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CHAPTER TWO Meg

‘I spy with my little eye, something blue.’

‘Blue?’ said Shelly. ‘It can’t be inside the car, Ceece!’

‘It’s not! Look! On the bottom of that silo.’

‘Well, don’t show me, for God’s sakes! Now you have to pick something else!’

Meg smiled at them, Shelly riding shotgun, C.C. in the back, where she would be the entire trip because she didn’t drive a stick. Meg wasn’t playing the I Spy game; she was too worried about her car. The windshield wipers had done it again, a sort of hiccup. As she watched, they stalled mid-swipe and finally slid down and lay there, as if exhausted. Meg stared at them; she could relate.

At least it had nearly stopped raining. She glanced over at Shelly, then caught C.C. staring at her in the rear-view mirror. Both of them had that flicker of alarm in their eyes, their lively chatting abruptly stopped. It was clear to all of them now, the car was unwell. But it kept on going. Good ole Rosie, Meg thought. But she wondered again if the full load–all their suitcases, the cooler and the three of them–wasn’t too much for her ancient Honda.

‘I think your old car is having mid-life issues too, Meg.’ Shelly was fanning herself with the map again. She laughed, and C.C. chortled in the back.

Meg turned the radio off, then the headlights. She flipped the wiper switch off, then on, and the blades reluctantly picked up. But then the car surged and sputtered, and the wipers flopped spasmodically again.

As long as the car is moving, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pull over here, in Middle-of-Nowhere, Illinois. Meg stared up at the gray sky, not to God, because she’d long ago dismissed that notion, but rather in the same way Eeyore would look at his personal rain cloud, not questioning, but with a somber acceptance. Hello there, Rain cloud. I knew you’d stay with me.

‘Those wipers look about as useful as goose doo on a pump handle,’ said C.C., matter-of-factly.

Meg smiled, finally. She was always grateful for C.C.’s take on things, and now it seemed their every mile southward was bringing out a little more of her latent accent and homespun sayings.

Meg looked at the trip odometer: 212. And they had nearly four hundred miles to go!

She tried the wipers again. ‘C’mon, you worthless things!’ They sprang to life, as if to mock her.

‘Yay!’ said C.C., and she and Shelly resumed their conversation.

Meg straightened in her seat again, able to see now through the cleared arcs. They rolled past another mile marker and Meg flinched when she saw it: 32. Her upcoming wedding anniversary. She said nothing, fearing that C.C. would interpret it as a bad omen.

Was it her imagination or were the wipers slowing again? Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. They were. They stuttered, then refused to rise. Again. She glared at the blades, black and crisp-looking–she’d bought new ones just for this trip-but utterly useless on their metal arms. Involuntarily, she glanced down at her new pants, loden-green corduroys, also purchased just for this trip; she’d been shocked to find that she had to buy a size six. She’d been a fit ten her whole married life, except for when she was pregnant. A deep and audible sigh of empathy with the wipers slipped out as she decided she really couldn’t see. She carefully steered the car toward the side of the road.

Suddenly the wipers picked up again and the engine hummed to life. ‘Make up your friggin’ mind!’ Meg growled. She steered the car back onto the paved but unlined country road.

‘What the hell’s wrong with the wipers?’ asked Shelly.

‘Yeah, what’s wrong?’ C.C. asked.

Meg felt a surge of irritation that she was expected to know what was wrong, just because it was her car. She was a high-school English teacher; her mechanical aptitude wouldn’t fill a thimble. She tried the wiper switch again as rustling sounds came from the back seat.

‘Here, hon.’ C.C.’s chubby pale hand appeared between the seats, holding four squares of a Hershey bar. ‘Have some chocolate.’ C.C.’s panacea.

‘No, thanks. I’m okay,’ said Meg, though she realized her posture, hunched over the steering wheel, hands clenched and bloodless on the wheel, belied her claim. C.C.’s hand silently retracted, followed by soft sounds of smacking from the back seat.

Meg touched the accelerator with her toe again. The speedometer registered a lethargic twenty-seven miles per hour. She pressed again and there was a small roar, so she tried the wipers; they started up again, at a galloping beat. But they seemed…untrustworthy. But both Shelly and C.C. gave dramatic sighs of relief and resumed chatting.

Did they not notice that they were crawling along? Could they not hear the engine? Meg continued to breathe as if through a cocktail straw. The car was fine, she told herself; it was her. Hadn’t nearly everything become untrustworthy since—

Even the bucolic rural Illinois farmland had become foreboding. The country scene, the broad sky, the rich, chocolatey soil of the newly plowed fields, the red barns with their big white Xs on the doors, they had all always been a salve to her, harking back to another era. She had such nostalgia for a slower pace and a gentler time that Meg thought reincarnation seemed a more distinct possibility than heaven or hell. But at the moment, the somber gray sky and the sodden fields felt not calming, but remote and desolate.

They were down to ten miles per hour. Should she pull over again? A sudden stillness announced that there was no question for her to ponder anymore. The wipers slid one final arc. The quiet settled into the car like a morose fourth passenger. On momentum alone, Meg steered the car to the edge of the road.

No one spoke, but she knew the other two were looking at her. She exhaled finally; she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath. She took one hand off the steering wheel, turned the key in the ignition to off, then turned it back. Nothing. She tried it again, with the same result.

She leaned back hard in her seat. ‘Shit. I’m sorry, you guys.’ She massaged the red marks on her otherwise white palms. ‘It was my stupid literary fantasy, to take the scenic small roads, emulate John Steinbeck. Now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere,’ she said morosely, staring out her window. There was not a house, barn or even another car in sight. Just acres and acres of wet farmland.

Meg closed her eyes, too tired to remember C.C.’s cardinal rule never to tempt the fates when things were going wrong. As she rubbed her hands she thought: This can’t get any worse. They were stuck in the middle of their lives, in middle America, in the middle of life crises, and now, in the middle of nowhere. ‘So much for our Great Escape,’ she said with a small, unconvincing laugh.

How many decades had they fantasized about ‘the Great Escape’? To just up and leave their kids, husbands, jobs, lives for a week or two, head for the horizon, free of the myriad burdens of being something to someone, other than friend. They’d long ago agreed that their friendship was what held them together, reminded them of who they were as women, whole identities unto themselves, not defined by their roles of work, mothering or marriage. Even when the demands of young children and escalating careers had meant their conversations were carried out more on the phone than in person, especially with Shelly’s stint in New York, their friendship had kept them all afloat in hard times, held firm the sails in high winds.

Meg silently recounted all the reasons the trip had never happened till now: someone’s kid got sick, or was in the playoffs, or was graduating. Or someone got a promotion, or four new clients, or school was ending late because of snow days. Or someone’s husband had the flu, or suddenly had to go out of town that week, or was turning forty, or fifty, or was just too busy, depressed or tired to be left alone with the household responsibilities. Once, it was Meg’s dog. He’d cut his leg on some garden edging and the vet bill had wiped out her entire vacation budget. Meg had always thought all the reasons were valid. Disappointing, but valid. But now, at this gray moment, on this gray day, they seemed like so many excuses strung together. Even Buster.

Oh my God! She turned, wide-eyed, looked back at C.C., then over at Shelly. ‘How ironic is this? You know all those reasons that kept coming up that we never did the Great Escape? It just occurred to me that the only reason we’re on this trip now is because…’ she had to take a breath, ‘…all those reasons left us first.’

She looked at her friends again and they looked at her.

‘Fuck.’ Shelly leaned back against her door. ‘That’s true. First Len dies, then I lose most of my life savings in that damn mall development deal, having the added side benefit of making every man run to the other side of the street when they see me.’ She turned to Meg, her expression still incredulous. ‘Then your old dog dies and Grant takes off. You’d think The Trio had a curse thrown down on us.’

C.C. made three neat spitting sounds in the back seat. ‘Don’t even say that!’

‘Relax,’ said Meg. ‘It’s merely the curse of middle age.’

No one spoke for a minute, then C.C.’s voice floated up from the back seat, quiet, tentative. ‘So, I guess we’re broken down, huh?’

‘Of course we are,’ said Shelly. ‘And the car is broken down too.’ Shelly cracked up, but no one else did.

‘This isn’t a good sign,’ said C.C. softly, ominously.

And, there it is! Not with the signs again. Meg thought the words just a half-beat before Shelly barked them out.

‘Not with the signs again, C.C.!’

Meg felt that surge of anger again: at C.C. for perpetually seeing everything, good or bad, as a sign, and at Shelly for castigating C.C. for it. It occurred to Meg that their friendship had stood the test of time, but never had they put it to the test of the Road Trip. Not to mention: Remodeling a House. Which necessarily also meant: Going into Business Together. And, most dangerous of all, Living Together.

Meg’s breathing grew tight and rapid, her heart pounding. The nausea, the headache. The weather. Migraine. As if the universe was saying: This is but one way things can get worse. She forced herself to inhale deeply. Don’t say it, she told herself, at the insistent thought in her head. But the words came out anyway. ‘She’s right. I think this whole trip may have been a mistake.’

‘Now, c’mon,’ said Shelly, lightly punching Meg in the arm. ‘We are three competent women. This is nothing.’ She made a ‘pbllth’ sound. A mere blip on the radar. We’ve been through way more than a measly old car breakdown together.’

That was true. Birth, marriage, divorce, death, financial problems.

Abandonment.

Shit happens. And it seemed especially to happen when you turned fifty, thought Meg. Your kids leave. And then the dog dies. She’d had other friends who’d lost their old dogs or cats just before or after their last kid went off to college. No coincidence. They’d all waited till their youngest kid was five or six before they relented to the incessant begging and got a puppy or kitten. So all those animals simply came to the end of their natural lives at the exact time when many of the moms were feeling like a significant part of their own lives was ending. But Meg had been looking forward to the empty nest, that’s why she’d taken early retirement. She would not have if she’d known her husband, too, was going to leave her.

She reached down with her left hand, found the lever and reclined her seat; she couldn’t go far because the cooler and jackets and pillows were on the back seat behind her. She covered her eyes with her hands, massaging her forehead and temples with her fingertips. Her lower back ached, and her underwear was threatening to bisect her. But she didn’t have the energy to rearrange anything.

She longed for the safety and comfort of her living room, to be stretched out on her blue velvet couch, facing the big picture window that overlooked the slope of the hill. In her imagination, Buster was taking up half the couch, but keeping her feet warm. Dear old Buster. Her last act before leaving home had been to sprinkle that dear, dumb dog’s ashes on the hillside behind their house, saying prayers for him, and for herself, to no one at all.

Home. The purple and white crocuses would soon be dotting that hillside, not quite the cheerleaders of spring that tulips or even daffodils are, but maybe the junior varsity squad, smaller, less popular, but still cute and perky. Every year, just when she needed it most, they had cheered her into believing that spring would once again be victorious over the long, northern Iowa winter. But maybe not this year. Her life had been so turned upside down that now even the spinning of the earth on its axis seemed to be in question.

She was vaguely aware of C.C. and Shelly quietly talking, the kind of softly urgent exchanges between upright people around a prone person, in a coma maybe, or discovered inert on the sidewalk. But Meg drifted away, backing out of reality, which she did so often lately.

But reality, as it always does, followed. The familiar image of her husband, not her, ensconced on the couch with Buster sent a dull ache through her. Then a thought made her heart skip and race in a way that was both invigorating and life-threatening, all at once. Maybe Grant was there now! She put a hand to her chest, unconsciously spreading her fingers wide, like a net over her sternum. Maybe he had come back, was even now reading one of the letters she’d written and left for him, just in case, on the kitchen table.

A weak groan escaped from deep within her. She knew all too well that her house was empty–empty of children, empty of Buster, empty of Grant, and most of all empty of herself, because even when she’d been living there, alone, the past few weeks, she’d felt barely a shell of herself. And maybe even before Grant had left. In her heart of hearts, she’d known that their marriage had been leaking air for years, invisibly, like a balloon forgotten in the corner of the living room long after the party is over. Wizened, sinking almost imperceptibly, but undeniably, weighted down now by the very ribbon that was supposed to keep it from floating away.

‘Meg-legs?’ C.C. enquired again. Meg held up a finger, asking for another minute before anything was required of her. ‘Okay, honey, take your time. We’re warm and toasty in here. And we’ve got food.’

Good ol’ C.C. She would sit quietly in the back for days, munching her chocolate bars, supporting Meg in her fragility. In fact, it wasn’t her own but C.C.’s situation that had finally made this trip happen, first with Lenny’s death, then Aunt Georgie’s and the inheritance of Dogs’ Wood, the house in Tennessee.

So much change. Wasn’t life supposed to be less full of change, not more, with age? She wasn’t sure where she’d gotten that idea, but it was dead wrong.

A noisy clatter startled her. She abruptly sat up, bringing her seatback forward with the flip of the lever. The rain had suddenly intensified, the fat drops making a chaotic drumbeat on the car.

‘Oh, yay. That’s what we needed. A percussive soundtrack to our…situation,’ said Shelly, looking out her window, her enthusiasm of a moment ago gone.

Meg looked at her friends; they were both gazing skyward, hunched down into themselves as if they expected the roof to fall in. Meg grasped the key again, her mouth set. She felt both women’s rapt attention on her. C.C. began muttering a prayer.

‘C’mon, baby. You can do it,’ Meg said loudly, over the rain and over the prayer, deciding that talking directly to the car would be more productive than to a God she no longer believed in. ‘You can do it.’

It pulled at her throat to hear her words, exactly the way she’d urged on her kids, especially for all their firsts: letting go of her fingers and taking those first robotic steps on stubby legs across the living room; or when they were learning to dive off the edge of the pool, their little toes curled tightly around the cement edge, bony knees knocking from chill and fear, arms plastered against ears, fingers tight, hands laid perfectly, one over the other, a prayer pose if ever there was one, with Meg treading water, waiting, saying, ‘You can do it! I know you can!’; or as they wobbled off on their little bikes with the small, fat tires but, for the first time, no training wheels, defying both gravity and Meg’s own death-grip on their bicycle seat till she had to let go; or when they first merged into rush-hour traffic on the freeway with their still-crisp learner’s permit tucked proudly into their purse or wallet, both child and mother’s knuckles white; or when they were sitting on their overstuffed college suitcase, finally succeeding in zippering it closed, and then the child who had been so irritable and distant all summer, nearly bursting with the need to leave home, suddenly burst into tears at the prospect. ‘C’mon, you can do it,’ she’d said each and every time, until they had.

‘C’mon, you can do it,’ she said again, louder, to her car and to herself. But when she turned the key, the solitary and forlorn click of the ignition could barely be heard above the rain. She looked right, saw Shelly studying her, overly sympathetically.

‘Damn cars,’ she told Meg. ‘They’re like men. You can’t live with ’em, and you can’t live without ’em.’

Meg nodded, although it was Shelly’s mantra, not hers. Meg had never wanted to be alone. Never.

She sighed, reached forward, patted the dashboard. ‘What’s wrong, little Rosie?’

She felt a gaze pierce the side of her head. Shelly again. This time, mouth and eyes wide open. ‘You named your car?’ she asked. ‘I did not know this about you. How could I not know this? Did you name your lawn mower too?’ Shelly snickered. C.C. chuckled in the back seat. Meg tried to look indignant, but she couldn’t completely stifle a smile.

‘And your cheese grater?’ asked Shelly. There was just a fraction of a moment of silence, then the car seemed to explode with laughter. Their fatigue and predicament was taking its toll, all of them laughing so hard they could barely breathe, tears streaming down their cheeks, the kind of uncontrollable laughter that was pure, emotional release.

‘And your…carrot peeler?’ Shelly wheezed.

‘Oh, wait! I know, I know!’ said Meg, breathlessly. ‘Together, they could be Larry, Moe and Curly!’ She fell onto the steering wheel in silent, shaking laughter.

Shelly shrieked, then caught her breath enough to squeeze out, ‘Perhaps we should change from The Trio, to the Three Stooges!’ More uncontrollable laughter. ‘Oh! I’ve got it!’ Shelly was almost screaming now. ‘The lawn mower is…Moe!’

C.C.’s distinct laugh, an almost maniacal giggle when she really got going, made Meg laugh even harder. They were all beside themselves, hardly able to breathe.

Shelly was wheezing, talking in gasps. ‘And the…carrot…peeler is…Curly,’ more shrieks of laughter, ‘and the…the…’

Meg and C.C., still laughing but more controlled, waited for Shelly.

But Shelly had stopped laughing. She looked truly frightened. ‘Oh shit!’ she said, pressing her palms to her cheeks. Meg glanced back at C.C., who looked worriedly at Shelly, then at Meg.

‘Shell?’ asked Meg, placing her hand on Shelly’s knee. Meg’s mind raced with what the problem could be–a suddenly remembered stove left on at home? Sudden pain?

‘I forgot the third thing!’ said Shelly.

There was just the briefest pause, then all three screamed with laughter again.

‘I don’t remember it either!’ C.C. squealed.

‘Oh my God,’ Meg said flatly, catching her breath, looking side to side, blinking. ‘I can’t remember it either! This is so pathetic.’ She burst out laughing along with the other two and inadvertently snorted, making them all dissolve again.

‘Stop! Stop! Or you’ll make me pee!’ C.C. gasped from the back seat.

They slowly regained control. C.C.’s worry, a frequent one of late, quickly brought some sobriety into the car.

‘Oh my,’ said Meg, inhaling deeply. She pulled a tissue from the center console and dabbed at her eyes, sighing. ‘Golly. Just look at us here, all broken down and stranded, not doing a darned thing about it.’

‘Well, why the hell are we just sitting here, girls?’ said Shelly, digging through her purse. She pulled out a pack of tissues, which she handed back to C.C., then her bright red reading glasses, then her gem-studded cellphone. ‘You’re a member of Triple A, right, Meg?’ she asked.

Meg shook her head, pointed to a small sticker on the corner of the windshield. ‘No, but we’ve got–’ she sucked in a breath–‘I’ve got towing coverage. With our insurance.’ She held out her hand. ‘May I use your phone?’ Shelly handed it to her.

‘Ceece?’ Shelly said, twisting in her seat. ‘You’d better get an urgent delivery prayer up that we can get a signal out here.’

Meg turned and watched as C.C. closed her eyes, crossed herself quickly, then put her forehead against her clasped hands. Meg turned back around. She looked at the sticker, blinked, pressed her head back into the headrest, then looked at Shelly again. ‘I can’t read the numbers. Hand the specs over too, please.’ She punched in the number, and when it rang, Meg gave the other two a thumbs-up.

‘Yay, Jesus!’ shouted Shelly, the recalcitrant but loyal Jew, pumping her fist. Meg could hear C.C. clapping, saying, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ Meg waved her hand for them to quiet.

‘Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Yes? Great. Hi. This is Meg Bartholomew. We, uh, need a little help, I guess.’

Shelly leaned over, nearly in Meg’s lap, and yelled toward the phone, ‘We need a lot of help!’ Meg swatted her off, grinning.

Meg listened, then said, ‘Well, actually, I did happen to notice the last mile marker we passed. Number thirty-two.’ Whether C.C. hadn’t heard, or didn’t remember the significance of the number, or simply decided to keep quiet, Meg didn’t know. But she was grateful.

When she had relayed the rest of the information, Meg closed the phone and handed it back to Shelly. ‘Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do but wait for someone to rescue us.’

The rain, which had been slowly letting up, had now finally stopped altogether, as if it too were worn out. Meg looked up, hopeful for a rainbow that she could point out to C.C. But there was no rainbow, no fingers of sunlight breaking through, not even a parting in the clouds.

No one spoke. Meg looked out at the soggy patchwork of farmland, most of it fallow still, even late March being too early and–untrustworthy–for planting. She stared at the barbed-wire fence, watched the drops clinging to the bottom of the wires, like tiny, upside-down birds, until they grew fat and heavy, and gravity made them plunge to the ground. She rested her head on the cool glass and wondered where Grant was. She closed her eyes, picturing him in his ubiquitous Yankees cap, driving his orange BMW. But where? She willed him to write to her, tried even to make herself picture a letter already waiting for her in Tennessee. He had the address; she’d dictated it to him that day he was sitting at the kitchen table making some sort of list and—She had a sudden pang. What had he been writing that day? He’d been sitting at the kitchen table, writing a list on a legal pad, and listening to that awful sports radio where the men seemed to yell all the time. She’d hesitated briefly, then she’d asked to speak to him. ‘What’s up?’ he said, neither looking up nor turning down the radio. The conversation that had followed, like all their conversations, was stilted, awkward. But somehow Meg had worked in how much she’d loved his letters to her in college, and that maybe they could write to each other while she was away. She thought, but didn’t say, that if they could write to each other, maybe they could find a way to talk to each other. ‘I really don’t need the address,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll call you if I need you.’ ‘Well, the phone may not work when we get there. C.C. thinks it’s been turned off. Just write it down. Please?’ Meg remembered the tired anger of having to cajole. ‘It can’t hurt to have it. If only for emergencies.’ Only then had he torn a small corner off the bottom of the page, hastily scrawled the address on it as she dictated. But she could tell he was, from habit, more attuned to what was being said on the radio than by her.

Sitting in the car now, Meg realized she should have looked at whatever it was he was writing. Probably his own list of things to take. He had known. Even then. Maybe he’d been planning to leave her for months. Years.

She gazed out at the expanse of emptiness again. She looked at the barbed-wire fence across the road, looking sharp and certain of its responsibilities. On one post was a small, metal ‘No Trespassing’ sign, a bullet hole just above the circle of the o. She wondered if the shooter had been aiming for the o, or had just taken a pot shot.

Sitting there, just past mile marker 32, Meg stared at the sign through the wet glass, and wondered if, in the end, aiming made any difference.