We, the women in the family, are to leave first thing in the morning. First thing in the morning. What a friendly phrase, open to interpretation, availing itself of alternatives, rather than scraping against the
constrictions of time. Leaving may indeed be the first thing I do; I may, however, do it at 7, or I may do it at 9.
As it happens, I do it at 9:30 or, according to my traveling companion, on the late side. She stands by the door, car keys in hand. Her bag is packed, her coat is on, and her posture is impatient. It invites encouragement. Running up and down the stairs, I blow balloons of breathless promises. Be right there . . . just have to get my jacket . . . just have to dry my hair . . . .
”Mo-om!”
All right, all right. How did she get to be in charge here? There was a time when, at the moment of my own choosing, I opened up the back of the station wagon and put her in. She would walk, her white hair grazing the ceiling, over to a wheel bump, and sit down. She had her world at her feet: a Raggedy Ann blanket and a small unobtrusive volume called ”Mouse Tales.” She also had her brother. Together, they pinched and yelped up the turnpike. The entire length of New Jersey was a welt, a bruise on our travelogue.
These were our early journeys, fraught with the perils of short tempers, frequent thirsts and little urgencies that had a way of surfacing just as we went speeding past a sign that read, ”Next Service Area, 48 miles.”
Now, in what I grimly regard as a pervasive loss of elasticity, the urgency is mine. ”Again?” she wails, as I veer off, every 20 minutes, toward the exit lane.
Nor is this the only change in our relative positions. Having moved progressively, over the years, from the rear of the station wagon to the more civilized section known as the middle seat and then to the front, full-fledged passenger seat, she is taking command of the entertainment; the dial is her domain. In addition, there are the tapes, 13 in all. These she operates from a somewhat battered box she curses as being ”so old.”
I remember the purchase, way back, I believe, at the turn of the decade. But I will do well to keep my mouth shut: The batteries themselves have outlasted the average lifespan of most marriages. Besides she has been kind. Of the 13 tapes, Michael Jackson and the Stones heavily represented among them, I am permitted one of my own, ”The Greatest Hits of 1720,” which she had to approve. If this sounds like a power struggle, it is. And yet as much as I might like to decide, all by myself, when to squirt the windshield, I discover over the next three days and several hundred miles that sharing the power has its rewards.
Our mission is to visit colleges, to sweep through the campuses of the great. This will allow her the opportunity to see that all of the places I have suggested are preposterous, and for me to see that she has her own ideas- which I, in turn, will find even more preposterous.
None of this matters, as things develop. What matters is that on the second night of our journey we are in a motel in Maine, having driven through what is, to say the least, an unseasonable snow. We are punchy, giddy with survival, and hungry. Following the lights of a snowplow at 10 m.p.h. for four hours, our noses pressed to the windshield, has stimulated our appetites. The restaurant is closed. A dwindling supply of soft drinks, chocolate chip cookies and Cheez-Its will have to do.
Never mind. There will be hot baths, big wide beds and ”Hill Street Blues.” Presently the nightgowns are unpacked, the water is running, and the televison is on. I am just popping the cork on a bottle of seltzer when I hear vague rumblings of disharmony coming from next door. By the time my traveling companion emerges from her bath, the war has escalated. Our neighbors are
”having words.” Glasses, or maybe ashtrays, crash against the walls. One of us-I won`t say who-turns down ”Hill Street Blues.” We are all ears and nerve endings, laughter and chatter.
It is a funny and rather wonderful night. Sometime, when the storm next door has settled to a whimper, I lie listening to the howl of the one outside. My daughter turns in the other bed, and I think how far we`ve come, of distances traveled. Across the miles and over years, critcism and acceptance, confrontation and growth.
A car is close quarters; there are no illusions. I have been reminded more than once that if I were dependent upon trains, I would miss them, that I`m disorganized, that I stop entirely too often. A trip across the country with me, for instance, would be out of the question. Who could live so long?
Thus the journey we have taken is more expansive than the one we planned. It began with a little girl in the back seat of a station wagon and finished with the friend and companion asleep in bed beside me.
