The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving (18 page)

skylark

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

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

“What're you doing?” says Trev.

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

“I've gotta piss, too.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once again, I'm left holding the groceries.

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

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

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

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

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

fingers

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

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

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

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

“But I don't
have
anything,” she explains.

“
Th
en just leave it for now,” I tell her, turning my attention back to the road. “We'll get a Kleenex when we get home.”
Fuck. I knew I forgot something.

“Eww,” Piper says.

Glancing back, I see she's defied me, she's gone ahead and wiped Jodi's nose. Corkscrewing her face, she now holds a glistening index finger at arms length.

I knit my brow into the mirror. “Don't you dare wipe that on the seat, young lady.”

She knits her brow right back at me, makes sure I'm paying attention, then wipes her finger on the back of the driver's seat.

“Damnit, Piper! What did I just say?”

She's smiles devilishly at the
D
word and ribs Jodi, who is smiling, too. He garbles something unintelligible, unable to control his mirth.

“It's not funny!”

Th
ey laugh at my ire. Daddy is a joke, a reliable source of amusement. Daddy is to be teased and taunted like a terrier. Above all, Daddy is to be tested.

“Damnit, it's not funny!”

Piper eggs Jodi's laughter on still further, poking his distended belly and pointing at the back of the seat, until the boy begins kicking his feet deliriously.

Just as I let up on the accelerator, swing my head around, and begin easing onto the muddy shoulder for a time-out, Piper thrusts her still glistening finger over my right shoulder, so that I might inspect the punch line inches from my face.

“I wiped the other one, silly.”

Jodi dispenses a snotty laugh and kicks his legs some more.

Daddy is a sucker. Daddy takes the bait every time. What choice does Daddy have, even in his edgy state of nerve-worn fatigue, but to laugh at himself?

When Piper sees that I'm in on the joke, she gives me the smile, the new one, the one where she jams her tongue through the gap in her front teeth.