you?”

  “Look, I swear, this isn’t a stunt, I’m not running. I thought we agreed that—”

  “Where are you right now?”

  “On the road.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  “East of the mountains.”

  “Okay, Ben, fine. That was your last chance. I’m officially done.”

  “No, wait, listen.”

  “I’m done listening. This time I’m not letting you talk me out of anything.”

  “Please, wait. Just—”

  But before I can finish, she hangs up on me.

  Trev looks uncomfortable as he watches the hope drain from my face; a forkful of beans is poised halfway between his plate and his open mouth. In an attempt at levity, he tacks a frozen half smile on his face.

  “You want a Smurf taco?” he says.

  skylark

  I know it sounds silly. Paranoid even. But I swear we’re being followed. The shit brown Skylark with the crooked plate started tailing us around Moses Lake. How on earth Janet pulled this off, I have no idea. Is this guy gonna serve me? For twenty miles, I’ve been stealing covert glances in the rearview mirror, careful not to alert Trev to our pursuer, whoever it may be. Granted, it’s not a busy stretch of highway—two lanes through a moonscape and hardly any exits between Moses Lake and Ritzville. But most drivers would’ve passed me miles ago. In fact, no less than a half-dozen cars have passed the Skylark and the handi-van in tandem. But the Skylark sticks, keeps a measured distance. It slows when I slow, speeds up when I speed up.

  At Shrag, I signal as if to exit. The Skylark doesn’t bite. That just tells me he’s no dummy. Whoever this guy is—and I’m assuming it’s a guy—he’s done this before. At Odessa, I don’t signal but veer toward the exit lane at the last instant. Immediately, the Skylark drifts toward the exit. When I pop back out into the right lane, the Skylark drifts back.

  “What’re you doing?” says Trev.

  “I was gonna piss, but it doesn’t look like there’s any services.”

  “I’ve gotta piss, too.”

  It’s settled. At exit 220, I pull off at Ritzville. The Skylark follows suit but slows considerably on the exit ramp, so that even while I linger at the stop sign it doesn’t pull close enough for me to get a look at the driver. Finally, I swing a left and cross I-90 on the overpass. Checking the rearview mirror, I’m relieved to see the Skylark hang a right toward Pasco. Okay, I’m paranoid. What was I thinking? By the time I pull into the service station, the whole idea seems laughable.

  The filling station is all but deserted, except for the girl in the fingerless gloves, who has apparently managed to pass us during our lunch hour—one can only assume using her thumb—as there are no vehicles out front. She’s leaning against a newspaper dispenser, alternately gnawing on her cuticles and smoking a cigarette, glaring straight ahead from behind her black bangs, as though daring somebody to look at her. Where the hell is her father that she’s out here hitchhiking through the desert? The thought of it pisses me off more than it ought to—I’m pissed at her parents, more than I have a right to be, pissed at whatever circumstances have compelled this girl to be out here to the middle of nowhere, whatever impulses have prompted her to take flight in the first place. But who knows, maybe it’s her own fault, maybe she’s not running from anything but boredom and stability and her own teenage angst. Maybe her mom’s a nurse and her dad’s a fireman and her big brother’s pulling straight A’s at the U. Maybe she’s still got a bunch of teddy bears lined shoulder to shoulder on her windowsill. Maybe she used to play the clarinet, and her parents and her teachers can’t figure out why she quit. Maybe her folks are at home pulling their hair out right this minute. Should I alert the authorities? Maybe I should offer the kid a ride. Instead, I just keep sneaking glances at her as we approach. I’ve little doubt that she can feel my eyes on her, though she continues to glare straight ahead. Not only is her nose pierced, but she’s got a tiny hoop through her eyebrow. She’s doing everything she can to make herself ugly, and it’s still not working.

  I’m not the only one attentive to the smoking girl. Trev is doing his damnedest not to stare at her, and if I’m not mistaken, the effort is even causing him to blush as he wheels off the ramp. The hot wind is kicking up desert grit and swirling it about the parking lot in dust devils. An empty wrapper skitters across the pavement. Out beyond the frontage road, big dust clouds are gathering in the parched fields, obscuring the distant hills in a haze.

  The smoking girl gives us a sidelong glance as we pass. “Cool shoes,” she intones, with all the enthusiasm of a tollbooth operator.

  Trev looks down at his gold Chucks, and his eyes stick there. “Thanks,” he says, his voice threatening to crack.

  Pushing the double-glass doors open to let Trev pass through, I resolve myself to offer the girl a lift on the way out. Maybe I can talk some sense into her, convince her to go back to her teddy bears and her clarinet, to quit vandalizing her body, and start carving out a future. At the very least, I can get her safely to point B.

  Trev and I discuss the matter as I zip his fly down in the bathroom.

  “Whaddaya think? Do we give her a ride?”

  “Hell yes,” he says, dribbling into his plastic vessel.

  But by the time I’ve fastened Trev’s fly; rinsed his vessel; wrapped it in its plastic bag; replaced it in his storage pouch; taken my own leak; zipped my own fly; washed my hands; prepaid for the gas; bought a Powerade, some pork rinds, and some baby wipes, there’s no sign of the girl.

  “You see what happened to that girl that was out front?” I say to the clerk.

  “Beats me,” he says, bagging my pork rinds.

  Once again, I’m left holding the groceries.

  “Damn,” says Trev, wheeling across the dusty lot. “I was gonna hit that shit.”

  I lower the ramp, and Trev rolls on, squinting against the gritty wind. Once aboard, I buckle him in, circle the car, and unscrew the gas cap, gazing off toward the blurry horizon while I fill up.

  It’s 4:36 p.m. as we ease back onto the interstate. We’re two and a half hours behind schedule now, but I’m not worried. As it stands, we ought to make Wallace by 7:00 p.m., check into our motel, and grab some dinner. Maybe I’ll pick up a few beers for the motel, and we’ll pore over tomorrow’s itinerary, which includes the Oasis Bordello Tour, an old mining shaft (provided they offer wheelchair access). Sunday, it’s on through the panhandle to Montana, where we’ll wend our way north to Polson, for the Miracle of America Museum. There, among other attractions, a two-headed calf awaits us.

  But for the crunch of pork rinds, and the hum of the tires, the desert landscape unfolds in silence. Thoughts of my old life threaten to linger, but I turn on the radio and scare them off like so many pigeons. Clint what’s-his-name. Something about bad good-byes. Within twenty minutes, Trev dozes off again with his mouth open,
his big head lolling to one side. I’m having trouble keeping my own eyes open. I crack the window to fight the drowsiness.

  Suddenly, about a mile after the Harrington exit, I glance in the rearview mirror and receive a jolt. The Skylark is on our tail again.

  fingers

  Yes, she’s demanding, capricious, at times exhausting, but my Piper will break your heart with her new gap-toothed smile, and her flapper haircut, and her tiny bitten fingernails. When you see my Piper in front of the Toasted Oats, spindly-legged in her rubber boots and cape, her brow crinkled in concentration as she runs her nimble fingers up and down the grocery list, you will want to gather her up in your arms. You will marvel at the care and attention with which she guides Jodi hand in hand down the supermarket aisle, past the Grape Nuts and the Lucky Charms. She will shame you with her patience as she bends down in the shadow of Tony the Tiger and endeavors for two minutes to interpret her baby brother’s earnest garblings while Daddy waves her on impatiently from the head of the aisle. And when she succeeds in understanding baby brother, and you see his little face light up in recognition, you will understand why he clings to her so.

  When you see her coercing me in the checkout line, clutching a Heath bar as she tugs at my shirttail and begs me politely to make an exception to the not-before-dinner rule, you will pity me for having to say no. And when you see us pushing our cart across the parking lot toward the RAV4 and see that she is eating the Heath bar, you might think I’m a bad parent.

  “DADDY, JODI HAS a snot,” Piper chimes from the backseat, where she insists on sitting beside him for the drive home from Central Market. The rain has let up and the clouds are hurrying east, and the weak sunlight fights its way through the treetops intermittently.

  “Wipe it, then, honey.” Our eyes lock briefly in the rearview mirror, long enough for Piper to roll hers. She sighs at my inability to grasp the obvious—a habit she recently picked up from her mother.