The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving

  When the delivery kid raps, I open the door to find that he’s not a kid at all but a skinny guy about my age, whose Domino’s hat looks new compared the the rest of his wardrobe. He’s got a tattoo peeking out from beneath his shirt collar—something faded with talons. He wears the brim of his cap low and avoids eye contact throughout the transaction. I tip him, he nods once, hops back in his idling Festiva, spins a semicircle, and speeds off.

  I linger in the open doorway listening to the hiss of the rain, which seems to go on forever. The sky is oppressive: slate gray and inching eastward. Not a sky for dreamers. A sky for people just trying to get by. It could be dawn, or dusk, or three in the afternoon. This could be Medford or Wenatchee or Bismarck. I can still smell the cool dust rising off the pavement, even through the pungent warmth of the steaming pizzas. Across the courtyard, the motel office is darkened, the red neon vacancy sign reads ANCY. The little restaurant is deserted but for Old Willard standing at the window like an apparition. A lake has formed in the center of the court, barren except for the van. Then I see it, and my scalp tightens, and that welcome sense of anonymity drains right out of me. Across the way, gassing up at the Chevron, is the brown Skylark.

  “Fuck me,” I say, scurrying for cover. I close the door behind me, plop the pizzas down, and draw the heavy curtains closed. Immediately, I peer through the crack, and out the blurry window.

  “What’s the deal?” says Trev.

  “I think Janet is having me followed.”

  “For real?”

  “Who’s Janet?” says Dot, leaning up in the far bed.

  “His ex-wife.”

  “Wife,” I say.

  “Did you do something wrong?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  I can’t quite make out the guy at the pump—his back is to me—but it’s a guy, that much is clear from the broad shoulders and the baseball cap.

  “Dude’s been on our ass for two hundred miles.”

  “For real? So what do we do?” says Trev. “It’s not like we can leave.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t really get it. If he was gonna serve me, he would’ve done it before we ever left the state, right?”

  “You mean that brown car?” says Dot.

  “You saw it?”

  “You’re just paranoid,” she says.

  I probably am just paranoid, I tell myself. The fact is, Janet couldn’t possibly have gotten somebody on me that quick. We picked this guy up around Moses Lake. Janet didn’t even know I was on the road until George, and I didn’t tell her exactly where I was. This is a coincidence. It’s the interstate—there are only so many exits. The guy’s probably selling dog brushes out of his trunk, probably living on jojos and pizzas and motel beds like us, stopping at the same mini-marts as us.

  “Let’s eat some pizza,” I say, and begin rolling out Trev’s tray table.

  Halfway through my second slice, I can’t stand it anymore. Peering through the crack again, I scope the vicinity from the southern horizon to the Chevron station. A red pickup swishes past on the main drag. A police cruiser pulls into the Chevron and parks in front. Panning back in the other direction, I catch Old Willard out of the corner of my eye, still standing at the window scanning the area for Nazis.

  After three hours of incessant window checking and no further sign of the Skylark, I finally relax as evening falls, assuring myself that if our pursuer should reappear (though he won’t, because he’s not really pursuing us), I will take the offensive. I will not be hunted. Fishing my Bob Frost out of my backpack, I sink into my creaky roll-away in the corner near the bathroom, beneath the dangling coat hangers. I prop myself up on a folded pillow, and futilely scan the pages for a few minutes, half listening to Trev and Dot converse in the glow of the muted television.

  “So why’d you change your mind about visiting your dad?” she asks.

  “I’m just excited to see him in a wheelchair.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Thanks,” he says.

  Dot is flipping through the road atlas. I hear the pages turning. “Hey, so what about the Germs?” she says.

  “Never heard of them.”

  She stops flipping pages. “You’ve never heard of the Germs?”

  They go on and on like this, talking about punk bands and movies I’ve never heard of and things that get on their nerves and the various indignities of youth. All the while, the fat heavy rain drones on, washing away the dust. A dull, delicious ache sinks into my bones.

  When I awaken, I find Dot asleep on her bed atop the covers, her bare legs pulled up under one of Trev’s sweatshirts. Trev is still awake, leaning back slightly in his wheelchair, clutching the remote weakly in his lap.

  “How you doin’?” I whisper, approaching him in the half-light.

  “Not bad,” he says. Then he smiles a thousand-watter, nods his head, and smiles some more. I couldn’t be more giddy if it were my own smile.

  “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gotta piss?”

  “Nah.”

  “Wanna brush your teeth?”

  “I’m good.”

  Leaning in, I get ahold of him under the knees, and drape his stiff arm over my shoulder, readying myself to scoop him up. I feel the heat of his wasted body, feel the stubble of his cheek against my forehead, smell the grease of his scalp and the sour sweat rising up from beneath his shirt collar, tinged with Speed Stick, and none of it is unpleasant. “So, you’re not bummed we missed the bordello tour?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Yeah,” I whisper back. “Me neither.”

  Hoisting him, I prop him on my knee, wiggle his shoes off, and unfasten his cargoes, working them down past his boxers, over his white bulbous knees. Once I’ve situated him in bed, on his side, with a pillow tucked snugly between his knees, I plug in his chair to charge for the night.

  “Good night,” I whisper.

  “Good night.”

  Pausing at the foot of Dot’s bed, I can’t resist one more look at her curled up atop the covers. She stirs but does not awaken. She doesn’t look so tough with her delicate features in repose, her little lips parted slightly. Hard to look tough with drool on your pillow. Resisting the urge to tuck her in, I snap off the TV and climb back into my creaky roll-away.

  Lying on my back, I can still feel Trev smiling in the darkness, and I can’t help but smile back.

  the dealership

  Oh that,” says the mechanic, a heavyset bald guy with a maple bar in one hand and a powdered donut perched on the rim of his coffee cup in the other hand. “That’s just a dummy light. But I’ll check it out. You kids help yourself to a donut.”

  He walks off gingerly, balancing his donut. We kids retire to the waiting area, a windowless den lined with folding chairs in the rear of the dealership, where we help ourselves to a donut.

  “These are stale,” says Dot.

  “I’ll bet if we rubbed two of them together, we could start a fire,” says Trev.

  But for a sport fishing calendar on the wall, which is current (September features a bearded dude in yellow waders, dangling a trophy trout), the waiting room is a time warp; 1970s faux wood, balding gray carpet. Thumbing an issue of Hot Rod from 1997, it occurs to me that we could be waiting a long time.

  But within five minutes, the mechanic is back, still clutching a maple bar. “Gas cap,” he says, over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your gas cap was screwed on crooked. Sends a message to the dealy-bob.”

  Trev and I exchange glances.

  “See, between you and me,” he says, and here he lowers his voice, “damn near everything sends a message to the dealy-bob. It’s like the brain of the whole car. But the thing is—and don’t say I told you so—the dealy-bob, it ain’t so smart. Fact is, my dog’s smarter. Now and then, it’ll be a vacuum leak or a hose, and once in a while it’ll be a thermostat. But often as not, it’s the gas cap. You kids get a
donut?”

  We’re two days and five hundred miles behind schedule as we ease east onto I-90, with the fuel topped off and the gas cap properly secured. If all goes according to plan, we’ll cover half that distance today, skipping Wallace, along with our scheduled detour to Polson, and aim for Butte by nightfall. We’ll lunch along the way and make a brief stop at Big Stack in late afternoon if time allows. I’m willing to grant Dot two cigarette stops, which makes me an enabler, I guess. But the fact is, I don’t want to lose her. From Butte, she insists she’ll make her own way, and I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to convince her otherwise, though I hope I can at least persuade her to bunk with us again tonight and wait until morning before lighting out by thumb. If nothing else, maybe she’ll let me buy her a bus ticket. But I doubt it.

  The rain clouds scattered sometime during the night. Travel conditions are ideal for making up time: dry pavement, clear skies, and no Winnebagos glutting the flow of traffic. With Couer d’Alene in the rearview mirror, we begin steadily gaining elevation and winding our way through the heart of the panhandle toward the divide, where hulking green ranges, rock-ribbed and dark, close in on us from either side, until the sky is just a pale blue ribbon. The effect of this landscape is at once cozy and oppressive. I’d hate to spend a winter in one of these narrow valleys, socked in a haze of chimney smoke. This was silver country back in the day, and gold and quartz, too, if memory serves. At one point, the Idaho panhandle nearly became the state of Lincoln, something I recall from Piper’s second-grade state report. She chose Idaho because it was “skinny on top and fat on the bottom,” and because potatoes were her “sixth-favorite food.” But I’m determined not to think about Piper or Jodi or Janet today, so I turn the newfangled country on low, low enough that Trev and Dot don’t notice, so low I can barely hear it myself. Somehow it’s enough to know it’s there, that somebody’s telling it like it is, even if the music sucks.

  Trev and Dot have taken up where they left off last night, passing the miles in what is for the most part easy conversation, though Dot, like me, has a tendency to push. I’m perfectly content to be invisible in the driver’s seat, listening to Dot lead this dance from the backseat, where she’s stretched out lengthwise with her head on the armrest, tracking Trev’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She does not pity him as far as I can tell, nor does she go easy on him, as do most people.

  “So, do you get sick of people staring at you?” she says.

  “It’s worse when they talk to me like I’m retarded.”

  “That sucks.”

  “What about you?” he says. “People must stare at you.”

  “Old pervs and religious people, but that’s about it.”

  “I’m not religious,” he says.

  “I guess that makes you an old perv.”

  “But I’m not old.”

  “Older than me, anyway. So, then, can you have sex? I mean like everything works or whatever?”

  Blushing to the roots of his hair, Trev looks straight ahead at the road and shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

  When, after a long moment, he fails to reply, Dot pushes him. “So is that a yes or a no?”

  Poor Trev is caught in the headlights.

  But Dot refuses to veer. “I guess I’ll take that as a no.”

  “Yes,” he says, at last, with an edge of impatience. “Everything works.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it.”

  “Should I be?”

  “Uh. Yeah? Duh.” And with that, she finally lets the subject drop, and we hum along in silence for a few miles until she trains her crosshairs on me. “So, how old are you, anyway? Are you like my dad’s age?”

  “Yes. I’m old enough to be your father. But don’t worry, I don’t want to be.”

  “Got any kids?”

  Trev casts an uneasy sidelong glance at me.

  “Nope,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Long story.”

  “Well, it’s not like we don’t have time to kill, right?”

  “Trust me, it’s not a good story. You won’t like the ending.”

  “What, you just never wanted any? Or you just never found the right person or what?”

  “Like I said,” and this time I say it more firmly: “Long story.”

  “What, are you gay?” she says. “Because I’ve got no problem with gay people.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “So, you just didn’t want any or what? Because I can see not wanting to have any.”

  I grip the wheel tighter and stare straight ahead.

  “He doesn’t like to talk about it,” says Trev.

  His defense, though welcome, catches me by surprise—it’s the first indication I’ve had that he knows anything about Piper and Jodi. I could hug him for never bringing it up.

  Dot heaves a theatrical sigh. “What is it with guys? They never want to talk about anything.”

  almost home

  We’re halfway down Agatewood now—right before the dogleg west of Dolphin Lane, coasting through that familiar sun-checkered corridor beneath the tall firs. My window is down. I can smell the trade winds blowing through Agate Pass. Piper is growing impatient in the backseat, Jodi’s snot still clinging to her index finger.

  “It’s starting to dry,” she complains.

  “Well, put it in your mouth, then.”

  “Eww,” she says. “Daddy, you’re grotie.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Daddy grotie,” mimics Jodi, clearly enough that I can understand him.

  “He says you’re grotie.”

  “I heard.”

  “Grotie,” says Jodi once more. “Squishity-squish-squash grotie.”

  What will that speech pathologist cost? What if Piper needs orthodontia? Whatever any of it costs, Janet can afford it. And should we ever run into trouble financially, Bernard and Ruth will always be there. I hope Bern pulls the trigger on that Discovery Bay lot. The kids would love it.

  “Squish-squishy-bah-buh-squishity-squish, Daddy.” Where does he get the saliva, I wonder?

  “He wants to see the octopus,” Piper says.

  “We already saw the octopus.”

  “We saw the octopus. He was asleep.”

  “Jodi, buddy. Octopus go night-night. We’ll go visit the octopus another time, okay?”

  Checking the rearview mirror, I expect to see pouting lips, a quivering chin. But he surprises me, and I love him for it.

  “Kaykay,” he says.

  the box

  Weary of Dot’s hounding, and harassed by my thoughts, I’m gripping the wheel a little tighter than usual as we wind our way up through the rugged Bitterroots toward the Montana border. Trev has fallen asleep in his wheelchair, his mouth wide open. He’s scruffy. He’s got bed head. He’s going to need a shower. Stretched out in back, Dot has resorted to headphones. Her green Chucks tap out a rhythm against the elbow rest. Her sweet lips mouth angry words. Occasionally she blows her bangs out of her eyes or contemplates her fingernails, looking bored but comfortable.

  At Lookout Pass, without warning or expectation, without so much as a cloud visible for the past thirty miles, we round a wide bend not unlike thirty bends before it, when suddenly it starts hailing stones the size of marbles. They’re beating hard on the roof. The din is such that Dot removes her headphones, and sits up. The racket wakens Trev, who rolls his shoulders and straightens his head. “Holy crap, now what?”

  “Look at the freakin’ size of it,” says Dot.

  Pellets begin collecting on the wipers and under the lip of the hood, pounding the glass like gravel, hammering the roof. The clatter is so loud that Trev is forced to raise his voice to be heard.

  “No way,” he says. “This is insane.”

  On the roadway, hailstones shimmy like oil on a hot skillet. You can hear them bouncing up against the floor of the car, rattling under the grille. They quickly begin to accumulate along the fog lines. Just ahead, a pair of trucks have pul
led over and are huddled on the shoulder against the onslaught, their red lights flashing dully through the haze. I slow to thirty as we pass. I ought to pull over, too, and I’m almost certain Trev is about to suggest as much when abruptly the hammering ice gives way to the muted patter of rain, and suddenly the world seems quieter than ever.

  “Damn,” says Trev.

  “That was intense,” says Dot. She’s left her seat and is on her knees now, just behind Trev and me, leaning in close, her gloveless right hand clutching the armrest of Trev’s wheelchair.

  “Totally intense,” says Trev.

  Then we all lapse into a reflective silence, the kind you savor after big events. About a half mile past Henderson, I spot through the haze a shit-can Isuzu pulled over on the left shoulder with its hazards on. A figure hunches in the rain before the rear wheel, clutching a tire iron. Slowing as I pass, I see that it’s a very pregnant woman. Drenched, she is apparently having a tough time removing the flat. There’s a dude smoking a cigarette in the passenger’s seat who appears to be barking instructions out the open window. Without consulting Trev, I pull off on the left and back slowly down the shoulder until I’m fifty feet or so in front of them, where I throw the van in park and leave it idling.

  “I’m gonna see if they need a hand,” I say, hopping out of the van into the downpour.

  The Isuzu is at least four different colors, if you include bondo gray. Really, it’s several cars fashioned into one. The hood is blue. The front left side panel is yellow. The doors are green. Cars are speeding by at seventy miles per hour, trailing sheets of gritty road water. When the girl turns on her haunches to greet me, her enormous belly pressed tight against a cheap cotton dress, she’s smiling. You can tell she smiles a lot. She’s young, maybe three years older than Dot. Her heart-shaped face is wide open and freckled, framed by straight, wet, dirty blond hair to the shoulders. Her hazel eyes seem to hide nothing. She’s lovely in the most wholesome of ways. Even extremely pregnant, squatting in a nasty rain squall on a muddy shoulder, with a tire iron in her hand, and a fuck-stick of a boyfriend hollering instructions at her, she’s got that unsullied youthful glow about her, the same one that Dot tries so hard to hide.