Interstate

INTERSTATE 8

Goodbye, darling,” and she says “‘Darling’; you never call me that anymore. I can’t even remember when you last called me it, or if you ever did. Have you ever?” and he says “Sure, plenty, tons, or a few times at least. I can’t recall each one, but certainly when I first met you. That very night at the party we were at, I said to the host ‘There’s my future darling,’ and she said ‘Who?’ and I said ‘There, there, my future darling wife of my future darling kids,’ and went over to you — you were with some guy you couldn’t take your eyes off of, so I knew I had some doing to do, and I actually had to wrest him away from you by grabbing his wrist and giving it a bit of a twist to get his arm off you — and then I said to you…no, don’t let me run on, and with such bullshit too, for we gotta go, gotta move, gotta hustle, darling,” and she says “I like it though, not said that way, but before with the more endearing ‘darling.’ Where the other stuff comes from — juvenile fantasies of wresting men away from your wench — beats me. But the ‘darling’—I think I like it more than any other sweet talk from you, even if I can’t remember if you ever called me it”—“I have, my darling, I have”—“and I call you it lots of times,” and he says “That he knows, his darling, and it’s perhaps where he got it from,” and she says “Sometimes — no holding me in bed when we go to sleep, unless it’s your first move to making love; no kiss goodbye and hello when you leave and come home if it’s just to and from work — I even think we’re, well, frittering apart in a way from what we were”—“Saved by the fritters and way”—“something I’ve thought a lot about lately and it…distresses me,” and he says “You were going to say ‘saddens,’ yes?” and she says “Don’t play prig,” and he says “I only wanted to see how sharply I was tuned in — you know, reading thy mind, but okay, what? — I’m an all-ears kind of guy,” and she says “One sure sign of what I see taking place, other than for the two or three I mentioned—” “Which were they?” and she says “Nate,” and he nods, “is that, one, just your being flip about it like this—” “You mean ‘three’ or ‘four,’ if I’m counting right, but I’m sorry, go on”—“trying to get around it with jokes when years ago you would have taken it seriously if not gravely…well, maybe not that bad. And, two, and maybe this is trivial, nevertheless I liked it: you don’t say anything affectionate anymore when we make love or before or after it,” and he says “I’m the strong silent type, and after, a quick quiet sleeper — oops,” and she says “I really get an awful feeling sometimes of what might eventually become of us, this gradual dribbling away,” and he says “And you want from me that current term I hate, ‘reinforcement,’” and she says “Not right now but sometime soon, like on the phone tonight — something for you to think about on the long drive home,” and he says “But what a time for you to bring it up, when we’re nice and tight like this, arms locked, pelvises stuck, ready for the big goodbye-darling pucker-up,” and she says “I mean it. You also don’t make love to me as much, with or without the nice words,” and he says “We don’t make love, the two-way street, darling,” and she says “I don’t appreciate it when you use it like that, so please?” and he says “So what do you mean ‘we don’t as much’? As much where, here in a public hallway? Or when, since the first few weeks after we first met? We make it every bit as much or just a touch less much or however such one should word it — little less touch, bit less mush, that sorta stuff, but none of those up to snuff. Look, it just isn’t true, despite all the so-called detergents — deterrents of long-term marriage used-to-itness and the natural aging process, on my part at least and I’ve got almost a dozen years on ya, but we really gotta go — kids, car and me, and your dad waiting with them downstairs and by now possibly pissed off,” and kisses her lips, digs into them with his, she kisses back with not as much dig, wishes they had the time, if the gang wasn’t waiting for him and his mother-in-law wasn’t in the apartment, though even there, he’d say…he’d say “Darling, and this is no joke and I’m not playing up to you now with that word, well, maybe a little bissel, but if we could do it in a few minutes from pants-dropping start to pulling-them-up finish, last time for two days and nights, you know what I mean, the where and when, it’s here and now, and we didn’t do it all day yesterday and today so that makes three, even if we just go into the guest bathroom past your mother under the guise of my washing my hands and you going to the toilet and neither of us wanting to use their private john off the master bedroom, or other way around with the washing and toilet, and do it standing up, you leaning over and me from behind, wouldn’t take me more than a coupla minutes and you might even get something out of it, I’m sorry but that’s how it is, and as a parting even a one-sided goodbye-darling gift to me,” and she’d say yes, they’d hold their breath, or he would, she’d hardly have started, for they’d really have to be quick — when hasn’t she said yes to sex unless she was very mad at him for something he said or did and she felt he hadn’t sufficiently apologized, but have to go, must, hates keeping people waiting, one more kiss, does and then says “I mean it, you’re my darling, I love you, okay?” and she says “What a way,” and he says “I mean, I just love you, plain and simple, ornate and complex, but I have to—” and jerks his head to the elevator door and she says “Okay, I love you too,” and they separate and she takes his hands and looks at them and then him, smiles pining-like, regretting already that he’s gone? and says “You should get moving, it’s unfair leaving them down there, I guess, and it’s funny, I already feel you’re gone,” and he says “Am I psychic? — I’ll tell you tonight why I said that, you just have to remind me, but now’s no time to quote unquote boast…say goodbye to your momma again for me,” and she says “I will,” and he’s pulling his hands from hers when the elevator door opens and his father-in-law steps out: “Nathan, where are you? — Don’t let the door close,” to the elevator car, “keep the Open button down — We’ve been waiting, it’s been quarter of an hour,” and he says “Just toodle-dee-dooing to your darling daughter, no other harm; we’re not used to long separations — Bye, dear,” and she nods to him with her eyes closed and he thinks “What’s that mean? I mean, surely no tears; that’d be ridiculous. I was only kidding about the long separation. It’s only going to be two days, so look at it as a break,” and waves and gets in the elevator, “Oh, kids, hi — of course, holding the door open,” Julie pressing down hard on the Open button with her whole hand, and Margo says “Daddy, you said you’d be down quickly,” and he says “I am — we will be — let’s go,” and his father-in-law pushes the L button and door closes. “Oh, forgot to say goodbye to your mom, we gotta go back,” he says to the girls and Julie says “You’re just fooling us now.”

“Drive carefully, precious cargo aboard,” his father-in-law says through the car window and he says “Horace, don’t worry, I’m a good driver and I never take chances with the kids in the car,” and Horace says “You shouldn’t take them ever. You’re a family man with terrific responsibilities now so you should always drive as if they’re with you,” and he says “That’s what I meant — thanks for everything, you’ve both been wonderful,” and Horace says “And thank you for bringing your family — drive carefully, precious cargo aboard,” and he says “You bet, no high speeds, you can count on it; I don’t care how long it takes to get there,” and starts the car, waits thirty seconds less than he usually does for the engine to warm up — doesn’t want to keep looking back and forth at Horace and smiling and waving for him to go inside — checks the right side mirror a few seconds longer than he usually does when no cars are coming, so Horace will see how careful he is, and pulls out of the parking spot. “Wave to Grandpa,” he says and kids turn to the window and say “Goodbye, Grandpa, goodbye,” and he waves without looking as he drives up the block.

“You bring any fresh bagels, Daddy?” Margo says and he says “Did I bring fresh bagels? Did I hear someone say ‘Did Daddy bring fresh bagels?’ Does Daddy ever forget to bring fresh bagels for long trips?” and Margo says “What kind you get?” and he says “Oh gosh, I forgot the bagels. The poppyseed, sesame, blueberry, jalapeño—” and Margo says “I don’t like those kinds,” and he says “Good thing, for I only bought chocolate and plain, plenty of chocolate and plain, plus a coupla garlic in their own bag since you can’t stand their stink on the chocolate and plain, and in that same ‘own’ bag one everything bagel for me. But too much about bagels already. Your bagel bag’s under your seat next to my briefcase if neither’s been moved. Split one with Julie,” and she says “I want one for myself,” and he says “Then offer the bag to her — Julie, sweetie, want a bagel?” and Margo says “Why you being so nice to us now and when nobody’s around?” and he says “Why do you say that? Julie, you want a bagel?” and Julie says “I just want to look outside. The city’s so gray. I only like traveling on sunny days. That makes the trip happier. But when the day’s gray it makes everything gray and there’s nothing more grayer than a gray city on a gray day,” and he says “Little quiz: Which came first, the gray city or gray day and, as a bonus question for extra points, how’d it get across the road?” and Julie says “I’m glad I don’t live here. With all the gray I feel something awful’s going to all of a suddenly happen,” and he says “Margo, don’t offer her a gray bagel,” waits for a laugh, is none, says “Mommy and I did — lived here — for years. As kids, public-schooled all the way, then when we met and got married, and we turned out healthy, stealthy and okay — we had you two wonderful girls at least,” and Margo says “Phooey flattery, Daddy; you won’t pick our spirits with that,” and he says “Okay, I won’t correct you, but listen: people who don’t live in this city—” and she says “We know, you told and told us: ‘they can’t appreciate it,’” and he says “And the day’ll get brighter, I promise, though we’ll first see it on the road. The weatherman calls for sunny cheerful weather on the whole Northeast coast,” and she says “The weatherman said ‘cheerful’? That’s nice, I like that kind of prediction. What will he mean when he says ‘cool’?” and he says “Boy, are you ever getting tuned into life and its meanings. Both, but if I can say this without either of you thinking I’m underrating or deprecating the other, right now Margo more,” and Julie says “That’s not nice,” and Margo says “She’s right, you shouldn’t choose anybody,” and he says “You see? I fail at honesty, fail at fibbing, fail at any imaginative mix of the two and whatever else is left. I’m sorry, and whatever I say now to help my case will I’m sure be taken unfavorably, so, since you have your bagels, books, games, dolls and each other, I’ll just dummy up and drive,” and Margo says “Daddy?” and he says nothing, something about the things he has to do when he gets home is coming into his head and he wants it to continue, and she says “Daddy…Daddy…please say something, you don’t have to go that far,” and he says “Really, sweetheart, I was just using that excuse so I could think for a while, because talking, thinking, the two things at once, it’s hard,” and she says “Then that’s all right.”

They pass a sign saying there’s a rest area in three miles and Margo says “Can we stop at the next rest place coming up? I have to go,” and he says “But you went at home,” and she says “No I didn’t,” and he says “But I told you both to go just before we left. I said ‘Julie, Margo, everybody, including Daddy, go to the bathroom before we set out. Mommy, you don’t have to be cause you’re staying here,’” and she says “Maybe I did go then but I have to again,” and he says “How can you go so soon after you just went?” and she says “I didn’t just went; you kept us waiting in the lobby for a half hour when you said you’d be right down,” and he says “It wasn’t half an hour; it was ten minutes at the most,” and she says “Longer. Grandpa said so when he looked at his watch. He said ‘Where’s your father? He’s been kibbutzing’”—“Kibitzing”—“‘kibitzing upstairs for more than a half hour,’” and he says “Grandpa likes to exaggerate, not so much to make me look bad but to make himself — anyway, when he came up he said it was only quarter of an hour. ‘Nathan,’ he said, ‘it’s been quarter of an hour we’ve been waiting’—and it wasn’t even that, I don’t think,” and she says “Grandpa doesn’t exaggerate or tell lies,” and he says “Wait, can you hold it a second? The music’s about to end and they’ll give the title and composer of the piece — it sounds like Vivaldi but there’s something that tells me it’s Marcello. No, it’s all right, that was a false end,” sitting back again after leaning forward to the radio. “Look, maybe Grandpa’s watch runs a little fast and he got the time wrong,” and she says “His watch is very expensive and has a battery worth ten dollars in it and he says he checks his watch with the radio every morning so it’ll always have the right time. And he said we’ve been waiting a half hour downstairs, so even if his watch was five minutes fast or ten it’d still be a half hour we were down there. And when we went upstairs to get you it’d be more than a half hour because of the time it took in the elevator and upstairs, so that makes more than an hour altogether since I went to pee,” and he says “Wait, you lost me, and you’re also cheating yourself with the total time. My point is only that you still shouldn’t have to yet — go to the bathroom. We’ve been on the road”—he presses a radio button and the station numbers turn into the time—“almost an hour, which means it’s been at the most an hour and a half since you went. Can’t you keep it in another half an hour? That way we’ll have gone about seventy miles, if the traffic continues to move the way it is, which will be more than a third of the trip, even if that’s fewer miles than when I like to first stop, which is ideally about a hundred — halfway,” and she says “I think I can hold it in another ten minutes. But the sign we’re passing says the rest area is in a mile and the next one is twenty-six miles and I know I can’t hold it in for twenty-seven miles,” and he says “All right, and I’m losing the signal to this New York station fast, so I’m sure I’ll never find out who wrote the piece — it’s beautiful though, isn’t it?” moving into the slow lane, “—that oboe and with the harpsichord going in back,” and she doesn’t say anything and he says “I’m not trying to take your mind off your bladder, Margo, but you don’t like this music? It’s so soothing, even with the losing-the-station noises,” and she says “It’s okay,” and Julie says “I have to go also, Daddy,” and he says “You’re just saying that to help your sister, but you needn’t, we’re here,” pulling into the exit road. “You know,” he says, walking to the building from the parking lot, “even if you’re not hungry, get something to eat, for I don’t know if I’ll make another stop till we’re home,” and Margo says “Even if we have to pee bad?” and he says “Then I’ll stop, of course; I wouldn’t want to damage your insides. But I’m going to ask you both to go twice, once when we come in and then when we leave,” and Julie says “We won’t have anything to pee,” and he says “You can always pee something, always; you’ll just sit on the potty till you do,” and she says “It’s not a potty. These places don’t have them and I’m too old for one,” and he says “Sorry; but do you want something to eat? Margo?” They’re inside now and Margo sees a place that sells tacos and says “Tacos, yes, I want two — can I, and something to drink?” and Julie says “I don’t want them but I’ll find something,” and he says “First you both pee. I’ll do it twice too, now and later. Meet you both outside here, and don’t go wandering if by chance you’re out first,” and goes into the men’s room.

Passes several urinals till he sees one that’s clean. One had a cigarette butt in it and three in a row needed to be flushed. What are the pissers afraid of, germs from putting their fingers on the flush lever? Then use a paper towel to flush it, if they have them here and not just hand dryers, or toilet paper, but that’d be thinking too far ahead, and if you only think it while standing at the urinal, then too much work to get it. And who throws a butt into a urinal? They don’t know someone has to take it out? Not with the hand but just any way you take it out, even with pincers or a nail at the end of a pick, is disgusting. Just the idea that someone has to take it out. Has to if it’s part of his job and he doesn’t want to be fired or quit. In that way the people who clean the ladies’ room have it better. But they’re probably the same cleaning men; they just block off the ladies’ room when they clean it, for he’s never seen a cleaning woman in one of these places, not to say because he hasn’t seen one they haven’t been there. At least there aren’t cuspidors anymore. Now those things had to be the worst to clean. When he worked in Washington they were all over the Capitol and Senate and House office buildings, even the public hallways. Worse cleaning them than preparing bodies for funerals, he’d think, or as bad. But they’re professionals, embalmers, and probably go to school for it or through some long apprenticeship before they start doing it on their own and they’re no doubt a lot better paid than cleaning men. They wore white jackets and black slacks, or is he mixing them up with the waiters in the Senate and House dining rooms? But he seems to remember seeing them, in some congressman’s office or Senate committee room, in that starched white jacket buttoned all the way up, emptying…not humidors. What are they called again besides spittoons? How can he have the word one second and not the next? “Spittoons” will do, but cuspidors, like on a cusp, which is maybe where the word came from — the shape of the thing, the lip — if he knows what cusp is, or exactly, but he bets it’s from the Latin somewhere for that’s how far back cuspidors probably go. They did it with a big can on wheels, about the size of a water bucket but the top covered except for a wide slit to pour the spit and chewing tobacco crud in. They probably emptied the bucket into a toilet someplace — where else? — and then cleaned and maybe even had to polish the cuspidors and probably cleaned those buckets as well and the toilets and slop sinks they poured it all in and maybe the area on the floor around the cuspidors where the spit missed. They also took care of the offices and committee rooms, vacuumed carpets, rugs, dusted, work like that, emptied trash baskets, made everything shine, while embalmers only work on bodies, he thinks, and have nothing to do with things like selling caskets and seating the funeral guests. So one job’s as bad as the other. Or the em-balmer’s job is worse, especially since there aren’t cuspidors around for cleaning men to empty anymore. Though cleaning a bunch of those still couldn’t be equal to embalming or just preparing for burial a decomposed or particularly ravaged or mutilated body, and even worse, the body of a child no matter what condition it comes to him in, but he supposes they get used to that too after a few years. He’s heard of embalmers, once from a woman he was seeing who answered phones for a funeral home, who used the navels of corpses they were working on as ashtrays, though maybe those were just stories or the very odd case. If a senator still has a cuspidor in his private office, do the cleaning people there have to empty and polish it? He just doesn’t see anyone doing that chore anymore, maybe not even for the president, but then who would do it, for you can’t let the thing run over? A devoted follower perhaps or a janitor from the old days who sort of got used to putting up with it or some young flunky who wants to become assistant to one of the administrative assistants and for that future job might even do something worse. When he was in the office of a senator or congressman he was waiting to interview — a different era, almost, but that has nothing to do with what he was saying, which was, well…he’d be looking around, in a way wasting time till he was called into the senator’s or representative’s private office, and suddenly find himself staring into a cuspidor on the floor. Didn’t do it out of any curiosity or because he was somehow drawn to it, that’s for sure, or maybe that was it; more like an accident of the eyes, he’d call it, that happened a number of times. But how’d he get into this and here while holding his dick? Something to do instead of just looking at the urinal while he tried to piss. He finally does — had to go when he walked in here so doesn’t know why it didn’t just come — flushes and goes to the washstand to clean his glasses and wash his hands and throw water on his face to help make him more alert for the rest of the trip, dries his hands — no paper towels, just the dryers, and for his face and glasses, his handkerchief — and leaves, kids aren’t there, looks around and doesn’t see them, goes to the gift shop and the wall by the exit where there are some video games, two places they’d wander off to without money, starts to get worried, thinks “Wait, who’s going to take both of them?” for both would have left the ladies’ room at the same time. Maybe they’re still in it, and at the door there cups his hands round his mouth and says “Margo, Julie, are you still in there?” and from what sounds like way inside it Margo says “We’re coming out,” and they come out, he says “What the heck were you doing? Don’t you know we’re in a hurry to get home?” and Julie says “Why do we have to? We want to see some things here; it’s a good place,” and he says “There’s nothing to see; let’s just eat,” and she says “There’s video games, a good gift shop; we’ve been to this stop before,” and he says “They’re all alike, up and down America; they all have everything you want to take all your dough. Come on, a snack — I’ll give you plenty of time to eat, and then I want to get home in time to prepare you a proper dinner and give you a couple of hours between dinner and bed to do what you want — read or ride your bikes or just relax,” and Margo says “It wasn’t our fault we took so long. All the toilets were filled. Ladies don’t have those stand-up things to pee in and they take longer than men,” and he says “Oh yes, boy oh boy, are you the observant one,” and takes Julie’s hand and they get on line at the Roy Rogers while Margo goes to a different fast-food place for tacos.

They’re off the turnpike, across the big bridge and past the first rest stop on the left and about an hour and a half from home if they don’t run into any heavy traffic or tie-ups, or even closer, hour and a quarter, hour and ten, but around that time in the trip when he usually starts thinking of what he has to do when he gets home and in what order and how much time it’ll all take before he can sit down with the newspaper for fifteen minutes and have a drink, like unpacking the car — they didn’t bring much stuff and this time his in-laws didn’t load him down with presents for the kids and a couple of bags of deli and food his mother-in-law made, maybe for some reason because his wife didn’t return with them — get the various things in their various places and the emptied valises back to the basement, but what else? Raise the thermostat from the 58 he put it at when they left. Open the curtains and shades, take the automatic light timer out of the socket and reconnect the lamp plug into the wall and replace the bulb in it with the hundred-watt rather than the twenty-five he put in for these few days. Turn the oven on even if he doesn’t know what he’s going to cook them. Maybe there’ll be something in the refrigerator to reheat that hasn’t started to spoil, or from the freezer but which can be thawed while baking — he, he’ll just have wine and some mustard and cheese on the good bread he brought from New York and part of the salad plate or tossed salad he makes for them, but his own vinaigrette dressing, not their bottled creamy Italian kind they like, when a car in the fast lane a few feet ahead of him starts moving into his lane without signaling and he honks and it keeps coming and he slows down and starts moving into the slow lane and is halfway over the dividing line when he looks at the right side mirror and sees a van coming on fast. The van honks and he cuts back into the middle lane and waves without looking at the van and says “I know, I’m sorry, it’s that stupid car,” and honks at it, though probably the van will think the honk’s for it. The car moves slowly back into the fast lane and honks twice and he says, as the van passes him, “Oh Jesus, honk honk, bunch of geese we all are, heading south for the summer, though, and with no camaraderie or cooperation or concordance or just plain plan or whatever you want to call it — fool, fool,” in the car’s direction and Margo says “What, Daddy?” and he says “Nothing, I should’ve expected it or at least expected anything and then corrected it better — it’s essentially and evidentially partially my fault,” and she says “What is, correct what?” and he says “Oh, again, nothing, just talking faultily to my littlest self with my biggest words,” and she says “Huh?” and to Julie “Do you get it?” and he says “You know, you both do, the brain, for that’s about how it feels right now, pea-sized, miniaturized, but without the intricate technics — forget it, my honeys, Daddy’s just a-kiddin’ again and wouldn’t want to give you the impression he has a bad image of himself or any command of the language when he this minute does not — just a-kiddin’ again, oh, can I never ever stop? — boing boing,” rapping his temple, “sorry, getting myself even deeper into what I won’t be able to get out of unless I switch subjects or shut up.” Car to the left stays beside his and he wants to see who’s driving, what kind of person, really, could be such a lousy driver, though he can try and guess if maybe only to see, even when he’s thinking seriously, how far off the mark he can be: unaccompanied man, not a woman, alone because the passenger, if it were an adult, and this one wouldn’t have a kid, would have tipped him off that he was driving recklessly and he would have corrected it sooner, and a woman wouldn’t stay alongside the car she cut off and risk being needled if not taunted and propositioned and cursed, around forty and with a hat on, hunter’s or trucker’s cap or one they used to call and maybe still do a pork-pie, fatty face and about a hundred pounds overweight, torpid from his bloat and also the huge snack with a couple of tall sodas or shakes he had at the last rest stop, so another reason he was so slow to react, package of opened, no, open package of small powdered doughnuts or bonbons on the passenger seat, beanbag ashtray half-filled with butts on top of the dashboard, messy car, lots of dumb bumper stickers and window decals, dirty T-shirt, that should be it and he actually doesn’t recall any stickers or decals but he wasn’t looking for them then, looks and there are two men, young, passenger must have been bent over when he honked at them or could he have seen him from behind and completely forgot? look like brothers though driver’s clean-faced and other’s got a shaggy mustache, lean if not weightliffer-mus-cular, thick necks, beefy shoulders, work clothes or just not dress clothes — fancy catalog-type casual clothes, both staring stolidly at him, driver not glancing front once, as if saying “What’s with you, dummy, got a problem?” and he nods and faces forward and thinks maybe he should move to the slow lane — checks the right wing mirror, that’s what it is, wing mirror, no car there — nah, that’ll just…that’ll just what? — suggest to them he’s intimidated or scared and thinking him weak that could start who knows what with them, where they stay alongside trying to rile him even more: gibes, glares, threats, fingers, fists, as if he almost got them killed in an accident, dumb idiot, but they stay even with him anyway and he’d like to know why, hasn’t looked to the side at them since that one time and he didn’t do anything then but nod and maybe flash a nothing smile, doesn’t try going faster for he’s already doing seventy and that’s about as fast as he wants to get when the speed limit’s fifty-five and if they stick with him at that clip it could make driving even more dangerous than it now is and they also might take his going faster as some kind of whatever they take it as, a contest they’re going to win no matter what, and he’s seen lots of cars stopped by cops on this road in the past and he doesn’t want to get tagged when he’s sort of anxious to get home, and really, he might be exaggerating the menacing from them and also with the ticket he doesn’t want to pay through the nose, for he thinks the fine’s up to around a hundred fifty now. Fact is he’s never been ticketed, all his years driving. Been stopped a few times, maybe twice, and once, second the cop reached his window, he said “I’m sorry, I must’ve been doing ten over the limit,” and the cop said “Twelve, but at least you’re honest about it; most drivers, you wouldn’t believe the excuses. I’ll let you off but don’t let me catch you going even five over on this street or I’ll ticket you for both at the same time,” and another time, twenty years ago, made a U on some boulevard and two cops stopped him in their car. Early morning, five-thirty, six and he was driving home from a woman’s house because she wanted him out before her kids awoke, didn’t want them seeing him in bed with her, just seeing him in the kitchen, even, and they could tell their father and it could hurt her chances in the divorce, and the cops warned him about making a U. “It’s not heavy traffic, so no big danger now, but in an hour you could get killed doing it, so don’t, as a standard rule, make a U.” “What’s the law on it, just out of curiosity?” and they said they didn’t know. Those, far as he remembers, were the only two. Looks over, casually, blank expression, as if something caught his attention on that side and he’s going to have a peek and then look back to the road, hoping those guys aren’t looking at him anymore and he can take his mind off them. Passenger’s staring at him with a tough look, driver’s just driving, pinky reaming his nose. Should he face front quick? but nods, passenger nods and then a little smile and then a broad one, throwing up his shoulders and raising his hands as if “What can I tell you? We made a mistake and we’re sorry,” and then points to the backseat, still smiling, as if “Hope we didn’t scare your girls none,” and then salutes him and waves to the girls with wiggling fingers and the car shoots ahead and soon they got to be doing eighty, eighty-five, maybe even ninety or more and he watches them awhile speeding out of sight and then turns on the radio and moves the dial around. Maybe now would be a good time to go seventy-five or so, he thinks, for if anyone’s going to get caught by radar somewhere or just a police car on the road, it’s them, but no, sixty-five’s fine. They could be slowing down, now that he can’t see them — all that shooting out and speed for his benefit, for whatever reason — and he could end up being the sole speeder on the road.

Seems nothing much is ever on the radio in this area but various kinds of obtuse music and the same kind of religious bilge — always a male and “I’ve seen the Lord and He’s me and you and you’ll see Him too if you listen to me and do what I say which is what He’s told me is for you and that’s to do God’s work,” and so on, and sometimes even worse. How could anyone…? — oh, he knows: people like to believe. Must be the hills—“And don’t forget to send me your moolah so I can carry on our cause”—but must be the hills around why he can’t get the good stations from his city or Wilmington or is it Newark, Delaware, pronounced “new ark,” or even way back and to the right, he thinks, Philadelphia, and shuts it off. What was that look by that guy all about? No, forget it. No, really, think, what started it, continued it, and then the end? Oh, first terrify you or use whatever punk means to try to and then when they’ve done a pretty good job of it or think they have, smile but really a big phony one and be nice and their gestures even polite and “Oh, hope we didn’t disturb your ride and your cute bitty kiddies,” for they got what they wanted and now just don’t want to get in trouble for it — you could have a car phone and call the police and give them their license plate number and so forth — something, anyway, for them to change their tactics like that, but exactly what he doesn’t know. But dopes, that’s all, pure dopes. As for their dangerous driving, face it: you’ve done as bad if not worse. Made mistakes like they did, drove too close behind a car where when it suddenly slowed you almost plowed into it, pulled away from the curb without looking into the street to see what was coming and almost got into you don’t know how many collisions, drove dreamily alongside some parked cars and nearly hit a woman holding a kid getting out of the passenger’s door, didn’t let the truck pass first when you were entering a highway and it nearly went over you and the kids. You even did something like those just before when you started moving into the right lane without looking and that van was coming. But when you have done things like that you usually if you could apologized right off to the driver you did it to, as you did with the van. But you never that you can remember gave the driver of the car you just scared half to death or nearly killed with your lousy driving any kind of terrifying or cynical or “You’re to blame, dumbo, you, so just go screw yourself” look. You have, first chance — oh, a few times when you were in a miserable mood or something, you didn’t, and you blamed the other driver and a couple of times raised your hand or even once your fist in a threatening gesture and called him an asshole or jerk — but thrown up your shoulders and hand as the passenger only did later, but surely no sinister…anyway, usually totally apologetic or close, at times mouthing “I’m sorry,” or if your window was open and theirs too, or even if theirs wasn’t, saying or shouting it: “Excuse me, my blunder, stupid of me, I’m sorry.” Smart, though, not to have messed with those men. They didn’t look like nice guys despite the last nice-guy gestures and look of the passenger and you wouldn’t have been surprised, if you had looked toughly or cynically back at them or given them any kind of rebuke with your look, if they wouldn’t have — passenger, at least, driver as much as he could from his seat — raised a middle finger at you or even shook a fist or done something like point a hand at you in the shape of a pistol and with the index finger made believe they were pulling the trigger a few times. Enough, they’re gone, incident’s done, think of other things or just don’t think. You just hope you don’t run into them on the road again or in a rest stop along the way if you have to stop. You’ll have to, you always do, if just for a quick take-out coffee to keep you awake for the rest of the trip and for the kids a large box of popcorn to keep them fed and occupied, and if you get that coffee you’ll also need to piss, since your bladder always fills up with a couple of cups. But even if you do see them, and odds are slight, by that time you’re sure they won’t recognize you but you think you’ll recognize them. What happened meant more to you than them, that’s probably why, and because of the kind of guy you are compared to them: things sink in, you usually try to understand why they happened, and when you do something wrong intentionally or by mistake it hits you harder than what they do hits them. You see them forgetting it, after a quick joking exchange not talking about it, maybe scaring the shit out of someone else if the feeling nudges them and another car like yours with kids or just to them some dumb-looking schmuck at the wheel happens to be driving alongside theirs. Anyway, that’s how it is on the big road: so anonymous though tough and scary every so often and sometimes heated and dangerous for a few seconds before the cars go their own way or one or the other disappears.

Few minutes later he’s talking to Margo. Starts when he says “So,” for he has nothing else to say and nothing much is on his mind and definitely nothing’s on the radio and to pass the time he’d like to talk or just hear their voices and what they have to say, “so, anybody missing Mommy yet?” and Julie says “I am, when will we see her next?” Actually, started when he was thinking of his wife and how odd it’ll be going to sleep tonight without her, not only because there’ll be no one in the bedroom to speak to but they do it what? every day, almost every day, morning, little before he gets up, or afternoon if he’s home and kids are in school or away, or night soon after they get into bed and one of them turns off one of the side-table lights, and just holding her, mornings around four or five when it’s coldest in the room he almost always snuggles up and holds her from behind, for that’s the way she usually faces, his hand on her thigh or breast or in her pubic hair, sometimes clutching a bunch of it but gently so it doesn’t hurt or wake her, how he might even masturbate tonight for the first time in he doesn’t know how long, could be a couple of years, for he never does it when he knows she’ll be there that night or the next to make love with, feels if he jerks off that same day or even the one before it might stop him from getting or keeping his prick even semi-stiff and that when there’s less to shoot it reduces the final kick, and at his age when for years he’s been feeling there’s little by little less thrill at the end he doesn’t want to lose any of it, and he won’t be seeing her for two nights, no, tonight and two make three, and then what brought all these thoughts and this image of her up: back to him while she’s seated on her end of the bed, taking her bra off from behind, so he’d be observing this while lying or sitting up reading in bed, way her hands and arms twist around till the hook’s unhitched, light plop of her large breasts against her chest when the bra’s pulled away, two-or-so-inch buttocks’ crack rising above her old loose-fitting briefs. Came out of nowhere it seemed, just flashed in his pan or maybe something from underneath to temper being alone tonight in bed. Oh, “temper,” now where’d that one come from? And he says “In two days from now or, if Mommy’s having too good a time without us — only kidding. If she’s got something she has to do there that needs a third day, or let’s face it, if she just wants to spend another day with your grandfolks or they sort of put the screws on her to because they see so little of her and when they do it’s always with us. And she is their favorite child, you know, as much as they love your aunt — then a day more, which means altogether four nights.” “Three is how I count it,” Julie says and he says “If it makes you feel better, and maybe you’re right, for you’re tops in your class in math, then three,” and she says to Margo “Three, I know it — Daddy’s wrong and I’m right.” “We’ll all drive to the train station to pick her up,” he says, “—she’s arranging it to come in around five or six so we can do that,” and Julie says “Whoopee, I love trains — I want to take one,” and he says “One day, to New York — they’re faster and all-around safer I bet, with no possible problems on the highway and we won’t have to find a place to park or worry about our car being stolen there or pay through the nose for a garage, but Margo,” for he hasn’t heard from her yet, “my Margo, sweetheart, you love trains too, don’t you?” and she says “Can I stay home when you go?” and he says “Of course not, you can’t be home alone — not at your age; you’re too beautiful and you might be stolen — only kidding. Mommy hates when I make jokes like that, says they scare you,” and she says “They do.” “Well, don’t be, nobody’s stealing you; we live in a safe neighborhood and all our doors at night are always locked and windows too. Besides, someone tries to break in, bam, one sock in the kisser from me and he’s gone forever if not knocked unconscious. But why wouldn’t you want to go pick Mommy up with us? We can go to the platform when the train comes in and help her with her bags and things — might even be a present or two for you in them,” and she says “Mommy’s been mean to me lately, I hate her,” and he says “No you don’t, and if you did, it could only be for a few minutes; your Mommy’s a darling,” and she says “I do, you don’t know,” and he says “Okay, why? I’m going to be reasonable, why?” and she says “She yelled at me — she had no reason to,” and he says “For not getting out of the bathroom sooner this morning? I heard; you were in there brushing your hair and she had to go to the john badly,” and she says “She could have used the other bathroom and she didn’t have to scream,” and he says “She only raised her voice and that bathroom’s in your grandparents’ room and they were sleeping, so she didn’t want to wake them,” and she says “She’s their daughter, she could do it like I do when I have to go in your bathroom and you’re in bed, and how do you know they were sleeping? — she didn’t even knock,” and he says “Because their door was closed,” and she says “That doesn’t mean anything,” and he says “It means they’re not ready yet to be disturbed even by their favorite daughter unless it’s an emergency, but something more serious than just number one,” and she says “Number one?” and he says “To pee, to urinate; the other’s number two, defecation. And Mommy thought it’d be easier, instead of disturbing them, for they are fairly elderly people, for you to get out of the bathroom if you were only brushing your hair,” and she says “How do you know I was only doing that? — there are no peepholes there,” and he says “Because you said so. I’m brushing my hair, can’t you go to the other bathroom? My hair’s important; you want me to look nice, you always say.’ Sometimes, you know, you can get a little disrespectful and headstrong, kid, so she thought she had to raise her voice to get through to you. But don’t worry about it, it’s over. Mommy for sure doesn’t think any less of you because of it, and when you speak to her on the phone later, you’ll see: everything will be fine. In fact, everything’s going to be peachy cream cheese for the rest of the day. We’ll have some fun when we get home, what do you say?” and she says “What?” and he says “I don’t know; reading, maybe playing Scrabble together or Monopoly — something, after supper. I might even break my cardinal hatred of TV and watch it for an hour with you,” and she says “Okay, and this is good, talking personal-like; Mommy might be mean sometimes but you’re mostly nice,” and he says “Isn’t that the same thing? So Mommy and I are even in your feelings — great. And when, long as we’re talking, haven’t I been nice? Only kidding, but really, when?” and she says “Like today when you punched me. I should be madder at you than I am at Mommy for what she did, but we made up,” and he says “When did I do that and when did we make up?” and she says “You punched my arm right before you said you were very sorry you did and me and you hugged and made up,” and he says “Wait, I don’t remember — you kidding me now? And it’s something I should remember — I hit you? I mean, I’ve done it before, not hard, just little hits or smacks, and so few times that I remember every one of them, but today?” and she says “In Grandma’s apartment, this morning. You wanted to leave fast and thought I was slow and then when I was out of the door going to the elevator and forgot something and went back in to get it, you followed me and grabbed my arm and punched it. I hurt and it still hurts, my arm,” and he says “I never punched you. What do you think, I’m stupid — I’d forget that? I remember the scene now and there was no punch. I did grab your arms, or shoulders. Not ‘grabbed’ them — held them when you turned around. And besides, I wasn’t in such a rush. I still hadn’t said goodbye to Mommy and I can’t just do it in a second, race over to her, quick kiss and goodbye. It’s not the way we do it. I wouldn’t be seeing her for a few days so I’d say something, she’d say something to me, we’d hug and stuff — like that, same as I’d do for my kids, but different. But as for you, it’s true, I said let’s get going, meaning you kids should start for the car, since Grandpa wanted to go downstairs with you. Maybe he did that to give Mommy and me a moment of privacy, but I also had to stay behind a couple more minutes to see if I forgot anything for the car and to say goodbye to Grandma. And you flew out the door and then flew back and I said ‘Where are you going, I thought you were leaving?’ and you didn’t say but continued to run past me and that’s when I grabbed you, or held you — sort of snatched you out of the air, you were running so fast — just to get an answer from you, since I didn’t like you racing past without giving one,” and she says “You grabbed my arms tight — clenched them hard, so it felt like punching and I didn’t see all the time your hands, so it could’ve been one. And you yelled ‘Hey, listen, where the hell you going? We’ve got to go, so stop wasting time,’” and he says “I didn’t say that,” and she says “You did, everybody heard except maybe Grandpa in the elevator. Mommy must have heard you from wherever she was in the house. And I had a mark where you grabbed or punched me and I bet I still have it — I looked at my arm in the lobby when we were waiting for you and Grandpa said where’d I get that? I didn’t tell him; you wouldn’t want me to. But you were too rough with me and you have been too rough lots because of little things I do, but you’re still nice most times, or half of them,” and he says “No, really, I didn’t, you’re imagining it, no, and unless I convince you otherwise you’ll probably think I did this to you today for the rest of your life. I wasn’t rough with you this time though I admit I have been a bit too rough with you other times, or just demanding. Or, you know, when the house suddenly looks a chaotic mess to me and I can’t find anything or am always stumbling over everything and have to get the whole joint cleaned up in five minutes or I feel it’ll overwhelm me. When I get like that, a bit carried away, true, or can’t find my wallet or glasses or keys when I’m leaving the house…but I always apologized for it or did nine times out of ten. In other words, I think I recognize my mistakes right after they happen but maybe don’t do enough to stop them from returning,” and she says “I’m not talking of those times with your glasses and things. But Mommy knows what I’m saying how rough you’ve been, Julie’s seen it, almost everyone we know has, but they don’t tell you because you’re my father and they don’t think it’s up to them to say. And maybe because they’re scared of you when you act like that — pushing people around and screaming and grabbing their arms hard; I know I am,” and he says “Mommy thinks I punched you today?” and she says “No, I didn’t tell her because I was angry at her too, but Julie saw the mark on my arm downstairs,” and he says “Hey, is Julie sleeping? — I have a feeling,” and she says “You’re just changing the subject,” and he says “I’m not, but is she?” and she says “She fell asleep while we were talking,” and he says “So let’s talk in whispers; she needs the rest and I don’t want to wake her anyway. And if I did grab you too hard today — I don’t think I did and I certainly didn’t punch you, though there could be a chance I forgot on the first score — then I’m sorry. You know I have a temper sometimes and occasionally even go way out of control and my sense of how everything has to be just so-so to perfect, not sloppy, and on time and stuff and how it gets to me when it isn’t sometimes, foolishly though and beyond my powers to stop it, or just can’t. I don’t like it and I’m sorry if I acted that way to you today, let’s say, and surely sorry if I left any marks on your arm, but most of all sorry if I ever made you scared of me,” and she says “You have, to every—” and he says “Shh, shh, lower,” and she says “To everybody in the house but I think especially to me,” and he says “Not everybody, or not so much,” and she says “Yes, to everybody, and much, too much, where we hate you,” and he says “Okay then, I’m sorry, I apologize, to you and through you to everybody, you can even tell them that if I forget to,” and she says “All right, and I’m sorry too but glad we spoke about it, are you?” and he says “Sure, it’s always smart to talk things out that are bothering you,” and she says “I’m glad you think that because that’s what I’m starting to think too.”

Few minutes later he yawns so big a yawn that his eyes squeeze tight and tears come and he tries opening them but for a couple of seconds can’t and he thinks Jesus, what is he, that tired? doesn’t want to stop but might have to — concentrate, concentrate, and while he’s staring front, head pitched a little over the wheel, trying to keep his eyes from closing like that again, he yawns, tries to stop it and is suddenly out, he thinks after he snaps awake, he’s been out, unconscious, but for how long? seconds, even a half minute, a minute, just sitting here sleeping but holding the wheel straight where it didn’t leave the lane. Checks and no cars around so nothing much would have happened if he did go into one of the next lanes and then awakened. But never happened, this. Or happened once, on a trip with his wife before she was his wife and they had kids, eleven hours on the road and he’d driven most of them and forty or so miles from the bungalow on a private cove they’d rented for a month…anyway, stop at the next rest stop. And that was eleven hours, since early morning, so they probably didn’t have enough sleep night before and had tired themselves out a little packing and loading for the trip and cleaning the apartment for the couple subletting it for the month, trying to make it in one day to avoid the costs of an overnight stay and to take full advantage of the cottage’s thirty-one-day lease. That’s right, think like that, of anything to stay awake, or stop on the shoulder to rest his eyes a few minutes, nap for ten, that’d refresh him, and kids won’t mind that much. But you never know. He sometimes gets scared like this. Car coming along could go off the road right into them, thinking it was another lane. Not that but a car in the slow lane might come too close or some thugs might stop to rob him, guys like those guys in the car before. They see a man and his kids: easy target, back up on the shoulder, “Say, you don’t have a jack we can use, for we think we have a flat,” bam, out comes the gun. Sometimes he wishes he kept a weapon in the car to protect himself, like mace. But then the kids could get hold of it accidentally or out of curiosity and then what? That could happen, much as he might warn them. So a baseball bat. Anyway, still thinking, and feeling more alert. Radio, and turns it on. He’ll take any show this time, religious, ridiculous call-in, but can’t pick up anything but two stations with the same kind of thumping music that makes him irritable it’s so ugly, and it’ll wake Julie, so turns it off. Talk. Whispers “Margo?” but she doesn’t answer. “Margo? Margo?” Quickly turns around and sees they’re both asleep. Just a glimpse of them, but little angels; at what age does that look stop? Next rest area shouldn’t be that far off, five, ten miles — forgets when he saw the last sign for one and how many miles it said next area was, but he’s definitely going to stop, piss, wash his face, have two coffees or just a big large one, though he’s not yawning anymore so maybe the crisis is over, though still stop.

Little later Margo says “Julie’s up,” and he says “Oh, you’re awake,” and she says “I wasn’t sleeping,” and he says “You weren’t? What is it with you two where you don’t like to admit it? Okay,” and she says “Can I speak about something serious now without you getting angry like you can?” and he says “Why would I with just your asking me something — what kind of guy you think I am?” and she says “You have before when I asked you to do something you didn’t want to,” and he says “What is it you want? I promise I’m turning over a new leaf, no more anger or at least not as much — control, control and self-command is the word, or words, and besides, just ask it,” and she says “What time is it?” and he says “That’s what you were afraid to ask?” and she says “No, don’t be silly,” and he says “You can read the time — what time is it?” and she says “Do you think, you don’t have to if you don’t want, we can get home in time to drop me off first at Lillian’s ice-skating party?” and he says “That’s what you thought I’d get angry about? Anyway, it’s already started — I told you this morning I didn’t think you’d be able to go when I saw how late we were getting out,” and she says “But I’ve been thinking about it now and I don’t want to miss it,” and he says “We don’t even have a present,” and she says “Mommy has a whole bunch home for emergencies, I can tell her I’ll give it in school tomorrow,” and he says “That’d work but to get there we’d have to really rush and I don’t want to, right now what I’m doing’s a safe speed and just enough over the maximum, and even if we rushed, really broke the speed laws and everything, you’d barely make the last half hour of it,” and she says “I’ve been to two at that rink and they always went on a half hour to an hour more,” and Julie says “That’s not fair if she goes,” and he says “I don’t want to count on the party going over — it’s just too much out of the way, twenty minutes, then twenty minutes plus twenty in coming back to get you and returning home, and I’m tired, sweetie — did you see me yawning before?” and she says no and he says “You said you were awake so I thought you might have, but I did, I’m so tired I don’t think I should even be driving now — I want to stop for coffee and rest my eyes and mind a little from this driving and that’ll add another half hour to the trip, which’ll mean you’ll get to the party, if we make great time, exactly when it’s scheduled to stop,” and she says “I still want to try,” and he says “You should’ve thought of that this morning when you dillydallied in the john and I was pushing us to get ready so we could go, and also when we stopped for your tacos,” and she says “That’s not fair, we stopped for more — your men’s room, and you had a biscuit and coffee and the tomatoes from Julie’s hamburger,” and Julie says “I didn’t want them but Daddy told me to put them on so he could have them,” and he says “Listen, if we make exceptional time till the Beltway and if on the Beltway I see there’s no heavy traffic or there’s a way where I can avoid it and I think we can get to the party for at the very least, half an hour, then okay, but less than that it’s not worth it, don’t you agree?” and she says “No but okay,” and he says “Okay?” and she says “Yes, what else can I say?” and he says “Good, for then I’ll do my best to get you there, I swear,” and speeds up a little and she says “Like I said, you’re very nice and sometimes easy to talk to. I didn’t say the last thing, but easier than Mommy most times, and you make up with me faster,” and he says “Listen, I’ll have no comparative parent ratings please,” and she says “What’s those?” and he says “I said it wrong; I meant, your mother’s a much better parent than I, doesn’t get hotheaded or temper-tantrummy the way I do, she never really rants or becomes cross, and if I did grab your arms in a pinching sort of way as you said — left marks there, squeezed the skin too hard, but no punches; that I know I’ve never done — well, you know she’s never acted like that, right?” and she says “That’s right, not even a slap, which you once said you did,” and he says “So there. She’s as easy if not easier to talk to than I, more understanding and a lot quicker to forgive and let bygones be and so on and more patient and sensible about what might be bothering you; while my first reaction, if it’s not your health or safety that’s at stake, is to joke about it, but overall we’re both okay, would you agree?” and “You too, Julie — that we’re not total boobs and floperoos as parents or even near to that?” and Margo says “She’s shaking yes and I can say I shake along with that too,” and he says “Well, good.”

Little later he thinks maybe he can get to the rink in time for her to skate even if they stop for a short break, and drives a little faster, for he slowed down last time, soon after he’d speeded up, to what he’d been doing, and reaches seventy-five, more than he likes to and had got up to last time, slows to seventy-one for he doesn’t want to get stopped by a cop for that would end it, no party, he’s only trying to do something nice for her, hundred- to hundred-fifty-dollar ticket and who knows what else, humiliation, explaining to his wife why he was speeding and with a fine so high and just endangering the kids she’d really be pissed, and what’s four fewer miles an hour anyway in what’s left of this trip, five minutes, six? when he sees a car ahead in the fast lane, doesn’t like passing on the right and why the hell is it in that lane if it’s just going to putt-putt along at sixty? so he gets behind it, a man, and judging by the back of him, pretty old, now down to sixty, fifty-eight and the man probably thinks that’s speeding, and stays about thirty feet back but it doesn’t move over, and he flashes his brights, okay, it’s so, he gets a little pleasure or some power thing forcing the cars in front to move over, flashes the brights repeatedly and waits and again and waits and then says “Oh the hell with you, you putz, for what’re you doing there, dreaming?” and Julie says “What, Daddy?” and he says “Nothing, I meant some thing else,” and checks his mirrors, no car behind in the center lane, none in sight in any of them, and darts into it but same time car in front does and he brakes and honks and hears a thump from the backseat into the front and one of the girls screams and the other car goes back into the fast lane and speeds off and he yells “Margo, girls, you all right?” and Julie says “Yes, that was scary, I thought that car would kill us,” and he says “That noise — the bumping sound I heard,” and Margo says “It was my hands against the back of the front seat here, I was pushed forward, my seatbelt must be on too loose, but I’m okay,” and he says “And who screamed? — but forget it, I’m sorry, it was my fault, I never should have tried passing him like that,” and has slowed down, other car’s already a few hundred feet ahead, and thinks that’s enough, too fast, no sense in speeding up and taking chances, and that’s crap you don’t like passing on the right, do it from the slow lane then if there are three lanes and you feel you have to pass the car in the fast, and you’re not tired anymore and that power thing before about forcing the guy over is just ego-building horse-shit you’re going to have to can, for think what could have happened if that man had cut into the center lane just one second after he did, your car would have been clipped, yours doing seventy or so, his, sixty, it could have been disastrous, you could have crashed, turned around, spun around, smashed, gone off the road, over the shoulder, rolled over, kids killed, all of you killed, car in flames, worst of all, them killed and not you. Oh brother, someone’s watching over you — not that, luck and maybe that man’s skillful driving in pulling to the left so quick and good brakes on your part and so on, and stays in the center lane and tells himself to stay in it rest of the trip, though first get off at the next exit even if it’s not a rest stop but only a regular highway exit with those little picture signs that say a restaurant’s near, but don’t hurry your stay there, coffee, maybe a sandwich, where you can sit tight and rest your nerves and eyes, and sees a sign for a highway rest area coming up in three miles, another answer to his prayers if he believed in them, and says “Hurray, rest stop’s heading our way,” and Margo says “We’re really going to it?” and he says “I’m sorry, I know what you’re thinking, my darling — we’ll worry about your party after, but for now I absolutely without question need a break.”

Once they’re out of the restrooms: “Get anything you want, so long as it’s popcorn or something healthy, not sweet, and of course if you want real food too, fine with me,” and gives Margo a five-dollar bill for the two of them, “Can we get soda?” Julie says and he says “Only if it’s a diet or natural-flavor one; okay, we’ll celebrate getting here alive, but I’d prefer just juice — I’ll be sitting over there,” and they get on line at a take-out stand where there’s a popcorn machine and he goes to the Roy Rogers, coffee, sits and thinks Jesus, I still can’t shake what happened. So don’t shake, think why it’s bugging you. One second, that’s all, one, or at the most two. How many times has that happened to him? Too many; half a dozen, full, and he didn’t start driving till he was twenty-five; never hit but lots of near misses. Did hit a bridge railing once on the outskirts of D.C. but that was the car designers’ or engineers’ fault, which the company clammed up about before the car was built rather than redesign the chassis or whatever needed redesigning, or that’s what the newspapers said: rear-wheel lockup that got about ten people killed, or the accident deaths this independent watchdog group said it knew about, and almost wiped them out too: Lee in the front seat screaming when the car spun around out of control toward the bridge railing “We’re dead, we’re all dead,” Margo in her car seat in back, on their way to the National Gallery to see a show of minor French Impressionists: he remembers it all, discussing whether to drive the junkpile the rest of the way or turn back, drinking cappuccino in the East Wing cafeteria there and thinking, while Lee walked around looking at the paintings with Margo in a baby carrier on her back, Damn, now I gotta go around getting body-repair estimates and deal with my insurance company and rent a car while this one’s in the shop. No more taking car chances, as he said. Definitely not with the kids or Lee and not with himself either. For what would they do without him? Eventually they’d be okay, but they’d be devastated for a while and it could wreck them for years, maybe affect the kids the rest of their lives, if he died or was left severely paralyzed. You want to stay healthy and alive for them long as you can. Sixty-five, that’s the max speed anywhere from now on, even in the states where the limit’s now sixty-five but where you can go ten over without being touched. You had the kids late and want to be around to put them through college and graduate school if they want to go, and more — if they need help starting out or buying a home or happen to get stuck with some permanent or chronically progressing crippling disease or such, when he sees those two guys from the Interstate an hour or so ago. Driver’s dumping their used stuff off a tray into the trash can, other’s sticking a cigarette between his lips but making no move to light it, and now they’re heading past him — doesn’t want to have anything to do with them so looks the other way — and passenger says “Isn’t that the fella…?” and driver says “Who?” and passenger says “There, one we almost bashed into on the highway way before?” and driver says “Beats me — you’re talking like I got a good look at him,” and passenger says “Sure, it’s him, you saw,” and comes over, he knows it’s inevitable so he turns their way and passenger’s smiling, cigarette clutched in his fist now, driver’s disinterested, just wants to get out of here and on the road again, and says “Excuse me, but weren’t you the fella on the road before and we got into your lane a little and where we all like nearly collided?” and he says “That’s right, I thought I recognized you — say, I’m really sorry about it,” and passenger says “Why? It was our fault and mostly mine — I felt shitty about it, you had these kids in the car, didn’t you? Boys or something? Where are they?” and he says “Girls, and up front somewhere getting food,” and passenger says “Yeah, girls, but they had short hair,” and he says “Actually, both have long, but it was quick and we were all going pretty fast,” and driver says “Hey, when have you ever mistaken boys for girls, that’s a new one,” and passenger says “Kids. And I know I tried apologizing to you back then but I even told my friend here — he’ll vouch for me—‘You see that worried look on that man? I wish I could tell him more some way how rotten I feel about what we did,’” and driver says “Not in those words so much but something, and he took the blame for he was distracting me. Got me involved in something else where I took my eyes from my driving, which I never do, never,” and he says “It’s all right, lots of close calls, won’t be our last, just a good thing, that’s all it was,” and driver says “But what I told him too was ‘Impossible, no way you’ll see that man on the “I” again for your whole life, or if you do, you won’t know it’s him, it’ll be that far along in years, you’ll have forgotten his face and he’ll have aged like you’ve never seen, so stop mauling yourself over it, and me too with your groans,’” and passenger says “Oh what’re you talking of?” and driver says “I’m being honest for once — you were rattling on like that, making me almost into another close accident shave if there was any other car near,” and passenger says to Nathan “Don’t listen to him — once he starts, never stops; mouth like a runaway can opener. Anyhow, no harm meant, right?” and driver says “Of course none meant, he knows, you can tell by him there isn’t, so let’s get with it, we got to go,” and he says “No harm meant, certainly, and thanks,” and sticks out his hand and passenger says “Hey, good, we get to shake on it, more than I could have asked for — but boy, it’s weird, us meeting up again,” and shakes his hand and driver waves goodbye and they start to go and passenger turns around and says “One last ask, man — let your girls know what I said too, that I felt rotten for them if I scared them, or if we did, but I’m the one who felt bad,” and he says “Will do, thanks again,” and they leave.

Raining when they get outside, not much, sprinkles, and he says “Hey, let’s make a dash for the car,” and Margo says “Why, it’s not raining so much,” and he says “Hey, man, whataya talking about, it’s a good excuse to run and we need it after being cooped up in the car and your stuffing yourself here, for I don’t see no popcorn left, is that what I don’t see, man, hey, hey?” and she says “We ate it. And why are you talking like that with all the mans and stuff?” and he says “Just pretending, and I didn’t want any corn anyway, but let’s run,” and runs and looks back after about twenty feet and they’re walking and talking and he yells “Hey, last one to the car’s a rotten you-know-what,” and they run and he stays there till they’re even and then lags behind them so they can beat him. “You cheated,” Margo says and Julie says “Daddy’s a cheater,” and he says “Yeah, man, that’s me,” and Margo says “Stop that, you sound mean,” and he says “Sorry, man, sorry, man — oops, okay, stop.”

They’re on the road a few minutes when it starts pouring, then comes down so hard that most of the cars have slowed down and turned on their lights. He can’t see well even with the wipers on high speed and says “Look, Margo, we can never make the party now — we’re down to half the speed we were going and if it doesn’t let up, this is it the rest of the way,” and she says “I understand,” and he goes into the slow lane, down to thirty-five an hour, at times twenty-five, twenty, sticking his face a few inches from the windshield to see out, rubbing his side window because it’s clouded up. “Wish one of you was up here to wipe the front window for me, though that’s not an invite and we’ll be fine. Oh, by the way, guess who — no, you couldn’t, but you won’t believe who I bumped into at the Roy Rogers when you were getting popcorn,” and they say nothing and he says “Hello, anyone hear me?” and Margo says yes and he says “In fact, one of them told me to particularly tell you girls how sorry he was if he scared you on the road before — now you know who they are?” and Margo says no and he says “I don’t really know if I should believe him. He seemed sincere when he was saying it — he’s my ‘hey, man’ man — but then something doesn’t quite jive with his attitude on the road when he did sort of scare us, or at least me — know who I’m talking about now?” and Julie says “Stop teasing, who?” and he says “Those two guys from maybe an hour and a half ago or two hours, on the Interstate before the big bridge…they almost ran us off — you know, cut into our lane without warning me, not the old dude before but two much younger men from way way before,” and Margo says “I don’t recall,” and Julie says “Did one wave a doll at me?” and he says “I don’t think so,” and she says “That must’ve been someone else, a Raggedy-Ann, or Andy,” and he says “On this trip?” and Margo says “She’s making it up, can’t you tell?” and he says “Anyway, right after—” and Margo says “Daddy, she slapped me,” and he says “Julie, stop it — anyway, right after they scared us they smiled, the passenger in the front seat did, and wiggled his fingers at you both,” and Margo says “No, ma père, I don’t recall,” and Julie says “If it isn’t the doll man — he was nice — I don’t too,” and he says “Okay, recountal closed.”

Few minutes later he thinks if there’s another rest area soon he’ll pull in and stay in the car till the rain abates and if it doesn’t in around fifteen minutes, pull up at the entrance and race inside with the kids, holding some protection over them — sweater, jacket, he doesn’t care if he gets wet — and then park and run in and dry off and take another piss and tell the kids to use the ladies’ room again and he’ll have coffee — or tell the kids to use the ladies’ room while he’s parking — and let them get anything they want this time, sugared artificially flavored and colored soda, Pepsi or Coke, even, lollipop apiece and for each of them one of those Pez, is it? just the refill or with the dispenser, even if they have several empty dispensers at home in the shapes of various cartoon characters, junky cupcakes, any kind of cake, just so they — but no more popcorn, that’ll only give them a tummyache — won’t be bored and sort of as compensation for the long trip and also as a reward for being so patient and cooperative during it, that’s how we’ll word it, “gifts for being such nifty kids on this trip.”

Rain never abates, sees a rest area half hour after he thought he’d stop at the next but even at thirty-five miles an hour they’re at the most forty minutes from home, so passes it. Parks in front of the house; downpour, as they’re preparing to get out of the car, turns into a drizzle. “We’re saved,” he says, “saved,” and Julie asks “What’s that?” and he says “Means miracle; rain’s down to a trickle when I thought it’d be a twenty-year torrent.” Gets everything inside in several trips, empty trash cans on the grass and in the street to the side of the house, mail out of the box, newspapers off porch and walkway. Turns the heat up, oven on, peels carrots and washes and slices celery sticks and puts a plate of them with some cherry tomatoes on the dining room table so the kids can snack, unpacks, puts things away fast as he can, soiled clothes into the washing machine in the basement and pours soap powder in without measuring first and turns it on, straightens up the downstairs, couch pillows plumped up and put in place, that more than anything for the amount of work put in makes a room seem neater, all the old newspapers, magazines, catalogs, drawing and construction paper and children’s books lying around the living room stacked into one pile, something about a room with lots of things open and mislaid disorients him, makes a salad, slices bread brought from New York and butters it, asks the girls when they’re taking from the veggie plate to set the rest of the table, asks them a few times, yells upstairs “Girls, please come down and set the table,” finally says when he sees them reading in the living room and eating the buttered bread “What am I supposed to do, everything? — come on, get with it, set the goddamn table, and that bread was supposed to be for dinner,” and they jump up and run into the kitchen for tableware, “That’s better,” he says and Julie says “You didn’t have to curse,” and he says “You’re right, forget the ‘goddamn,’ but did you get the cloth napkins out of the linen drawer?” and Margo says “Nor shout either — ordering, you’re always ordering,” and he says “I’m not always, and I guess I’m hurrying too fast and being kind of a pain in the ass to get everything done so I can rest a second, excuse me,” tells them to get juice for themselves, please? puts a pot of water on to boil, why didn’t he do it sooner and why’s he have the oven on? and shuts it off — spaghetti, salad, bread, veggie plate (while he’s dribbling olive oil and rice vinegar into the salad bowl), fruit, that should be enough, maybe broccoli if it’s still good, opens a can of apricots and spoons some into two cereal bowls and places them next to the kids’ settings, smells the broccoli in the plastic bag from the refrigerator, mush, stinks, dumps it into the garbage, smells and tastes the tomato sauce from the jar in the refrigerator, still okay and dumps it into a saucepan and puts a very low flame under it, then thinks You know yourself, you’ll forget it and pot will burn and it’s all the sauce you have, and shuts it off, water’s boiling, sticks the spaghetti in, empties the remaining apricots into a container and puts it into the refrigerator, sits for a few minutes with a scotch and water and reads the mail and the part of today’s paper that wasn’t soaked, calls the girls to dinner, same old mail and front-page news, dumps all the catalogs but one so his wife won’t get suspicious that not even one came when she was away, for he doesn’t want her getting her hands on the rest and buying what he thinks are a lot of unnecessary things and increasing the number of catalogs they already get, how do the catalogers or whatever the word for them is get her name? every time she orders, or as much as he can, he tells her to insist the cataloger not sell her name to any other company’s mailing list or she’ll never buy from it again, calls the girls to dinner, catalog he kept is one he’s almost sure she won’t buy anything from: maternity bras and baby clothes from a time she bought them years ago and catalog’s come ever since, calls the girls to dinner, Julie sits and says “I have nothing to drink,” and he says “Did you wash your hands? — I should’ve told you that before you sat,” and both girls wash their hands and he washes his in the kitchen sink and heats the tomato sauce and drains and butters the spaghetti and gets everything on the table along with a glass of wine for him, Parmesan cheese! and runs in and gets it, butter and bread knife and more bread, shakes the pepper mill and refills it and sits and Julie says “I still have nothing to drink,” and he says “Excuse me, but I think I told you before to get something. Not milk, that’s no good with dinner, Mommy says. But one of the flavored seltzers with ice, orange juice in it to make Orangina if it’s plain seltzer, or a flavored seltzer with juice, what’s the difference really? or just straight orange juice with or without ice and which is on the side shelf of the refrigerator,” and Julie gets juice for Margo and her and they eat, he says ‘Food okay, there’s enough?” and Margo says “I’m not that hungry — it could be the popcorn, to be honest; I’m sorry,” and he says “So what did you think about the day today — good day, bad, so-so mediocre day; how does it rate on your average everyday day gauge?” and Margo says “Who?” and he says “Both of you,” and Julie says “I don’t get the question,” and Margo says “An awful boring horrible day, useless and one of the worst. Too much car and stop, car and stop; I wish we could take the train once,” and he says “I promise you — once, we will. But the rest of the day today forgotten — the bad, the so-so mediocre, the good?” and Julie says “Still, what do you mean?” and he says “I don’t know — those cowboys; that’s what my dad liked to call wild and dangerous drivers, and their cars broncos, which is funny, for that’s the name of a fashionable expensive car today, isn’t it?” and Margo says “You think they got the idea from your father?” and he says “If they did I bet right now he’s thinking of suing them from heaven,” and she says “That’s impossible, but do you believe people go there after they die if they’ve been good?” and he says “Death, please, not a subject fit for the dinner table, even over spaghetti and cheap wine,” and she says “Would you be sad if Julie or me died?” and he says “Where’d you get that thought?” and she says “Would you though?” and he says “Very very very very, a thought so sad that I’m now sad just thinking about it, but it ain’t gonna happen so let’s not talk about it,” and Julie says “But everyone dies, right?” and he says “Yes, or maybe, but it’s a hundred years away for you kids at least, so far away and the way science is progressing today that it may never happen to you,” and Margo says “But you’ll die earlier than us unless Julie or me dies before you,” and he says “But I said you won’t, you won’t, and I asked you to drop the subject,” and she says “Why, as long as we’re willing to talk about it and are interested, isn’t that so, Julie?” and Julie says “I sort of am,” and he says “You see, she’s not,” and Julie says “No, I am,” and he says “But I’m not. Neither of my kids will die, not in my lifetime or maybe anybody’s, and I’m going to stay so healthy that I’ll outlive the oldest man who ever lived — Methuselah, even,” and Margo says “I never heard of him,” and he says “Ah, he was probably before your time. But during that long long life of mine I’m going to make sure you kids also acquire the means to live that long and even longer, so from now on you don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to living — nothing, forget it,” and Margo says “And Mommy?” and he says “Mommy too, an exceptionally long life — Methuselah’s wife and then some, I’ll see to it,” and Julie says “And Mommy’s parents?” and he says “Now enough, we’ve discussed it way past the point of interest and amusement and information and spaghetti conversation and really, all I was getting at before with those guys on the road and the endless rainstorm and your not ice-skating and so forth was, well, that it’s all been forgotten or put away by you till I just brought it up, and it’s not upsetting you and you both can sleep peacefully and get up tomorrow feeling good, can’t you?” and Margo says “It was not seeing my friends at the party I minded, not the ice-skating, but it’s okay,” and he says “Good, great. Now, continuing my duty as reprehensible single parent — only kidding; responsible father and not morbid-mood bringer and chief family scarer, I have to ask if either of you has homework to do,” and they say they’ve done it, but their teachers went over it in class while they were away, and he asks them to and they clear the table for him, he has another glass of wine and salad while they have dessert, he washes the dishes and puts things away and wants to listen to music while doing this but the classical music station has devoted the hour to marches and waltzes and the other public station which often plays serious music has a call-in on AIDS, yells from the kitchen “Someone want to help Daddy some more and sweep the dining room and kitchen? When I was a kid my folks made me do it every night, even when I was Julie’s age and no matter how badly I did it,” no answer, looks and they’re not around so must be in their rooms upstairs or in one of them with the door closed, he sweeps the floors, puts the washed laundry into the dryer, Julie yells down to the basement “Can we watch TV?” and he says “Is that what you and Margo have been doing since dessert — in my room and you’re only now feeling you’re being deceptive because you know I wouldn’t have permitted it?” and she says “What do you mean?” and he says “The answer’s no; the mind, let’s do something for the mind. Shut the TV off and both of you come downstairs, I’ll meet you halfway,” and goes upstairs and in the dining room they say “So?…yes?” and he suggests Battleship and they say they hate it and he says “It’s something I loved as a kid and your grandma’s taught you and given you plenty of graph paper for and you’ve played it with her, but all right…how about Scrabble?” and Margo says “If we have to do something like that, since you’re forcing us, okay,” and he says “I’m not forcing, but let’s do it,” and has another glass of wine while he plays and in about half an hour says “So, what d’ya know, the old brain’s lost again. Almost bedtime, kids, anyone want to call Mommy? — number’s on the fridge door. You call and I’ll put away the game, for it’ll take too long for you two to duel it out to the end,” and Julie calls, speaks to Lee and then Margo gets on and both tell her how boring, dull, long and monotonous the day’s been and how Daddy’s so unfair not letting them watch TV after such a terrible day and Margo must have mentioned Scrabble and Lee must have said she thought it a good idea to play it because now Margo says “It was his, we didn’t want to. He said we should learn new words and use our minds more and I already get thirty vocabulary words a week at school and all the ones we used on the board weren’t new to Julie or me, though he explained them like they were. And I use my mind all the time in reading and making things and thinking and I’m sure he let us win because he saw how bored we were playing it with him,” and then “I know, ‘he’ is ‘Daddy,’ but what of it? Our teacher says we’re supposed to use the pronoun more in writing and speech,” and then “Mommy wants to speak to you,” and he gets on and Lee says “So how’d it go?” and he says “Home, fine; despite what the kids say, I think we’ve had fun and I got a good dinner without milk in them and I’ll probably get them in bed on time. But oh boy, the trip. Listen, I’ll be honest, we nearly got hit twice on the road. Once wasn’t my fault — two bozos who in fact I later saw at a Roy Rogers at a rest stop, and they seemed awful on the road — angry, dumb, potentially homicidal, even. But at the restaurant they acted like they were my pals, so what do I make of it?” and she says “Perhaps you misconstrued or exaggerated what you saw in them on the road — they weren’t just jokers?” and he says “Didn’t seem so, on the road. You know, I can read people’s faces pretty well and just as often misread them too, but I swear I thought they’d pull out a gun and aim it out the window at me and the kids. I mean, if half the people in this country have a gun and maybe a quarter of those carry it in their cars, we’ll say, then these two guys would have to have had one between them — the figures and what I saw in their faces tell me this — if not a semiautomatic something or another and a grenade,” and she says “Certainly you’re exaggerating here,” and he says “Yeah, a little about the weapons, maybe,” and she says “But also the aiming the gun and possibly shooting all of you. That’s a horrible thought and I’m sure inaccurate and I hope you didn’t pass it on to the kids,” and he says “Only minimally, inappreciably, fleetingly and undoubtedly mistakenly, but they’ve indicated since they’ve forgotten the whole incident. But in the Roy Rogers, I’m telling you, if they sold beer there I bet these guys would have slapped my back and cuffed my chin and said ‘Hiya, palsy,’ and stood me to a couple of rounds, not that I’d drink when I had to drive, naturally,” and she says “I’ll remember that for you when we go to our next party,” and he says “I meant over long trips.” “But what else happened? — you said ‘two near accidents,’” and he says “Other one was partly my fault, going into the center lane — middle lane — which do you use?” and she says “What of it?” and he says “Funny, but that’s what Margo said before, though about what I forget — she must’ve got the expression from you; I was wondering where,” and she says “Really, what of it? This is long distance, sweetie, and I don’t mind the extended call and the expense if it’s about something,” and he says “So? So? Money, big deal, for you could have what you have when crash, you’re gone or forever out of it and what’s the dough good for then, except to help take care of you? If anything, that’s something you think about when you almost get into a serious collision, but of course mostly what if the kids were hurt or you were — me — and they survived. Hurt and worse. But it was partly my fault, is what I’m saying, darting into the middle lane, I’ll settle on, same time this old guy in front of me does from the passing lane — fast lane?…sorry. In other words, we’re both in the fast lane — one syllable, so in the end that’s what decides it for me, but he wasn’t budging from it, when he suddenly darts into the middle lane the second after I did — close but not a close call, I don’t think, but close enough, at seventy miles an hour, to send scare shivers through me and get me flashing about death and the kids and so on. So he was partly at fault too, since he didn’t signal or look. Or just didn’t signal, I’m not sure if he didn’t look, but if he did he wouldn’t have made that sudden reckless move, right? But maybe it was all too fast, my sudden reckless move and his, that he didn’t have time, so it’s a draw,” and she says “Time to what?” and he says “About him? I forget — what was I saying? But that was close call number two, and then, to top it off hour and a half or so from home, the rain,” and she says “You had rain? It was gorgeous here all day. Sunny, golden, clear, a light wind that felt like balmy sea breezes — the most heaven-sent weather on the most rhapsodizical of spring days,” and he says “Not a drop? No wonder — we got it all. It came down in buckets, barrels, big street Dumpsters, I never experienced rain like it and it didn’t stop being this way till we parked in front of the house, where it just sort of decompressed, though it still might have been coming down torrentially everywhere else around us; in other words, with a little bit of stretching, I think we were blessed. I would have stopped at a rest area — rest stop? — service area? — those places with the Roy Rockefellers and Bob’s Pig Boys and Taco Bellies, if I could have seen a sign for one through the rain. Okay, I saw the signs but on that neck of the Interstate all the exits to those service areas are from the left side and I was in no way going to drive in the fast lane to enter one and it seemed too chancy to get over,” and she says “So what did you do?” and he says “Thought of you. No. Rest of the way drove slowly in the slow lane, of course — twenty-five, twenty, though still with limited visibility. But we’re here, trip’s over with, so as you and Margo say, what of it, right?” “Good. I’m glad you’re all home and safe. Anything else?” and he says “To tell you? Wait, all I’ve been doing is going on about me — what about you? Besides the beautiful day, anything interesting or exciting or new happen to you?” and she says “It’s been nice being with my folks, that’s all, and I did a bit of book buying and store browsing and got my hair trimmed and—” and he says “There is something. Before I left, when we were in the hallway outside your parents’ apartment — I was holding you, I think — we were holding each other — and I said I was psychic, you remember?” and she says no and he says “Or maybe I only thought it, but I could almost swear I told you it, and just about something specific, not psychic in general. But I was in this rush to get on the road to get caught in that rain and nearly clipped by two cars so I said I’d tell you about it tonight, but you don’t remember,” and she says “It’s beginning to sound familiar but that may be only because you’re talking about it now and it’s tricking me into thinking I heard it before,” and he says “Too bad; I was hoping you’d remember and tell me what I was referring to in my being psychic,” and she says “Nope, I’m sorry, the bell’s not hinging,” and he says “Let me think, for I don’t know why but I don’t want to lose it — I mean how many times in his life is a man psychic, or this one?” and she says “Better you tell me tomorrow after you remember. Write it down if it comes back,” and he says “I suppose. Oh — this is it, flash from the front — that you already regretted we were gone, or that I was, or it had to be ‘we,’ and I had just been thinking, moment before you said it, that you were thinking this,” and she says “Come again?” and he says “Step one, I felt by your look but really more by something that jumped into my head that you were regretting that we or I was gone — were? was?…I should stop that; I’m so inconsolable—incorrigible,” and she says “You are and it’s getting—” and he says “And step two, that you said exactly what I’d been thinking, that ‘we’ or ‘I’ but probably ‘we,’ or maybe ‘I,’” and she says “If you say I did, I believe you, since it’s not a thought I’d mind having. And I did, for a few minutes, regret that you and the girls were gone, right after you took the elevator down. But we’ll see each other soon,” and he says “Of course. So…I miss you; you, me?” and she says “Of course,” and he says “Of course, of course. And, well, I love you, do you, still, me?” and she says “What a thing. Why would you ask?” and he says “Oh, you know, one acts like a dodo so much, he has to hear it again just to make sure his mate hasn’t turned off him, but it really only popped into me like the other things,” and she says “You’re my one and only, my uno moono, the big man in my life,” and he says “Same here, but ‘woman.’ Never since we started seeing each other…no one else,” and she says “Good, and same here, and I’ll see you in two days, or is it three? We’ll talk,” and Julie says “Did you hear what Daddy said to Mommy?” and Margo says “Don’t be a child,” and Lee says “I hear what the girls are saying. You’re in for it now. Get a good night’s sleep and make sure they do too,” and he says “What do you think, I’m going to play pinochle half the night with them?” and she says “Pinochle? Where’d that come from?” and he says “Just another pop-in thought, but it was a game my dad played with his cronies, though I don’t think I thought of him once today. No, that’s not true either,” and she says “What else isn’t?” and he says “Nothing, just an expression. We better get. Bye-bye, my lovey,” and she says “Goodnight,” and he says “And give my best to your parents,” and she says “I will.”

Later, kids in bed, teeth brushed, flossed, clothes set for the next day and he says “Lights out, everybody,” and Margo says “Can I read for five minutes more?” and he says “Fine, for both of you, five minutes’ free play, but that’s it, deal?” and they say nothing and he says “You have to say something,” and they say yes and five minutes later he goes back upstairs to the part of the hallway between their rooms and says “Lights out now, please,” and Julie says “Can’t we have a story?” and he says no and she says “You said last night you’d give one because Mommy won’t be here,” and he says “Okay, but a short one. ‘There were two sisters ready for sleep—’” and she says “Oh God, Daddy, two sisters — real original. Do they have our names?” and he says “No, why would they? — it’s a story,” and she says “Margo, did you hear that — Daddy’s story with two sisters like us?” and Margo says “I’m not listening, I’m reading,” and he says “Not like you. Just two sisters, ages a little different and personalities completely unlike yours, who are very tired, yawning, in bed and ready for sleep — remember, this is a short one — when a bear comes into their room—” and Julie says “With you it’s always a bear. Why not an elephant?” and he says “Hey, who’s telling it? You don’t like the way I do it, I won’t and it’s goodnight, sweet peas,” and she says “No, go on,” and he says “Not a bear but a flying duck. And this duck — this is the story—‘And this duck, Dickie, for all ducks have first names starting with D, says “Hey, gals, let’s go outside and cause a major duck ruckus,” and they say “No, we’re tired and have to go to sleep; sorry, Dickie. Maybe tomorrow or the day after,”’ end of story,” and Julie says “That wasn’t one — it didn’t go on and there was no ending,” and he says “Best I can do tonight for a shortie. It’s late,” looks at his watch, “—oh my gosh, past ten and tomorrow’s a school day and I promised Mommy and I’m even a little tired myself and still have to make lunch for you for tomorrow and do other things. I’m also not in the right frame of mind and mood for a story — I gotta feel it and I don’t, so goodnight, all,” and flicks the wall light switch in her room which turns off the night table light and she says “Wait, I’m not done yet, I haven’t fixed my animals in bed,” and he says “What’s it gonna be, all night with you?” and turns the light on and watches her arrange her stuffed animals under her covers with their noses jutting just above and she rests her head on the pillow and says “Okay, I’m set,” and he turns the light off and says “Be back in a sec,” and sticks his head into Margo’s room and says “May I turn the light off now? — I gave you much more than five minutes,” and she says “Only half a page left till the end of the paragraph,” and he waits while she reads and thinks “Look at that concentration and the way she won’t give the book up — I wish I still had it like that,” and she puts a bookmark between the pages, closes the book and puts it on the floor and says “All right, I’m ready, thank you,” and he turns her night table light off from her wall switch and she says “You have to come say goodnight to me personally,” and he says “Orders, these kids are never done giving orders,” and sits on her bed and says goodnight and she raises her arms and he leans down between them and kisses her forehead and she hugs him and pulls him down to her and says “Now you’re sentenced to prison, you can never get free, what are you going to do, prisoner?” and he says “Willingly stay here for life, I guess — jail is so sweet and a break from everyday things,” and rests his face on her cheek and Julie says “What about me?” and he says “Be there soon, my cookie,” and lifts his head and looks at Margo in the light from the hallway and thinks “My firstborn, my firstborn, how big and beautiful you’ve grown, and smart? oh my God,” and feels tears and thinks “Now that wasn’t cheap sentimentality, was it?” and she says “What?” and he says “Why?” and she says “Way you’re staring at me; I do something wrong?” and he says “The opposite; I’m just admiring you,” and thinks “Ah, what great kids, incomparable, inconsolable, I’m so incorrigible, I gotta do something about that soon. For starters not to be such a gruffpot, just not be anything I know I shouldn’t be and which hurts them and anything like that and in the end me. I know I’ve said it all before but this is the end of saying I’ve said it or the end of saying this is the end of saying I’ve said it, or will try for it to be, right from now,” and says “This is really unbeatable, my dear, but please now release me so I can let you get some sleep, you need it,” and she takes her arms away and he kisses her lips and brushes her hair back with his hand and she says “You’re looking at me in that weird way again,” and he says “Honestly, it’s nothing; or maybe just the shadows and stuff on my face, making me look gruff — you know, but go to sleep,” and gets up and she says “I love you, Daddy,” and he says “Say, that’s a coincidence, for me too to you too too, now goodnight,” and blows her a kiss and goes into Julie’s room and says “By all rights I should’ve gone to my youngest first, who I believe is you”—puts his face right up to hers—“yes, this is definitely recognizable as Julie’s, because she needs more sleep. But I shut Margo’s light last so went into her room first to say goodnight, does that make any sense or should I reexplain or just forget it?” and she says “What were you talking of with her — did you tell her a full story?” and he says “I was telling her how beautiful, big, smart and grown she’s become, just like you with all those and how you two were always like that from day one of birth though not so grown,” and gets on his knees and brushes her hair back and says “Now guten nacht, my darlink sveetheart, mut — mit great sveet dreams to du,” and she says “And sweet dreams to you and see you in the morning and have a nice night,” and he says “And nice night too, I forgot that one, and see you in the morning,” and Margo says “You’re taking much longer with her than you did me,” and he says “Not true but I’ll return to give you equal time,” and Julie says “And then me,” and he says “I’m now giving it,” and kisses her lips and says “I love you, mein wunderbar kit, now goodnight,” and she says “Goodnight and don’t forget to come back,” and he says “Never, for tonight, that was it,” and goes into Margo’s room and says “Goodnight again, that’s all, I’m on my way out,” and kisses her forehead and she tries locking him in her arms and he says “No, really,” pulling her arms away, “fun’s fun and love’s love but it’s sleepy-sleep time,” and she says “One more kiss?” and he says “Please, no, this can go on forever,” and leaves the room and says “I’ll stay here for a few minutes,” and Margo says “If not a real story, sing?” and he says “Nah, I’ve a crummy voice,” and turns the hallway light off and she says “We need it to see the bathroom — the night light’s broke,” and he says “You’re getting a little light from my bedroom,” and she says “But then you’ll go to sleep,” and he says “I’ll leave the bathroom light on with the door quarterway open,” and turns the bathroom light on, shuts the door almost all the way and sits against the wall between their rooms and Margo says “Please sing. Mommy always does when there’s no story and sometimes even after one and it gets us to sleep faster,” and he says “But she has a pretty voice and knows lots of good songs. Okay, only one with my crummy voice and short as can be but sung slowly,” and he sings “‘Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, I am lost and gone forever, oh my darling Clementine.’ I don’t think those are the exact words but the tune’s right and the feeling’s all there. But that’s it; now complete utter silence,” and Julie says “More,” and he says “No! I mean it. I’m not saying another word and neither are you,” and they’re quiet and he thinks “‘I’ve been lost and gone forever? She’s been lost and gone? You have? She is? I’m?’ I don’t know which one, they all sound right,” and rests his arms on his knees, head on his wrist, blows out a long breath, no thoughts come. Sometime later he thinks “Was I sleeping? Must’ve been; wonder how long,” and whispers “Girls, you asleep?” and Margo says “I’m not,” and he says “So sleep, sweetheart, really; I’ll sit here a few more minutes,” and she says “If you come say goodnight to me one last time, you can leave,” and he thinks “Should I give in? What’s the harm,” and says “Okay, if that’ll do it,” and goes into her room and kisses her forehead and says “Goodnight now, all right?” and he can’t see her well in the dark but she seems to nod and he goes into Julie’s room and kisses her head and then goes downstairs to make them lunch.